Patrick Ney - Is his Polish Legit?

He is originally from the United Kingdom. I think he has been learning Polish for 6 years or so. He now lives in Poland with his family. I first came across him in the video youtube.com/watch?v=QLkkCbG0P5M then I searched for other videos about him youtube.com/results?search_query=patrick+ney.

I am just a beginner in the language but I thought I would share this because I found it interesting and others may as well.

Let me know what you all think, especially if you are a Native Polish Speaker.

@newyorkpolish
Well. In the video you have posted they have shown too little of him speaking Polish to judge his skills. What he said in the beginning was just a few easy to memorise slogans (hardly sentences) with poor-to-mediocre pronounciation.

In other videos his pronounciation seems to be way better.



I can say it's quite good (although far cry from being perfect or indistinguishable from native) as for an Anglophone after JUST 6 years of learning.

I bet our forum's expert Lyzko sounds much better though ;)

I watched a video of him chatting in Polish with a native speaker and he is quite fluent in terms of his ability to communicate. I'm certainly not able to judge his grammar as I speak only the most basic Polish myself and make so many mistakes, but I can say regarding pronunication and that all important aspect 'cadence', that he certainly doesn't sound like a native to my ears. He sounds significantly better when chatting with a native than when talking to camera. Talking straight to the camera his Polish sounds somewhat 'coarse' to my ear but when we are in conversation it's a scientifically observed fact that we pick up on the nuances of the other person's speech and tend to mirror them to some degree.

My husband is Polish and says that no foreginer would ever, ever, be mistaken for a native, no matter how good their Polish. Don't know if other Poles would agree with that??

Just took a look at the video posted above by NoToForeigners. Pronunication is very sloppy. You must pronounce each sound clearly in Polish and his word endings are very fuzzy, an unspeakable crime! (Excuse the pun). :))

It's not true of course. Show the video to your husband. I'm pretty sure he'll agree with me about the guy's accent and pronounciation being quite poor or simply nothing outstanding especially if you take into account the time he spent on learning. It's obviously more than sufficient to easily communicate with the locals though.

What's not true? Sorry, I don't follow. My husband says that foreigners can never pass for Polish and I think you're agreeing with that. I don't need to show him the video, as I said, the guy's pronunciation is not good. So what did I say that's not true??

Thank you to everyone who shared opinions. Online it seems people who speak English as their Native Language hold him in high regard when speaking Polish. I myself was impressed but I know nothing and I am only starting out in the language so I thought I would get some Professionals (Native Poles) opinions.

Thanks for the replies everybody.

Foreigner not being able to ever speak native-level Polish isn't true. It is possible and I personally know people who do or are very close to that. They're Asian or Ukrainian, etc. None of them is a native English speaker though.

That would include me :)) I'm impressed with anyone who can learn Polish to the level of communicative fluency that Patrick Ney has but I certainly hear the lack of finesse, for want of a better word. However that's not a big deal. As long as people can understand what you're saying to them it doesn't matter if the pronunication is less than perfect. Having said that I am very fussy about it myself when I'm speaking Polish but then as my grammar is so abysmal I have to compensate in some way or I'll sound absolutely awful!


There are certainly foreigners who have passed proficiency exams in Polish at a very high level but I doubt very much that any Chinese or Dutch or French person would ever be mistaken for a native Pole regardless of how good their Polish is. As a native English speaker, the only foreigners I've ever heard who speak English like a native are those who've grown up in an English speaking country, at least from childhood if not from birth. I don't see why it would be different with Polish. But I can appreciate that a speaker of another Slavic language would have an advantage. Nonetheless they would still have to lose the accent of their own country. The Russian accent for example is very strong, all that rolling of the letter 'l', sounds lovely, but doesn't sound Polish!

What do you think of Pascal Brodnicki? When i first heard him years ago I was very impressed but Mr Atch said his Polish is full of mistakes. Now, I can actually hear that his pronunciation is not good. He pronunces the 'ch' in kuchni for example as a hard 'k' sound.

@ New York

Here's the guy I'm talking about, he's the one without the beard!:



Born in France, Polish father.

Thank you Atch for posting that. I will definetly enjoy watching it.

I have been a number of time, including once with a Polish employee of the US government, I needed something from the states for my residency and she thought I was a Polish person wanting a visa to the US who had ended up in the wrong office, we went around for about five minutes before we got it straightened out.

Another time, I was arranging my family doctor. When I gave my name the person on the phone thought I was a Polish person calling for a foreigner "Tell them we don't have interpreters, he'll have to bring his own!"

Now there's no way that I could pass for a native speaker in a very long conversation ranging over a variety of unfamiliar topics, but shorter interactions that involve things I know about are another question altogether.

Well that's what Mr Atch says. He says that within a few sentences you can tell. Even I can pass for Polish because my pronunication is very good,if I'm saying a stock phrase with perfect grammar - I do know a few that I can reel off because I use them so often, mostly shopping related :)) I'm certain your Polish is advanced level but perhaps your pronunciation is also very good. It needs to be to get mistaken for a native. On the strength of a few short phrases people occasionally think I'm Polish but I've also been mistaken for American, Russian and Czech!! Oh and French. Nobody ever suggests English or Irish oddly enough.


Yes, it's especially good when you can watch a non-native in conversation with a native and see if you can hear the difference.

This happemned to me in the UK, too. Shorter interactions and telephone conversations wherein you pass as a native may testify that you have worked hard on the language you learn and you have succeeded!

Phonetics should be studied not only through listening and imitating sounds, but also by doing contrastive exercise and, last but not least, gaining some formal knowledge about the phonic system of the language. That was my way to "combat" the English vowels, diphtongs and triphtongs.

Recently I have heard a Hungarian woman in one of prof Miodek's TV programmes who spoke like a native. She introduced herself as a Hungarian, but did not say anything about her (Polish?) origins, however.

@Atch

I've been watch a little of Pascal Brodnicki and I must say I am impressed. Thanks for sharing again. Do you have any info about how he went about learning Polish etc? I would be interested in any information you may have. Is he a "special" breed lol?

If doing a show on TV is a "special" breed, he is a special breed.

Well his father being Polish would be an advantage I imagine. He grew up in France, first visited Poland when he was fifteen or sixteen but didn't move there permanently until the late nineties. He says he didn't speak any Polish when he first went to Poland, couldn't understand anything and was afraid to open his mouth. He's never formally studied the language, just picked it up as he went along. He says he's had a lot of criticism for his poor Polish and that some parents won't allow their children to watch his programmes because of it!

Thanks for the reply Atch, appreciate it.

The interesting thing is that although he claims he didn't know any Polish at all in the beginning, he must have been familiar with it, the sounds and so on. He says that his maternal grandmother lived in Poland for fifty years before coming to France and that her Polish is nearly as bad as his!! And I suppose his grandmother and father would have spoken Polish together so without being consciously aware of it, something must have lodged in his brain that helped him learn later.

Sorry, I should have said his paternal grandmother, father's mother.

Paternal or maternal grandmother, never mind that, I should add that there's another Franco-Polish clown doing shows in cuisine on Polish TV as well. I've forgotten his name unfortunately, but both chaps can be very easily identified as frog-eaters by their silly accents. I suspect the TV channel (TVN?) which broadcasts the shows tells them to keep at least some of their French accent so as to make the shows even more sexy (did you know that French has recently been declared the sexiest language on earth by some unspecified, mysterious lobbying groups?).

Anyway, those two frog-eaters have published a book on cuisine for which my wife put a lot of difficulty to get it for free at a Tesco store. Finally she got it from them, but the book is of no use now as she has never cooked anything yet according to a recipe from the book. I will never understand women irrespective of the language they speak.

Goodness me, you're in a bit of a lather today Ziemuś.


Years ago, when I was teaching (I feel an anecdote coming on..........) there was a sort of discount book supplier who used to come to the school a few times a year with a selection of lovely books, mostly aimed at the children, but with a few targeted towards the staff as well. Anyway on one occasion, both myself and another teacher bought a giant book of potato recipes, yes that's right, they were all based on spuds, only a fiver, who could resist. Now as you know, we Irish do love our spuds, so you'd think this would be bound to get some use in an Irish household. Well at the end of the school year, I asked my colleague 'Did you ever make anything out of that book?' 'No' said she. 'Did you?' 'No'. Whereupon we both errupted into shrieks of mirth. Naturally we still went on buying cookery books, and I have actually made some recipes from them, but that particular one ended up in the charity shop.


Yes, you could well be right there about the accents. Poles do seem to have a bit of a fatal attraction to all things French. Mr Atch detests poor old Pascal Brodnicki, he loves Prof Miodek though. He is indeed a bit of a national treasure. I hope he's truly appreciated.

@Atch
I've heard Pascal is actually able to speak polish like a native, but he's adding his french accent just to be more exotic for tv. If I listen to him I feel like that's true. He has moments of perfect polish accent when he speaks fast and he seems like he forces french too much sometimes. Pronunciation of many sounds is french of course.

There is another cook who claims to be Swedish (he's identity is not publicly known) who also speaks good polish. On his channel he's more polish then Poles. Anyway, he's much better teacher then Pascal :D

weekend.gazeta.pl/weekend/1,152121,17590943,Food_Emperor___tajemniczy_youtuber_ze_Szwecji__domorosly.html

youtube.com/user/FoodEmperor/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid

That's probably something of an exaggeration.


That's very easy to believe.

Good, what is important his example proves that it can be done. He can communicate in Polish with Poles that is the crux of the matter.


His grammar is not bad but he makes mistakes that no native speaker would make.


You're right on your money.

NYP, if you decide to learn Polish your efforts will be greatly appreciated by most Poles you come into contact with, especially in Poland. I communicate in Polish effectively, its a difficult language to master. I don't believe I will ever speak as a native, never the less I receive much positive feedback once people realise Polish is not my mother tongue. Learning the language of your adopted country is a true show of appreciation of thier culture and history.

Im Polish. Hes legit in grammar. hes phonetic discipline is not too good but the flow is typical common and higher academic perfect. in effect u listen to him like to an educated polish bum after 3 wines ;)

David Gaboriaud :) I would say that he's more bearable than Pascal though lol


I've noticed it too. That's why I usually can't watch his show, his "French accent" gets on my nerves lol

There are Ukrainian shop assistants in my city that probably could pass for natives if it wasn't for their Eastern "zaśpiew", I suspect (they could have Polish roots though, I guess).

I would say his Polish is great! Much better than of many Polish trying to speak English. Regards for all Polish perfectionists.

I would love to hear you speaking Polish (and mafketis as well)

Hi, I am Polish native who moved into UK 3 years ago. I've been learning English since I was 8 so I lucky to say that's 26 years now - but most of that time, much over 20 years i did that back in Poland. I'd like to share some of my reflections regarding languages learning processes. Although I was able to speak English (at that time I was able to use approx 2K words) after all that time served in Poland to teach myself to do so. First what I've noticed after I stepped on Queen's land in Edinburgh airport was how little i knew about English language, specially in very unique Scottish pronunciation. So - dialects matters. But after some time, when enough water float in the rivers, I started to realise it's so easier to express yourself if you are able to implement proper sounding into your sentences.

Everything is becoming more responsive. See - when you reach that level when native British can't say if you're British or foreigner, and when that very sound of words used within conversation is as similarly close as possible then your abilities to understand individuals are rising significantly upwards. But of course, it's incomparable to put together those two languages which are so different in terms of pronunciation. It's quite important to say we've been bombed by English since day one on planet. Just enough to say 90% of songs are written in English, alongside movies and whole commercial entertainment or so called "show business" in wider approach. So we, non native English speakers are being familiarised from the very beginning of our life. Polish case is different, and it's quite easy to see it. I did met a person, male slightly after 30 y.o. who was french monk working as missionary in central Africa alongside other missionaries, mostly Polish. As he claimed, he had to learn Polish in order to communicate with them. And it took him 8 years to learn Polish, but he indeed did it reaching perfectness. I was literally shocked when he told me afterwards he's not Polish. He was so good. There is also one french TV corespondent who's Polish is perfect too, but can't remember his name. He's been living in Poland for about 30 years so far and he is 100 % perfect with his pronunciation. So my conclusion based on what I know would be that somehow French people are able to learn themselves this unique and difficult sounds of Polish consonants. I can not exclude other nations from reaching that of course - but this is what I have simply notice.

So, getting into conclusion I think your husband was close of being right but there are individual exceptions.
PS - I am a walking, breathing proof that with hard, solid Polish as your native language you are still able to learn different language on high level. High level I say and by that what i mean is when you are using your second language and you "thinking" inside your head using that second language too. Level of fluency jumps up incredibly fast.