Your perception of the Polish accent

@Lyzko
I can hear a difference between Poles and Czechs,but not between Poles and Slovaks....they have the same accent when talking English.
One of the most pronounced is their inability to pronounce the leter G in words ending in it.
It always comes out as a K.
As in "Good Mornink".
:-)

Exactly, Milo! Right on:-) Final devoicing ALWAYS marks the Pole vs. the lazy Russian tendency to pronounce same "Good mawnnin", whereby the final "k" becomes lost.

You've penetrated our Slavonic soul and exposed our weak spot, Miloslaw :-)

And that's why I always greet people at work with "howdy"

One of many reasons I've noticed over the years (and not only for the Poles, by the way) that foreigners typically will mask their noticeable accent and/or faulty English grammar etc. behind rapid-fire slanguage and shorthand as distractionary tactics so that no one will call them on their foreignness:-)

Bravo! Brilliant post. Rapid-fire speech is also done by those who feel intimidated and scared that their time is running out.

...or that they'll be found out:-)

Knew a fella named Jerry who went back to Poland. He thought that if he said his name's "Jerzy", he'd immediately be identified as Polish, and so he try to Americanize his accent as best he could. A crying shame his personality couldn't keep pace with his ambitionsLOL

Arkady, I read your question and I didnt read the rest but my thoughts are that people with Polish as their native language when speaking english tend to have a slavic accent which sounds similar to czech,russian, croatian, etc. Basically eastern european. It's easier to understand than indian, chinese, or new zealanders. About on par with philipinos. Both my parents and I were born in austrlia and are native english speakers.

Basically it's an accent and there is very little you can do about it, most people wont think postively or negatively about it (in Asutralia) as far as I can tell.

@fdmrd2096

I broadly agree with your post.


I expect that the "New Zeelanders" bit was a bit of typical Aussie humour.

When Poles speak a foreign language, they have a chirping quality to their speech, as I've observed prior. Their English often sounds somewhat deliberate, perhaps because of final devoicing of certain struents as well as the fact that Polish has no schwa-sound as in English.

Yes. Most Poles` "king" sounds as /king/, instead of /kɪŋ/. Teaching the proper pronunciation of ing sound is drudgery.

What's weird is that many/most Polish speakers think that [ŋ] sounds like ń.....

...particularly when those learning it often don't see standard pronunciation as important!

Standard education doesn`t deal with such intricate matters. They are mostly taught at quality uni English courses, called English philology here. And by a few standard teachers who discern that importance.

Define "standard pronunciation" there is no single phonological system for English. Different standard varieties have different numbers of vowels (to say nothing of distribution of said vowels) and the different sounds of some consonants is also specific to particular standards.

And the entire field of ESL (in Europe at least) gave up on the 'standard pronunciation' or 'native pronunciation' as goals in teaching back in the 1990s....

It`s her Majesty Queen`s. She is the ultimate majestic standard. The bombasticest of all.

Hasn't been for decades even in the UK.....

How many decades?

She's hard fo me to understand, not as bad as the Scots.. Its funny when Brits get upset and start swearing, its like another language! Booolocks! LOL

No matter where one travels amid the admitted vastness of the entire English-speaking world, "B-A-T-H-R-O-O-M" may be pronounced any number of ways. Fine. However, any speakers substituting the "P-H"- sound for "T-H", as is the case among numerous African-Americans, are simply saying the word flat wrong, so stop bloody rationalizing plain laziness! Cultural relativism can't relativize that one.

English is what you hear on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news. All others are poor imitations. Some are very irritating - as if they were designed to make them less comprehensible to the lower class outsiders and foreigners. That is why I don't watch British movies.

If you mean the likes of a Walter Cronkite, Sam Donaldson or other great voices of the past, I'd have to agree!

I knew some British guys in the early-mid 90s who were horrified that teachers in their department were still using some version of RP/Queen's English as a model for their students.

I was told that that accent would make them instant targets of dislike in the UK (they put it a bit more colorfully). After some effort, they managed to get something a bit more realistic put in place.

The basic problem is that there's no neutral version of British English, it's all highly marked for region or social class (and sometimes other stuff).

The US does have a standard that's neutral for class and region and ethnic background (General American English). Some people move between it and something more defined as the occasion demands.

Since accent is so inexorably tied to class in the UK as in few other places, what you say should come as no susprise.

The most annoying and the most pretentious English comes from the NE old money, rich snobs. It sounds like a sickening blend of British and American - especially when spoken by older women that wanted to be sopranos. To them, it's caaa, not car.

James Gandolfino was NOT an old-money W.A.S.P.!