Ł -- English double-u or hard L sound?

Before the war pronouncing the £ like the English W was regarded as low class, uncouth and vulgar. After the war, since the rabble came to power under Soviet bayonets, it becmae the norm. How do you petrsoanlly relate to someone pronouncing the classic hard L the Russian way? High class, snobbish, silly, indifferent?

Elderly.

my mother pronounces letter £ just like the Russian Л, also she usually says 'yj' instead of just 'y' alone.

I love those sounds!!!

As long as I can understand someone,the pronunciation means little to me.

What really grates me are Poles, including teachers of Russian, who use the W-sounding Polish £ when speaking Russian. Such as (Moscow's Lomonosov University) -- Universitet Womonosova!

Or Helmut Kohl pronounced Kol ratehr than Kołl. At least the names of leading statesmen should be pronounced corrrectly. There were once stupid Poles who thought Britain's wartime PM was surnamed Hoor-heel (Churchill).

here's a very nice old song, in which you can hear the eastern-sounding £ :-)

Szlachcic,Beautiful voice,though I can't understand a word of it,I really like it.Thank you.

I have never heard anyone pronouncing L that way apart from very old Polish songs and movies and I think it sounds backwards so it's good it disappeared from our language.


There is even more stupid Britards who think that Arsenal London goalkeeper is surnamed Ches-ney (Szczęsny)

The eastern-sounding £ was well on the way of extinction before 1939. Only 30% of the population used it in the 1930s. It was artificailly kept up in pre-war films and theatre (and for some time after 1945) as it was part of the received pronounciation taught in schools for actors.

The last person I heard pronouncing it very distinctly was the famous actress Nina Andrycz, born in Brest Litovsk in 1915, who started her carrer in Vilnius in 1934, wife of the long-time PRL's prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz.

You beat me to it. Also, sometimes you can hear it in old editions of Polska Kronika Filmowa, coming from the 1950-s or 60-s, but that's about it.

Why did Cyrankiewicz put a tie on when he went to bed? - So his wife could tell his head from his a*se! (Aby żona mogła odróżnić jego głowę od d*py!)

to tu znajdziesz przedwojenną blondynkę z trochę słabszym przedwojennym £

Sofijufka,what did you say?Was that actually Mae west singing that or was she lip syncing that?Thank you for the video.The incomparable Mae West;She definitely had sex appeal for sure.

no, it was "polish Mae West" or the famous pre-war polish actor Eugeniusz Bodo in woman's diguise [he died in soviet gulag].

As himself: he had a lot of sex appeal



and the other Sława Przybylska's song with this beautiful £

Sofijufka,tbh I didn't even notice:I just heard the introduction of Mae west and mainly just listened to the song and that sounded like a Woman's voice;so he was actually singing it too?

yes, he was

sofijufka,amazing!so Poles no longer pronounce the L that way any more?Not that I would have noticed.Would it be possible to get you to write the sound phonetically?Does it sound like a W?Never mind I had got confused in what the OP meant by W until I took a closer look at the title, my bad

hmmmm.... just try to say "way" with a tip of your tongue against upper teeth

Sofijufka,Gotcha,thank you.I really want to learn polish so bad.

Actors were trained to pronounce dark £ correctly, but "kresowiacy", people from "Kresy" (Borderlands), from the East, beyond the Bug river (so-called Zabugaje), people from Wileńszyzna (Wilno, Vilnius, district), from Lwów (Lviv) and its vicinity, from Podole (Podolia) - they all spoke it this way, naturally from the childhood. Today, only few people pronounce the dark £; for example Belarusian and Lithuanian Poles.

Formally £ is described as a "dental velarized half-open lateral" consonant. Informally, it is called the actor's £, the stage £, the nobles' £ or the borderlands' £. Ask a person to say "ława" (a bench) - if you hear "uava" or "wava" then this is NOT the dark £.

Borderland Polish language varieties, also called borderlands dialects, have grown on ethnically non-Polish territories, either on a Ukrainian substrate - a South Borderlands dialect, or on Belarusian and Lithuanian subtract - a so called North Borderlands dialect. Due to the Russian influence both borderlands Polish language varieties share many common features, such as:

+ front-tongue £ (ława not uawa)
+ soft L' in any position (l'epsy, l'ampa)
+ soft CH' (głuchi, not głuchy)
+ voiced H (in standard Polish both CH and H are pronounced the same as voiceless CH)
+ dynamical accent (in standard Polish the accent is static, on penultimate syllable, unless of Latin or Greek origin)
... many other features
By 1939, the two borderland dialects were in common use, but after 1945, when most Polish population was repatriated to Western Poland, mainly the intelligentsia and the gentry, these dialects descended to a lower prestige positions.

but nobody says that way anymore so I suggest you learn how people speak Polish these days not 100 years ago

Wulkan,I'm aware of this,it just reminded me of how much I wanted to learn Polish.I wish I cold learn it wicked fast.

Everything is fine and dandy, Boletus, except for above. Ruski (as per source you have given us a link to) does not mean russian, it means: ruthenian. Ruthenian, in turn refers to a common predecessor of ukrainian and belorusian, by and large.

Absolutely, my translation error.

"Zabużanie" is the correct term AFAIK.

Zibi,I also admire Boletus's contribution.,Some people are well read and have knowledge,and then others who are Highly intelligent know what to do with that knowledge;boletus falls in this category.

Makes sense, thanks, although the term "zabugaje" was used where I was growing up. There was a big population of repatriates from "zza Buga" (probably Wołyń or Galicja, since some of them had Ukrainian surnames, such as Homziuk) in many villages on the line Toruń-Bydgoszcz. They were given properties of former Vistula colonists, mostly German, possible Dutch.


ipn.gov.pl/download/1/7478/biuletyn89_6768.pdf

Boletus what does zabugaje or ZabuZanie mean.Why would it be said differently?Is it a slang word?Or is it a dialect thing?

Boletus what does zabugaje or ZabuZanie mean

Zabużanie = those who had been transferred to PL from beyond the river Bug (which is on eastern frontier now) Ethymology: zza Buga = from beyond river Bug (east of Bug).

Zabugaje = the same, most likely. This expression is not too common in PL (where I grew up or live or on TV), but technically it is correct as well.

Both mean "ludzie zza Buga", people beyond Bug River (acually the Western Bug, since there is also another river of the same name), which now forms part of Ukraine-Polish and Polish-Belarusian border: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_River

zabugaj is a slang word. It literally means za-bug-aj (beyond-Bug-man)
zabużanin, plural zabużanie. Suffix -anin, -anie indicates inhabitant(s) of a region, town or village. In certain forms the consonant G is being replaced by Ż (Z with dot above, in English ZH). Hence za-buż-anin, not za-bug-anin.

In old times, a very typical G=>Ż exchange used to take place during forming of certain female names:
Examples:
1. The standard form
man: Bajek, his wife: Bajk-owa, his daughter: Bajk-ówna
2. For names ending with G, GA, etc.. Exchange G=>Ż
man: Skarga, his wife: Skarg-owa, his daughter: Skarż-anka (not Skarg-ówna, that would be unpalatable)
man: Ludwiga, his wife: Ludwig-owa, his daughter: Ludwiż-anka