I am a native English speaker and for me the hardest to remember is the slight difference in sound when z, ź, and ż are in words. The same with ć and cz also ś and sz. My favorite letter in the Polish language is probably ł, it’s just fun to say and I remember it easily. Dziękuję bardzo!
here is a tip, english speaking people from the united states have a hard time with the slavic languages as well as other languages and in opinion, its the accent. my first language is spanish and when i was learning english, it was the accent, when learning english we need to smooth the pronounciation and when a english speaking person, you need to roughen up the pronounciation. this will help. unlearn what you have learn.
Im Slovene and also for me these diferences are hard, but don't you worry because these diferences ( sz-ś..cz-ć..i-y and so on are so small that probably they won't even notice. It's like in Serbo-Croatian they have č and ć and in Slovene we have only č and the diference is so small that you don't have to worry. Otherwise i love Polish alphabet specialy letters ł,ę and ą..
@@taurondur The differences being small actually make it a problem, lol. We use ć, cz, dź, dż, ś, sz, ź, ż in minimal pairs, which means that they are completely different phonemes, so substituting one for the other would be confusing. For example, "Kasia", "kasza", and "kasa", or "zimie", "Rzymie", or "ziąb", "ząb" are completely different words, so learning the difference is very important.
I grew up hearing polish from my grandparents who were both native poles. I spoke English as a child learning polish is still challenging from English with the alphabet being so different in its sounds
I am a native portuguese speaker from Angola, I am living in Poland currently 1 years it is being good experience, I study in english at university but i have huge desire to learn polish language dziękuję bardzo dear teacher for this amazing lecture.
Hello my name is katherine, I"m from CHILE, I can see,this language,it seem, difficult,but not Impossible, Poland sound very interesting, and to learn Polish ,it takes time to learn that,with passion and dedication☺📖🌇 greetings from CHILE.
this genuinely might help me, i was meant to learn Polish to help his parents talk to me cos they thought i was Polish, but i'm English. he broke up with me but i've started and i dont like to quit something once i start, so wish me luck :)
I don't know why but this made me laugh so much! I love the choice of words and images 😂❤❤❤ I have no exposure to Polish before today and this made it fun 🇺🇲
@@HanzoGamingPoland Do you mean old Greek or modern Greek? Anyway both of them arent't match for slavic languages, which keep many declensions and cases. And Greek for sure isn't harder than Polish, even looking at their phonology.
Eu adoro idiomas e de um tempo pra cá eu tenho me interessado por polonês. Eu já tinha experimentado iniciar um curso de russo há muito tempo atrás e o impacto foi enorme para mim, sobretudo no alfabeto. Mas depois me apaixonei. Acho o polonês um pouco parecido, com algumas diferenciações, é claro.
Dobry wieczór. In meiner Jugend habe ich in der Nähe zur polnischen Grenze gewohnt. Im August 1984 ist unsere Klasse nach Gorzów WLKP gefahren. Für die Korrespondenz mit einigen Mädchen habe ich etwas Polnisch gelernt, natürlich zum Schreiben. Die Aussprache muss man immer wieder üben. Einen Kurs bei Norbert müsste ich auf Spanisch machen, da ich Englisch nicht gelernt habe (lernen wollte).
As a bosnian speaker we share many phonemes even though they're written differently. But the vowels with the curvy line at the bottom sound completely foreign.
Speaking Ijekavian dialect of Serbian and Russian language I find this quite easy,a bit of practice and I could start learning Polish And I was a bit shocked at "Jagoda" as that's "Strawberry" in Serbian
Hi Norbert, it is great to find Polish alphabet with pronunciation. I am Czech and I have typical problem with ś/sz + ć/cz + ź/ż + dź/dż - why do you need so many letters for š, č, ž + dž and dz (it is two letters together)? :D However my biggest problem is letters, that we don't have in Czech: ą, ę, ł (I miss the feeling to be sure how to pronounce them in text) and I am confused by difference in pronunciation of y (Czechs say "i") and ó (CZ o: = "long" o). Polish learning is really funny. You never know what to expect :D Thank you
There is a difference in pronunciation between 'dz' and 'd+z' etc. You can compare the pronunciation of words like: dzwon vs. nadzwyczaj, dżdżownica vs. nadżerka.
@@Ecolinguist never mind. On Google Translate, the z/ż is pronounced longer in nadzwyczaj/nadżerka than dz/dż. Ukrainian and Belarusian also have дз/дж, and I never understood the point of that, from a Russian perspective. Now I get it! Dzięki, Norbert!
@@vuhdeem Hmm. The difference is very subtle. Almost negligible. Not sure where you can find the pronunciation examples for theses particular words. Maybe this article will clarify some things for you: pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Aneks:J%C4%99zyk_polski__-wymowa-__dwuznaki
Cześć! for me the most difficult ones are ą, ę, y, dź; and I cannot really feel the difference between ź and ż. And maybe the digraphs in the words like *si* becomes sz + i sometimes... (I am from Hungary; interested in the language as I have a colleague from PL)
I'm a Ukrainian speaker, and none of the Polish letters is difficult. The sound cluster źdźbło, however, is a little challenging :) I can pronounce it, but slowly, it's like a tongue twister.
Cześć Norberte! We need this, thank you. Letters Ą , Ę , Ł, DZ and maybe Ó don't exist in my - Serbian language. I like to listen carefully , and I can say this : Ą for me sounds like an ON with a nasal ( French ) N ; Ę is EN - also with a nasal N ; Ł is English W ( water ). DZ is mixed of d and z, I can pronounce it. Only letter Ó is a bit hard for me , it just sounds like U. Please correct me if my explanation is wrong. 😱
in the past "ó" sounded like a long-sounding "o" (just like in slovak or czech) then it changed into something like a mix between "o" and "u" sound. and finally, in modern times it sounds like a regular "u" ;) (there are dialects where the pronounciation differs, though) as for the ch and h letters, it's a bit more complicated. The letter "h" isn't really a Polish thing and exists only in loaned words from Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages (they correspond to the Polish letter "g", hence the Bohemism "druh" instead of "drug" or "hołota" instead of "gołota"(however we have the word "gołota" in Polish but it means something else, so they are so called doublets). In all those languages "h" is pronounced like something between Polish "ch" and "g" sound while in Polish both "ch" and "h" sound the same. Did they sound differently in the past? I don't know. What I know, though is that some people(usually older ones), who live close to the borders of those countries or even come from there, are able to differentiate pronounciation of "h" and "ch". There are also "ż" and "rz" letters which, of course, sounded differently in the past. The "Ż" has always sounded like a regular slavic "Ž/Ж" sound. The "RZ" however, corresponds to the soft "r" and it's been pronounced differently through the ages. At first it sounded like a soft "r". In a later medieval times it was pronounced like a Czech "ř", which is kind of mix between "r" and "ż" sounds. Then it evolved into the regular "ż" sound. I'm not an expert on old Polish language so I hope I didn't make a lot of mistakes trying to explain this :)
@@neckbreaker094 nawet jeśli u i ó oraz ż i rz brzmiały kiedyś inaczej, to było bardzo dawno. Natomiast ch i h jeszcze nie dawno, szczególnie na wschodzie brzmiały inaczej. H wymawiane było bardziej gardłowo jakby po arabsku, a ch miękko.
I am a Polish American Israeli. I speak fluent English, Hebrew and not so fluent French. I have studied many languages. I cannot hear or spell in Polish and it is very frustrating because reading it is not a problem. The dz, cz, sz and "a" "e" and all the accents really frustrate me. I am not giving up but your video helped a little bit. Can you make one where you have exercises in hearing and spelling the vowels and accents?! I almost broke my keyboard in the last two DuoLingo lessons that were focused on spelling where I could not spell anything after a month. I am really quite adept at other languages (except sign language). Struggling in Akko with Polish, Aviva in Akko
The most difficult for me is this strange ę letter in gouse. We dont have this in croatian. We also have hard and soft varieties of certainties letters for example č and ć (ch) and now I learned you have even more.
I have a question. Is Y like big/thick or is it like ы? In old Slavic there were multiple “i” ь и ы ї..Polish is only confusing for me when I write it because of the Latin alphabet..if it was written in Cyrillic or even glagolitic it would make sense..I’m Ukrainian. So, Polish is easy. It’s the writing that confuses me because of the Latin alphabet. So, if you could tell me if Y is i (ь)like in big/thick etc or if it’s ы it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance
A couple similarities to French: The Polish word for suitcase is the same in French - Valise Also the Y is also pronounced "ee grec" when writing the alphabet. There are small hints of French influence in Russian like bibliotheque (library), discotheque (nightclub), etc. It's interesting how much the French language influenced not only English (my native language).
You're right.🤓 We have quite a lot French words in Polish. For example: ekler (my favorite one! 😂), melba, suflet, farsz, marynata, pikantny, gofr, garaż, fotel, bistro, broszka, and many many more!
Elise Markey French was really popular with rich people in 19th century in Russian Empire, that's why there's a lot of French words in Russian language ;)
Moja koleżanka chciała nauczyć się Polskiego, ponieważ muj ojczysty język jest Polski, i chciała nauczyć się komunikować ze mną w moim ojczystym języku. Teraz wie jak wymówić każdą literę alfabetu. Dziękuję!
lol so i am a romanian living in Germany, trying to teach a polish the german language :)) and i came to this video to have an understanding of the sound of their alphabet
Polish in 95-100% phonetic, so when you know the pronounciation of each character and digraph, you can properly pronounce every word, even imaginary word.
I'm struggling with the pronunciation of the ż and ź. I finally figured out how to type them on my laptop. My Father's side is entirely polish. I've always had a fascination with my heritage, and I want to learn the language now.
Hi Norbert, there are a lot of letters that sound pretty much the same. Like the two modified Z‘s. Maybe it’s only my hearing but I can’t hear any difference :-) The Slovak alphabet has single instances of those sounds, like š ž č. Is it historically grounded and does the pronunciation really differ in common Polish spoken word? Thanks, Karol
Der Karol! Those Z-s do differ in pronunciation. :) It may take a while to learn to hear the difference but the sounds of those letters change the meanings of the words. It is hard to find a minimal pair of words distinguished by those two sounds [ż] and [ź] especially spelled with the letters 'Ż' and 'Ź' but I found these: burza [pronounced: buża] ) and buzia [pronounced: buźa]
By no doubt the most difficulty in Polish pronunciation constitute the "ę" and "ą" letters. The broad majority of Internet sources contradict each other - in terms of their pronunciation rules - or omit some vital edge cases of their pronunciation. It is amazing that literally nobody is able to clearly and completely describe it. The "teachers" are usually too lazy to do it.
It is impossible to write out how to pronounce them phonetically. But it irks me when I often read online people writing the sounds as "on" and "en" 🤦🏼 which is just completely false Also note that in common vernacular speech, you will not hear Ę in final position , but usually in poetry or certain songs and dialogues.
I'm learning Polish and I speak Serbian. No letter by itself is a problem to me, but the way letters combine. Like źdźbło, damn, I thought Serbian has hard consonant combinations like raskršće or similar, but I was wrong.
As Russian native speaker also highly fluent in English as well I'd say the Ż (if I got the index indiciation right) is the hardest, specifically the word applied to illustrate the pronunciation.
As a native Spanish speaker , and also knowing English and able to pronounce Russian and Bulgarian words , this didn’t seem to hard b/c I could hear the small difference between those hard to pronounce letters now I just need practice
I have Latino Blood, I IRONICALLY don't know much Spanish, but I know how ALL the letters in the Spanish Alphabet are Pronounced. What I've learned from Polish Pronunciation & Alphabet, there's no *Q* , *V* , & *X* in *Polish* ! 😱
palma - a palm tree wąs - moustache buty - shoes koc - a blanket być - to be czart - a devil dudy - pipes dzwon - a bell dźwięk - a sound dżem - jam echo - echo gęs - a goose
For me (I'm Ukrainian) the most hardest are "ę", "ą" but sure it's hard to pronounce in a row a lot of "dz", "dż" etc. Sometimes I forget that "ł" != "L" because in Ukrainian all the Polish words with Ł in our words we are saying "L" ("Л"). I'm not sure is it truth or not but I've read somewhere that Polish language lost some sounds because of Ukrainians who were not able to pronounce every sound correctly as result difference between "morze" and "może" has been disappeared at all but initially they were pronounced in different ways :)
Ukrainians pronounce their В (v) exactly like our Ł when it is in final position. If you watch polish films from the 1930s you will hear our Ł pronounced exactly like typical East Slavic
@@Msciwoj-j4x yes if we are talking just about letter, but I mean in the words where polish letter "Ł" in Ukrainian we are usually using our Cyrillic "Л" for example Łajać - Лаяти chŁopiec - хЛопець obŁuda - обЛуда ścisŁy - стисЛий the only what comes to my mind where it turns into "В" it's długo - доВго maybe there is more So it's really hard for me to say it correctly and suppose I'm not alone with it :) Actually this letter/sound reminds me when children here not able to pronounce "Л" ластівка полетіла (jaskółka poleciała) - łastivka połetiła (actually it's hard to describe by letters :) ) About movies interesting idea I will try to find some, because the oldest what I've seen it's "Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową" :)
Да. Ведь все славянские языки произошли от одного единого предка - праславянского, а до этого и прабалтославянского. Ну и английский тоже родственник, хоть и невероятно далёкий, ведь он является индоевропейским языком
Native Romanian speaker, I'll never even try to learn the Polish language thanks to this video.(Not intended as an insult for the video but for Polish)
First of all, thank you for making this video! I have been wondering about Polish pronunciation for a very long time!!! I speak Russian without an English accent and English without a Russian accent, because I learned both when I was a child. I noticed that the ź is like the English/French zh sound, while the ż is like the Russian zh sound, and I am able to pronounce both without an issue. I noticed in the same way that ś is like the English sh and sz is like the Russian sh sound, and I’m able to pronounce those correctly, as well. However, ć is like an English and Russian ch sound,... but it’s very, very hard for me to hear the difference between that and cz :/. I would need more examples, I think, because I have a good ear for this stuff, but for now, even if I hear a slight difference, which I don’t think I do, I definitely am not able to pronounce the two differently. Same with dź and dż... I’m wondering if dź and dż (and ć and cz) are just allophones of the same phoneme. Can you make a minimal pair with those letters? Like, does e ever follow dź, like it follows dż, and can both ć and cz be at the start/end of a word? Btw, I adored “ufoludek” and I think that any American who wants to learn Polish will stop trying once they reach źdźbło 🤣 talk about a consonant cluster!!! I showed my Mexican-American friend that word and he said, “That makes the romance language native speaker in me cry.” Btw, I thought you’d also include rz... I thought that the r gets cancelled and it ends up sounding like a ż or something.
Here are a few examples of phonemic pairings of ć/ci and cz; ś/si and sz; ź/zi and ż/rz. Ciapa vs czapa [IPA: t͡ɕapa vs t͡ʂapa]. The first word means an inept person or a splotch, the other means a cap (headgear). Płać vs płacz [IPA: pwat͡ɕ vs pwat͡ʂ]. Imperative mood of 'to pay' and imperative mood of 'to cry; whimper'. Koś vs kosz [IPA: kɔɕ vs kɔʂ]. The first word in an imperative of the verb 'to mow; reap', while the other means 'basket' or 'kish' (Cossack government) Paź vs parz [IPA: paʑ vs paʐ]. 'Pageboy' and imperative mood of 'scald; burn' or 'copulate' (pair up). As you can see, these are distinct phonemes, not accentual differences in pronunciation of words. Standard Polish has the most complex consonant system of all Slavic languages, owing to several palatalizations, which resulted in differentiation of retroflex sounds from alveolo-palatal sounds. That is why we use dots (kropki) or z's and acute accents (kreski) to differentiate between the two subtypes. The difference in production of these sounds is the position of the tongue when uttering: retroflex consonants require the tip of the tongue to be rolled up and moved back towards the palate, while alveolo-palatal consonants require the mid section of the tongue blade to be pressed against the alveolar section of the palate. From the Russian phonological point of view, imagine з being a tasty berry. If you move that berry with the tip of your tongue deeper into your mouth, it will morph into ж. If you squash that berry with the flat of your tongue against the roof of your mouth... you'll get a Polish ź! If you do the same trick, while whispering, you'll get the voiceless variants of those sounds: Polish 'sz' or Russian 'ш' and Polish 'ś'. For 'dż', smash d into ż/ж, so they're uttered at the same time, just like Russian ц / Polish c is in fact 'ts' uttered very fast. To get 'cz', just whisper 'dż' or say 't' and 'sz' at the same time. Fun, isn't it? Any vowel can follow an alveolo-palatal consonant (ź, ć, ś, dź), but they as they are soft (miękkie) sounds, we change the acute accent to 'i' inserted between the consonant and the vowel, so instead of 'dźeń', you have 'dzień' (day); 'ciało' (body) instead of 'ćało'; 'Kasia' (Kate) instead of 'Kaśa'. On the other hand, retroflex consonants are always hard (twarde) in Polish, so you put y between them and a following vowel, unlike in Russian, where и is put after ж or ш, despite that these consonant are also always pronounced the hard way, as if that и is in fact ы. So you'll never see szi, or żi, or czi, or dżi, with the exception of foreign borrowings, where we try to transliterate these post-alveolar sounds, normally absent in Polish phonology: [ʃ, ʒ, tʃ and dʒ] as in dżinn ('genie') or dżin ('gin').
@@Ecolinguist Just happened to come across your comparison video of Polish, Russian and Bulgarian. The comment was about the alphabet video though... Been trying to learn a bit of Polish for a couple of years, just for fun, but it's so bl**dy hard I'm tempted to switch to russian instead. 😉 No seriously, I'll look through your videos and see what gets stuck! 😃
flet - a flute jagoda - a blueberry hulajnoga - a scooter iglo - an igloo jedzenie - food kawa - coffee lód - ice łysy - bold miłość - love Norbert koń - a horse obraz - a painting ósemka - a number eight płot - fence rower - a bike słoń - an elephant świat - the world szok - schock tunel - a tunnel ufoludek - an extraterrestrial walizka - a suitcase okulary - glasses zaraza - a plague źdźbło - a straw żaba - a frog
4 ปีที่แล้ว +1
śmieszne ale dobre :) th-cam.com/video/GeBCTHgylDg/w-d-xo.html
Hi, I’m 17-year-old Japanese student and recently I’ve starred to study Polish. I have a question. What’s the difference between Ź sound and Ż sound?? I cannot distinguish😭
As an Orthodox Christian in America who goes to a church with Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, and Romanians. And is trying to learn prayers in Church Slavonic. The Polish language has always fascinated me.
I am macedonian and never knew ą and ę existed and how they were pronounced. Anyway most of the words are more or less the same or similar and I could understand them.
cześć :) jagoda in Bulgarian is strawberry, kind of strange you use that word to describe a blueberry. The Bulgarian for blueberry is borovinka (боровинка) :) Keep up with the awesome videos!
I think jagoda might have ment "berry" sometime in the past (an umbrella term for all berries). Today we use the word "borówka" for berry, and it too means blueberry (usually the american, large kind) but few people know this and normally we would use the specific words for each of the "berries". Strawberry is truskawka in Polish.
@@turusan02 Interesting. In russian we still use only "jagoda" for "berry", "klubnika" or "zemlyanika" for "strawberry" and "golubika" or "chernika" for "blueberry".
It's the same as the word "gora", in most Slavic languages it means "mountain" but in Bulgarian it means "forest". Or "godina" which means "year" all around the Slavic world but "hour" in Czech. It's a phenomenon which you can see a lot in languages of the same family.
The most difficult thing is the distinction between the various hissing sounds: ś vs. sz, ź vs. ż, dź vs. dż, and ć vs. cz.
Do you mean it's hard to hear the difference or it's hard to actually pronounce it? :)
Both, I would say: Hear the difference and pronounce the sounds differently.
@@stefanreichenberger5091 I see. Have you ever tried a shadowing technique?
I think the difference in sound has to do with the position of the lips.
Once I have time to actively learn Polish I'll try shadowing.
@@stefanreichenberger5091 Great! Once you try, let us know if it helped :)
I learned Polish when I was in 1st grade until 5th.
The “use it or lose it” is so strong. I’m trying to re-teach myself 30 years later…
Ooh that's interesting! Language acquisition is usually at its strongest when you're that young.
This is so real
I agree here
I am a native English speaker and for me the hardest to remember is the slight difference in sound when z, ź, and ż are in words. The same with ć and cz also ś and sz.
My favorite letter in the Polish language is probably ł, it’s just fun to say and I remember it easily.
Dziękuję bardzo!
here is a tip, english speaking people from the united states have a hard time with the slavic languages as well as other languages and in opinion, its the accent. my first language is spanish and when i was learning english, it was the accent, when learning english we need to smooth the pronounciation and when a english speaking person, you need to roughen up the pronounciation. this will help. unlearn what you have learn.
Im Slovene and also for me these diferences are hard, but don't you worry because these diferences ( sz-ś..cz-ć..i-y and so on are so small that probably they won't even notice. It's like in Serbo-Croatian they have č and ć and in Slovene we have only č and the diference is so small that you don't have to worry. Otherwise i love Polish alphabet specialy letters ł,ę and ą..
Ł - W_eekend
@@taurondur The differences being small actually make it a problem, lol. We use ć, cz, dź, dż, ś, sz, ź, ż in minimal pairs, which means that they are completely different phonemes, so substituting one for the other would be confusing. For example, "Kasia", "kasza", and "kasa", or "zimie", "Rzymie", or "ziąb", "ząb" are completely different words, so learning the difference is very important.
ĆMA
Get ready for boss battle: ŹDŹBŁO
That shouldn't be a word
Żółć.
chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie w szczebrzeszynie, w szczękach chrząszcza trzeszczy miąższ
Zh'jbwo easy
similar to German boss battle: Streichholzschächtelchen. (Not? so, this could also be a algorithm only comment, though?)
I grew up hearing polish from my grandparents who were both native poles. I spoke English as a child learning polish is still challenging from English with the alphabet being so different in its sounds
I am a native portuguese speaker from Angola, I am living in Poland currently 1 years it is being good experience, I study in english at university but i have huge desire to learn polish language dziękuję bardzo dear teacher for this amazing lecture.
Hi I will apply very soon when they open the registration in April or March in opole university
I feel like I’m insane
Me too arbitrarysadmess6724 me too
😂
Hello
my name is katherine, I"m from
CHILE, I can see,this language,it seem, difficult,but not Impossible,
Poland sound very interesting,
and to learn Polish ,it takes time to learn that,with passion and dedication☺📖🌇 greetings from
CHILE.
Hola! Como te va con el polaco? Lo sigues aprendiendo? Jestem z Hiszpanii ale uczę się teraz polskiego dlatego, że to bardzo piękne język.
Cześć, Norbert! This was my first lesson of Polish! Thank you very much))
After a month of Polish, I think I've got it!
Cześć! Nice to see you on my channel! 🤠
@@Ecolinguist cześć, miło cię poznać
@@Ecolinguist hey cz, , dz ,
HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE THE R?!?!??
PLEASE
00:20 what did you just call me?!
The b*tch is holding a byc😅
Right after calling out our booties. How bold
2:21 Уфолюдек - я под столом )))))
Южный Кот а Хулайнога? :D
Уфолюдек, мать твою, а ну иди сюда.. (с)
Хуйляйнога тоже прикол.
Норберт 😂 убил
@@ElliotHell47
Наверно, не от "ублюдок", а "люд"
this genuinely might help me, i was meant to learn Polish to help his parents talk to me cos they thought i was Polish, but i'm English. he broke up with me but i've started and i dont like to quit something once i start, so wish me luck :)
2:43 I beg you pardon?
This is a great video. I love to watch your youtube videos and Instagram posts :)
Thank you for your feedback 🙏🏻🤓💬🇵🇱
@@Ecolinguist These videos are really helpful :)
I don't know why but this made me laugh so much! I love the choice of words and images 😂❤❤❤ I have no exposure to Polish before today and this made it fun 🇺🇲
This is why people told me Polish is the hardest European language. It’s so interesting to see how each letter is pronounced.
No the hardest European language is Greek
Oh. Pls help me with poland language I have difficulty pronouncinng it huhuhu😢
@@HanzoGamingPoland Really? I'm gonna look that up too. I didn't know that!
@@Aethereality and Hungarian language are harder too
@@HanzoGamingPoland Do you mean old Greek or modern Greek? Anyway both of them arent't match for slavic languages, which keep many declensions and cases. And Greek for sure isn't harder than Polish, even looking at their phonology.
Самокат - гуляй нога)) забавно)
Что видели - то и называли, все просто
Лови уфолюдка
I was NOT ready for the Jagoda Hulajnoga rhyme! Great vid!
Eu adoro idiomas e de um tempo pra cá eu tenho me interessado por polonês. Eu já tinha experimentado iniciar um curso de russo há muito tempo atrás e o impacto foi enorme para mim, sobretudo no alfabeto. Mas depois me apaixonei. Acho o polonês um pouco parecido, com algumas diferenciações, é claro.
Дуже дякую:)
Dobry wieczór. In meiner Jugend habe ich in der Nähe zur polnischen Grenze gewohnt. Im August 1984 ist unsere Klasse nach Gorzów WLKP gefahren. Für die Korrespondenz mit einigen Mädchen habe ich etwas Polnisch gelernt, natürlich zum Schreiben. Die Aussprache muss man immer wieder üben.
Einen Kurs bei Norbert müsste ich auf Spanisch machen, da ich Englisch nicht gelernt habe (lernen wollte).
Дякую за відео, Норберте!
As a bosnian speaker we share many phonemes even though they're written differently. But the vowels with the curvy line at the bottom sound completely foreign.
Speaking Ijekavian dialect of Serbian and Russian language I find this quite easy,a bit of practice and I could start learning Polish
And I was a bit shocked at "Jagoda" as that's "Strawberry" in Serbian
In Czech “jahoda” means strawberry as well. Blackberry is “borůvka”
Strawberry - truskawka.
@@sadcookie7401 Jagoda to jagoda. A borówka to borówka. ;)
U nás je taky jahoda ta červená
Colombian Spanish here. Can you do a video with the IPA?
Your videos have been very helpfull. I've been learning Polish so I can one day talk to my wifes grandparents
Hi Norbert, it is great to find Polish alphabet with pronunciation. I am Czech and I have typical problem with ś/sz + ć/cz + ź/ż + dź/dż - why do you need so many letters for š, č, ž + dž and dz (it is two letters together)? :D
However my biggest problem is letters, that we don't have in Czech: ą, ę, ł (I miss the feeling to be sure how to pronounce them in text) and I am confused by difference in pronunciation of y (Czechs say "i") and ó (CZ o: = "long" o).
Polish learning is really funny. You never know what to expect :D Thank you
Thank You from Brazil my Friend
Why are "dz," "dź," and "dż" necessary to recognize as a separate sounds if they're just the same as z/ź/ż but with a D in front?
There is a difference in pronunciation between 'dz' and 'd+z' etc. You can compare the pronunciation of words like: dzwon vs. nadzwyczaj, dżdżownica vs. nadżerka.
@@Ecolinguist that's very interesting! Where can I find natural speech examples of that? On Google Translate they sound the same
@@Ecolinguist never mind. On Google Translate, the z/ż is pronounced longer in nadzwyczaj/nadżerka than dz/dż.
Ukrainian and Belarusian also have дз/дж, and I never understood the point of that, from a Russian perspective. Now I get it! Dzięki, Norbert!
@@vuhdeem Hmm. The difference is very subtle. Almost negligible. Not sure where you can find the pronunciation examples for theses particular words. Maybe this article will clarify some things for you: pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Aneks:J%C4%99zyk_polski__-wymowa-__dwuznaki
@@Ecolinguist its a dead link
Cześć! for me the most difficult ones are ą, ę, y, dź; and I cannot really feel the difference between ź and ż. And maybe the digraphs in the words like *si* becomes sz + i sometimes... (I am from Hungary; interested in the language as I have a colleague from PL)
Én lengyel vagyok, aki 18 éve Magyarországon élek. Üdv testvérem. :)
I'm a Ukrainian speaker, and none of the Polish letters is difficult.
The sound cluster źdźbło, however, is a little challenging :) I can pronounce it, but slowly, it's like a tongue twister.
Cześć Norberte! We need this, thank you. Letters Ą , Ę , Ł, DZ and maybe Ó don't exist in my - Serbian language. I like to listen carefully , and I can say this : Ą for me sounds like an ON with a nasal ( French ) N ; Ę is EN - also with a nasal N ; Ł is English W ( water ). DZ is mixed of d and z, I can pronounce it. Only letter Ó is a bit hard for me , it just sounds like U. Please correct me if my explanation is wrong. 😱
ó and u represent the same sound so you're not mistaken 🤓
u and ó sounds the same. Same for "ch" and h".
in the past "ó" sounded like a long-sounding "o" (just like in slovak or czech) then it changed into something like a mix between "o" and "u" sound. and finally, in modern times it sounds like a regular "u" ;) (there are dialects where the pronounciation differs, though) as for the ch and h letters, it's a bit more complicated. The letter "h" isn't really a Polish thing and exists only in loaned words from Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages (they correspond to the Polish letter "g", hence the Bohemism "druh" instead of "drug" or "hołota" instead of "gołota"(however we have the word "gołota" in Polish but it means something else, so they are so called doublets). In all those languages "h" is pronounced like something between Polish "ch" and "g" sound while in Polish both "ch" and "h" sound the same. Did they sound differently in the past? I don't know. What I know, though is that some people(usually older ones), who live close to the borders of those countries or even come from there, are able to differentiate pronounciation of "h" and "ch". There are also "ż" and "rz" letters which, of course, sounded differently in the past. The "Ż" has always sounded like a regular slavic "Ž/Ж" sound. The "RZ" however, corresponds to the soft "r" and it's been pronounced differently through the ages. At first it sounded like a soft "r". In a later medieval times it was pronounced like a Czech "ř", which is kind of mix between "r" and "ż" sounds. Then it evolved into the regular "ż" sound.
I'm not an expert on old Polish language so I hope I didn't make a lot of mistakes trying to explain this :)
@@neckbreaker094 nawet jeśli u i ó oraz ż i rz brzmiały kiedyś inaczej, to było bardzo dawno. Natomiast ch i h jeszcze nie dawno, szczególnie na wschodzie brzmiały inaczej. H wymawiane było bardziej gardłowo jakby po arabsku, a ch miękko.
@@neckbreaker094 Is this "ó" the same as "ů" in Czech?
2:27 - на картинке чемодан и мне говорят "Вали ска"))
Это как на французском valise
Вали ска уфолюдек
I am a Polish American Israeli. I speak fluent English, Hebrew and not so fluent French. I have studied many languages. I cannot hear or spell in Polish and it is very frustrating because reading it is not a problem. The dz, cz, sz and "a" "e" and all the accents really frustrate me. I am not giving up but your video helped a little bit. Can you make one where you have exercises in hearing and spelling the vowels and accents?! I almost broke my keyboard in the last two DuoLingo lessons that were focused on spelling where I could not spell anything after a month. I am really quite adept at other languages (except sign language).
Struggling in Akko with Polish,
Aviva in Akko
❤❤❤ beautiful rhanks for teaching us this
I have a deep mind to know this kind of language Which teaches by the best teacher
This is my first time in the chanel. It's completly diferent to me. My native speak is portuguese, Im from Brazil. 🇧🇷
If u want to know, Polish is a Slavic language family along with Czech and Slovak which is categorised as West Slavic.
The most difficult for me is this strange ę letter in gouse. We dont have this in croatian. We also have hard and soft varieties of certainties letters for example č and ć (ch) and now I learned you have even more.
Little bit difficult to learn polish language the pronunciation is so different but I love it.
thank you norbert, i am starting on the alphabet this week
Dziękuję Norbert! ❤
the example of byc is so funny
I have a question. Is Y like big/thick or is it like ы? In old Slavic there were multiple “i” ь и ы ї..Polish is only confusing for me when I write it because of the Latin alphabet..if it was written in Cyrillic or even glagolitic it would make sense..I’m Ukrainian. So, Polish is easy. It’s the writing that confuses me because of the Latin alphabet. So, if you could tell me if Y is i (ь)like in big/thick etc or if it’s ы it would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance
Helpful video. I find most typically Polish sound hard. I'm Gujarati (India) but English is fine for me to learn Polish. KeepSmiling 😊🌺
A couple similarities to French:
The Polish word for suitcase is the same in French - Valise
Also the Y is also pronounced "ee grec" when writing the alphabet.
There are small hints of French influence in Russian like bibliotheque (library), discotheque (nightclub), etc. It's interesting how much the French language influenced not only English (my native language).
You're right.🤓 We have quite a lot French words in Polish. For example: ekler (my favorite one! 😂), melba, suflet, farsz, marynata, pikantny, gofr, garaż, fotel, bistro, broszka, and many many more!
Elise Markey French was really popular with rich people in 19th century in Russian Empire, that's why there's a lot of French words in Russian language ;)
@@плю oui comme divan ou nez, ça cest la meme shoes en russe.
@@Ecolinguist bistro actually is from French but it originated from russian быстро didn't it
Amazing! thanks man! it is great!
Excellent video. Thank you.
2:42 what am i learning...
My ears are hurting after hearing that 😅
My family have plan and move to poland. I want to learn the polish but so difficult..
Moja koleżanka chciała nauczyć się Polskiego, ponieważ muj ojczysty język jest Polski, i chciała nauczyć się komunikować ze mną w moim ojczystym języku. Teraz wie jak wymówić każdą literę alfabetu. Dziękuję!
Omg, polski fan genshin! :D
@@ranvocado Tak!!
Y has the same name "i grec" in Welsh :)
lol so i am a romanian living in Germany, trying to teach a polish the german language :)) and i came to this video to have an understanding of the sound of their alphabet
I dont know much Polish but atleast is easy for me to pronounce this words because my parents talk Polish so I know what it sounds like
Polish in 95-100% phonetic, so when you know the pronounciation of each character and digraph, you can properly pronounce every word, even imaginary word.
I'm struggling with the pronunciation of the ż and ź. I finally figured out how to type them on my laptop. My Father's side is entirely polish. I've always had a fascination with my heritage, and I want to learn the language now.
Norbert: žaba
Me: Ah, so that's why his name is Jabba the Hutt
I wonder if żaba the frog was the inspiration for Jabba the Hutt?
0:49 is pretty funny
Hi Norbert, there are a lot of letters that sound pretty much the same. Like the two modified Z‘s. Maybe it’s only my hearing but I can’t hear any difference :-) The Slovak alphabet has single instances of those sounds, like š ž č. Is it historically grounded and does the pronunciation really differ in common Polish spoken word? Thanks, Karol
Der Karol! Those Z-s do differ in pronunciation. :) It may take a while to learn to hear the difference but the sounds of those letters change the meanings of the words. It is hard to find a minimal pair of words distinguished by those two sounds [ż] and [ź] especially spelled with the letters 'Ż' and 'Ź' but I found these: burza [pronounced: buża] ) and buzia [pronounced: buźa]
Are you a Slovak speaker Karol?
Ecolinguist yes, I’m a native Slovak but have lived im Germany for the last 20 years
Ecolinguist for an outsider, it’s really hard to tell the difference between, say, ć and cz, or dz and dz with a dot :-)
@@krueckschloss Are you learning Polish now? 🤓
The dolphin killed me 😂😂
YOU SHOULD ADD ZBYCHOLUDY TO THE LIST ;) THANK YOU. VERY EDUCATIVE
true
koksem jesteś, nie zmieniaj się
ZBYCHOLUDY 👽 ZBYCHOLUDY 👽 ZBYCHOLUDY 👽
👽 ZBYCHOLUDY 👽 👽 ZBYCHOLUDY 👽 👽 ZBYCHOLUDY 👽
we all agree, zbycholudy is a necessary word nowadays
By no doubt the most difficulty in Polish pronunciation constitute the "ę" and "ą" letters. The broad majority of Internet sources contradict each other - in terms of their pronunciation rules - or omit some vital edge cases of their pronunciation. It is amazing that literally nobody is able to clearly and completely describe it. The "teachers" are usually too lazy to do it.
It is impossible to write out how to pronounce them phonetically. But it irks me when I often read online people writing the sounds as "on" and "en" 🤦🏼 which is just completely false
Also note that in common vernacular speech, you will not hear Ę in final position , but usually in poetry or certain songs and dialogues.
@@Msciwoj-j4x It is impossible to write "ę" and "ą" phonetically? Have you ever heard about the International Phonetic Alphabet?
Thank you
thank you norbert
I'm learning Polish and I speak Serbian. No letter by itself is a problem to me, but the way letters combine. Like źdźbło, damn, I thought Serbian has hard consonant combinations like raskršće or similar, but I was wrong.
As Russian native speaker also highly fluent in English as well I'd say the Ż (if I got the index indiciation right) is the hardest, specifically the word applied to illustrate the pronunciation.
Ż - Ж; Ź - ЖЬ
As a native Spanish speaker , and also knowing English and able to pronounce Russian and Bulgarian words , this didn’t seem to hard b/c I could hear the small difference between those hard to pronounce letters now I just need practice
I have Latino Blood, I IRONICALLY don't know much Spanish, but I know how ALL the letters in the Spanish Alphabet are Pronounced. What I've learned from Polish Pronunciation & Alphabet, there's no *Q* , *V* , & *X* in *Polish* ! 😱
palma - a palm tree
wąs - moustache
buty - shoes
koc - a blanket
być - to be
czart - a devil
dudy - pipes
dzwon - a bell
dźwięk - a sound
dżem - jam
echo - echo
gęs - a goose
Dzięki
ufoludek one love that's so cool really I am from Belarus really similar words to Belarusian and Ukranian
Defenitly got brain damage trying to pronounce źdźbło 2:45
I'm iranian btw
As a Native Russian speaker I don't find it really difficult. I can pronounce nasal sounds with my French background just fine
I just wanna cry after this :( why would you need sooooo many same letters for different sounds....
For me (I'm Ukrainian) the most hardest are "ę", "ą" but sure it's hard to pronounce in a row a lot of "dz", "dż" etc. Sometimes I forget that "ł" != "L" because in Ukrainian all the Polish words with Ł in our words we are saying "L" ("Л").
I'm not sure is it truth or not but I've read somewhere that Polish language lost some sounds because of Ukrainians who were not able to pronounce every sound correctly as result difference between "morze" and "może" has been disappeared at all but initially they were pronounced in different ways :)
Ukrainians pronounce their В (v) exactly like our Ł when it is in final position. If you watch polish films from the 1930s you will hear our Ł pronounced exactly like typical East Slavic
@@Msciwoj-j4x yes if we are talking just about letter, but I mean in the words where polish letter "Ł" in Ukrainian we are usually using our Cyrillic "Л" for example
Łajać - Лаяти
chŁopiec - хЛопець
obŁuda - обЛуда
ścisŁy - стисЛий
the only what comes to my mind where it turns into "В" it's długo - доВго maybe there is more
So it's really hard for me to say it correctly and suppose I'm not alone with it :)
Actually this letter/sound reminds me when children here not able to pronounce "Л"
ластівка полетіла (jaskółka poleciała) - łastivka połetiła (actually it's hard to describe by letters :) )
About movies interesting idea I will try to find some, because the oldest what I've seen it's "Jak rozpętałem drugą wojnę światową" :)
Похоже на английский алфавит,но в этом алфавите есть и звуки я так поняла.Слова некоторые похожи на русские🤔🧐
Английский и польский (и большинство европейских языков) используют латинский алфавит, поэтому они и похожи
Да. Ведь все славянские языки произошли от одного единого предка - праславянского, а до этого и прабалтославянского. Ну и английский тоже родственник, хоть и невероятно далёкий, ведь он является индоевропейским языком
@@icpomp поэтому цыфры например, или слова типа "брат" так похоже на французсом, русском, английском и других языках. Потому что индо европейский.
Thanks my native language is dari
Być and buty, fantastic
I always have problems pronouncing dz and other accents as i live in england and im polish but im basically fluent in both english and polish
Native Romanian speaker, I'll never even try to learn the Polish language thanks to this video.(Not intended as an insult for the video but for Polish)
lol, nobody gives a shit. we don't want you to learn it anyway sooo gurl bye
First of all, thank you for making this video! I have been wondering about Polish pronunciation for a very long time!!!
I speak Russian without an English accent and English without a Russian accent, because I learned both when I was a child. I noticed that the ź is like the English/French zh sound, while the ż is like the Russian zh sound, and I am able to pronounce both without an issue. I noticed in the same way that ś is like the English sh and sz is like the Russian sh sound, and I’m able to pronounce those correctly, as well. However, ć is like an English and Russian ch sound,... but it’s very, very hard for me to hear the difference between that and cz :/. I would need more examples, I think, because I have a good ear for this stuff, but for now, even if I hear a slight difference, which I don’t think I do, I definitely am not able to pronounce the two differently. Same with dź and dż... I’m wondering if dź and dż (and ć and cz) are just allophones of the same phoneme. Can you make a minimal pair with those letters? Like, does e ever follow dź, like it follows dż, and can both ć and cz be at the start/end of a word?
Btw, I adored “ufoludek” and I think that any American who wants to learn Polish will stop trying once they reach źdźbło 🤣 talk about a consonant cluster!!! I showed my Mexican-American friend that word and he said, “That makes the romance language native speaker in me cry.”
Btw, I thought you’d also include rz... I thought that the r gets cancelled and it ends up sounding like a ż or something.
Thanks for the comment! That sounds like an idea for another video. :)
Here are a few examples of phonemic pairings of ć/ci and cz; ś/si and sz; ź/zi and ż/rz.
Ciapa vs czapa [IPA: t͡ɕapa vs t͡ʂapa]. The first word means an inept person or a splotch, the other means a cap (headgear).
Płać vs płacz [IPA: pwat͡ɕ vs pwat͡ʂ]. Imperative mood of 'to pay' and imperative mood of 'to cry; whimper'.
Koś vs kosz [IPA: kɔɕ vs kɔʂ]. The first word in an imperative of the verb 'to mow; reap', while the other means 'basket' or 'kish' (Cossack government)
Paź vs parz [IPA: paʑ vs paʐ]. 'Pageboy' and imperative mood of 'scald; burn' or 'copulate' (pair up).
As you can see, these are distinct phonemes, not accentual differences in pronunciation of words. Standard Polish has the most complex consonant system of all Slavic languages, owing to several palatalizations, which resulted in differentiation of retroflex sounds from alveolo-palatal sounds. That is why we use dots (kropki) or z's and acute accents (kreski) to differentiate between the two subtypes. The difference in production of these sounds is the position of the tongue when uttering: retroflex consonants require the tip of the tongue to be rolled up and moved back towards the palate, while alveolo-palatal consonants require the mid section of the tongue blade to be pressed against the alveolar section of the palate. From the Russian phonological point of view, imagine з being a tasty berry. If you move that berry with the tip of your tongue deeper into your mouth, it will morph into ж. If you squash that berry with the flat of your tongue against the roof of your mouth... you'll get a Polish ź! If you do the same trick, while whispering, you'll get the voiceless variants of those sounds: Polish 'sz' or Russian 'ш' and Polish 'ś'. For 'dż', smash d into ż/ж, so they're uttered at the same time, just like Russian ц / Polish c is in fact 'ts' uttered very fast. To get 'cz', just whisper 'dż' or say 't' and 'sz' at the same time. Fun, isn't it?
Any vowel can follow an alveolo-palatal consonant (ź, ć, ś, dź), but they as they are soft (miękkie) sounds, we change the acute accent to 'i' inserted between the consonant and the vowel, so instead of 'dźeń', you have 'dzień' (day); 'ciało' (body) instead of 'ćało'; 'Kasia' (Kate) instead of 'Kaśa'.
On the other hand, retroflex consonants are always hard (twarde) in Polish, so you put y between them and a following vowel, unlike in Russian, where и is put after ж or ш, despite that these consonant are also always pronounced the hard way, as if that и is in fact ы. So you'll never see szi, or żi, or czi, or dżi, with the exception of foreign borrowings, where we try to transliterate these post-alveolar sounds, normally absent in Polish phonology: [ʃ, ʒ, tʃ and dʒ] as in dżinn ('genie') or dżin ('gin').
Happened to have autogenerated English text on when watching this.
Rather fun...
Just found you. Sub'ed!
Thanks! :) How did you find me? Which video was your first on my channel? Just curious. 🤓
@@Ecolinguist
Just happened to come across your comparison video of Polish, Russian and Bulgarian. The comment was about the alphabet video though...
Been trying to learn a bit of Polish for a couple of years, just for fun, but it's so bl**dy hard I'm tempted to switch to russian instead. 😉
No seriously, I'll look through your videos and see what gets stuck! 😃
i almost cried when he said "iglo" and it was the same as english......
flet - a flute
jagoda - a blueberry
hulajnoga - a scooter
iglo - an igloo
jedzenie - food
kawa - coffee
lód - ice
łysy - bold
miłość - love
Norbert
koń - a horse
obraz - a painting
ósemka - a number eight
płot - fence
rower - a bike
słoń - an elephant
świat - the world
szok - schock
tunel - a tunnel
ufoludek - an extraterrestrial
walizka - a suitcase
okulary - glasses
zaraza - a plague
źdźbło - a straw
żaba - a frog
śmieszne ale dobre :) th-cam.com/video/GeBCTHgylDg/w-d-xo.html
Hi, I’m 17-year-old Japanese student and recently I’ve starred to study Polish. I have a question. What’s the difference between Ź sound and Ż sound?? I cannot distinguish😭
As an Orthodox Christian in America who goes to a church with Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, and Romanians. And is trying to learn prayers in Church Slavonic. The Polish language has always fascinated me.
The Poles are Roman-Catholic though.
Is the Ź the same sound as Ż ?
I think I'm late but is there any tips for Finnish speaker
i cant believe i forgot my mother tongue
The a and e with the sedilla sounds like “ong” to me, as in English “song”. Am I hearing that right?
Yes.
ą sounds in 2/3 like "on" in "song".
ę sounds in 2/3 like "en" in "leng".
"on" and "en" - long sounds
ą and ę - short sounds
1:58
Tks . !!
You're welcome 🤗
How many alphabets are in Polish letters.
Good job! Tanks I teach gorlfriende
Почему такое чувство, что в польском много лишних букв?
I am macedonian and never knew ą and ę existed and how they were pronounced. Anyway most of the words are more or less the same or similar and I could understand them.
cześć :) jagoda in Bulgarian is strawberry, kind of strange you use that word to describe a blueberry. The Bulgarian for blueberry is borovinka (боровинка) :) Keep up with the awesome videos!
I think jagoda might have ment "berry" sometime in the past (an umbrella term for all berries). Today we use the word "borówka" for berry, and it too means blueberry (usually the american, large kind) but few people know this and normally we would use the specific words for each of the "berries". Strawberry is truskawka in Polish.
@@turusan02 Interesting. In russian we still use only "jagoda" for "berry", "klubnika" or "zemlyanika" for "strawberry" and "golubika" or "chernika" for "blueberry".
It's the same as the word "gora", in most Slavic languages it means "mountain" but in Bulgarian it means "forest". Or "godina" which means "year" all around the Slavic world but "hour" in Czech. It's a phenomenon which you can see a lot in languages of the same family.
V každé normální řeči to tak je,akorát Poláci si to vymysleli jinak
I'm a native Portuguese speaker. The sounds ż and sz are completely alien to me.
is there a difference in the pronunciation of "e" and "y"
I dont understand the two ź ż?? I can’t pronounce it