This is what my American friends told me too. They didn't differentiate betwen Polish and Russian as they sound the same for them.
To us Russian doesn't sound hissing at all!
No... do you really think so? I've always thought it is Russian ...To boboxe: I guess I get what you mean and would be happy to help you, if I could. But since Russian is my mother tongue, I can’t feel its “peculiar taste”: I don’t hear Russian as separate sounds, but as meaningful words.
But as for Polish, I could share my feelings with you. For the Russian ear it’s a language of “дж” (“dzh”), “пш” (“psh”), “шт” (“sht”) –like sounds. Yes, to us it’s hissing, as Setwale put it. Very hissing. The “hissiest” language in the world, totally unlike Russian
Since you're asking about Germanic languages I'll try to tell you what I observed when I learned English:
I agree.
- like a language without vowels. Unstressed vowels almost pale into insignificance....and since for us Bulgarian looks like Russian without most of the vowels, I'm even scared to ask how you describe Bulgarian or Serbian......And Russian sounds - however absurd it might sound from a Czech
You can achieve it to an extent by surrouding yourself with a foreign language for a while. Your ears will get accustomed to it and lose a bit of the habit with your mothertongue. It will first sound foreign to you afterwards.
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No, it is not a joke at all.
Well, tongue-in-cheek. 
I wholeheartedly agree.The only people who think German is harsh-sounding are those who don't speak it.
I mean, we have this French r, Italian zz and a lot of vowels - what d'you want more? ) Well, jana could you maybe pretty please with sugar on top let us hear the famous "stuck your finger through your throat on thursday" (correct?) saying in Czech? pleeease! I was going to say the same thing but about German. I guess it right what you say - we think German sounds ''rough and harsh'' because we don't speak it. Obviously, it depends how you speak it, but generally all of our sounds are baby-soft.. We have no particularly ear-splitting r's like in French, no J or G like the Spaniards.. and we even have a beautiful мягкий знак to make our speech even more sugar-coated! )
Moral is lost in this thread anyway, so here's strč prst skrz krk.
Crescent said:
Your file kind of confirmed my suspicion.
No, not on Thursday. It is a hard word (čtvrtek) but it would ruin it because it contains a vowel.
Moral is lost in this thread anyway, so here's strč prst skrz krk.
But as for Polish, I could share my feelings with you. For the Russian ear it’s a language of “дж” (“dzh”), “пш” (“psh”), “шт” (“sht”) –like sounds. Yes, to us it’s hissing, as Setwale put it. Very hissing. The “hissiest” language in the world, totally unlike Russian
-> speech synthesizer http://www.ivo.pl/index.php?option=com_ivonaonline&Itemid=38
That's exactly what people from England and Germany told me, when I said : W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie" and "W czasie suszy szosa sucha"
For those, who want to hear it
Truly sadistic of you
But, come to think of it, I have ever heard Polish rap a few times. Pronouncing that would be more than capital punishment to me.
I wish I had taken a photo of my American friends when I told them to pronounce these phrases they looked as if they had been, sorry for roughness but I couldn't resist, constipated.That's exactly what people from England and Germany told me, when I said : W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie" and "W czasie suszy szosa sucha"
For those, who want to hear it
Truly sadistic of you
But, come to think of it, I have ever heard Polish rap a few times. Pronouncing that would be more than capital punishment to me.
[...]
Moral is lost in this thread anyway, so here's strč prst skrz krk.
I always thought that four-lettered clusters of consonants, weren't existent in Slavic languages until I saw your post Jana, although, without the existence of vowels they'd be impossible to pronounce. Thanks for this one I enjoy łamiąc sobie język in an attempt to pronounce it. Something of similar kind in Polish:
With an R inside each word, it's not as hard as it seems to be. Here's my pronunciation guide: Convert it (mentally) to "starch pirst scarce kirk" and pronounce it as if they were English words. Once you can do it, repeat it over and over and try to shorten the "vowel + R" part.
