Ignoramus
29 Jul 2012
Language / How to pronounce "y" in Polish? [28]
Hi everyone. This is my first time here, so apologies for not first saying a little about myself, and also if this post appears in the wrong place (no practical experience of this forum yet). But I understand where kepler is coming from, as this question is one (there are a few!) that's been bothering me since taking an interest in the language a year ago.
Oscar Swan's "Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar" says that "y" is always pronounced as in the English "bit" and gives two examples: dym and ty. Dym is fine; it's simply as in the English "dim". But "ty", on nearly all the recordings I have (YouTube and FORVO mostly) seems to have a vowel sound which is difficult to describe, as some of the other comments have suggested, but definitely different. It seems to be between an English "i" and the vowel sound in the hesitant English "er...." (obviously with no "r") but kind of dipthongised with a sort of rising intonation.
Another example would be jesteśmy: I just don't hear the "y" there as being the short "i" in English "bit".
People may feel this has already been adequately covered and I hesitated before posting, but any further thoughts would be much appreciated. Also, given the difficulty of representing Polish sounds in English, does anyone know of any standardised transliteration system? Nothing very helpful comes up in Google. Dziękuję bardzo!
Hi everyone. This is my first time here, so apologies for not first saying a little about myself, and also if this post appears in the wrong place (no practical experience of this forum yet). But I understand where kepler is coming from, as this question is one (there are a few!) that's been bothering me since taking an interest in the language a year ago.
Oscar Swan's "Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar" says that "y" is always pronounced as in the English "bit" and gives two examples: dym and ty. Dym is fine; it's simply as in the English "dim". But "ty", on nearly all the recordings I have (YouTube and FORVO mostly) seems to have a vowel sound which is difficult to describe, as some of the other comments have suggested, but definitely different. It seems to be between an English "i" and the vowel sound in the hesitant English "er...." (obviously with no "r") but kind of dipthongised with a sort of rising intonation.
Another example would be jesteśmy: I just don't hear the "y" there as being the short "i" in English "bit".
People may feel this has already been adequately covered and I hesitated before posting, but any further thoughts would be much appreciated. Also, given the difficulty of representing Polish sounds in English, does anyone know of any standardised transliteration system? Nothing very helpful comes up in Google. Dziękuję bardzo!