Can anyone tell me how to pronounce this composer's name?
Krzysztof Penderecki
- Thread starter Namakemono
- Start date
Krzysztof:
Pronounce 'rz' and 'sz' like English shoe. 'rz' actually is pronounced 'zh', but because of the 'k' it turns rather to 'sz' i.e. 'sh'.
The 'y' is pronounced like 'it'.
Penderecki:
The 'e's are pronounced like 'pet'.
The 'ck' is pronounced like cats + k.
The 'r' is rolled like in Scottish and Spanish.
Since I'm neither a native speaker of Polish nor English, my pronounciation examples might not be correct.
Better check out this file: www*cs*rit*edu/~spr/polish/v*au
Note: Replace the '*' with '.'
GyörgyMS
Pronounce 'rz' and 'sz' like English shoe. 'rz' actually is pronounced 'zh', but because of the 'k' it turns rather to 'sz' i.e. 'sh'.
The 'y' is pronounced like 'it'.
Penderecki:
The 'e's are pronounced like 'pet'.
The 'ck' is pronounced like cats + k.
The 'r' is rolled like in Scottish and Spanish.
Since I'm neither a native speaker of Polish nor English, my pronounciation examples might not be correct.
Better check out this file: www*cs*rit*edu/~spr/polish/v*au
Note: Replace the '*' with '.'
GyörgyMS
Thank you! I'll spend the next five minutes trying to pronounce that. 
What GyörgyMS wrote is correct.
If you'll ever have any doubts about the prononunciation of any polish name and you don't have much time, you can always try Wikipedia. Almost every page about anything strictly polish has either an audio file with the pronounciation or the IPA code for it.
If you'll ever have any doubts about the prononunciation of any polish name and you don't have much time, you can always try Wikipedia. Almost every page about anything strictly polish has either an audio file with the pronounciation or the IPA code for it.
I tried that, but I see blocks instead of letters.
Thanks! That was very helpful.
Of course, this is correct (as slowik confirms in #4). But I’d like to add a small detail.GyörgyMS said:
When the pronunciation of the digraph rz is not devoiced because of initial [k] – as f.ex. in the name of the city Rzeszów - it is pronounced like French je. But not entirely – as far as I have observed.
Polish is characterized by three sibilants which in traditional Polish orthography are written as s, ś and sz – just to mention the unvoiced ones. The interesting thing with this rather unusual phonemic inventory feature is that you need to “push the extremes”, i.e. the s and the sz, away from ś in order to give the latter a distinctive character.
The result is, at least for the sz (and consequently the voiced version rz) that these are not palatal, but rather cacuminal sounds. The difference between French char and Polish Rzeszów is therefore conspicuous. It is kind of a paradox that the French s seems to be pronounced “sharper” than the Polish s – as if the “concession” in terms of going to the “extreme ends” of the sibilants in Polish is only being done on one side.
Compared to the Polish three sibilants, Spanish and Standard Modern Greek only have one which means that it has some “liberty of action”, as it were, along the sibilant line from Polish sz to s (or vice versa). As a result of this, a Pole would invariably consider the Spanish (orthographical) s and Standard Modern Greek σ as very much like the Pοlish ś - the Polish “middle way” in terms of sibilants.
ś Yeah. Just a caution for future. I just checked it. It says 'Krzysztof Penderecki' pretty cool and proper, but I tried 'Sienkiewicz', and Ewa says 'Siedemkiewicz'. Amazing.
Referring to my contribution #9, I am surprised! The sound which you describe as sh and which, for all intents and purposes, corresponds to English sh as in shoe, does not exist in Spanish!Namarne said:
Do you go out of your way to pronounce more correctly than your Spanish phonemic inventory permits in order to pay tribute to this eminent musician?
A Greek would use his only available sibilant, a sound which acoustically is a spitting image of the Spanish one – and, incidentally, of the Polish ś! The perception of such a sibilant among speakers who have “only” two sibilants in their language – i.e. the most common distribution – would invariably be rather an [s] than a [sh], the latter representing here the IPA grapheme which looks like the symbol used in integral calculus. The reason for this perception is probably that a Polish ś is not enough marked phonetically to be able to enter, so to say, into the domain of integral calculus and its sign...
There is a thread http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=92728 about All Slavic languages: Sibilants, but it does not focus on the three sibilants in Polish.
ś