Posts tagged with "pronunciation"

Pronunciation Samples

Posted by Anna 21 Comments
Jul 11 2008

At last!

I know you’ve been asking about pronunciation, and I know you’ve been requesting phonetic equivalents for all the Polish words I’m introducing in each post.

The problem with phonetic approximations is that if we use English sounds, then for those readers who are not native English speakers, such examples will not make much sense. Also, how would we transcribe such gems as ś ń ć or ę and ą? Those sounds simply don’t exist in the English language.

The only other option would be to use those real phonetic symbols. You know, those you see in foreign dictionaries. The little scribbles in square brackets that require an advanced degree in linguistics to pronounce them correctly. Yeah, those! I don’t know about you, but I just tend to zone out when I see them.

So I thought the easiest would be to simply give you the correct pronunciation, you can listen to it, and then transcribe it any way you want. Sounds good? I hope so!

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Is Polish a Phonetic Language

Posted by Anna No Comments
Jun 23 2008

Many Poles will tell you that Polish is a phonetic language. In other words, you read it as you write it. Cool! Sounds easy enough, right? But hold on a sec. That’s not entirely true. While written Polish might indeed be easier to decipher than for example English (just think about the many different ways you can read the letter “a” in English), it has its own set of funky spelling problems. As any child in Poland can tell you, there is nothing more hideous in this world than Polish orthography. And unfortunately that orthography is directly tied into how we pronounce Polish words.

Take these two vowels, for example:
u and ó
They both sound exactly the same, like “oo” in English.

Or this pair:
ż and rz
Again, exactly the same sound in both cases, similar to the French “j” in “Je” (as in “Je t’aime”). Except, when the “rz” combination is pronounced separately as “r”+”z”. Not very often, but it does happen.

Or this pair:
h and ch
They both sound like “h”.

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