also speaking good polish may make him seem even more mentally deranged
It's no more deranged than my "duplo kavi" (I don't even know how to write it properly) when ordering coffee in Hungary :)
I think you worry too much. If the customer seems nice, a longer conversation is likely to issue, in whatever language. But if he looks like a nutcase, no amount of Polish is going to help him :)
Is it ok to speak polish very badly to someone in Poland even if the other person speaks reasonable english?
Blimey! There's hope for me yet! Don't think i've ever heard Polish spoken so badly! Having said that Catsoldier, people learn by making mistakes as i'm sure you know. Even when my Polish was much worse than it is now, i still spoke Polish to people in shops when i was in Poland. Unless you are fortunate enough to be able to speak Polish on a regular basis, when else are you going to get the chance to practice it?
I've made a fair few howlers speaking it abroad in the past, and probably did make a fool of myself, but by and large most Poles were laughing with me, not at me!
Most will respect you for at least making the effort!
The only way to do this correctly is to have a laugh with the two behind the counter otherwise he can't but appear silly
Cool, at the end of the video the expression on his face is priceless. He's so proud of himself a genuine sense of accomplishment.
In my opinion the only way to this correctly is to try, no matter how badly you might sound to others. When the girl behind the counter tried speaking english he didn't even flinch but insisted on the conversation to be carried on in polish, more power to him. The only way to learn is to practice what you have learned thus far, nothing wrong with that, I think he did OK. I'm sure the shop attendants found this situation a bit amusing afterwards and might have cracked a few jokes after he left the shop, but he did catch them off guard.
Even the Old Blue Eyes himself sang in Polish, at the end of this clip you'll hear him having a go at Polish.
you need to hear some of the Polish Language programmes on China Radio International! i thought i'd discovered a new language!
i listened to their Czech service for 10 minutes once before i could figure out what language it was supposed to be!
it is a hard Language to learn compared to Czech, Portugese is almost as hard. theres actually a lot of similar sounds in Portugese & Polish that i have trouble with
sorry i can't find the webstream. but 963am (if you don't live near a Twoje Radio transmitter) or anywhere between 7200 & 7400 short wave in the evenings
A British historian who settled in Poland decades ago and specializes in Polish history, Mr Professor Norman Davies, speaks Polish.
Comments:
I have been waiting for such a meeting for a very long time. A beautiful moment. I admire Mr. Norman Davis for his commitment to Polish affairs, for his excellent Polish language, for everything he wrote, for modesty. A great man. .
The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life to escape the snare of death.
Mamed Chalidow, originally a Chechen boxer and martial art fighter, came to Poland in 1997 as a 17 yo. He learnt Polish, married a Poless and settled in northern city of Olsztyn for decades. Became a Polish citizen in 2010.
Very good Polish, I heard only one vocabulary dissosance. And a slight alien accent.
A native Polish speaker friend of mine once told me that in his experience, foreigners such as myself nearly always trip themselves up in their pronunciation of consonant clusters! Dipthongs were rarely an issues, but consonants such as "rz-" "brz" etc. usually got the better of us, first to admit it.
During my initial phone conversation with the above gentleman, he confessed that he was almost fooled into thinking I was Polish.......except when he heard my consonant clusters, By then, the jig was up LOL
Those affricates are a challenge, that's for sure. You're right there, Lenka. I'm talking here though solely about pronunciation as dead give away that the interlocutor's a foreigner. Forget about vocabulary or syntax, punning and other types of verbal humor:-)
That's actually a good point, jon. Perhaps too, the fact that your native tongue is British and mine is American definitely influences how we pronounce words in our own language and how "English" pronounces sound such as the "or-" in "wORd", for example, is quite different from how we say the same sound in the US variety!:-)
We have many more schwa-type sounds in American English and probably it's therefore a tad easier for a native Brit such as yourself to learn to pronounce Polish than for a native-born American English speaker like me, don't you think?
For sure. With the rz sound, it's as near as damn it the same as the /ʒ/ in pleasure.
wORd
I'd pronounce it /wɜːd/, as in nurse or bird.
We have many more schwa-type sounds in American English
Thinking about it, isn't the opposite more true? Or am I just thinking of endings, since in English English, pleasure, teacher, dollar, visitor, colour, all end in schwa.
Well, take for instance the English word "ugly". From my perception, I hear this word pronounced in "Standard British" aka "RP" (Received Pronunciation) as roughly "Ahgluy" vs. "Standard American". Polish, as with many European languages, has no phonetic equivalent to the American short "u-sound".
Conversely for this reason, Poles probably can pronounce British far more easily than American English, along with the other obvious reason of sheer language exposure to the UK rather than the US.
Between Polish and English there are similar things. Almost no Pole can get /ɔː/ or /ɜː/ anything like right and many struggle with /ŋ/ despite it being very close to ę.
Standard British"
There's no 'standard British' as such, and the term "Standard English" tends to refer to British/Aus/NZ grammar usage and spelling.
Your example of ugly would work better without the h; it's a short and clipped vowel in RP. I would use the same vowel as in wood.
Poles probably can pronounce British far more easily than American English
Largely yes, however it's worth remembering that the two languages emerged and for most of their history evolved only a few hundred miles apart.
So true, jon! Sorry, I meant before "Standard English", as of course there are Irish, Scottish, and Welsh varieties of "English" pronunciation:-)
Your analogy of "ugly" with "wood" suggests that your native pronunciation/accent is from the Liverpool area, e.g. "Luv, *** over to the pub!" as opposed to that snooty-sounding, upper class, posh accent, am I more or less correct?
Thanks for straightening me out, jon! I sent you a private message about "sie" and sometimes Polish native speakers can't understand me when I say it. Since I don't want to take a chance with English, on occasion, I've actually end up writing it down and then they understand LOL
