"Unless you speak mandarin which coincidentally happens to have the same contrast." I had to sit up and take notice, you're telling me I have a shortcut into the phonology of Polish of all languages via a completely non-indo-european language?
Apparently if you're gonna have a contrast between post-alveolar consonants then it will almost always be retroflex VS alveolo-palatal which makes sense since they're the most distinct.
Fun fact 7:58 We would actually say "Jeremiaszu, czy przygotowałeś generator kobla" (cobla? - it comes from the English word " cobblestone " that's why i have no idea how to write this informal word) Actually, this sentence isnt wrong but it looked a Little bit strange to say " brukowca " at least for minecraft Players But no one would say "cobla" in the situation different than minecraft or other games i don't know about I used to play Minecraft approximately 7years ago
Just for reference, there are words where "rz" is in fact, r and z mashed together, and not the digraph. Most of the time it's proper nouns like names of places, or compound words, but there is the commonly used verb 'marznąć' (to freeze, as in the feeling of cold), as well as words related to it, like 'zmarzlina' (permafrost).
4:29 Ł used to be like the dark L in British English, but it became /w/ later. About devoicing, sometimes the first sound of the next word matters: od podatków -> ot podatkuf but od bogów wojny -> od boguw wojny So if the next sound is voiced and there isn't any longer pause, there's no devoicing.
Almost the same occurs in Russian. The only significant difference from Russian is strange devoicing of "w" after "k", in Russian "w" after a voiceless consonant (and before a vowel) always stays voiced.
For a native Russian speaker, Ł is perceived as a form of "dark L", especially in cognate words. By the way, Ł in Polish names is always transliterated into Russian as Л (L), not as У (U) or В (W).
@@watchmakerful It makes sense, because Russian speakers have created their rules for transcribing Polish words *before* Poles switched from /ɫ/ to /w/. Similarly, Polish loanwords in Esperanto, like pilko (ball, from piłka) and zloto (the Polish zloty, from złoty) feature L and not Ŭ. The language was created when the sound was /ɫ/, the dark L.
A regional peculiarity affects voicing of final consonants before the following vowel or sonorants: "róg ulicy" sounds [rukulicy] in some regions but [rugulicy] in other ones, similarly "sok jagodowy" may sound [sokiagodowy] or [sogjagodowy].
Using "ą" for the nasal O is justified historically, as it used to be nasal A 500 years ago. For those who learn French: there is an analogue with "an/am" being pronounced closer to nasal O nowadays.
As a fellow west slav the thing that I love about polish is that it sits neatly in between being somewhat intelligible yet still different enough so anything said or written in it automatically is hilarious lol.
One of the best presentations of Polish reading rules. Small extension to the ą/ę topic: for the sake of simplicity 😉 let's treat them as a kind of diphtongs with the second element being usually nasal. Depending on the following sound, the element may produce one of the following allophones: s/ś/sz/z/ź/ż/w->w̃ (wąs/wąż/wąwóz), p/b->m (pępek/trąba), t/cz/d/dż->n (kąt/prąd), ć/dź->ń (kącie/prądzie), k/g->ŋ (ręka/sięga), ki/gi->ŋ' (not in IPA 😄 pękiem/ciągiem). The first allophone may become non-nasal or (in case of final ę) be lost entirely : idą->idou (still rare), idę->ide (typical). And finally a nasal peculiarity: in the word 'tramwaj' 'm' is not pronounced as [m] but with mouth slightly open and the upper teeth touching the lower lip (as with [v]).
3:38 From my understanding there was never a distinction between h and ch in most dialects. Slavic languages can be divided into g- languages, where the Proto-Slavic *g stayed as g, and h- languages turned into a fricative like ɦ. Polish has g so it makes no sense for it to also have ɦ. The ch [x] sound, on the other hand, was initially an allophone of the *š - a sound that appeared due the RUKI law so it's a common Slavic thing. Some dialects, especially eastern ones, can have a h/ch distinction because of contact with languages like Ukrainian which have ɦ. And why does Polish spelling use both h and ch? Most words containing h are borrowings from other Slavic languages which have ɦ, like wataha from Ukrainian ватага or hasło from Czech heslo, or other languages which use h in the spelling, like huta from German Hütte or herbata from Latin herba thea. (there are probably some exceptions)
I am glad that our Czech ancestors were smart enough to keep even not used letters in our alphabet, like Q, X and W, so we can easilly writte even English now. 🙂
It's very easy to know what from ż/rz u/ó h/ch is needed if you know other Slavic languages, cause those sound evolved differently so you can just compare words
Thank you for this. I speak Putonghua so yay you just unlocked Polish for me. & my Japanese college professor was of Polish descent! We called Professor Szatrowski ザトラウスキー先生 but now you're telling me it should've been シャトロヴスキー先生 all along?!? Oh well she was Polish American I believe.
I'm pretty sure the spellings for words containing rz/ż, ch/h and u/ó were indeed updated, a relatively short time ago too, it's just that the committee responsible deemed it worth it to preserve the variant spellings for historical reasons. They did make the distinctions way more regular however, that's where the rules for which is used where we learn in school come from. They missed a few, however, which is why there's still a couple exceptions present, like "król" for example.
@kartonrealista That can very well be the case, but etymology has nothing to do with whether it's regular or not. A word written with 'ó' is regular if the vowel changes to an 'o' in one (if that's even possible?) or more of its declensions (what we call an "oboczność" in Polish). For example: "pokój" - "pokoje", "gród" - "grodu", but not "mószla", as the 'u' sound never alters to an 'o'. "Król", in that case, is an exception to the rule. Taking the origins of the word into account may be helpful, but I'm fairly certain the whole point of the reform was to make such knowledge unnecessary.
And some of the changes were really bad, such as spelling the name Jakub with "u", which used to be spelt as Jakób (Jacob, Iacobus). We have words such as "jakobini", not "jakubini" for that very reason.
What a nice video! And I was always wondering what the difference between ó and u were. Now I know (same sound) :) Despite Polish having so many hard consonants, most of them hard to pronounce and differentiate even, for some reason it sounds rather soft language compared to other slavic languages, and I think one of the reasons for that is that the L letter is soft, and not fat like in most slavic languages.
fun fact you can turn those Zs into carons to get the correspondences to other slavic languages, & in some dialects rz still makes the ř sound of Czechoslovak
It’s interesting to note that a lot of the phonology of Polish is shared with, of all things, Sanskrit. Both have the soft/hard fricative (and affricate) distinction, both have a /ʋ/ sound (at least, if the IPA for polish “w” on Wikipedia is accurate), both have similar vowels (including nasalization), and both have a tapped “r”. Since Devanagari - used today to write many Indian languages (such as Hindi) - was developed to write Sanskrit, it can probably be used as a strangely elegant script for Polish. Some adaptation would be needed, of course. Sanskrit doesn’t have an equivalent for “y”, but since Polish doesn’t seem to distinguish vowel length (at least from what I’ve seen), the character for short “i” could be used instead. There’s also no /w/ (“ł”) in Sanskrit, but there should be a workaround (unused symbol or digraph). Someone should give it a go, seems like a fun exercise!
In Polish, there used to be short and long vowels. Most of them were shortened because we're lazy. For example ó used to be pronounced as /ɔ:/ so like nowadays o but longer, then it changed to /o/ and now /u/. When it comes to Ł, in the Sanskrit script it can be written as a symbol similar to L because Ł used to be pronounced similarly to L, but a bit different - the same difference that exists in russian with л.
Good video, i do think it would be improved if you mentioned that ó, rz and ch also serve to mark situations where can change into another (ó into o, rz into r and ch into sz).
Swedish also has the same distinction between _sz_ /ʂ/, spelt _rs_ in Swedish, and _ś_ /ɕ/, spelt as _kj_ before the so called "hard" vowels (A, O, U, Å), _k_ before "soft" vowels (E, I, Y, Ä, Ö), and sometimes as _tj._
@@jank097 I have also noticed many Swedes have started to merge /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ into just /ʂ/. It's interesting that such similar sound changes are occurring in the two languages at the same time.
@@kacperwoch4368 Yes, _r + consonant_ makes some consonants apical-retroflex (thereof /ʂ/), non-dental and/or retracted depending on how you analyze it. There are a couple of other strange letter combinations as well: sj, sk*, skj, stj, g* **, ti(o)** - /ɧ~xʷ/ (like PL _ch_) tj, kj, k*, g* ** - /ɕ/ (like PL _ś_) dj, gj, hj, lj, g* - /j/ gn - /ŋn/*!, /gn/ * when followed by a "soft" vowel. ** in words of French origin like "station", "gelé" and "garage". *! never syllable-initially. There are exceptions to some of these, mostly in more recently loaned words. Also, different dialects may pronounce them differently. These pronunciations are just the ones in the standard language.
Wreście, dobry filmik który wytłumacza wymowę/ortografię języka polskiego do obcokrajowców w dobry sposób. Teraz mogę dać linka to tego filmiku kiedy ktoś będzie się śmiał z naszego języka. Jedynę co chciałbym dodać że niektóre słowa z innych języków mogą mieć ortografię z innych języków i V (Marvel, Avengers), X (sex, X-Men) i Q (quiz) występują takich słowach ale wymowa jest zpolszczona. X-Men /iks-men/ a nie /eks-mən/.
Polish has more sense when written with Czech alphabet. Reduced Czech standard is used in Slovakian and in Slovenian, while modified version is used in Croato-serbian.
0:30 Okay sure, Polish spelling is *much* more predictable than English, but I have to nitpick a bit here: You totally have "double duty" letter *exactly* like the g in "good" vs "gem". English g is "softened" before "e" (and sometimes other letters), while Polish c s z are "softened" before i. Polish c sounding different in "cukier" and "ciasto" is the same thing as english's g. Also you could argue digraphs (e.g. "czarny") are also another pronunciation of the same letter. It *is* (almost) completely predictable, while in English it isn't, but still. The one case I can think of that isn't 100% predictable is because of digraphs: "zamarzać" has a separate r and z, not "rz". Also there are some silent letters in colloquial speech, such as the ł in "jabłko" (pronounced japko) and "mógł" (pronounced muk). Also very technically at 1:30 I understand pęk is not pronounced like "penk" but [peŋk], though that distinction is totally not important and not present in all regions. Anyway I like that you actually explain how to pronounce sz vs ś, etc.! Most just say "it's softer or something idk it sounds like this haha bye"
@@sjuns5159 for pęk i didn't transcribe the velar nasal because this is a video for laymen and the same allophone exists for /n/ before /k/ in english so it just naturally comes out. otherwise i could just say that the nasal vowels turn into nasals homorganic with the following stop or affricate and that would be the end of that
@myaobyclepiej Yeah, *totally* fair. As I said, the difference is never really important at all (I believe, I'm not Polish, just a learner). I do want to get things like that right, but if that's someone wants, they should probably just go learn how to read those "X language phonology" pages on wikipedia (which is what I do). You've made a nice video, concise and clear
@@Ellestra I don't deny that English isn't consistent. A minimal example to show that would be "get" vs "gem". My comment only argued that Polish also has double duty letters (not a very important point but still true). Though as opposed to English almost entirely regularly (except in obscure cases like _zamarzać_).
@@sjuns5159 but Polish is rather consistent with all ,,ci" ,,si" ,,ni". As a native polish speaker I cannot find any word when ,,c" in words with "ci" wouldn't be softened, all ,,ci", ,,si" ,,ni" sound like ,,ć", ,,ś" and ,,ń" in polish words. When in english ,,ge" can sound very different depending on the word.
4:46 another way is to imagine the the soft sounds having a “y” /j/ after them. Try pronouncing “sh” /ʃ/ or “ch” /tʃ/ from the position where you would pronounce “ee” /i/.
The only case that I know of and can be argued to have vowel reduction ([EDIT after 2 days]and now I probably realise that's not that) in Polish is some forms of "włączać" where ą is pronounced as nasal "a" instead of nasal "o". Some people disavow this as a mistake but I care scarcely for prescriptivism.
@@watchmakerful it's not assimilation, it's analogy. people copy patterns of frequentative verbs like zaprosić-zapraszać or chodzić-chadzać and apply it to wł/õ/czyć-wł/ã/czać
é used to be visible in old texts, and one of my teachers told me it was pronounced like an i (the actual example was świéce, which was apparently pronounced "świce"), but it fell out of favour. is there any reason why ó didn't also fall out of use? also the anecdote about J replacing I only after consonants that had a hard form reminded me of how before a spelling reform in the early 20th century, this rule didn't exist, so "miasto" was spelled as "mjasto".
@@starleaf-luna all long vowels merged with their short counterparts except for ó for some reason, é was pronounced i but went back to e, it's generally only retained in older text like Mickiewicz's works in rhyming syllables (daléj/spali) because updating the spelling would ruin the rhyme. as to /j/, its spelling was never very regular, used to be y some time ago, you can still see it in some names like Reymont or Zamoyski. not long ago it was still used in foreign palatalizations like historya and dyecezya (native r d z soften to rz dź ź), but it was replaced with i, or j if using i would lead to ambiguity (misja vs misia)
Ż and sz exist in Russian with the same quality, ś is always long (щ) and corresponds, strangely, to Polish szcz, dż occurs only in loanwords (and not always pronounced as a single sound), cz does not exist at all, ć exists (although it is slightly different and corresponds to cz), ź is extremely rare (and always long). Russian softens "s" and "z", but in an entirely different way from Polish.
It's both. K before i is softened, as well as g, m, n and almost all consonants. It's not mentioned here because most people, even Polish, don't even notice that.
In translations of Breaking Bad shitposts (where this sentence is from), people translate Jesse as Jeremiasz, because there is no equivalent the other way around.
@@myaobyclepiejSarcasm aside, I genuinely pronounce them with different vowels (as a speaker of General American!). For me, "which" has a more central vowel most of the time.
You read it as you write it, it's 100% phonetic. The difficulty in pronunciation comes from english speakers ignorance of other languages and the best proof of that is most vietnamese immigrant workers in poland and recently korean tank instructors speak very good polish after a year of just hearing the language around them constantly. I pity English speakers sometimes, it's difficult to learn a new language when everybody speaks yours already. No incentive, only passionate people do it and they usually succed.
As someone who has been learning Czech for the past 5 years, I can't help but compare the languages of the neighbouring countries. In short, the "conflicting consonant sets system", meant to make pronunciation "easier" for the average native speaker, ends up only complicating it. I don't believe it's necessary to learn this system, you can just pronounce every sound as it would be pronounced on it's own, and then as you keep speaking the language you will find what pronunciations you can change to make them easier for yourself. Or pick up on habits of native speakers. And just because you're pronouncing every sound in it's default form doesn't mean you won't be understood. For example, in Ukranian, o is always pronounced "oh" no matter what, but in Russian they're too lazy to open their mouths and simplify it into "ah". And despite that a Russian speaker can still understand a Ukranian speaker (unless they've had zero exposure to Ukranian language, which is unlikely but it does happen)
The é at the end of exposé is pronounced to rhyme with hey only because it's a loanword from French. It's not English at all. You mispronounced one of the most mispronounced English words too - pronunciation. It doesn't have an o before the u in the second syllable so it's nun not noun. But since a large group of native English speakers mispronounce it, you're forgiven 🙂 Otherwise a fascinating video. I'm still confused but I speak with a New Zealand accent so the comparisons with English words don't quite align with NZ pronunciations, but that's fine 🙂
the é at the end of exposé is diphthongized because dress is a checked vowel and it can't occur at the end of a word, not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, for example in 'seance'. as to the fact that it comes from french, that's kind of the point, anglophones diphthongize monophthongs when pronouncing foreign words, and this video is for anglophones who want to pronounce foreign words. also i don't know what you're talking about with the way i say 'pronunciation,' all three instances in the video are clearly pronounced with the strut vowel, not mouth
3:34 not true, the sound ,,H'' in polish is ,,H" in english but ,,Ch" in polish is ,,Kh" in english (Also h-? ch-sz) 4:50 ,,Ż" in english is ,,Zh" and i think ,,Rz" in english is ,,Rh" but i'm not sure (Also ż-g rz-r)
"Ch" graphem does not represent [x] sound anymore, contrary to what dictionaries may say. You can occasionally hear English speakers saying [h] as strong as the Polish sound, the latter is not so strong as [x] in Czech or Russian.
This is the most Polish coded video ever. P.S. Your English is very good! Most Polish speakers I've met can't properly reduce vowels in English, are you by any chance Russian?
Well, English uses ⟨sh⟩ & ⟨ch⟩ for /ʃ/ & /t͡ʃ/, Welsh uses ⟨ll⟩ for /ɬ/. And Czech uses -both ⟨ch⟩ & ⟨h⟩ for /x/,- ⟨ch⟩ for /x/, ⟨ú⟩ & ⟨ů⟩ for /uː/ (I was almost wrong about this too, read the replies) -and ⟨e⟩ & ⟨ě⟩ for /ɛ/.-
@@astrOtuba In Czech 'ch' is unvoiced while 'h' is voiced. "ú" is used only in loanwords and at the beggining of a word while "ů" is used anywhere else. For both "e" and "ě" - the latter is spelled more as 'ye' part in the word "yes".
@@michakmiecik819 my bad, I opened the Czech IPA page and saw that /x/ can be represented by ⟨h⟩ too, but somehow forgot about devoicing, so ⟨h⟩ word finally and before voiceless consonants is voiceless /x/ (like in “práh”), but apart from that you're right. I've updated my original comment. Ú separates some native and loanwords like _kůra_ vs _kúra_ but it still sounds the same Perhaps you wanted to write that both ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ě⟩ are *pronounced* more like “ye” in English “yes”, not *spelled.* Yeah, that's almost correct. Here I'll quote the _Czech phonology_ Wikipedia page: “The letter ě is not a separate vowel. It denotes /ɛ/ after a palatal stop or palatal nasal (e.g. něco /ɲɛtso/), /ɲɛ/ after /m/ (e.g. měkký /mɲɛkiː/), and /jɛ/ after other labial consonants (e.g. běs /bjɛs/).” So, I technically I was right about vowel sounds themselves, but the spelling actually makes a lot of sense so _dē factō_ I was wrong, sorry
0:50 In standard polish yes, but many people speak dialects on a daily basis so "o piątej u tej kobiety" (five o'clock at this womans') becomes for example "uo piunty u ty kobity"
@@askarufus7939 no, I’m actually from Pomerania. Perhaps this explains it since it used to be a German and Kaszubian speaking area. Where are you from where people speak a dialect?
@@FarfettilLejl Świętokrzyskie, Lubelszczyzna. I suppose your region had much more ethnic changes not to keep a dialect. Watch a meme "Chłopie coś ty zrobił". I think she's from Świętokrzyskie...
@@askarufus7939 haha, I’ve just watched it, great lady 😂 Her Polish sounds quite standard though, perhaps with some slight differences but I wouldn’t have noticed them if I hadn’t been paying attention. Yeah, I think here in Pomerania the dialects were levelled out because many people from other parts of Poland settled after the war. Even the Kashubian language has been largely replaced by Polish
In some dialects, h/ch and ż/rz are still pronounced differently. But the merging of u and ó happened so early (around the 17th century if I remember correctly) that pretty much nowhere these are distinct.
Meanwhile the merging of h/ch is fairly recent and still developing and the merging of ż/rz generally happened somewhere around the 19th century (although started as early as the beginning of the Polish language, it was a slow process)
even as a non-Polish person i'm really annoyed when people bring it up as an example of particularly weird and hard spelling. and yeah, it's not that easy to pronounce coming from a Germanic or Romance language but.. it's not like Abkhaz or something like that. similarly annoying when people limit themselves by thinking learning the Cyrillian or Greek alphabet would be hard. those two especially really aren't hard and it's sad to know people get scared off the joy of having to deal with aspects in Russian or the fact that Greek has only a single regular verb 🤍
poles don't say the k word all the time, it's just an overused stereotype that spread on the internet. People usually get upset when you say it. Stop believing everything you see on the internet
Not funny, bro. If you like picking up only curse words and you're not interested in the subject of learning Polish, you should just dismiss it and look for something else.
O with a tail works in modern computerized world, but in the oldie times where eveything was written down ith patin caligraphy such an o would just look like an q, g or p depending on the writter. Using a in it's stead removed (nearly) all confusion.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
Why am i watching this i'm literally native polish
lol
I guess that'll be half of the people watching this xDD, like me too
Im not even learning polish, I'm learning russian, but I'll watch this anyway cause it's a cool langauge.
Powtórka z polskiego w podstawówce
@@JedrzejP hehe prawda
"Unless you speak mandarin which coincidentally happens to have the same contrast."
I had to sit up and take notice, you're telling me I have a shortcut into the phonology of Polish of all languages via a completely non-indo-european language?
Why not? More than 1 billion people speak Chinese. I have studied basic Chinese phonology, and I found this mention really useful.
@AthanasiosJapan think that the original comment agrees with you, and is shocked haha
Apparently if you're gonna have a contrast between post-alveolar consonants then it will almost always be retroflex VS alveolo-palatal which makes sense since they're the most distinct.
Yeah, and check this out: Japanese shi, ji, chi and zi are exactly the same sounds as polish si, dzi, ci and zi
@@jakubnowak649 In Japanese "Ji" and "Zi" are allophones of the same じ phoneme.
that mandarin shit shocked me i need to read polish written with pin yin now
proshe barzo, tak xie pishe polski pinyin'em
@Adiee5Priv so many bpoblems jet i understand no broblem
Those emojis representing British and American pronunciation, and nasal vowels are so funny.
Fun fact 7:58
We would actually say "Jeremiaszu, czy przygotowałeś generator kobla" (cobla? - it comes from the English word " cobblestone " that's why i have no idea how to write this informal word)
Actually, this sentence isnt wrong but it looked a Little bit strange to say " brukowca " at least for minecraft Players
But no one would say "cobla" in the situation different than minecraft or other games i don't know about
I used to play Minecraft approximately 7years ago
god my brother uses this
Just for reference, there are words where "rz" is in fact, r and z mashed together, and not the digraph.
Most of the time it's proper nouns like names of places, or compound words, but there is the commonly used verb 'marznąć' (to freeze, as in the feeling of cold), as well as words related to it, like 'zmarzlina' (permafrost).
It took me a moment to figure the knife and gun joke, but once I did it's pretty funny.
4:29 Ł used to be like the dark L in British English, but it became /w/ later.
About devoicing, sometimes the first sound of the next word matters:
od podatków -> ot podatkuf
but
od bogów wojny -> od boguw wojny
So if the next sound is voiced and there isn't any longer pause, there's no devoicing.
Almost the same occurs in Russian. The only significant difference from Russian is strange devoicing of "w" after "k", in Russian "w" after a voiceless consonant (and before a vowel) always stays voiced.
For a native Russian speaker, Ł is perceived as a form of "dark L", especially in cognate words. By the way, Ł in Polish names is always transliterated into Russian as Л (L), not as У (U) or В (W).
@@watchmakerful It makes sense, because Russian speakers have created their rules for transcribing Polish words *before* Poles switched from /ɫ/ to /w/.
Similarly, Polish loanwords in Esperanto, like pilko (ball, from piłka) and zloto (the Polish zloty, from złoty) feature L and not Ŭ. The language was created when the sound was /ɫ/, the dark L.
So, the devoicing uses a similar system to voicing in Burmese. Cool
A regional peculiarity affects voicing of final consonants before the following vowel or sonorants: "róg ulicy" sounds [rukulicy] in some regions but [rugulicy] in other ones, similarly "sok jagodowy" may sound [sokiagodowy] or [sogjagodowy].
wow it makes much more sense than Englisj
Is your profile pic the girl from x0o0x_'s songs?
Also the majority of the world's languages have better spelling systems than English.
Our spelling is easier but good luck with our grammar ;)
@@teolinekIt s HARD. But if you know any other slavic language is not that hard. I mean... U get used to it. It keeps being a torture thou.
Don't worry, even if English spelling seems hard, it can be mastered through tough and thorough thought, though. @@miguelangelrodriguez9578
Nie mogłem przestać grzać jak użyłes nóż do oznaczenia brytyjskiej wymowy a pistoletu do amerykańskiej.
Niezłe :D
Using "ą" for the nasal O is justified historically, as it used to be nasal A 500 years ago. For those who learn French: there is an analogue with "an/am" being pronounced closer to nasal O nowadays.
And French [ɒ̃] is a decent approximation for Polish ą
"Anglofonia jest nieuleczalna"
No padłem.
5:20 Koronesuki is a really nice model to illustrate tongue position while spelling something, I absolutely didn't expect it
As a fellow west slav the thing that I love about polish is that it sits neatly in between being somewhat intelligible yet still different enough so anything said or written in it automatically is hilarious lol.
The charm of closely related languages.
Well, we could say the same thing about Czech :)
what a way to start a video
What a way to end, too
One of the best presentations of Polish reading rules. Small extension to the ą/ę topic: for the sake of simplicity 😉 let's treat them as a kind of diphtongs with the second element being usually nasal. Depending on the following sound, the element may produce one of the following allophones: s/ś/sz/z/ź/ż/w->w̃ (wąs/wąż/wąwóz), p/b->m (pępek/trąba), t/cz/d/dż->n (kąt/prąd), ć/dź->ń (kącie/prądzie), k/g->ŋ (ręka/sięga), ki/gi->ŋ' (not in IPA 😄 pękiem/ciągiem). The first allophone may become non-nasal or (in case of final ę) be lost entirely : idą->idou (still rare), idę->ide (typical).
And finally a nasal peculiarity: in the word 'tramwaj' 'm' is not pronounced as [m] but with mouth slightly open and the upper teeth touching the lower lip (as with [v]).
3:38 From my understanding there was never a distinction between h and ch in most dialects. Slavic languages can be divided into g- languages, where the Proto-Slavic *g stayed as g, and h- languages turned into a fricative like ɦ. Polish has g so it makes no sense for it to also have ɦ. The ch [x] sound, on the other hand, was initially an allophone of the *š - a sound that appeared due the RUKI law so it's a common Slavic thing.
Some dialects, especially eastern ones, can have a h/ch distinction because of contact with languages like Ukrainian which have ɦ.
And why does Polish spelling use both h and ch? Most words containing h are borrowings from other Slavic languages which have ɦ, like wataha from Ukrainian ватага or hasło from Czech heslo, or other languages which use h in the spelling, like huta from German Hütte or herbata from Latin herba thea. (there are probably some exceptions)
I am glad that our Czech ancestors were smart enough to keep even not used letters in our alphabet, like Q, X and W, so we can easilly writte even English now. 🙂
Thank you, this is the comment I was looking for!
It's very easy to know what from ż/rz u/ó h/ch is needed if you know other Slavic languages, cause those sound evolved differently so you can just compare words
Thank you for this. I speak Putonghua so yay you just unlocked Polish for me. & my Japanese college professor was of Polish descent! We called Professor Szatrowski ザトラウスキー先生 but now you're telling me it should've been シャトロヴスキー先生 all along?!?
Oh well she was Polish American I believe.
the Polish -ski ending gets rendered into Japanese as スキ, スキー reflects the russian -skiy
As a brazilian i think it's easy to pronounce, we have all this sounds in Brazilian portuguese, including the nasal ones (we even have a lot more)
Portuguese has lots of similarities with Slavic languages when it comes phonetics.
This is really good video.
Edit: I'm not sure if you are English or Polish native speaker. You're Polish pronunciation is spot on.
He's Polish.
I'm pretty sure the spellings for words containing rz/ż, ch/h and u/ó were indeed updated, a relatively short time ago too, it's just that the committee responsible deemed it worth it to preserve the variant spellings for historical reasons. They did make the distinctions way more regular however, that's where the rules for which is used where we learn in school come from. They missed a few, however, which is why there's still a couple exceptions present, like "król" for example.
Where's the exception? Doesn't król come from Karol? If so it's regular.
@kartonrealista That can very well be the case, but etymology has nothing to do with whether it's regular or not. A word written with 'ó' is regular if the vowel changes to an 'o' in one (if that's even possible?) or more of its declensions (what we call an "oboczność" in Polish). For example: "pokój" - "pokoje", "gród" - "grodu", but not "mószla", as the 'u' sound never alters to an 'o'. "Król", in that case, is an exception to the rule. Taking the origins of the word into account may be helpful, but I'm fairly certain the whole point of the reform was to make such knowledge unnecessary.
And some of the changes were really bad, such as spelling the name Jakub with "u", which used to be spelt as Jakób (Jacob, Iacobus). We have words such as "jakobini", not "jakubini" for that very reason.
Though I have no intention of fully learning Polish, I will still watch this and any video you make.
Sounds pretty though
What a nice video! And I was always wondering what the difference between ó and u were. Now I know (same sound) :)
Despite Polish having so many hard consonants, most of them hard to pronounce and differentiate even, for some reason it sounds rather soft language compared to other slavic languages, and I think one of the reasons for that is that the L letter is soft, and not fat like in most slavic languages.
Different people nasalize the final ę different amounts, I do it quie a bit, some people dont do it at all, some just a bit but yeah
fun fact you can turn those Zs into carons to get the correspondences to other slavic languages, & in some dialects rz still makes the ř sound of Czechoslovak
what is caron
@@SuhbanIo diacritic on top of š ž č ř ň
@@hya2in8 ohh
@@hya2in8 also known as „haček”
Only Czech has ř, Slovak doesn't. Slovak has ľ, though.
It’s interesting to note that a lot of the phonology of Polish is shared with, of all things, Sanskrit. Both have the soft/hard fricative (and affricate) distinction, both have a /ʋ/ sound (at least, if the IPA for polish “w” on Wikipedia is accurate), both have similar vowels (including nasalization), and both have a tapped “r”.
Since Devanagari - used today to write many Indian languages (such as Hindi) - was developed to write Sanskrit, it can probably be used as a strangely elegant script for Polish.
Some adaptation would be needed, of course. Sanskrit doesn’t have an equivalent for “y”, but since Polish doesn’t seem to distinguish vowel length (at least from what I’ve seen), the character for short “i” could be used instead. There’s also no /w/ (“ł”) in Sanskrit, but there should be a workaround (unused symbol or digraph).
Someone should give it a go, seems like a fun exercise!
In Polish, there used to be short and long vowels. Most of them were shortened because we're lazy. For example ó used to be pronounced as /ɔ:/ so like nowadays o but longer, then it changed to /o/ and now /u/. When it comes to Ł, in the Sanskrit script it can be written as a symbol similar to L because Ł used to be pronounced similarly to L, but a bit different - the same difference that exists in russian with л.
Polish "w" is always /v/, I wonder where on Wikipedia did you see that transcription?
@@dirtyyy7668 thats true, w is pronounced as /ʋ/ in Ukrainian, maybe they mixed it up
sanskrit doesn't have retroflex affricates, polish is /v/ not ʋ
H/CH are different sounds, you can still hear it when talking with older people from certain parts of Poland
This is just showing me that i absolutely have no idea how to pronounce words in English lol
Entertaining content aside, your video is beautifully presented too. Well done!
JEREMIASZU, MUSIMY GOTOWAĆ XDDDDD
This is a very good video.
Starting to fall in love with poland, seems like a country with so much integrity.
Good video, i do think it would be improved if you mentioned that ó, rz and ch also serve to mark situations where can change into another (ó into o, rz into r and ch into sz).
Swedish also has the same distinction between _sz_ /ʂ/, spelt _rs_ in Swedish, and _ś_ /ɕ/, spelt as _kj_ before the so called "hard" vowels (A, O, U, Å), _k_ before "soft" vowels (E, I, Y, Ä, Ö), and sometimes as _tj._
Interesting. In Norwegian the “kj” spelling is reserved for the ⟨ç⟩ sound, although many have started to pronounce it as a soft “sh” instead
@@jank097 I have also noticed many Swedes have started to merge /ʂ/ and /ɕ/ into just /ʂ/. It's interesting that such similar sound changes are occurring in the two languages at the same time.
rs and kj?! And somehow they complain Polish spelling is weird.
@@kacperwoch4368 Yes, _r + consonant_ makes some consonants apical-retroflex (thereof /ʂ/), non-dental and/or retracted depending on how you analyze it. There are a couple of other strange letter combinations as well:
sj, sk*, skj, stj, g* **, ti(o)** - /ɧ~xʷ/ (like PL _ch_)
tj, kj, k*, g* ** - /ɕ/ (like PL _ś_)
dj, gj, hj, lj, g* - /j/
gn - /ŋn/*!, /gn/
* when followed by a "soft" vowel.
** in words of French origin like "station", "gelé" and "garage".
*! never syllable-initially.
There are exceptions to some of these, mostly in more recently loaned words. Also, different dialects may pronounce them differently. These pronunciations are just the ones in the standard language.
Wreście, dobry filmik który wytłumacza wymowę/ortografię języka polskiego do obcokrajowców w dobry sposób. Teraz mogę dać linka to tego filmiku kiedy ktoś będzie się śmiał z naszego języka.
Jedynę co chciałbym dodać że niektóre słowa z innych języków mogą mieć ortografię z innych języków i V (Marvel, Avengers), X (sex, X-Men) i Q (quiz) występują takich słowach ale wymowa jest zpolszczona. X-Men /iks-men/ a nie /eks-mən/.
Polish has more sense when written with Czech alphabet. Reduced Czech standard is used in Slovakian and in Slovenian, while modified version is used in Croato-serbian.
Damn, you nailed the Polish pronounciation!
@kaocchi i am polish
@@myaobyclepiej A dobra. Nie spodziewałem się takiego zwrotu akcji.
I went to Poland for work in 2019. The only thing I remember is that ł isn't an L
It is if you're from north-eastern Poland, or from a very old movie :D
i didn't expect to find a koronesuki watching a video about polish pronunciation
0:30 Okay sure, Polish spelling is *much* more predictable than English, but I have to nitpick a bit here: You totally have "double duty" letter *exactly* like the g in "good" vs "gem". English g is "softened" before "e" (and sometimes other letters), while Polish c s z are "softened" before i. Polish c sounding different in "cukier" and "ciasto" is the same thing as english's g. Also you could argue digraphs (e.g. "czarny") are also another pronunciation of the same letter. It *is* (almost) completely predictable, while in English it isn't, but still. The one case I can think of that isn't 100% predictable is because of digraphs: "zamarzać" has a separate r and z, not "rz". Also there are some silent letters in colloquial speech, such as the ł in "jabłko" (pronounced japko) and "mógł" (pronounced muk).
Also very technically at 1:30 I understand pęk is not pronounced like "penk" but [peŋk], though that distinction is totally not important and not present in all regions.
Anyway I like that you actually explain how to pronounce sz vs ś, etc.! Most just say "it's softer or something idk it sounds like this haha bye"
@@sjuns5159 for pęk i didn't transcribe the velar nasal because this is a video for laymen and the same allophone exists for /n/ before /k/ in english so it just naturally comes out. otherwise i could just say that the nasal vowels turn into nasals homorganic with the following stop or affricate and that would be the end of that
@myaobyclepiej Yeah, *totally* fair. As I said, the difference is never really important at all (I believe, I'm not Polish, just a learner). I do want to get things like that right, but if that's someone wants, they should probably just go learn how to read those "X language phonology" pages on wikipedia (which is what I do). You've made a nice video, concise and clear
But English is not really consistent with this, is it? Give, get, girl, geek, gecko. Begin, burger, target, tiger, together.
@@Ellestra I don't deny that English isn't consistent. A minimal example to show that would be "get" vs "gem". My comment only argued that Polish also has double duty letters (not a very important point but still true). Though as opposed to English almost entirely regularly (except in obscure cases like _zamarzać_).
@@sjuns5159 but Polish is rather consistent with all ,,ci" ,,si" ,,ni".
As a native polish speaker I cannot find any word when ,,c" in words with "ci" wouldn't be softened, all ,,ci", ,,si" ,,ni" sound like ,,ć", ,,ś" and ,,ń" in polish words.
When in english ,,ge" can sound very different depending on the word.
should i be concerned at the fact that i only understood the soft/hard difference after the koronesukis were brought up even though i speak mandarin
0:46 oh, Portuguese 😮
actually this word is common in many languages.
@matheusroberto1323 A pronúncia mano
@@GutoBeto ah entendi
4:46 another way is to imagine the the soft sounds having a “y” /j/ after them. Try pronouncing “sh” /ʃ/ or “ch” /tʃ/ from the position where you would pronounce “ee” /i/.
The image of villager threw me off a bit lol
Yes, very good
The only case that I know of and can be argued to have vowel reduction ([EDIT after 2 days]and now I probably realise that's not that) in Polish is some forms of "włączać" where ą is pronounced as nasal "a" instead of nasal "o". Some people disavow this as a mistake but I care scarcely for prescriptivism.
How can it be a vowel reduction if it occurs on a stressed vowel? It looks more like assimilation.
@@watchmakerful it's not assimilation, it's analogy. people copy patterns of frequentative verbs like zaprosić-zapraszać or chodzić-chadzać and apply it to wł/õ/czyć-wł/ã/czać
As a Bulgarian, I fecking hate you for not adopting Cyrillic. Love from Bulgaria 🇧🇬❤️🇵🇱
0:48 prow fesh iõ næl
é used to be visible in old texts, and one of my teachers told me it was pronounced like an i (the actual example was świéce, which was apparently pronounced "świce"), but it fell out of favour. is there any reason why ó didn't also fall out of use?
also the anecdote about J replacing I only after consonants that had a hard form reminded me of how before a spelling reform in the early 20th century, this rule didn't exist, so "miasto" was spelled as "mjasto".
@@starleaf-luna all long vowels merged with their short counterparts except for ó for some reason, é was pronounced i but went back to e, it's generally only retained in older text like Mickiewicz's works in rhyming syllables (daléj/spali) because updating the spelling would ruin the rhyme.
as to /j/, its spelling was never very regular, used to be y some time ago, you can still see it in some names like Reymont or Zamoyski. not long ago it was still used in foreign palatalizations like historya and dyecezya (native r d z soften to rz dź ź), but it was replaced with i, or j if using i would lead to ambiguity (misja vs misia)
Polish spelling is a lot more regular than English.
what program do you use to make presentations?
@@filipu1225 powerpoint
@@myaobyclepiejwow really, very nice I love this pres
ten filmik zasługuje na lajka, bo nie ma w nim obrzydliwych p*dalskich "żartów", nie to co w prezentacji twojego, skądinąd bardzo fajnego, conlanga
7:10 gyatt
I'm lucky being Russian learning polish, the ś, ź, ć dź, sz, ż/rz, cz, dż exist in russian as well (in some way)
Ż and sz exist in Russian with the same quality, ś is always long (щ) and corresponds, strangely, to Polish szcz, dż occurs only in loanwords (and not always pronounced as a single sound), cz does not exist at all, ć exists (although it is slightly different and corresponds to cz), ź is extremely rare (and always long). Russian softens "s" and "z", but in an entirely different way from Polish.
How could you disrespect Bydgoszczy like that 😢
6:25 I feel like in "kiedy" the k is softened rather than a "j" inserted. might be regional tho, idk
It's both. K before i is softened, as well as g, m, n and almost all consonants. It's not mentioned here because most people, even Polish, don't even notice that.
@@lesny.nietoperekI remember hearing about it in primary school and not believing it
Wszyscy szczodrze głaszczą wstrzemięźliwe pszczoły.
haha
A cat walking on my keyboard.
Nice Cruel Barbie's Thesis avatar.
0:57 Polish have one silent letter - c before h.
@@The0Stroy brother that's a digraph
@myaobyclepiej Yeah. But 'h' and 'ch' are pronounced same - so 'ch' can be seen both as digraph or silent 'c'
7:34 I died XD
Amazing video! The sample sentences at the end were the best part. 10/10
Wait, no. Jeremiasz is Jeremiah, not Jesse. 3/10
😉
In translations of Breaking Bad shitposts (where this sentence is from), people translate Jesse as Jeremiasz, because there is no equivalent the other way around.
@@wojwesoly I think Jerzy would be pretty funny as a Polish Jesse
1:49 I think better example is "which"[łycz]. It have much more pronounced "y" sound that don.t merge to other sound.
literally the same exact vowel
@@myaobyclepiej no
@@Reegeed ah, alright, call cambridge and tell them you've discovered the elusive bit-which split then
@@myaobyclepiejSarcasm aside, I genuinely pronounce them with different vowels (as a speaker of General American!). For me, "which" has a more central vowel most of the time.
@@CutieWolf-359 only in America
Me, a native Mandarin speaker and still can't tell the differences:
(If you put it side to side I can tell, but separately? Nope.)
You read it as you write it, it's 100% phonetic. The difficulty in pronunciation comes from english speakers ignorance of other languages and the best proof of that is most vietnamese immigrant workers in poland and recently korean tank instructors speak very good polish after a year of just hearing the language around them constantly.
I pity English speakers sometimes, it's difficult to learn a new language when everybody speaks yours already. No incentive, only passionate people do it and they usually succed.
siema 8)
I feel like polish (much like English) needs a reform, with a lot more accents rather than combinations.
Just use Cyrillic 😊
Thank you for finally showing the normies the error of their ways
As someone who has been learning Czech for the past 5 years, I can't help but compare the languages of the neighbouring countries. In short, the "conflicting consonant sets system", meant to make pronunciation "easier" for the average native speaker, ends up only complicating it. I don't believe it's necessary to learn this system, you can just pronounce every sound as it would be pronounced on it's own, and then as you keep speaking the language you will find what pronunciations you can change to make them easier for yourself. Or pick up on habits of native speakers. And just because you're pronouncing every sound in it's default form doesn't mean you won't be understood. For example, in Ukranian, o is always pronounced "oh" no matter what, but in Russian they're too lazy to open their mouths and simplify it into "ah". And despite that a Russian speaker can still understand a Ukranian speaker (unless they've had zero exposure to Ukranian language, which is unlikely but it does happen)
Aside from Latin alphabet, it sounds way harder than Russian
Predictable stress unlike in Russian. Vowels don't change how they sound depending on the stress unlike in Russian.
@@ajuc005if they at least MARKED the stresses in Russian like they do in Greek but nope you just have to guess
The é at the end of exposé is pronounced to rhyme with hey only because it's a loanword from French. It's not English at all. You mispronounced one of the most mispronounced English words too - pronunciation. It doesn't have an o before the u in the second syllable so it's nun not noun. But since a large group of native English speakers mispronounce it, you're forgiven 🙂 Otherwise a fascinating video. I'm still confused but I speak with a New Zealand accent so the comparisons with English words don't quite align with NZ pronunciations, but that's fine 🙂
the é at the end of exposé is diphthongized because dress is a checked vowel and it can't occur at the end of a word, not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, for example in 'seance'. as to the fact that it comes from french, that's kind of the point, anglophones diphthongize monophthongs when pronouncing foreign words, and this video is for anglophones who want to pronounce foreign words.
also i don't know what you're talking about with the way i say 'pronunciation,' all three instances in the video are clearly pronounced with the strut vowel, not mouth
Sorry but H/CH is still pronounced differently. At least I can distinguish these sounds.
kto z POLSKI?
ja
If you thought Polish was difficult, you should take a look at Tibetan haha
3:34 not true, the sound ,,H'' in polish is ,,H" in english but ,,Ch" in polish is ,,Kh" in english (Also h-? ch-sz)
4:50 ,,Ż" in english is ,,Zh" and i think ,,Rz" in english is ,,Rh" but i'm not sure (Also ż-g rz-r)
@@Patrolx24 these are digraphs, digraphs aren't phonemes
"Ch" graphem does not represent [x] sound anymore, contrary to what dictionaries may say. You can occasionally hear English speakers saying [h] as strong as the Polish sound, the latter is not so strong as [x] in Czech or Russian.
Łej ijzijr zen Ijnglysz!
are you polish
This is the most Polish coded video ever. P.S. Your English is very good! Most Polish speakers I've met can't properly reduce vowels in English, are you by any chance Russian?
@@Yuri-ib3ej no
I don't like digraphs anymore.
5:23 Wait...
I guess trying every IPA symbol over the summer wasn't a bad idea.
This is what happens when you refuse to use the č š ž letters, people have no idea what your nonsense letters bunchings are supposed to mean.
Well, English uses ⟨sh⟩ & ⟨ch⟩ for /ʃ/ & /t͡ʃ/, Welsh uses ⟨ll⟩ for /ɬ/. And Czech uses -both ⟨ch⟩ & ⟨h⟩ for /x/,- ⟨ch⟩ for /x/, ⟨ú⟩ & ⟨ů⟩ for /uː/ (I was almost wrong about this too, read the replies) -and ⟨e⟩ & ⟨ě⟩ for /ɛ/.-
@@astrOtuba In Czech 'ch' is unvoiced while 'h' is voiced. "ú" is used only in loanwords and at the beggining of a word while "ů" is used anywhere else. For both "e" and "ě" - the latter is spelled more as 'ye' part in the word "yes".
@@michakmiecik819 my bad, I opened the Czech IPA page and saw that /x/ can be represented by ⟨h⟩ too, but somehow forgot about devoicing, so ⟨h⟩ word finally and before voiceless consonants is voiceless /x/ (like in “práh”), but apart from that you're right. I've updated my original comment.
Ú separates some native and loanwords like _kůra_ vs _kúra_ but it still sounds the same
Perhaps you wanted to write that both ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ě⟩ are *pronounced* more like “ye” in English “yes”, not *spelled.*
Yeah, that's almost correct. Here I'll quote the _Czech phonology_ Wikipedia page:
“The letter ě is not a separate vowel. It denotes /ɛ/ after a palatal stop or palatal nasal (e.g. něco /ɲɛtso/), /ɲɛ/ after /m/ (e.g. měkký /mɲɛkiː/), and /jɛ/ after other labial consonants (e.g. běs /bjɛs/).”
So, I technically I was right about vowel sounds themselves, but the spelling actually makes a lot of sense so _dē factō_ I was wrong, sorry
0:50 In standard polish yes, but many people speak dialects on a daily basis so
"o piątej u tej kobiety" (five o'clock at this womans') becomes for example
"uo piunty u ty kobity"
Many? I don’t know anyone who speaks a dialect
@FarfettilLejl Are you from Warsaw?
@@askarufus7939 no, I’m actually from Pomerania. Perhaps this explains it since it used to be a German and Kaszubian speaking area.
Where are you from where people speak a dialect?
@@FarfettilLejl Świętokrzyskie, Lubelszczyzna. I suppose your region had much more ethnic changes not to keep a dialect. Watch a meme "Chłopie coś ty zrobił". I think she's from Świętokrzyskie...
@@askarufus7939 haha, I’ve just watched it, great lady 😂
Her Polish sounds quite standard though, perhaps with some slight differences but I wouldn’t have noticed them if I hadn’t been paying attention.
Yeah, I think here in Pomerania the dialects were levelled out because many people from other parts of Poland settled after the war. Even the Kashubian language has been largely replaced by Polish
I think merging of u/ó, h/ch, ż/rz was terrible thing and it's such a shame the distinction dissapeared
In some dialects, h/ch and ż/rz are still pronounced differently. But the merging of u and ó happened so early (around the 17th century if I remember correctly) that pretty much nowhere these are distinct.
Meanwhile the merging of h/ch is fairly recent and still developing and the merging of ż/rz generally happened somewhere around the 19th century (although started as early as the beginning of the Polish language, it was a slow process)
What was the original sound of rz? Was it like the Czech fricative trill amalgamation (ř)?
@wojwesoly yes. It was originally just a softened r, then it gradually changed into the sound of ż
7:52 bro you said dż not cz
I disagree
even as a non-Polish person i'm really annoyed when people bring it up as an example of particularly weird and hard spelling. and yeah, it's not that easy to pronounce coming from a Germanic or Romance language but.. it's not like Abkhaz or something like that.
similarly annoying when people limit themselves by thinking learning the Cyrillian or Greek alphabet would be hard. those two especially really aren't hard and it's sad to know people get scared off the joy of having to deal with aspects in Russian or the fact that Greek has only a single regular verb 🤍
Sorry, but the cyrillic alphabet would fit for polish much more. For real....
nie
That's some russian BS.
Fake. Not a ingle "kurwa" in this whole video.
poles don't say the k word all the time, it's just an overused stereotype that spread on the internet. People usually get upset when you say it. Stop believing everything you see on the internet
Not funny, bro. If you like picking up only curse words and you're not interested in the subject of learning Polish, you should just dismiss it and look for something else.
KURWA MAĆ
you're not funny
@@jendorei What did i do
O with a tail works in modern computerized world, but in the oldie times where eveything was written down ith patin caligraphy such an o would just look like an q, g or p depending on the writter. Using a in it's stead removed (nearly) all confusion.