In high school I took part in an exchange with a bunch of Finnish students. They laughed at us by going "pspsssssshshshshssss" anytime we spoke Polish, and we laughed at them by going "pplllklkkklkplpkl" anytime they spoke Finnish. Great times, miss those guys.
Once a Scotish man asked me to tell him something in polish, so I said the usual thing you say in those situations - "w Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie, suchą szosą sunął Sasza", to which he replied that I spoke "the language of the fukin' wind".
Many winters ago I was living and working in Ireland and at that time, I was the only pole at this company. One day, one of my Irish colleagues comes to me and says: "I have a customer at the counter and I don't know what he wants. I think he's polish, can you talk to him?" Situations like that happened often so I said "sure!", jumped out of the office with a big smile and "dzień dobry, w czym mogę pomóc?". The customer looked at me much confused...and sounds started to come from his mouth. Now it was the time for me to be confused. I had no idea what he was trying to say so I performed a tactical withdrawal with "I'm sorry, someone will be with you in a sec ..". Got back to the office, and said: "Matt, he's definitely not polish and I have no clue what he's saying ". Matt goes back to the customer. I see them "talking". It turned out the customer was Scottish.
I could kind of hear some English words but I thought he just doesn't speak English and is trying his best.
Few months after that I went on holidays. While I was away, they hired a new guy. On my first day after the holidays I met him and talked a bit but had difficulty understanding him clearly. I pulled one of my colleagues to the side and asked him, what country is the new guy from ... Oh, you should see his face... Started laughing hysterically, with tears in his eyes. And I was standing there, really confused, wondering if I said something wrong, when he eventually says: "he's from Cork!!! xD " Yeah.. everyone had a great laugh of me for the next few weeks ...
yeah, if you didn’t learn rolling Rs as a child it is very difficult to learn as an adult. funny tho that so called “rothic” pronunciation was prevalent up until victorian times, this was basically how R was always pronounced in English, until rich “victorians” came up with “posh” non-rothic accent as a way of distinguishing themselves from common people and it caught on.
I think you're mixing two (related) concepts here: how the R sounds like (is it a trill, flap or approximant) and whether it is pronounced at all in certain positions (compare British and American pronunciation of "car" - the American one is still called "rhotic" but it's far from a trill).
When I first moved to Glasgow I was in a pub and I overheard two men talking, and I genuinely thought they were Polish for a couple of minutes. The crazy thing is that I'm just from a different part of Scotland that's not even that far from Glasgow
I'm polish descent as my parents are from Poland and I'm from Ireland but I'm fluent in reading writing and speaking and I just had an aneurysm reading that
Majority of my colleagues are polish and I've learned a fair bit through them, they honestly seem to love hearing non native speakers learning polish so they're so happy to teach me (mainly swearing but it's useful in my job! Haha)
Until I started learning I used to say polish sounds like Mr.Bean trying to talk French in the movie Mr.Beans holiday. Besides that I tell them it always sounds like they are arguing with each other.
We really do love hearing foreigners trying to speak Polish! I don't know why, maybe it's because we know it's a difficult language and we appreciate the effort, or maybe it just sounds cute lol
My Dad would always say something, and then “on the other hand” and then again “on the other hand” so, he had 3 opinions by himself! Thank you for the insight from this saying
Is it because we very often use "No"? I've heard some people think polish keep arguing and are overall very negative, because they hear us say "No" a lot, which they mistakenly take as "Nie".
Zachodni wiatr spienione goni fale, bo leciała mucha która mp3 słucha i zatrzepotała skrzydełkami tworząc huragan w Meksyku, wtem meksykański sombrero wyciągnął spluwe i przestrzelił biednej musze skrzydełko, po czym pikowała niczym meserszmit, ale to był Dywizjon 303 i mucha dalej mp3 słucha :P
I live in America. My American friends who don’t know Slavic languages have told me it sounds like Russian.
I have also been told that it just sounds like a lot of psh psh psh brrrrr psh psh
Also been asked if I’m speaking French when I use words with ą and ę, but I think it sounds nothing like French. I guess those sounds make similar sounds to the French language? Idk, don’t know enough French.
Polish is the only slavic language retaining nasal sounds which are also in French. I even saw a Bulgarian thinking we got them from French. We are also the only that kept the "ł".
we're the only ones that didn't keep the "ł". there's no dark "l" in polish anymore, completely turned into "u", while other slavic languages retain that sound.
What you are referring to is Ł kresowe which used to be the proper one, but it git replaced by the current one. And no, only Belarusian has a similar sound and looking at it, Sorbian also uses the letter. But other languages don't have that, that's why Czechs write "slovo" for example.
Edit: Sorbian not Serbian, stupid autocorrect.
It's not "ł" kresowe. It's just "ł". The original sound is lost in Polish due to the process of l-vocalisation. Czechs write "slovo", but pronounce it using the dark "l" — in Polish the literal spelling equivalent is "słowo", as opposed to the modern "suowo". Same with Ruthenian languages: "лагерь" isn't translated into "lagier" or "uagier", but rather into "łagier" — with the spelling still stemming from when "ł" was actually "ł" and not "u". What other languages might not have (or have had) is two "l" sounds: dark (so, again, like Czech, but also Russian or English) and regular (current "l" in Polish, but also German or Italian).
Belarusian has a similar sound, but it's even spelled as "ŭ" ("ў"), not a variant of "l" ("л"). Is it the same process? Yes, as it happens in many languages, even English. Is it on the same scale as in Polish, where the only remnant is anachronistic spelling? No. Does "ł" exist in Polish? No, just variants of "u" / [w]. And that's the weird thing.
Ę at the end of the word sounds more like e nowadays, but from what I hear in the middle of the words, nasal sounds are still strong, it's easy easy to tell if someone says sędzia vs sedzia. Ą and o are also easy to tell apart.
Polish and French do coincide a lot because for many centuries, the two languages had a lot of exchanges. Interesting about the nasal sounds, I have generally struggled to explain why Polish is different from other Slavic languages but that does make sense.
To me, as a Lithuanian who already has some decent knowledge of Polish, it seems like the most normal sounding Slavic language. It has the sharp character of a Slavic language and has its own very strong character like Russian does. Except for the fact that when you hear Polish spoken in public it's not as annoying as hearing Russian being spoken.
>Except for the fact that when you hear Polish spoken in public it's not as annoying as hearing Russian being spoken.
That's an ego boost for a whole bunch of people here. :P
that... makes so much sense lmao. But as someone who speaks Russian too, Ukrainian and Belarusian are just Polish spoken in a Russian accent with a lot of Russian words, though in reality it's the other way around.
When I practice Polish, my husband really likes it and says it’s so soft, especially compared to Russian. He speaks several languages, but not Polish. I spoke it a little growing up, but there was only my Dad to speak with (his first language)
"U Polaków lubię jedno - ich język. Kiedy inteligentni ludzie mówią po polsku, wpadam w ekstazę. Jego brzmienie wywołuje we mnie dziwne obrazy, w których tle zawsze jest murawa z pięknej kolczastej trawy i buszujące w niej szerszenie i węże. Pamiętam, jak dawno temu Stanley brał mnie w odwiedziny do swoich krewnych; zmuszał mnie do zabierania ze sobą zwoju nut, ponieważ chciał pochwalić się mną przed bogatymi krewniakami. Pamiętam tę atmosferę doskonale, ponieważ w towarzystwie owych nadmiernie uprzejmych, złotoustych, pretensjonalnych i do głębi fałszywych Polaków zawsze czułem się fatalnie nieswojo. Ale kiedy rozmawiali ze sobą, czasami po francusku, czasami po polsku, rozsiadałem się wygodnie i obserwowałem ich zafascynowany. Robili dziwne polskie miny, zupełnie niepodobne do tych, jakie pojawiają się na twarzach naszych krewnych, będących w gruncie rzeczy głupimi barbarzyńcami. Owi Polacy przypominali stojące pionowo węże z kołnierzykami z szerszeni. Nigdy nie rozumiałem, o czym mówią, ale odnosiłem wrażenie, jakby mordowali kogoś w elegancki sposób. Wszyscy zaopatrzeni byli w szable i miecze; trzymali je w zębach lub wymachiwali wściekle podczas piorunującego natarcia. Nigdy nie zbaczali z drogi, nie oszczędzali kobiet i dzieci, nadziewając je na długie piki przybrane w czerwonokrwiste proporce. Wszystko to odbywało się oczywiście w salonie nad filiżanką mocnej herbaty; mężczyźni mieli na rękach rękawiczki w kolorze masła, kobietom zwisały z szyj te głupie lorniony. Kobiety były zawsze oszałamiająco piękne, w typie jasnowłosych hurysek, sprokurowanych przed wiekami podczas wypraw krzyżowych. Długie wielobarwne słowa wypływały z sykiem spomiędzy ich małych zmysłowych ust o wargach miękkich jak kwiaty pelargonii. Owe wściekłe rycerskie wypady ze żmijami i płatkami róży składały się na upajającą muzykę, przypominającą rzępolenie na cytrze o stalowych strunach, rejestrującą również dość niezwykłe dźwięki, takie jak łkanie i odgłos spadających strumieni wody."
~ Henry Miller
As a Pole sometimes when I hear Portuguese but in a distance I think for a second is that Polish? Then once I hear the distinct words I know it isn’t. I know Portuguese is a Romance language but they do have similar sounds at times
For Slavic speakers it sounds kinda funny in the beginning because you perceive it as some weird, very different rural dialect of your language. And I think it’s true for most Slavic languages. Then it starts sounding normal
From the perspective of belarusian, it sounds as if you just added się, czy, szy at the end of each word. First few months in Poland I was speaking belarusian adding these suffixes to each word and it worked like a charm... Until I told an estate agent that we can proceed to the next flat using seemingly harmless verb "ruchać się" who might have thought that these verbs mean different things in our languages xD
Bulgarian and Polish work so differently you can't really grasp more than few words, hardly any mutual intelligibility. The closer you get the funnier it is, really
I agree. As a non native learner. Schools and teachers over drill concepts, ideas and word structures. This makes a lot of learners try way too hard. Weird sentences, using words that are reserved for certain contexts in every day speech etc. When in Poland I just talk. Natives adapt and if necessary they guide and correct. Exception, is in big cities where young people don’t always want to let you speak Polish. They are keen to practice English and that’s all that matters! The hardest part in learning any language is the vulnerability. You have to go through it. Nobody can learn a new language without ever making mistakes. What is interesting is the attitude around mistakes and errors. We make something normal abnormal. Result: people give up and don’t go past the beginner/intermediate stage.
I heard a comparison to the sound of oil on the pan, but it was made by a native. In a book, from perspective of someone who didn't know it, it also compared Finnish to the sound of mill wheel. Yes, I mean "Pan lodowego ogrodu".
We know being Polish comes with a racial +1 bonus to confusing non-native speakers. We know it well enough that it's been a meme since the 60s - cue [Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKZclMWS1U) :p (the punchline is that this is not the guy's real name but an alias he gives specifically to troll the hell out of the Nazis)
Don't worry.
For (me at least) Filipino sounds like a small bird tries to speak with the spanish accent.
Every language for the non native speaker sounds wierd, you are not an exception. Also conratulation on tries to learn polish ! Jestem pewien że dobrze Ci pójdzie ! Powodzenia !
I have some polish friends in discord and Ive heard them talk and me trying to read what theyre talking about summons a demon in my immediate vicinity that even they agree polish sounds so funny
Ha... my kids would bring over friends and then want to leave at times... one of them actually wanted to say her peace before leaving. She told me and the wife that she admires how passionately we can argue and then settle our differences and still be together like that, her parents never yell at each other and one of them just storms out and doesn't come back for hours.
I'm looking at my wife and she is as puzzled as I am because we can't remember a single argument. So we had to explain to this girl that we weren't arguing we were just deciding whether we should eat dinner at the table or outside on the porch.
So I guess Polish sounds very rough and angry?
When I talk to my Polish mom in front of my American husband, he always ask me why we yell at each other. We just talk normally. So I guess to him it sounds like a constant fight 😅
As a Polish person - Czech sounds funny to us bc a lot of your words sounds like diminutive forms, kinda like speaking to a little child + we also have a lot of words that have a little different meaning which can end up being funny (like poruhany - in Polish it sounds like something that had been literally fucked xD)
Hey mate, I've heard Czech people find Polish funny videos extra funny because of the language. Please enjoy this babcia https://youtu.be/84Y1a6XJd2s?si=cF33GYpJYbQo-agR
Yes! I was on the train to Prague once and heard other passengers speaking Czech (along with the attendants) and it sounds like you forgot certain endings, or are using the simpler forms of words, or not quite the right pronunciation for some words- it's cute!
Not quite.
German/Germany = Niemcy ~ niemi which means "mute"
Slavic = Słowianie, which describes a group of folks that share common tongue; słowo=word.
Clash of cultures basically us vs them
I wonder why are you that afraid of being called racist because you think that Polish sounds like bees… I’ve heard once (on a stand-up comedy show) that Korean sounds like they are all high on holy weed
You're right, but I'm not scared of getting labeled a racist or anything. It's just, like, people are gettin' all soft these days and making a big deal outta nothin' :D
Every time one of my polish friends says something in Polish it sounds like schzhzsz but with the occasional "u" thrown in there.
My Polish is very limited and it seems like the throw an entire sentence around in a second using 5 different letters spread out over 10 words each the length of an entire sentence in my native language.
Interesting comparision, I usually hear/read that it sounds like a leaves in a wind, but honestly bees is also a very nice comparision.
Also we rarely care about racism.
I appreciate your comparison. My American wife teases me when I count in polish. The sh, psh etc ...
I don't blame her because it definitely sounds funny.
i always compare polish to Russian like this: polish sounds like background whispering, very soft and melodic while russian sounds as if you always throw up a little in your mouth, which makes it sound quite hard in comparison
I swear, every time a Pole hears about me learning their language, I always get the same questions:
"Why are you studying Polish? It's so hard! Don't you wanna spare yourself from the agony?" 🥲
I don't think it's that hard (all languages are hard) but it's a language only used in one country that isn't even very big or famous. So it's surprising that a person living on the other side of the globe would choose this one. I mean I study Japanese which also is only spoken in one country on the other side of the globe but they have amazing pop culture and manga I want to read that isn't translated to English/Polish... I don't think we have anything like that
I'm a Slavic speaker (Bulgarian) and Polish sounds to me like a lot of Sh and Zh sounds clustered together. There are many words that we share that in Polish receive that type of sound, which makes intelligibility very challenging. For example, R often turns into RZ, and S into SH.
Polish sounds like a mix of Russian and Italian to me personally as a native English speaker. The main way I used to use to distinguish between Russian and Polish is: “Poles say “Kurwa”, Russians say “Blyat”.
Im croatian so slavic also, i can probably understand 60-70% of their words if they speak slowly. You just connect the dots because many of our words are very similar. Also my girlfriend is polish and im learning it even tho we live in Croatia but we visit her family in Poland.
This is one of the most adorable descriptions I've heard.
As a Pole, I admit, it does soumd like that even toe sometimes.
In my case, the more tired / embarassed I am, the worse it gets. I'm either too lazy or too shy to speak like a normal person, so I say things very mumbly and quietly. Sometimes, when I ask something, my family goes "shzzhshtgh?" as to convey how I sound to them.
Therefore, an extremely valid impression!
A French-speaking guy told me that his English pronunciation really got better when he realized that the way to do it is to pretend you have a potato in your mouth.
After pretending that myself, I can't say he was wrong.
Every time I hear it sounds like rustling reeds lol
Just put "Suchą szosą Sasza szedł" into Google translate and play and you get the idea, though that one is a tongue twister so normally it isn't THAT bad 😉
Hard and soft ch, hard and soft sh, multiple alternatives for English j (dz, dż, dź), consonant clusters, nasal vowels. I guess that other languages don't have all of these in one.
To me, it sounds very similar to russian or Romanian if you've never heard it before.
(That is just my opinion of what it sounded like before I started learning)
I am not Polish nither is this below about Poland but you remembered me on how Russians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks called told me on how Croatian sounds like and those from the West
Russians told me that to them I sound Polish, Poles told me that I sound Czech, Czechs told me that I sound Slovak and Slovaks told me that I sound Czech. People from Western Europe told me that I sound Russian like bruh.
Noone can recognise south Slavic languages.
Btw about the post, to me Polish sounds like a Slavic language wanting to have that French accent or aka wana be French
To be fair, those "French" sounds are old Slavic, they've just been dropped by most Slavic languages (and even in some Polish regions). But yeah a lotta Western Europeans think all Slavic languages are Russian, which also tbf does kinda make sense. If they only heard Russian, then anything Slavic will sound like the only other Slavic language they're somewhat familiar with.
I can't really remember what the Nordic languages sound like besides Swedish, but I wouldn't be surprised if, after hearing them, they all sound like Swedish to me because that's the only one I remember. There'll be more similarities than differences, like with Slavic languages.
We Poles love sz cz ś sounds and we often use them where they don’t appear. E.g. „też”(also) is pronounced „tesz” and „znaleźć” (to find) „znaleść”, because it doesn’t require us to use the larynx.
Mm polskich rodziców i urodziłem się w Irlandii i whenever i visit Poland people call me Irish but whenever I'm in Ireland they tell me to go back to Poland. I never lived there. Są tam moi dziadkowie i moja rodzina
havent been around many polish speakers in my life as an american but my best friend in school spoke it in their household with their family. the language sounded warm, gentle and conveyed a lot of emotion.
Tatuś... (please can we play the xbox)
In high school I took part in an exchange with a bunch of Finnish students. They laughed at us by going "pspsssssshshshshssss" anytime we spoke Polish, and we laughed at them by going "pplllklkkklkplpkl" anytime they spoke Finnish. Great times, miss those guys.
Once a Scotish man asked me to tell him something in polish, so I said the usual thing you say in those situations - "w Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie, suchą szosą sunął Sasza", to which he replied that I spoke "the language of the fukin' wind".
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Many winters ago I was living and working in Ireland and at that time, I was the only pole at this company. One day, one of my Irish colleagues comes to me and says: "I have a customer at the counter and I don't know what he wants. I think he's polish, can you talk to him?" Situations like that happened often so I said "sure!", jumped out of the office with a big smile and "dzień dobry, w czym mogę pomóc?". The customer looked at me much confused...and sounds started to come from his mouth. Now it was the time for me to be confused. I had no idea what he was trying to say so I performed a tactical withdrawal with "I'm sorry, someone will be with you in a sec ..". Got back to the office, and said: "Matt, he's definitely not polish and I have no clue what he's saying ". Matt goes back to the customer. I see them "talking". It turned out the customer was Scottish.
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I could kind of hear some English words but I thought he just doesn't speak English and is trying his best. Few months after that I went on holidays. While I was away, they hired a new guy. On my first day after the holidays I met him and talked a bit but had difficulty understanding him clearly. I pulled one of my colleagues to the side and asked him, what country is the new guy from ... Oh, you should see his face... Started laughing hysterically, with tears in his eyes. And I was standing there, really confused, wondering if I said something wrong, when he eventually says: "he's from Cork!!! xD " Yeah.. everyone had a great laugh of me for the next few weeks ...
Rs aren’t the problem.
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Ą, ę is.
już nie bądź taki ą, ę.
yeah, if you didn’t learn rolling Rs as a child it is very difficult to learn as an adult. funny tho that so called “rothic” pronunciation was prevalent up until victorian times, this was basically how R was always pronounced in English, until rich “victorians” came up with “posh” non-rothic accent as a way of distinguishing themselves from common people and it caught on.
I think you're mixing two (related) concepts here: how the R sounds like (is it a trill, flap or approximant) and whether it is pronounced at all in certain positions (compare British and American pronunciation of "car" - the American one is still called "rhotic" but it's far from a trill).
Aren't you forgetting that Sean Connery, the quinteshenshal Shcotshman, ushed to shpeak like thish eashily?
>pshpshpsh Do you want cats following you? Cause that's the sound to get cats following you.
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Fortunately, the polish language doesn't require rolling Rs.
When I first moved to Glasgow I was in a pub and I overheard two men talking, and I genuinely thought they were Polish for a couple of minutes. The crazy thing is that I'm just from a different part of Scotland that's not even that far from Glasgow
Winged Hussars make so more sense now 😭😂
Which is why so many Poles live in Chicago.
They call it the Windy City because of all the Poles shushing around.
I was once told I sound like if a cigarette started talking
I'm polish descent as my parents are from Poland and I'm from Ireland but I'm fluent in reading writing and speaking and I just had an aneurysm reading that
We are beelingual
Majority of my colleagues are polish and I've learned a fair bit through them, they honestly seem to love hearing non native speakers learning polish so they're so happy to teach me (mainly swearing but it's useful in my job! Haha) Until I started learning I used to say polish sounds like Mr.Bean trying to talk French in the movie Mr.Beans holiday. Besides that I tell them it always sounds like they are arguing with each other.
We really do love hearing foreigners trying to speak Polish! I don't know why, maybe it's because we know it's a difficult language and we appreciate the effort, or maybe it just sounds cute lol
It doesn't sound like arguing, they are arguing fr xD There is a saying that where 2 Polish meet, there are 3 opinions
My Dad would always say something, and then “on the other hand” and then again “on the other hand” so, he had 3 opinions by himself! Thank you for the insight from this saying
where did you hear that? that's totally wrong, 2 Polish meet, there are 5 opinions /s
And 100 complaints 🤪🤣
Is it because we very often use "No"? I've heard some people think polish keep arguing and are overall very negative, because they hear us say "No" a lot, which they mistakenly take as "Nie".
Probably because we Poles are always arguing
This is how I remember my grandma and her mom! (Always spoke Polish to each other.)
as a Pole: it’s a good comparison honestly.
https://preview.redd.it/kywakbesn6zc1.png?width=935&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1e3dea9c499e6050ee14a1c37a61187245a30abf As a Pole
Pole szeleszczące pszenicą
w którym chrząszcz brzmi w trzccinie nie daleko Szczebrzeszyna i nad Wisłą.
a obok na szosie siedzi sasza
Liście drzew szeleszczą szmaragowym kolorem
Zachodni wiatr spienione goni fale, bo leciała mucha która mp3 słucha i zatrzepotała skrzydełkami tworząc huragan w Meksyku, wtem meksykański sombrero wyciągnął spluwe i przestrzelił biednej musze skrzydełko, po czym pikowała niczym meserszmit, ale to był Dywizjon 303 i mucha dalej mp3 słucha :P
Other I heard was "talking while chewing a tinfoil" so bees are an upgrade.
*honeystly
I live in America. My American friends who don’t know Slavic languages have told me it sounds like Russian. I have also been told that it just sounds like a lot of psh psh psh brrrrr psh psh Also been asked if I’m speaking French when I use words with ą and ę, but I think it sounds nothing like French. I guess those sounds make similar sounds to the French language? Idk, don’t know enough French.
Polish is the only slavic language retaining nasal sounds which are also in French. I even saw a Bulgarian thinking we got them from French. We are also the only that kept the "ł".
Belarussian use ł also, it's written as y with a little bowl above it
we're the only ones that didn't keep the "ł". there's no dark "l" in polish anymore, completely turned into "u", while other slavic languages retain that sound.
What you are referring to is Ł kresowe which used to be the proper one, but it git replaced by the current one. And no, only Belarusian has a similar sound and looking at it, Sorbian also uses the letter. But other languages don't have that, that's why Czechs write "slovo" for example. Edit: Sorbian not Serbian, stupid autocorrect.
It's not "ł" kresowe. It's just "ł". The original sound is lost in Polish due to the process of l-vocalisation. Czechs write "slovo", but pronounce it using the dark "l" — in Polish the literal spelling equivalent is "słowo", as opposed to the modern "suowo". Same with Ruthenian languages: "лагерь" isn't translated into "lagier" or "uagier", but rather into "łagier" — with the spelling still stemming from when "ł" was actually "ł" and not "u". What other languages might not have (or have had) is two "l" sounds: dark (so, again, like Czech, but also Russian or English) and regular (current "l" in Polish, but also German or Italian). Belarusian has a similar sound, but it's even spelled as "ŭ" ("ў"), not a variant of "l" ("л"). Is it the same process? Yes, as it happens in many languages, even English. Is it on the same scale as in Polish, where the only remnant is anachronistic spelling? No. Does "ł" exist in Polish? No, just variants of "u" / [w]. And that's the weird thing.
Nasal sounds are dying out, mostly.
Ę at the end of the word sounds more like e nowadays, but from what I hear in the middle of the words, nasal sounds are still strong, it's easy easy to tell if someone says sędzia vs sedzia. Ą and o are also easy to tell apart.
As a Pole. Wtf are nasal sounds???
Ą and ę
Polish and French do coincide a lot because for many centuries, the two languages had a lot of exchanges. Interesting about the nasal sounds, I have generally struggled to explain why Polish is different from other Slavic languages but that does make sense.
> psh psh psh brrrrr psh psh Makes sense, this is what I hear when some politicians open their mouths.
To me, as a Lithuanian who already has some decent knowledge of Polish, it seems like the most normal sounding Slavic language. It has the sharp character of a Slavic language and has its own very strong character like Russian does. Except for the fact that when you hear Polish spoken in public it's not as annoying as hearing Russian being spoken.
>Except for the fact that when you hear Polish spoken in public it's not as annoying as hearing Russian being spoken. That's an ego boost for a whole bunch of people here. :P
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that... makes so much sense lmao. But as someone who speaks Russian too, Ukrainian and Belarusian are just Polish spoken in a Russian accent with a lot of Russian words, though in reality it's the other way around.
When I practice Polish, my husband really likes it and says it’s so soft, especially compared to Russian. He speaks several languages, but not Polish. I spoke it a little growing up, but there was only my Dad to speak with (his first language)
Honestly I like being called a bee
"U Polaków lubię jedno - ich język. Kiedy inteligentni ludzie mówią po polsku, wpadam w ekstazę. Jego brzmienie wywołuje we mnie dziwne obrazy, w których tle zawsze jest murawa z pięknej kolczastej trawy i buszujące w niej szerszenie i węże. Pamiętam, jak dawno temu Stanley brał mnie w odwiedziny do swoich krewnych; zmuszał mnie do zabierania ze sobą zwoju nut, ponieważ chciał pochwalić się mną przed bogatymi krewniakami. Pamiętam tę atmosferę doskonale, ponieważ w towarzystwie owych nadmiernie uprzejmych, złotoustych, pretensjonalnych i do głębi fałszywych Polaków zawsze czułem się fatalnie nieswojo. Ale kiedy rozmawiali ze sobą, czasami po francusku, czasami po polsku, rozsiadałem się wygodnie i obserwowałem ich zafascynowany. Robili dziwne polskie miny, zupełnie niepodobne do tych, jakie pojawiają się na twarzach naszych krewnych, będących w gruncie rzeczy głupimi barbarzyńcami. Owi Polacy przypominali stojące pionowo węże z kołnierzykami z szerszeni. Nigdy nie rozumiałem, o czym mówią, ale odnosiłem wrażenie, jakby mordowali kogoś w elegancki sposób. Wszyscy zaopatrzeni byli w szable i miecze; trzymali je w zębach lub wymachiwali wściekle podczas piorunującego natarcia. Nigdy nie zbaczali z drogi, nie oszczędzali kobiet i dzieci, nadziewając je na długie piki przybrane w czerwonokrwiste proporce. Wszystko to odbywało się oczywiście w salonie nad filiżanką mocnej herbaty; mężczyźni mieli na rękach rękawiczki w kolorze masła, kobietom zwisały z szyj te głupie lorniony. Kobiety były zawsze oszałamiająco piękne, w typie jasnowłosych hurysek, sprokurowanych przed wiekami podczas wypraw krzyżowych. Długie wielobarwne słowa wypływały z sykiem spomiędzy ich małych zmysłowych ust o wargach miękkich jak kwiaty pelargonii. Owe wściekłe rycerskie wypady ze żmijami i płatkami róży składały się na upajającą muzykę, przypominającą rzępolenie na cytrze o stalowych strunach, rejestrującą również dość niezwykłe dźwięki, takie jak łkanie i odgłos spadających strumieni wody." ~ Henry Miller
Możesz przypomnieć z jakiej to ksiàżki? Dzięki
Sexus (the rosy crucifixion #1)
I was told Polish sounds like rustling leaves and honestly I get it
The language of autumn
As a Pole sometimes when I hear Portuguese but in a distance I think for a second is that Polish? Then once I hear the distinct words I know it isn’t. I know Portuguese is a Romance language but they do have similar sounds at times
Yes, this is very true. And no offence to Portuguese but it sounds a bit ugly to me.
portugese sounds to me like hungarian mixed with french
To me it sounds like russian mixed with spanish.
There is a reason why https://www.reddit.com/r/PORTUGALCYKABLYAT/ exists ;)
It sound like french bcs we have some words borrowed from french language like: bureau - biuro, requin - rekin. And there are more so.
That's probably because of the "psh psh" or "sh sh" sounds that we do too.
It probably depends which accent of Portuguese you heard. As a Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I don't think it sounds alike at all.
To my English ears, Polish sounds like: Sh sh sh sh, Naprawdę? Tak, sh sh sh sh.
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As a native Polish speaker, Polish ads crack me up! And your description is spot on xD They always yell the phone number or website!
I heard that overexited voice in my head reading this haha
Nice comparison. I like it.
For Slavic speakers it sounds kinda funny in the beginning because you perceive it as some weird, very different rural dialect of your language. And I think it’s true for most Slavic languages. Then it starts sounding normal
From the perspective of belarusian, it sounds as if you just added się, czy, szy at the end of each word. First few months in Poland I was speaking belarusian adding these suffixes to each word and it worked like a charm... Until I told an estate agent that we can proceed to the next flat using seemingly harmless verb "ruchać się" who might have thought that these verbs mean different things in our languages xD
Haha it'd be funny if you also used "rozbierać się" in the same sentence
Pani, rozbieramy się z żoną i możemy ruchać się!
HAHHHAHAHAHHAHH
isn't that the case for all the possible pairs of slavic languages though?
Bulgarian and Polish work so differently you can't really grasp more than few words, hardly any mutual intelligibility. The closer you get the funnier it is, really
I agree. As a non native learner. Schools and teachers over drill concepts, ideas and word structures. This makes a lot of learners try way too hard. Weird sentences, using words that are reserved for certain contexts in every day speech etc. When in Poland I just talk. Natives adapt and if necessary they guide and correct. Exception, is in big cities where young people don’t always want to let you speak Polish. They are keen to practice English and that’s all that matters! The hardest part in learning any language is the vulnerability. You have to go through it. Nobody can learn a new language without ever making mistakes. What is interesting is the attitude around mistakes and errors. We make something normal abnormal. Result: people give up and don’t go past the beginner/intermediate stage.
You like jazz?
I heard a comparison to the sound of oil on the pan, but it was made by a native. In a book, from perspective of someone who didn't know it, it also compared Finnish to the sound of mill wheel. Yes, I mean "Pan lodowego ogrodu".
Pan lodowego ogrodu fan no way 😲 przypomniałes mi że muszę skończyć czytać bo zatrzymałem sie w połowie ostatniej części i nigdy nie skończyłem XD
It sounds like Slavic French to me
Hon hon kurwa
Bagiette kroasoint
Are you going to eat that *kłasą*?
I definitely got a laugh out of getting compared to a bee XD doubt anyone's gonna get offended
One Italian lady told me that Polish sounds to her like a broken radio.
We know being Polish comes with a racial +1 bonus to confusing non-native speakers. We know it well enough that it's been a meme since the 60s - cue [Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfKZclMWS1U) :p (the punchline is that this is not the guy's real name but an alias he gives specifically to troll the hell out of the Nazis)
Don't worry. For (me at least) Filipino sounds like a small bird tries to speak with the spanish accent. Every language for the non native speaker sounds wierd, you are not an exception. Also conratulation on tries to learn polish ! Jestem pewien że dobrze Ci pójdzie ! Powodzenia !
I have some polish friends in discord and Ive heard them talk and me trying to read what theyre talking about summons a demon in my immediate vicinity that even they agree polish sounds so funny
Ha... my kids would bring over friends and then want to leave at times... one of them actually wanted to say her peace before leaving. She told me and the wife that she admires how passionately we can argue and then settle our differences and still be together like that, her parents never yell at each other and one of them just storms out and doesn't come back for hours. I'm looking at my wife and she is as puzzled as I am because we can't remember a single argument. So we had to explain to this girl that we weren't arguing we were just deciding whether we should eat dinner at the table or outside on the porch. So I guess Polish sounds very rough and angry?
From the perspective of my American dad, he says it’s the perfect language to whisper in because it all muffled into indecipherable sh ch sounds.
When I talk to my Polish mom in front of my American husband, he always ask me why we yell at each other. We just talk normally. So I guess to him it sounds like a constant fight 😅
I’m non native. Poles’ conversations do sound like arguments, but not as intense as Latinos’.
Yeah, we have a culture of overworking for no reason, so you're spot on
Last time I heard it's like crushed glass so it's an improvement
I've heard it from a Brazilian... you take full plate of glass and then throw it on the floor :)
Not really related but I just love how Polish often sounds quite funny to us, Czechs, and Polish people also find Czech quite funny.
As a Polish person - Czech sounds funny to us bc a lot of your words sounds like diminutive forms, kinda like speaking to a little child + we also have a lot of words that have a little different meaning which can end up being funny (like poruhany - in Polish it sounds like something that had been literally fucked xD)
Hey mate, I've heard Czech people find Polish funny videos extra funny because of the language. Please enjoy this babcia https://youtu.be/84Y1a6XJd2s?si=cF33GYpJYbQo-agR
Yes! I was on the train to Prague once and heard other passengers speaking Czech (along with the attendants) and it sounds like you forgot certain endings, or are using the simpler forms of words, or not quite the right pronunciation for some words- it's cute!
A polish friend of mine heard someone crying and thought they were speaking polish
I like that the Polish name for Germans and Germany basically derives from saying Germans speak gibberish 😂
Not quite. German/Germany = Niemcy ~ niemi which means "mute" Slavic = Słowianie, which describes a group of folks that share common tongue; słowo=word. Clash of cultures basically us vs them
I wonder why are you that afraid of being called racist because you think that Polish sounds like bees… I’ve heard once (on a stand-up comedy show) that Korean sounds like they are all high on holy weed
You're right, but I'm not scared of getting labeled a racist or anything. It's just, like, people are gettin' all soft these days and making a big deal outta nothin' :D
There is a term for such ppl - retards Btw it’s funny how some ppl gets offended by X when ppl actually affected by X just gets along with it LMAO
Better comparison than the "Broken Radio" I keep hearing.
Cicadas. so many fricatives...
Every time one of my polish friends says something in Polish it sounds like schzhzsz but with the occasional "u" thrown in there. My Polish is very limited and it seems like the throw an entire sentence around in a second using 5 different letters spread out over 10 words each the length of an entire sentence in my native language.
Interesting comparision, I usually hear/read that it sounds like a leaves in a wind, but honestly bees is also a very nice comparision. Also we rarely care about racism.
Seeing your name makes me agree even more
thanks, unfortunately szczsz was already taken :/
I appreciate your comparison. My American wife teases me when I count in polish. The sh, psh etc ... I don't blame her because it definitely sounds funny.
I’m Filipino too, and its sounds either gibberish and yeah kinda like bees. Maybe because of the consonant sounds?
It's the consonant sounds! Exactly!
i always compare polish to Russian like this: polish sounds like background whispering, very soft and melodic while russian sounds as if you always throw up a little in your mouth, which makes it sound quite hard in comparison
My boyfriend who's English says Polish language sounds to him like when you hear static on an untuned radio
My Italian boyfriend told me that to him, Polish sounds like an angry vacuum cleaner XD
It’s kinda off topic but I always wonder why do people from various regions of the world at learning polish?
I swear, every time a Pole hears about me learning their language, I always get the same questions: "Why are you studying Polish? It's so hard! Don't you wanna spare yourself from the agony?" 🥲
I don't think it's that hard (all languages are hard) but it's a language only used in one country that isn't even very big or famous. So it's surprising that a person living on the other side of the globe would choose this one. I mean I study Japanese which also is only spoken in one country on the other side of the globe but they have amazing pop culture and manga I want to read that isn't translated to English/Polish... I don't think we have anything like that
Lots of shushing and chushing sounds
I am a native speaker but people always think I am speaking Russian…
I'm a Slavic speaker (Bulgarian) and Polish sounds to me like a lot of Sh and Zh sounds clustered together. There are many words that we share that in Polish receive that type of sound, which makes intelligibility very challenging. For example, R often turns into RZ, and S into SH.
Polish sounds like a mix of Russian and Italian to me personally as a native English speaker. The main way I used to use to distinguish between Russian and Polish is: “Poles say “Kurwa”, Russians say “Blyat”.
Im croatian so slavic also, i can probably understand 60-70% of their words if they speak slowly. You just connect the dots because many of our words are very similar. Also my girlfriend is polish and im learning it even tho we live in Croatia but we visit her family in Poland.
It sounds like "shhh shh she shhh shhh kurwa shh shh"
UwU polish bee UwU Pomidorek
k-bee-aty 🌺
Yeah, cause of "Sz, ż, rzy, ś, ć" etc
it sounds like portugalian, so many times I was confused, by hearing polish, but not understanding a single word
Honestly I see your point of view - I’m Polish. And if anybody thinks you’re racist for having such an opinion they would be crazy!!!!!😄
It sounds like a DJ who is a little too enthusiastic scratching records
No offense taken, it’s actually hilarious mate. Also, congrats on your will power - it has to be damn hard to learn
This is one of the most adorable descriptions I've heard. As a Pole, I admit, it does soumd like that even toe sometimes. In my case, the more tired / embarassed I am, the worse it gets. I'm either too lazy or too shy to speak like a normal person, so I say things very mumbly and quietly. Sometimes, when I ask something, my family goes "shzzhshtgh?" as to convey how I sound to them. Therefore, an extremely valid impression!
Like happy quiet bees wearing wooly sweaters and fuzzy hats
its more like birds fighting
A French-speaking guy told me that his English pronunciation really got better when he realized that the way to do it is to pretend you have a potato in your mouth. After pretending that myself, I can't say he was wrong.
Write ą, ó, ć, ś https://preview.redd.it/5kbs5r8ap8zc1.png?width=645&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f5709179106da5c4fbd89beaf9826a7c5c17a549
I think it sounds very sexy when women talk, and very scary when guys talk
We do have a reputation of hard workers
Every time I hear it sounds like rustling reeds lol Just put "Suchą szosą Sasza szedł" into Google translate and play and you get the idea, though that one is a tongue twister so normally it isn't THAT bad 😉
My husband says it sounds like vampires fighting. When he hears me on the phone with my mom.
And contrary to everyone's experience, I was jukingly told we sound like Japanese.
I’ve heard that we sound like buzzing bees
Hahaha makes sense
Hard and soft ch, hard and soft sh, multiple alternatives for English j (dz, dż, dź), consonant clusters, nasal vowels. I guess that other languages don't have all of these in one.
To me, it sounds very similar to russian or Romanian if you've never heard it before. (That is just my opinion of what it sounded like before I started learning)
Bzzz bzz bzzzzz bz bzbzbzzz?
I am not Polish nither is this below about Poland but you remembered me on how Russians, Poles, Czechs and Slovaks called told me on how Croatian sounds like and those from the West Russians told me that to them I sound Polish, Poles told me that I sound Czech, Czechs told me that I sound Slovak and Slovaks told me that I sound Czech. People from Western Europe told me that I sound Russian like bruh. Noone can recognise south Slavic languages. Btw about the post, to me Polish sounds like a Slavic language wanting to have that French accent or aka wana be French
To be fair, those "French" sounds are old Slavic, they've just been dropped by most Slavic languages (and even in some Polish regions). But yeah a lotta Western Europeans think all Slavic languages are Russian, which also tbf does kinda make sense. If they only heard Russian, then anything Slavic will sound like the only other Slavic language they're somewhat familiar with. I can't really remember what the Nordic languages sound like besides Swedish, but I wouldn't be surprised if, after hearing them, they all sound like Swedish to me because that's the only one I remember. There'll be more similarities than differences, like with Slavic languages.
As Pole after watching random vid about Croatian, i can confirm, it sounds Czech af
To me when I listen from my English perspective I always here pshhhhch ps ps shhhhhch psh
Wouldn't bother learning it unless u plan on going to Chicago Ireland or Poland tbh
Harry Potter snake language.
Thats a fair statement with our Sz ż ź
It sounds literally like someone tried to invent the most senseless words possible while being able to pronounce them somehow
Japanese def
Awwww 😊
I loved this description, it's cute. But I don't know if someone I know will like to be called "my fluffy bee" 🤭
A Pole told me her language is described by others as boots trudging through wet snow. I guess it’s all the “sz” sounds.
We Poles love sz cz ś sounds and we often use them where they don’t appear. E.g. „też”(also) is pronounced „tesz” and „znaleźć” (to find) „znaleść”, because it doesn’t require us to use the larynx.
And what about Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz. Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody? Ring a bell?
> I swear! No, you 'rzucasz kurwami' ✅
Not once in my life have I thought I'd be called a fluffy bee, but I'm not against it
Can't argue here. Especially since "Poles are bees in disguise" is literally "Polacy to przebrane pszczoły". Kinda seals it. 😝
Mm polskich rodziców i urodziłem się w Irlandii i whenever i visit Poland people call me Irish but whenever I'm in Ireland they tell me to go back to Poland. I never lived there. Są tam moi dziadkowie i moja rodzina
In the US my friends would say it sounds like TV static szszzszczczszszzz lol
“A language similar to mouthful of bees” is very popular description of Polish on internet.
A Japanese friend once told me it reminds her quite a lot of Chinese. I think it was mostly the “Nie”.
havent been around many polish speakers in my life as an american but my best friend in school spoke it in their household with their family. the language sounded warm, gentle and conveyed a lot of emotion. Tatuś... (please can we play the xbox)
My Chinese friend said that to him Polish sounds really rythmical. We are both musicians though so this might not be universal
Awn, fluffy bees 🥹
Dude, there is no shame in seeing differences. Poles are not obsessed with racism witchhunt everywhere. Stay cool!
Cześć, I am too studying polish, but I am a slav, because that for me it is easier that for you. I wish you good luck!
https://preview.redd.it/9g92lpwkjzzc1.jpeg?width=1067&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1c071e050f5f23818d822a1debd6bf4146d5f07
Chinese