Language / How to pronounce "y" in Polish? [28]

I do take your point and could have phrased it better! (Thanks for the info about making a vowel long for emphasis, which I didn't realise). Just saying that for those using books - which seem reputable - to help them, there seems so much confusion & unintended misinformation. The suggestion that "a" is pronounced like English "u" comes from the Lonely Planet phrasebook - LP are supposed to be reasonably reliable, but got that badly wrong. Without videos and audio recordings, and for people like me who don't have constant personal contact with Polish speakers, it would be impossible to get an idea of how the language sounds just from books. But of course you could say the same about any language.

Language / How to pronounce "y" in Polish? [28]

Thanks Wulcan. I hope I can trust Swan on grammar, if not on pronunciation. It shows how difficult it is to convey Polish sounds. I suppose that's partly due to some variety, perhaps regional, in the way Polish people say the words. Eg. different books suggesttak should be pronounced with a short "a" ("tack"), long "a" ("tahk") or even like our "u" ("tuck"). I guess you just have to accept it.

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!