Slow Talk in Polish TV

A bilingual Pole, and switching between national news TV channels, I notice a flaw in the Polish TV studio discourse. People, usually some professors or journslists, come to their interviews and debates, without properly preparing their statements. Clearly, overstimating their ability to express their thoughts 'ad lib'. Or, being lazy? I keep hearing time after time, someone, apparantly eager to say something, and once at the microphone, blabbering on, spluttering, pausing to rack their brains for words, repeating vacouous phrases, tip-toeing to finally make their point. Polish language, quite inefficient in the noise/content ratio, makes it worse still. Then I switch to US, or UK TV, and my problem seems to goes away.. Am I imagining this, or is there a problem? Is it that Poles are always happy to wait patiently for things to take their natural course, no matter how long, and I must... take a deep breath and chill out?

As a non-native speaker, you can`t properly follow the course of the discussion run in Polish. It is natural. That is why you imagine they are talking in a chaotic way/style.


Of course, coz you fully understand what they are talking about. :)

If they ever get there...

Sylvio, I couldn't write a better post on this subject. It's embarrassing to listen to those ad hoc Polish conversations that sound like from a random word generator.

Poles, it seems, are not capable of speaking in organized sentences that could be dictated and published without heavy digging for the meaning and edited for easy flow and reading.

Even here, with the benefit of time and the ability to proofread and correct, many Polish posts are painful to read.

Oh, yes, now it dawned on me, there may be sth to it. You mentioned you watch them on national TV. You should know it is controlled and run by PiS and their current party line is to show only PiS experts and politicians. Most of them are halfwits, indeed and they may find it difficult to discuss things in a clear logical way. Decent intelligent people don`t appear on state TV.

Sports figures do. The same exact problem. Poles are incomprehensible and embarrassing. Americans, including the guys straight from black ghettos, speak in full, well composed sentences - even right after the game while still trying to catch breath.

hahaha I thought the same about Americans when in NYC. I came there with my school and uni English based on historic(al) texts by great British authors and suddenly had to listen to and understand all that horrible slang used by New Yorkers. I abhorred it, so much that it became one of the reasons I left as quickly as possible and returned to Poland. :)

Perhaps we should really introduce "Polish for Foreigners". Spoken slowly and clearly.

I've noticed that the speed at which presenters talk is increasing. If you watch Polish channels on YouTube, you'll see that many presenters literally gabble. I think it's something to do with the reduced attention span of the viewers/listeners. The speakers are afraid that if they don't get the information out fast enough, you'll move on. Of course the solution is actually to write a more considered script beforehand where you get to the point faster, rather than speaking faster!

There's a very good podcast that I listen to. It's called "The news in slow French".

Worth listening to and helps with following French radio generally.

Oh no!!!! A living language!!!!!

(Kurtz voice) the horror...... the horror.....

Even more annoying is that menacingly manly whisper in the movies.

No matter what is going on around them, today, all men whisper - even when a war is raging feet away...

I'm afraid that probably started with Clint Eastwood. He could carry it off. Most can't.