Your perception of the Polish accent

No offence, but it seems that the English have no different accents - they are just trying to make individual efforts to avoid speaking properly.

Anyway, Latin and Germanic languages tend to "spread apart", while Slavonic languages are much more cohesive. If you're a native in English, sometimes you can't even understand a fellow native English speaker, and it's even worse for a German or an Italian - and you are mutually unintelligible in speech (I mean a German for an English etc. - save the Italian-Spanish inter-intelligibility in some cases). But if you're a native in Russian, for instance, you can even manage with a Pole, Croatian etc. (most of the time they only have political reasons not to do so).

ha ha ha
thanks......;)
Of course we have different accents, you only have to go few miles before it changes.
Maybe you're not listening>?

I also think that in Poland there's no big variety in accents, you've got the "góralski" highlander accent, Silesian which is a mix of German and Polish, Kashubian, and maybe Podlaski, these 4 are most "different", the rest is just "a bit" different, I'm from Silesia and I can clearly hear that fi. people from tri-city speak with just a slightly different accent then the Polish recieved pron. but I wouldn't recognise them as people from tri-city just by listening to them speaking...

Well, Slavic people tend to understand each other. I understand some of what Putin says when he speaks Russian due to the similarity to Polish. Also, some Serbian songs were forwarded to me and I understood some of the words there. My American friend has a penchant for Croatian films and I also understood a fair few words thanks to a knowledge of Polish.

The English have many accents, don't be so harsh ;) I was talking about the UK as a whole btw. More variety than an international brothel ;)

Katowice and Poznań accents are pretty easy to spot - especially if the speaker hasn't travelled much. I don't hear much accent in Gdańsk or Wrocław though - maybe due to population movements. Old people from around Warsaw have quite a distinctive sound; lots of sibilants and a tendency to say 'om' instead if 'ą'.

In Silesia, it is different. They often use o instead of a. For example, co mosz? No, mom bilet, no.

I could differentiate sb from Chorzów and sb from Warsaw.

I can recognise people from Trójmiasto and vicinity (they have their ways of saying things not that much the sound of the language ) they say jo instead of tak most of the time for example (but I guess it is more widespread in Pomorze area (not only Tricity)

Isn't it oversimplifying a bit? Siliesian is a whole dialect.. not just changing a to o. The amount of different words may actually make people from different parts of Poland unable to understand somebody who speaks Silesian. And changing a to o sometimes occures in the sociodialect of thugs and other people from pathological communities..

I was talking about accent, not dialect. I'm well aware of Gwara as my fiancee's parents use it. My Silesian is not bad ;)

I know that there are accents (I actually prefer the non-Southern English accents, with no vowel-split). But I mean, come on, people, you’ve probably made every logopedian flee from the country. Most of the time, it’s not the accent but the fact that there’s no articulation in speech, you just do not pronounce the sounds clearly. (I mean "you" in the impersonal sense here. :) It’s just a kind of broken English. Especially young people can speak as if their tongues were just failed efforts that Darwinism speaks of. :)

Regardless of the flaws, I can still recognise sb as being from a specific part of the country and that's the point I and njc are trying to make.

Oh, sorry, my bad. I was just afraid that some people might get the wrong idea after reading that, but actually it was me who was mistaken, because of course one can discuss accent without mentioning the dialect.

They are intertwined of course but I just meant the sound of the voice as opposed to the local words used.

No worries though :)

Why is it that modern British accents tend to centre on cities rather than rural areas, whereas Polish accents seem to be the other way around? Is there an assumption there that accents are somehow uneducated or even wrong? I worry about the idea of everyone speaking "with one voice".

I've spent plenty of time with people from £omża, plenty more time with people from some little place east of Warsaw called Mokobody, and had to endure sharing my flat with someone from close to the Lithuanian border. Most differences I have heard I put down to personal differences in choice of words or sound of voice, although some of these differences may be to do with accent or regionalisms.

I was on the tube (for those of you who don't know, that's the London Underground - a system of railways, many of which are situated underground, especially within the more central parts of London). As the train rolled along, two women and a man were standing by the doors talking and joking noisily. I don't really know what they were talking about, I wasn't eavesdropping. I could tell, though, that they were from the southeast but weren't Londoners.

Then one of the women started to laugh. It was a very loud laugh, punctuated by snorting sounds which gradually, as she laughed more and more, happened more and more. They were all laughing, but this one woman was particularly loud, and funny with the way she laughed.

Nearby sat a family with two little girls. The woman's laugh made me smile and chuckle to myself. I looked up just after a break in the laughter and suddenly, just as my eye caught one of the little girls, the laughing woman suddenly made another very loud snorting sound, then the little girl burst out laughing as well. Then I couldn't help laughing out loud too.

Anyway, as the family started talking, I could tell instantly that it was some kind of Slavic language, but I couldn't tell which. Judging by their appearance, almost definitely somewhere in the Balkans. The laughter had quietened down for a while, when suddenly the laughing woman said in a loud voice "v****al w**k" and started laughing again. Luckily, these words in particular didn't seem to register as anything to the family with young children. The one woman who sat nearby and who paid absolutely no attention to any of this was probably a Londoner. Londoners on tube trains are normally the ones who manage to remain completely blank and expressionless.

Later on, I was sat on another train, now much closer to home. I noticed, just as the man who had sat opposite me for the last half an hour stood up to leave the train, that he'd been reading a book with the words on the cover reading "Język portugalskiego" with something that suggested that this was Brazilian-style Portuguese.

Now that would be an accent to hear. But sometimes the best sound a voice can make is just laughter, even if some people's laughs would be unbearable in anything other than small doses. I'm sure I could only have taken her sense of humour in small doses.

Honestly you are talking about relativly large distances. I can tell where domeone if from in my city.

The comment about education introducing a common demonator is interesting. In English you can tell an educated person irrespective of their accent the speech tends to be "softer" in total heading towards a common middle ground.

I like hearing accents but could you say Poland is more "advanced/Integrated" (cant think of a better word at the moment) in this respect? Could the Survival of the language ensuring the survival of the culture have had something to do with this?

For a language to lose it's dialects and accents, along the way, people have to feel bad about the forms of speech that have developed naturally over generations in favour of another one that just has the power of authority behind it. I much prefer mutually intelligible accents rather than just one common accent.

Those here who have more ability to speak more than one language would possibly have the understanding that different languages involve thinking differently. Different accents, although obviously much closer than different languages, still go hand in hand with other differences in manner, perception and thought and these are differences the world needs.

Barney, I would most definitely not use the word advanced.

The Irish was lost in less than one generation about 150 years ago yet accents developed very quickly. In Spain Regional accents are very pronounced often coupled with different languages but there doesnt seem to be a merging. In France they have distinct accents and attempts are under way to resurrect regional accents/dialects (eg Occitan).

I find it strange that Poland doesnt seem to have distinct accents.

I was talking today with my friend about her home town she said that X village was German, this didn’t surprise me but when she said that town Y was Russian this did.

It was something that others were talking about in another thread about the survival of the language that made me think of that. My friends home town is near Poznan, far from Russia.


I agree but my brain is a bit slow

After the wwII a lot of people had to relocate to completly diffrent regions of Poland, where they mixed with the locals and migrants from other parts of the country .... this way many regional dialects disappeared... at the same time radio and tv served to farther standarize the language...

For the men I think its sexy.

I find the Polish accent on men and woman rather attractive and intriguing. I deal with a lot of people with thick accents and some of my friends have accents and its rather nice. Thus far the people that I've come into contact with go crazy when they hear a friend of mine speak and they begin asking questions just so that he or she will continue to talk. The only accents I cannot tolerate much of or have had a negative vibe from are southern states and Indian. If you have an accent, don't force yourself to be rid of it because it just adds another layer to who you are and many people do find it interesting.

No it doesn't, it just means you speak in a certain way.

I can assure that is most certainly not the case, the similarity between Polish and Russian is probably less than German and Dutch.

I agree. Some Russian words may be similair to Polish but that's it. The rest are totally different and it would be hard to understand each other.

It sounds good with SOME girls, but not so much with guys but still much better than the American accent.

Am I the only one who thinks the Polish accent is very sexy?

Now this is another arrogant British myth!

Although, in the spirit of the traditional Polish tolerance, I must reluctantly admit that this particular one is somehow firmly rooted in reality. The variety of British accents, or just the English accents, is amazing. I can't always locate the speaker on the map, but the differences are quite easy to hear. And then there's the Eton accent, right? One bloody school...

In Poland less so. But:
1. It was different only decades ago. People relocated a lot in the last 70 years, which resulted in melting regional accents, and then the TV added to it. And there was a cultural pressure too, speaking with accent suggested lack of education.

2. It's the question of exposure. You can hear the difference between a Silesian and a Varsovian, I can, sometimes, recognize people from Chorzów, Ruda Ślaska, Podlesie - if they come from the native families, of course, and speak Silesian.

3. There are more distinct accents in Poland, than you mention. Wrocław (Lwów, that is), Poznań, Warsaw, Kraków, £ódź, lubelskie, Podlasie, Podhale, Silesia, Kaszuby are (were) unmistakable, and there are at least traces of them still in usage. Well, unmistakable... some of the differences not as pronounced as the English wild experimentations, but they were there.

Once I heard a 'street interview' from Toruń, on the radio. They were speaking standard Polish, but the sound of it was an incessant, monotonous rattle, I actually needed a couple of seconds to replaytherecordinginmyheadandparseit. It wasn't a slur, pronunciation quite clear, luckily, but the speed of it and lack of melody...

In general, you are right tho. The English can't speak proper English at all :) Except for the Queen. But she is German, innit. Pedantic.

jejku..... I hope your political info is more accurate than your geographic info

Poland: 312,685 km2 = 120,696.41 sq mi

UK: 243,610 km2 = 94,060 sq mi

Poland is bigger than the UK but nowhere near twice as big,

or did you mean England? 130,395 km2 = 50,346 sq mi

Others have pointed out some of the reasons there aren't as many different regional accents in Poland as in the UK. I'll mention two more:

- regional accents aren't much tied to identity the way they are in the UK

- Polish spelling is a lot more rational than English spelling. Those Polish people who want to lose their regional accent can do so largely just by following the spelling while English spelling obscures the pronunciation which makes it harder for speakers to get rid of stigmatized features.

No, the Queen speaks terrible English. Just because she's the Queen it doesn't mean she's speaking correctly.

And how do I define correct? By what is the easiest to enunciate and to understand. What the Queen and most of British television speak in is actually pretty unnecessarily complex English pronunciation. Simple vowels like "O" becomes a many layered disjointed and incomprehensible generic vowel sound that begins with an "e" or an "a". Speakers of this kind of English will pronounce two or even three vowel sounds in place of one simple vowel. This isn't correct English, it's just sloppy and inefficient. It's also inefficient because it can't be spoken very fast. Some of the more efficient English dialects can communicate with four or five times the speed. Polish can be spoken at around ten times the speed. Yet another reason why this type of "English" is inefficient and downright offensive to the ears. Even American English sounds better.

EDIT: Here's a reason why Poland should have more accent variety than England:

- Geographic location. England being on an island means that it has less exposure to foreign influences throughout history. All of the accents in England can be attributed to migration levels and invasions, which are relatively few due to it being surrounded by sea. Mainland Europe has has more of this, and Poland is bordered by several countries with foreign languages; England is kind of bordered by two, sort of, and both use English anyway.

Yes,polish accent is very sexy.When you hear these sounds even in TV news there is always an excitement.Czech accent on women is also sexy.How do they manage that?When they talk you imagine a busty woman with stockings and deep thrat speaking from her desk.With polish you imagine a busty girl in province walking searching for butterflies.Sth like that.

Yo Greek guy, is the last name Jirask greek?