Advice on Teaching English in Poland

seriously?? I thought they are the same in any thinkable dialect of English. Good mourning anyone btw ??? ;)

Phil_C mouthed off:


Apparently not, go dope yourelf up on more of your goofballs if you can' take it.


Actually it's oral.

I don't know if it's only me but I notice a considerable difference in the way 'r' is pronounced in American and Irish English - and for me the Irish version is so much more pleasant (/charming/beautiful/etc/etc ;)

The Australians, by contrast, seem to put 'r's at the end of words that end in vowels. There is an Australian radio journalist on the air where I live and everytime he does a story on China he calls it "Chiner".

Good point, DE. Then again, some omit the r. For example, some say cheapa instead of cheaper. All the Polish students heard cipa and started laughing. She didn't know why. She lived in Poland for a year.

I once referred to an a particular argument as "a lot of hooey" to the shock/amusement of my students. I even knew the Polish word, I just didn't connect the two in my mind. I don't use the word 'hooey' anymore.

Hehehe, good one. I don't know why but I often say hooey when I exert myself or lift sth. Like the Japanese say 'jo-issho' when they move anything. I have to remind myself not to do it when at my parents-in-laws' place :)

As do I.


Of course, thanks verrrrry much ; )


Talking of that and "the queen's English", I've always thought her version of the word "here" sounds more like a gay karate guy than anything else...


Think morning as in forornor

Mourning as in moresore/soarfour

I am not 100 per cent sure now but I believe that 'Longman's contemporary English' dictionary has the same phonetic transcryptions for both words - I was just once going through the dictionary and found the word mourning (which was not familiar to me then) and got interested

I guess it can be different in Irish English though - don't the Irish still pronounce the 'h' sound in 'where', 'when', 'whale' (as the Elisabethan English did)

I know what you're getting at, but for my Estuary English accent all those words are the same

mafketis, r-colouring and rhotically trilling an r aren't quite the same thing. The word nurse for example could have a delightfully rolled r inside it (which is how I now imagine Teffle talks) which is distinct from both its North American and RP pronunciation.

I don't have a problem with r, and I use it in a linking capacity regularly, but if it's making life hard for my students (np. February) I'll tell them to ignore it, and just say Febry. And if they're not colouring their r, but trilling it (as Poles are wont to do), then I'll remove the trill but not teach r-colouring, so "four" goes from "foo-errrr" (Polish) to "faw" (Standard English).

Yep, Scots too usually.


I was afraid that might happen : ) Must brush up on my IPA, it would help!

Gumishu, if you (or any Pole) can distinguish between the vowel sounds in NOT, NUT and NOTE then you are half way there in many ways.

But I wouldn't get too hung up - for many native speakers a "foreign" accent, as long as it is understood, is often endearing, sexy even.

WHY ENGLISH IS SO HARD TO LEARN

We must polish the Polish furniture...

spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php

Scots had their language:
In bed at morrow, sleiping as I lay,
Me thocht Aurora with hir cristall ene....

No not rolled at all - you mean in the Scottish way maybe? If so, no.

Sounded of course, definitely, but maybe maybe more like a snarling dog if you know what I mean? : )

I love that. It makes my students crazy!

oh come on guys. english is easy. if it wasn't, you wouldn't have so many half a$$es speaking it every day.

imagine half a$$ing Polish and traveling abroad with it......

doh!

Imagine perfect Polish and traveling abroad with it. Except maybe in London or Chicago, it ain't gonna help you very much.


Again, to my ear, they sound the same. But then, I'm a Yank.

Don't you love to hear vegetable and comfortable?

I'd tell them to use the US pronunciation FEB-yoo-airy, I think the first r is about the only one not pronounced in SAE (and it's before a vowel, not after.

Er ... I ... might do ; )
Depends:
Do you say veg-et-able / com-fort-able or veg-tible /comft -or-ble?

/vedztǝbl/ /k˄mftǝbl/

It's so much more cumftable to say vejtebles :)

-1 to both of you for not pronouncing the R in comfortable ; )

Other than that though, yeah that's the way I would pronounce them too.

The other example just sounds robotic and machine gun like to me. Although plenty do say it. Probably the same ones who say tiss-you (tissue) and

dIAhmond (diamond)

Technically, probably both correct - I just think they sound awful.

I'm very lazy with "mutant" too and tend to do a kind of "semi-glottal stop" (not sure what you would call it?) in the middle, which is relatively rare for the Irish.

none of the above

just comfy and vegs?? ;)

I have /'vɛdžtǝbḷ/ and /'kʌmftɚbḷ/

so much easier!!

This American says feb-ru-ar-y, (four syllables) as do all of my friends. And I say veg-ta-bull and comf-tr-bull (three syllablables). As I've said before. I pronounce my r's. So do my students.

I say February with 4 syllables too. Comfy and veggies, you mean? ;)

Yeah, although I never use those words. It's just me.

What other advice can be given? Quickly isolate troublemakers and keep them in check.