pronunciation of rustling consonants

[Seana]

Hello,

Entering this thread I would like to discuss about Polish pronunciation, it could be often heart that Polish language is very difficult for foreign ear. Today I just read at the newspaper that Polish language sounds as the rushing steam engine, of which bars are passed round between different hissing sounds, from soft „ ć” to hard „ cz”. For the foreigner completely inconceivable. It concerns all languages admittedly, however in the opposite to them just Polish is most difficult to comprehend.

Have you the same opinion about it?

Greetings Seana

 

[Jana337]

"ć" to hard "cz".

To me, they are the same sound.
Polish friends once tried to pronounce them clearly and slowly for me, so I was able to catch the difference. But recognizing them in speech? No way!

Jana

 

[ALOV]

Hi,

i have some polish friends here in brussels and learned some polish, like Sucham, Nasdrovie, Kocham çie, Barzo dienkuje etc. ... never mind the orthograph Those words are quite ok to pronounce.
But Seana can you tell me how to pronounce 'Czesz' (Hi): its just impossible!
I think the problem for foreigners is they think too much at their own alfabet, whereas polish has a lot of variations of one letter, depending on the context.

 

[Seana]

Hi all,

Jana I think our both languages are alike. I have never learnt Czech but I am sure I won't have too much difficulties with it like with English. The structure of sentences, the same roots of words, deminutives and pronounciation as well are bit similar. But really I learnt from my German friend that the two Polish words 'dziewięć' (it means nine ) and dziesięć ( it means ten) are completely inconceivable. The same consonants "ć" and "cz"

But Seana can you tell me how to pronounce 'Czesz' (Hi): its just impossible!

It is something like 'chair'+ very soft ' sh' or better say as an 's' in the word sure and very very soft 'ch"
So chair( hard)+sh(soft)+ch(soft)

Spelling Cześć and now copy it and paste into the software I just send you.

http://www.ivo.pl/?page=syntezator_mowy_ivona

when you will have pasted it then click the button - "odczytaj" it means read.

Good luck

PS maybe someone would record it for Alov properly (as mp3 file) that nice word Cześć

 

[Mathilde Dioux]

Hi,
I am French and living in Poland since september, and doing my best to learn this tricky language.
I discovered quite late that there is a difference between ś /sz, or ć / cz / trz, or else rz/ź. I now can hear the differnence between each, but if I don't pay attention when speaking, I just say sz, cz and rz all the time. It was the same for Y / i in the beggining...
And it's right that for foreigners I met in Poland, Polish sounds like a shchshchhschsc thing, with some "r" from time to time

 

[Seana]

Hi,
I am always impressed by foreigners who speak Polish fluently with a proper pronoutiation. Apart from "rustling" consonants ż sz dż cz there are also the same nice "hissing" z s dz c and "soft" consonants "hushing" ź ś dź ć. It is really difficult to recognizing and pronouncing them.
In some dialects, for example Masurian, Silesian, the rustling consonants are replaced by "hissing" ones.

 

[Anatoli]

If you have some background in Russian, Ukrainian or Belarussian distinguishing „ć” and „cz” is not hard. ć is soft (palatalised), "cz" is very hard, unpalatalised, harder than English ch. The first (ć) could be imitated if you to pronounce chyu, chya, etc. with an [j] sound ("y" in "yes").