SOUNDS/ PRONUNCIATION

The first thing I notice in a language is its melody. Sometimes you can tell what language you are hearing from its melody that you’ve learned to recognize.

To me (native polish), Spanish pronunciation is just so much easier to imitate than any other, even the kin Russian or Czech. I don’t know the spanish-speakers opinion, though I guess for all the ‘sh’ and ‘tch’-like sounds (which make for a load of fun when I show my native tongue off to foreigners) Polish is actually more like Portuguese.

Ask a pole to read this tongue twister out to you: “W Szczebrzeszynie chrzaszcz brzmi w trzcinie”. Don’t try it at home, all those consonant-clusters (sz, cz, rz, ch) are in fact single sounds and that makes it way easier than it looks ;)

I was telling you Polish sounds like Spanish or maybe Portuguese, examples? Here: We have the rolling ‘r’ like the Spanish or the Italians (try saying shut up and you’ll feel the rolling thing). We have the nasal vowels ą, ę (Portuguese have ã, õ). Also, all sounds have the same length. No long or short vowels, so watch Poles say bitch or beach they often pronounce it the same – the 'i' sound in Polish sounds like something in between those two. Well Italians have the same problem. (the joke about an Italian tourist here). It’s more than just the long/short vowels, English generally has many more vowel sounds than either polish or Italian or Spanish and that really explains the joke.

Also, polish spelling follows pronunciation closely with most exemptions following simple rules. In the medieval days whoever was Roman-catholic tried to write their own languages with Latin characters (Greeks and Russians were orthodox so they didn’t). But Latin had only some 30 sounds to represent with letters, and most other languages had more, like 40 or 50, so they innovatively applied accented letters (i.e. French) or they used clustered characters (i.e. English or Polish too). Why is the English spelling so hairy then, you can ask? Mostly because English vowels went crazy, and it happened so fast that the the spelling didnt catch up, and was left behind for good.

More insight on the english vowels: You know how rappers like to chew the word ‘bitch’ before spitting it out, so it ends up sounding ‘Biiiaaatch’? Well, the medieval Englishmen were a hell of rappers, for they took to chewing STRESSED LONG VOWELS (a total of 7, I think) in the XIV century so instantly that whoever was born after 1600 would never understand the original language. For example oo was, according to the spelling, ALWAYS a long o sound, pronounced [door], and ee was always [ay] or a long e as in [fiancé]. Now try to say goose-geese the olde way and tell me how it sounds! Anyway, that practice caught on quickly, but the spelling was left behind, which is why modern English pronunciation doesn't follow the spelling.

In polish and most other European languages the vowels were more tame, and the spelling kept up with changes.

POLISH VOWELS..

Easy ones:

A      [father]

E      [set]

I        [aria or green but shorter]

O      [order or ball but shorter]

U      [book but shorter]

plus one more difficult – Y - between [kill] and uh [easily] but longer, and you’ll get close to it.

There’s also two ‘tailed’ letters – Ę [tent], Ą [wrong]. The ę sound is close to e [set] and the ą - a little tricky – to o [order]. The sounds are called nasals so I suppose they were close to the French or Portuguese nasal sounds back in the day. No fear though, as today they are but plain e or o plus a short nasal [n] after them, so they sound quite as in the examples.

So we have a total of 8 vowels in PL. I couldn’t do the reverse for English vowels, as some of them have nothing close to them in polish at all. This is another reason to say only hard thing about learning polish lies in its inflection.

..AND CONSONANTS

Ok, back to spelling problems of the middle ages (!). So most languages had sounds not present in Latin, and hence there was no existing hints as to how to write them. Two ways were invented, the accented letters (i.e. ü ä ó ń ć ę), and clusters of letters (ch, cz, sh, ou, ee).

Slavic languages have the concept of soft consonants. For most consonants, there’s a soft version. I think they’re one beautiful thing! The Russians use a following ‘yeri’ letter to denote those, we either use a special character, or a following ‘i’ does the same.

Most of the consonants actually have English equivalents in pronunciation. Here’s a handy pronunciation guide, take a look, they’re in pairs - a hard then a soft one (typical international fonts or Unicode handle the ‘funny letters’):

(ch)     cześć ! /hi!/                        as in Czech republic or Cheese

(chee) kiciu! /kitten*/ Or ć               as in Gotcha! –- pronounced the fast, slang way.

(sh)     szkoła /school/                     as in shop –- spoken the usual way

(sh’)   misiu /teddy bear*/ or cześć     as in “kiss-you” or “miss-you” when spoken fast

or in Shake it baby! --“Twist& shout” song style

(zh)     żona /wife/                          as in measure

(zh’)   buziaki /kisses/ or ź              as in magnesium – notice how the ‘i’ softens the (zh)

(j)      dż                                   as in judge or New Jersey

(j’)     dź or dzi                          as in module – almost as soft as in polish

(ni)     kochanie /love*/                   as in canyon or better in Spanish señorita

(h)      kochanie                          as in have  

(h)      h                                              yes, an alternative spelling for (h)

(y)       j                                     as in yard

(ts)     c                                              as in blitz or chutzpah or tsar

B, d, f, g (gate), h, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, z

Good, now that we’re through with the sounds, a bit surprise - I think what really makes the language melody, is how those sounds are normally grouped, the syllables. I mean, you could take 3 sounds in English and try pronouncing all possible combinations, right? Well, I think some of them will sound more natural than others, and that’s just what they are, natural to the language.

That’s how English has all [sh], [ch] and [e] sounds but ‘shche’ is not a common syllable in English. It just doesn’t seem right! – well, it does in polish! [shche] is actually quite common in all Slavic languages. Now you may start getting the picture why polish sounds the way it does.

Now if you speak the language, you hardly pay attention to the pronunciation. That’s why you can pronounce a lot of things, like [shche] above, but would hardly use them in a conversation. So it really takes getting those foreign syllables natural to you to pronounce yourself fluent in the language!

Many a time, when in the US, I was confused for a German. It’s the hard pronunciation.

Now that you realize all is about syllables, I will tell you for one syllable there is always one corresponding spelling in polish. Period. It’s that simple. Of course there’s many more syllables than there are actual sounds (around 40), so it’s easier to make a sound-to-spelling table proper spelling for combinations of 2 or 3 letters each. For example, you read ‘w’ as [v] in ‘dwa’ [k-v-ah] while you read it [f] in a ‘twa’ [t-f-ah] and the same holds for all 'dw' and 'tw' combinations. [--to be continued--]

VOCABULARY

Polish is a member of the Slavonic (Slavic) group of languages, much like English is related to Germanic, and to Romance languages.

Unlike English and German though, Polish uses many words that are used in Czech, Slovak or Russian in similar meanings. Also, Unlike English (though more so like French and German), Slavic languages have kept a lot of the ancient indo-european endings and grammar. What is indo-european though? -

- Most European languages are related because they have evolved from one (proto-indo-european) language long time ago. Many modern everyday words were ‘added’ only later. And even in the ‘common’ words the pronunciation has changed independently (which had influence on spelling too) which made them mutually unintelligible later. This is why you need a long study to learn Spanish or Polish, even though they originate from ‘dialects’ of one ancient language. Some words however still give a feeling of common descent,

ENGLISH    -         POLISH

Mama                  Mama

Papa                   Tata

Son                     Syn   [sin]

Mouse                 Mysz [mish]

Three                  Trzy  [t-shee]

Is                        Jest [yest]

I                         Ja [yah]

Milk                     Mleko [mleh-ko]

While others, mostly sophisticated words, are an effect of common influences from Latin or otherwise:

ENGLISH    -         POLISH

information           informacja [Inform-utz-ya]

situation               sytuacja     [Sit-oo-utz-ya]

robot                   robot        - a slavic origin, matter of fact!

concept                koncept     [con-tzept]

to prefer              preferować [pruh-fuhr-roh-vatsh]

school                  szkoła        [shkoh-a]

total                    totalny       [toh-tahl-nuh]

idea                    idea          [ee-deh-ah]

But when you come to study, you realize most grammar concepts(..)

Compared to English though, Polish sustained little influence. English was once very much like ancient German, but is no longer so. In the medieval times when England was bilingual in French and English, the original language dropped most of its inflection and grammar, save maybe the tense-system.

Since Slavic languages have kept

and is mostly related to its closest kins, Czech and Slovak, though through lengthy periods of Russian influence

REALLY EXPRESSING YOURSELF - PHRASALS 

Now if your aim shifts from learning about language to actually being able to communicate, so does your perspective. What is relevant to you as far as communicating may depend on what the scope of your interest is.

Often times, language lessons try to get the formal things across to you. Just as English does, most languages take different spoken- and formal forms. Reading scientific papers involves all sorts of Latinate words in English, but also the grammar, or the expression of such texts is severely limited. In everyday, we want our speech to give our emotions off. Phrases like ‘play up’ and ‘emphasize importance’ may carry the same meaning, but the second one is cold and precise, the scientific language of the papers. ‘Play up’ is broader in meaning, it can be very meaningful depending on the context. In effect, we get a key-word that can be used for many meanings, directing attention more to the emotion than the exact meaning of what we are saying. It’s both shorter, and sounds better. It gets to the point that even the widely-followed Fowler’s literary guide suggests the choice of lively, saxon words to their scientific Latinate counterparts.

Polish has a good parallel of formal and spoken language with similar usages as in English. Still, the Latinate words used in Polish are far less numerous than in English, so there’s a bunch of non-latinate words to accompany them in the formal language.

GRAMMAR

The wisest thing I ever read about foreign languages is that really all that matters when you learn a foreign language is how to express a certain „concept” in the new language, not the grammar’s rules. That follows the fact most natives can’t properly spell out their native grammar rules. Because, in normal life you use patterns, or concepts - and not grammar - to put your sentences together.

Most European languages either stick a prefix or suffix to a word to inflect it or they use auxiliary words. Some irregular words change entirely over when inflected. All this holds for polish, just that it’s WAY more inflected than English, or even French or German.

Polish has but three tenses. It’s however possible to draw a parallel to some English grammar. There’s past, present and future. But a lot of times you don’t use any endings to form either, but instead, the word itself changes.

I eat a chocolate bar everyday.

I ate three bars yesterday!

You could easily think them to be two separate, unrelated words. Take a look:

Codziennie j-em batonika czekoladowego.      (I eat)

Wczoraj z-jad-ł-em trzy batoniki!  (I ate)

and guess where the pattern stems from? Indo-european. English has a limited number of such irregular verbs. It wasn’t always so, Shakespeare used many irregular verbs that are not current anymore. Of course it’s kind of hard to remember all those irregular forms, which is why only the everyday words stay this way. Same goes for imported words, like produkować in polish (below).

So the rule of thumb is, when you come up with a new/less common word, you make past- or future- forms in a regular way, by adding an ending:

produce – produced – will produce – has produced

produkować – produkował – będzie produkował – wyprodukował

eat – ate – will eat – has eaten

jeść – jadł – będzie jadł – zjadł

Ok so the pattern is, if you see ł in the verb suffix it means the past form, much in the same way d is used in English. Unlike English though, the sense in polish is you just can’t have the past without the ł, and the feeling is so strong that even the most common words take the ł to form the past form. What else you can see in the example above is the prefixes, like wyprodukował. There’s the ł, so what the heck do you need that extra thing for, you can ask?

Well, what you really mean by saying ‘has produced’ is that the thing

Well, in fact the meaning is ‘made out’ or ‘produced out’. But that’s another verb, right? True, as I said polish has only three tenses so there’s no other way to furnish a perfective form than to use an ‘out’.

There’s one thing about English I like – whatever (indo-european) grammar you think of, there’s probably some trace of it in English, because of all the latin that made its way to English.

Progressive/non-frequentative:

Jeść            (Jadł)        (będzie jadł)

Jem            Jadłem       będę jadł

Jesz            Jadłeś        będziesz jadł

Je             Jadł             będzie jadł

Jemy          Jedliśmy   będziemy jedli

Jecie         Jedliście     będziecie jedli

Jedzą         Jedli          będą jedli

frequentative:

Jadać          (jadał)       (będzie jadał)

Jadam        jadałem     będę jadał

Jadasz        jadałeś       będziesz jadał

Jada          jadał           będzie jadał

Jadamy      jadaliśmy  będziemy jadali

Jadacie       jadaliście  będziecie jadali

Jadają        jadali          będą jadali

The funny thing is, there’s no perfective tense, so if you want to say your really ate the whole cake, you really have to use another verb, or a prefixed one for that matter:

Zjeść – to complete eating (to have eaten)

Wyjeść – to eat up (to have eaten up)

 

The great vowel shift - in polish!

Old english Geese (G-ay-z) rhymes with modern pace –> Geese (Geez)

Old english Mice (Mee-s) rhymes with modern peace –> Mice (Mice)

Polish vowel shift consistent in long back vowels (pronounced in the back of mouth) shifting to the front and becoming short. I, Y, and U didn't shift:

long A              -               a’ - o

long E              -               e’ – i or y -- notice how that parallels the english vowel shift in 'sheep'

long O              -               o’ - u as in stół (stuł) [table]. notice how that parallels the english vowel shift in 'stool'.

long I                -                i (merged with the short sound)

long Y              -                y (merged with the short sound)

long U              -               u (merged with the short sound)

The old pairing between long vowels and their short cognates is preserved in modern inflectional patterns. And so, the word 'stół' in nominative case changes into 'stołu' in genitive, 'stołowi' in dative, 'stół' in accusative, 'stołem' in instrumental and 'stole' in locative and vocative.

 

My Grandma’s Grammar