How to read Polish or something
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- Опубликовано: 31 май 2024
- Learning a new language can be fun, but who needs fun when you can read Polish instead? In this video I'm going to teach you how to read each Polish letter, so that even if you don't understand the meaning, you can at least make out the sounds. Consider it an oversimplified Polish pronunciation guide.
Wszyscy szczodrze głaszczą wstrzemięźliwe pszczoły!
0:00 start
0:55 wszyscy
2:54 szczodrze
4:58 głaszczą
6:00 wstrzemięźliwe
7:33 pszczoły
7:59 everything else
Correction about zi (7:05): There ARE cases where it can be pronounced 'zee' instead of 'ź'. Some words that start with 'i' (e.g. ignorować - to ignore) can have a form with a 'z' attached to the front (zignorować), which changes something barely significant I'm too incompetent to explain, but will be pronounced 'zee'. Or maybe even 'z-i' (z-ignorować). Unfortunately that might be an inconsistency in pronunciation you won't be able to decipher without knowing the meaning of what you're reading. Should be rare. I think.
If anyone actually knows what's up with 'zi' in more detail, feel free to reply and explain. I'm just some fucking guy.
A is A - No exceptions except the slight differences according to wikipedia's Polish phonology page, but let's not be that pedantic, nobody cares about that :p
Ignorować is unfinished (imperfective), zignorować is finished (perfective) - in normal situations you would say „zignorował ją” (he ignored her) when he did it and i.e. walked away - action is finished; you would say „ignorował ją” (he was ignoring her), when he is in the proces of ignoring, i.e. sitting in the same room acting, as if she wasn’t there
@@Machemik no it's finished, atleast I think so
my dialect is Silesian idk abu
It is different since one of them is constant steam of the given word and the other one is prefix added mostly to verbs. Like you said ignorować (to be ignoring [just ignore everything that woman say]) which is steam to the conjugation, in which some cases you ad prefix "z" z-ignorować (to ignore [just ignore something and move on]) making them two separated sounds (or like you said one sound "zee").
So in that case you need to understand etymology to read them the proper way.
It's nearly always the case, when you have a word which begins with "I" and you add a prefix "z-" you get that sound. For instance in words like: ziścić or zintegrować you also don't get the /ź/ sound instead having /z i/
you somehow gaslighted me into thinking that polish is a real language
It's just a variation of the black speech of Mordor.
he actually gaslighted me too for a second but then i saw pszczoły
zamknij się
@@Pran3kwhat are you mad for
I hated it when he convinced me that people actually use that opening D:
polish sounds like it'd be better and more consistent than english on paper but in practice it's polish
Make an actual language where alphabet makes sense and then give to biggest dumbasses makes sense.
I am polish btw
It is more consequent in reading, but good luck with that overcomplicated grammar
That's the most polish sentence I've ever read, and I love it. In polish it would be:
Wydawałoby się że polski jest lepszy i bardziej spójny na papierze niż angielski, ale w praktyce to polski.
@@Caddiar47only 7 cases. Proto-Indo-European had 8 ;)
@@Caddiar47Basic grammar easy and nobody cares about the overcomplicated gramarr subject
I learned to become a fluent Polish speaker by listening to “Hej, Sokoły” for about 5 hours straight and I regret nothing
That's where I went wrong. I listen to it in Ukrainian!
What you did to urself is crazy, dude
@@rachelnise2473Ukrainian doesn’t exist, it is just russian v2
@@diegomaradona1436 no, the slavic language's center is central Europe. Russian is slavic with a mix. Ukrainian has some Russian mix in compared with Polish. But I started learning Ukrainian because it's like Polish with easier spelling.
@@diegomaradona1436
Oh, yeah! But why Moskovity do not understand the Ukrainian version of Russian language?
The Polish "rz" sound shows up in English "treasure".
And in "vision".
@@aruraru6644 "Trerzer" and "wirzyn"
@@bartomiejtaracha4057why not wyrzyn
@@Untoldanimations depends on the accent
or genre
“Unlike in English, where letters have dreams and can be whatever the hell they want”
Lmfaooo I love this so much, painfully true 🥲
What rule of the foreign elites and spread of printing just before great vowel shift and no reforms do to the language
In english speaking countries letters have rights and can decide what they want to be. In poland letters are abused to be whatever polish people want them to be
For some reason I find that part of English really easy.
I rebember it being a major issue to be way back when I was just starting to learn english. Polish is waaaaaay simpler in this regard, but still a nightmare compared to english due to most words having a ton of different forms. For example: koszula, koszuli, koszulą, koszulę, koszulo are all just different forms of the word "shirt" (although the last one is practically never used).
I was trying to think of who says rob/mob and stop/mom w/ different "o's" and then it dawned on me... the British. Of course English confuses him when they are his main reference.😆
Fun fact - Morze może pomoże, a morze może nie pomoże, to może pomoże Pomorze, a jak Pomorze może nie pomoże, ani morze może nie pomoże, to może pomoże Gdańsk, is a completely normal sentence.
*nie pomoże
"Nie" with verbs is written separately.
@@grzegorzha. Yeah I have dys something so I make those mistakes
My favourite polish sentence
If anyone is curious it means "the sea may help, and if the sea doesn't help then maybe Pomorze (Pomerania) will help, but if Pomorze doesn't help, then maybe Gdańsk will help.
Nah, you messed it up, the first part especially, sorry. The second subsentence nakes no sense, and as someone else mentioned, "niepomoże" is not a word.
Should be: "Morze może pomoże, a jak morze nie pomoże, to może pomoże Pomorze, a jak Pomorze nie pomoże, to może pomoże Gdańsk".
Note that "to może Pomorze pomoże" is technically good and would sound good separately, but in case of this sentence it would break it up on "Pomorze", putting an accent on it, ehich would make it sound a tiny bit worse (less "rolling off of your tongue"), which is why I wrote "to może pomoże Pomorze" instead.
The accurate roasting of English made me immediately subscribe.
same here
The W->F thing is called "devoicing" and it's way more common in Polish than you might realize. D can become a T and K can turn into G. The rules for this are quite complex and not worth remembering because it's extremely natural and simply comes out like that.
It is natural but only for polish speakers. Polish usually speak "boys" with [s] at the end. English natives, using formal English - say "boyZ". The same - dog: polish "doK", english "doG" and so on.
English has this the other way, for example, the and thyroid
@@hakade5846 it is pretty much natural if you don't think about it (w is voiced and sz isn't, and you can't reconcile those without either saying wrz or fsz, the latter one being probably what you'd go for)
"It makes sense if you don't think about it" is my favourite sentence from now on...
"Wszyscy wiedzą, co to jest czas, dopóki ich nie zapytasz i poprosisz żeby ci wytłumaczyli"
@@tolep "Czas to jest to, co się dzieje gdy nic się nie dzieje. "😁
The rule I use with Russian grammar….💀
Świetny tutorial, jeszcze 11 minut temu nie wiedziałem co to Polska, teraz władam waszym językiem na poziomie C2, a w portfelu pojawił się dowód i karta do biedry
Tyle wygrać!
Jak do tego doszło nie wiem
❤
Przecież od zawsze byłeś Polakiem tylko udajesz....
Cud nad Wisłą! 😮
The way you're attacking english is phenomenal. 😂 I'm Slovak, not Polish, but I learned to speak both english and polish fluently. And while there are some crazy things in poish language, english was waaaay more confusing when I was a child. It makes no sense. Btw thanks for making me laugh.😊
Don't worry most polish people don't think polish makes sense sometimes either. At least reading it makes sense tho. However grammar and the exceptions from rules are tormenting many middle and high schoolers.
@@duqialI feel you. In Slovak we have exception from exceptions 🤦🏻♀️🤣.
This is GREAT! I'm a Ukrainian and I can guess meaning of Polish words by their sound, but not if they are written, now I have ability to read! ✊
Thank you for the video!!!
good job
Galician is very similar to Polish.
I'm Polish and found out that after just learning Ukrainian alphabet I can somewhat understand most of written text.
It's not that hard to understand Polish as a Slav when you read it and hear it at the same time but I swear, Poles just wanted to be different, looked south to Hungary, how they write and speak and just said "yes"
@@belivuk2526 hungarian did not invent any letters besides long and umlaut vowels ó ö ő ü ü á é í, and ny ly gy ty sz consonants. Hungarian also wants to do a consonant-vowel-constant pattern so doesn’t have the monster consonant clusters of Polish.
It's nice to know how to pronounce different languages so that you don't butcher them even if you don't understand them.
You can also _kind of_ understand some words' meanings if you already know another slavic language (I heard Belarussian is the closest?). Good luck with false friends of translators', though.
@@lmnkukrainian is probably a bit closer
@@lmnk Bulgarian is very different from Polish. The most similar are Slovak and Czech as they are from the West Slavic branch
@@taddufort8400 Ukrainian and Belarussian are very similar, but way further away from Polish than for example Czech or Slovak.
@@lmnk The closest are Czevh or Slovak, Belarussian is already from the eastern, not western Slavic branch. There is also southern Slavic branch.
For anyone curious, as a native Mandarin speaker, the Chinese sentence at 0:23 reads "everyone is generously caressing the self-restraining bee" (or "self-restraining bees," since there's no distinction between singular and plural here in the Chinese) (I think this is the actual meaning of the Polish sentence too...)
it's literally what the polish sentence means
On russian as well
just if something the bees are plural here cause otherwise the sentence would look like: "wszyscy szczodrze głaszczą wstrzemięźliw*ą* pszczoł*ę*" (the adjective and the noun change based on the declention), nevertheless I must admit, that it's surely a typical sentence I say everyday (definitively..) xD
How does a language function without distinguishing singular and plural?
@@samuelbucher5189numbers exist, and so does the word many
Learning simply how to pronounce words in a foreign language is very underrated. As a visitor or tourist, it can help you do things like ... pronounce something on a menu, order a pastry at a bakery with one word and a thank you, or ask for hand-gesture directions in an unfamiliar metro system or a neighborhood, by just saying the name of your destination in a questioning tone.
If you add simple courtesy words like "please, thank you, help!" your interactions with locals could improve ten-fold
1:18 fun fact, you can learn these vowels faster by walking barefoot across a floor covered in Lego.
Legend has it that when you perfect them, walking on legos only makes you taller and taller
3:10
children, touch, chop
HMMMM
it is all connected
Not anymore.
Anakin Skywalker likes this
2137
@@kakoytazabar BRO NAAAAAAH this is a violation
a children touched something and he is chopped down.
From this video I understood that in english even the vowels have freedom of speech
Even the consonants!
Tis their right 😔
I recall a story of a Pole teaching English in Japan - he started his classes by teaching how to read Polish, and then used it to teach pronunciation of the actual English words. He struggled teaching English to Japanese until he came up with this method. Story from a teacher at Polish-Japanese IT school, but I don't remember if he was telling about himself or his colleague.
Wow, I'm a linguist, and this was the very best lesson in letter pronunciation that I've ever seen. Clear, compact, funny, perfect.
My man just dropped "dżdżownica" so fucking casually in there...
🪱🪱🪱🪱🪱
Watch the last episode of maturatobzdura to realise that Polish can't even write it
@@mrkilwagwhen they walk around the biggest cities and ask hundreds of people (if it’s not staged) then you might find a couple delinquents like that
Dodge this "gżegżółka" 🤣
What? You don't want to have double the fun?
I love the state of mind when you already know Polish but click on the video regardless to watch it cuz bored
Same. At wotk bored, nothing happening so I can at least watch videos about languages (who cares thats my native one and I already know it)
TAKIE PRAWDZIWE
chce zobaczyć reakcje anglików w komentarzach
Hey, that's literally me!
bez kitu
I watched cause I liked him roasting English. I have same feeling of English being very imprecise language both phonetically and grammatically. However, phonetically, French is even worse.
This was surprisingly educational. I have a Polish wife and I've been learning Polish for years from Duolingo, and yet you dropped some nuggets in this video that I have never picked up from either of those sources.
Because Duolingo is a joke, you need to practice more on your wife, you'll learn so much faster
@@olablc531 True. The times I progress the fastest are when we visit Poland and I'm surrounded by people who are only speaking Polish.
I like Duolingo for a bunch of reasons but I'm also very aware that it doesn't give me a full education.
as a Russian native speaker, I always appreciate the mocking of the "r" sound in English. Thank you, fellow Slav
I'm not even gonna lie, Artur, you've convinced me to learn Polish. Wish me luck boys.
Woo-hooo! Good luck!
życzę tobie szczęścia
powodzenia!
powodzenia!!
Powodzenia. Polski nie jest najłatwiejszy
I once again realise that learning polish as a german is easier than through english
exactly how i feel about german
German is easier to learn than English in terms of spelling and general grammar
Wait till you get into polish ortography. Exceptions are rules, and rules are exceptions
@@xtreme3318we dont mish mash out letters, its the one thing i noticed with english, half of it is just todd howards words
"It just works" 😂
@@justuseodysee7348 there are no exceptions, only rules that we all forgot or came up with a dumb rule that is artificial instead of remembering the original one.
Remember all the stuff about prz and brz from school? No effing pbtdkgchjw, that isn't the rule, the rule was that we _started_ pronouncing [pbtdkgchjw](e)r[ij] as sz/ż sound, and even earlier probably as "Mandarin r". There was a legible difference in pronunciation, so they wrote it down as two sounds, and to this day it allows you to learn other Slavic languages more quickly!
The same with ch/h (the latter was pronounced more akin to g) and u/ó (the latter sounded more like o/ö mashed with u). I've heard people who spoke like that in my lifetime!
Don't even start me with ł/u as in auto, two different sounds :D
Whenever we rode around Poland me and other lithuanians were thinking "how do they pronounce so many syllables?", even when read separately they start combining and it then makes sense but this video truly helped making sure of that.
It's so funny to look at this as a czech guy understanding everything before hand and just watching you try explain it to english speaking blokes :D
7:05 zignorować
fuck.
zidiocenie, zindoktrynowany, zidentyfikować, zilustrować i pewnie jeszcze wiele. Ale jak się zastanowić, to trzonem tych wszystkich słów są wyrazy zapożyczone, co właściwie tylko potwierdza argument autora filmu.
Mhm, zatem mamy słowa zaczynające się na 'i' ze zmienioną formą poprzez dodanie 'z' na początku. Szkoda że o nich nie pomyślałem jak robiłem filmik, warto byłoby wspomnieć.
@@HowtoPolish *kurwa.
wszystkie to "z" + zaporzyczenie na "i"
Fun fact: Polish *used to* have double 'o' in its early days for representing the long 'o' sound. Then it got shortened to 'ó', still the same purpose. Vowel shift and other language shenanigans later, it turned into a 'u' sounding letter. There's actually some recordings of older people, where you can still hear the difference between 'o', 'ó' and 'u'
Oh, and another thing I remembered that I wanted to correct. Polish 'L' is not the same as English 'L'. English one is linguistically considered a 'dark L'. Polish also used to have this, and it left Polish language much later than old 'ó' pronounciation, so much more people are aware of this sound shift
I don't hear any difference between Polish and English 'L'. What makes the English version "dark"? Are we talking L przedniojęzykowozębowe? Because 'L' doesn't sound like that in any English word I can think of.
fun fact: english pronounciation of oo has similar story to how polish ó was formed.
The difference between u and ó can still be heard in some regional dialects like Silesian.
@@weareallbornmad410In American English, every single /l/ is extremely dark (velarized), especially in syllable codas (ends of syllables) where sometimes there's not even any contact with the roof of the mouth and all the sound comes from the bulge at the back. This is what happened with ł in Polish. In British English there is also dark L but only in syllable coda.
If you can't hear this in your pronunciation of English it simply means you don't speak like a native (excluding Irish English and maybe a couple other dialects)
LOL, you unironically helped me with reading letters from my grandma. i understand polish, but reading sometimes is tough
Remark about "i" (6:32): In most native varieties of English the i-vowels in "instant" and "feet" are not identical, in IPA they would usually be described as [ɪ] and [i:]. They differ both in quality and length. Many native speakers of slavic languages pronounce both as [i] (the Polish "i") like in this video, but the "i" in "instant" represents the same vowel as the "y" in "system" and the vowel in "feet" is pronounced a bit longer. The sound [ɪ] is somehow in between Polish "i" and "y" but a bit more open.
Yeah this is why i wished he had added IPA to help out with the pronunciation, the description of some of the vowles in particular was really confusing since some of it just seems either straight up wrong (like saying "instant" and "easy" have the same vowel) or ambiguous (like with the y sound he says its "I" as in "kit" or "system" but when hes pronouncing "wszyscy" it doesnt sound like hes pronouncing the second y exactly like I to me...)
Thank you very much for these Polish lessons, I am very grateful for this, you help a large part of people who do not speak Polish.
Greetings from Sosnowiec
Are you implying that people from Sosnowiec can't speak polish properly? xD
@@3Faidonas3 I do, and I'm tired of pretending it's not
Paszporcik jest?
@@superninja4255 Okay Joker
@@3Faidonas3 Sosnowiec is something akin to polish Ohio/Florida. It is not clear what language they speak, but I'm sure they'd love you to think it's polish.
vowels are my favorite snack, i eat them every day for breakfast
you mean for brkfst?
Ą is super yummy
yeah, as a kid I always ate letters. Vowels were really good but my parents always caught me and I had to give them back
and every night you barf an extra one onto your name?
Makes for a healthy vowel movement
For what it's worth, I think the rz in polish is similar to the j sound that the s makes in "treasure" or "pleasure" in english
You are right. Sounds Ż and RZ are the same (rzeka/ river = żaba/ frog).
But English "J" is close to Polish DŻ (jam/ dżem, budżet, gadżet).
as a Hungarian, I just wish I was a Slav in tracksuits after having seen your video. my compliments, perfect structure, extremely informative, made me try and repeat your sounds, your presentation stlye's worth a teacher medal bro! excellent tutorial!
dziekuje bardzo :)
Fun fact - there is somewhere on the internet a cold war era map of the United Kingdom, with all the place names written using Polish rules and original English pronunciation.
It was meant to be used by Polish airforce, to properly pronounce places, if they got lost there (I admire the optimism), but supposedly it's grat for English people to learn to read Polish.
I saw a map like this when I served in the army after graduating from college. My eyes still hurt remembering the spelling of "Manchester" as Menczyste. 😁
@@nicku1That must've been rather.. tiring to read 😉
U sure it's form cold war? I saw a map that is used by English to Polish but it was made during WW2 for Polish pilots fighting in the Battle of Britain.
@@Raptorclaw62Rather entertaining :)
Some Latin script based languages still re-spell foreign names. Guess the original English:
Corc Buş - Azerbaijani
Džordžs Bušs - Latvian
Džordžas Bušas - Lithuanian
... - English?
Latvian and Lithuanian add -(a)s at the end cuz masculine words have to have it in the nominative case, otherwise they kinda make no sense.
Poland be like: and his name is Jan Price
Jan Cena*
@@fajagaming5969Price means cena in polish ;)
Dżon Sina
Dżon Sina
@@jarlfenrir I know that dumbass, I'm polish, just didn't get the joke lmao
Came for the linguistics. Stayed for the humour. Its relentless.
I've shown this vid to my French friend and he had a mental brakdown, 10/10 would show again
😂😂😂
"Все щедро поглаживают сдержанных пчёл" - most sane slavic activity💀💀💀
This caught me off guard ☠️
If you wanna know - it means "Everyone is generously patting reserved bees"
Каждое утро восемь раз в неделю этим занимаюсь!
the key to taming bears
become friends with domesticated bees
acquire honey
profit
@@GeneSchnot reserved, more like calm or something. I think you can describe it as "those who try not to bite". Make sense since you're patting them
Loved the nonexistent Sponsor of the video🙌🏻maybe its Pierogi-man😁
Got a follow from me,greetings from Switzerland ✌🏻
This was super helpful! Made me realize pronunciation is actually a motor skill issue because (at least as a German speaker) several frikatives (cz, sz, w..) in a row or after a consonant are not a thing in most germanic languages so you straight up don't have the coordination even if the sound itself is easy.
Fun fact about ń/ni: In polish we both have a word "Słońce" (sun) and "Słonice" (female elephants). Just like he said, the only difference in the pronounciation, is that "ni" is a little longer than "ń".
and great story from my primary school years consists of my friend writing from hearing and mistaking this word. He wrote "morning female elephants lighten up the sky" instead of "morning sun lighten up the sky"
Technically one should be /swɔɲt͡sɛ/ and the other /swɔɲit͡sɛ/
So an extra syllable
@@kuollutkissa bazowany użytkownik IPA
@@kuollutkissa IPA用者在Baza:
No. "ni" is not a "longer ń".
ni is read as if it was written ńi. It's ń and then i. Instead of writing ńi, we write ni.
słońce has two syllables: słoń-ce, and słonice has three: sło-ni-ce.
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz next C:
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz it's actually easy, the worst part of this monstrosity comes next
Grzegorz (as a name) is literally the easiest polish tongue twister
@@Naumovych_Dmytro Chrząszczyrzewoszyce powiat łękołody
And then Konstantynopolitańczykowianeczka
Well, I cant even imagine that with polish alphabet, so take the russian version:
Гжегош Бжешченщикевич из
Хржченшчеживощице повят ленколоды
You may not be a formal educator, but you have a talent for explaining things in a sinple, easy-to-grasp way, which is the number one requirement for being a successful educator.
The irony in flaming English the entire time while trying to make Polish seem legit is hilarious. It’s so fun to see all the differences and pain points in other languages. Especially one with as deep a culture as Polish. Thanks brother.
THE LEGACY OF POLISH CULTURE MUST NOT BE FORGOTTEN 🗿🗿🗿🗿, AND OUR AGENTS WILL PERPETUATE IT AMONG PEOPLE FROM ABROAD 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅. WELL DONE, AGENT HOWTOPOLISH. 🗿🗿 YOU'VE PERFORMED ADMIRABLY. 🐻🐻🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🥟🥟🥟🥟🥟🥟🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
Lmao, made me chuckle 😂
thou definitelly are not an inhabitant of Rzeczpospolita Polska, if thou was would thou say 'Dziedzictwo polskiej kultury nie moze byc zapomniana, a nasi agenci sprawia zeby byla pomiedzy ludzmi z zagranicy, dobra robota agencie Howtopolish, popisaliscie sie znakomicie' aczywista tu brakujet diaktrywow jakie ma polski 语, ale bez nich przecietny polak zrozumi.
@@equilibrum999 Co to za bajdurzenie? Usuń to.
life is meaningless and we're all gonna die
@@equilibrum999 "dobra robota agencie Howtopolish, popisaliscie sie znakomicie"
Co to za jakieś rusycyzmy mi tu uprawia?
This is great. As a Czech this improves my ability to understand polish by A LOT. Usually you can't understand written polish because of how it's written and can only understand a bit of spoken polish because Poles speak ridiculously fast but I read some of the polish comments here and understood like 70 - 80 % :) I only wish you also went through the letters that are the same in english at least briefly. I bet there are plenty of non-english viewers with imperfect english like me who would appreciate that
It should be easy for you as Czech. Latin consenants are exactly the same in both languages as well as basic vovels. Whenever you see combination with Z go with hacek but little harder. Same with acute consonants (śńć) but little softer but if you use them plain you will be understood. If ć is on the end of the word you can go for t' probably noone will notice and it will help you produce sound.
Note that ch/h is pronounced the same (voiceless) but if you differentiate it, again noone will notice. Rz is not r with hacek go for z with hacek instead. Ó replace with U sound, Ą with ON and Ę with EN and you are good for reading.
@@vitoswat yep, that's basically what I learned in the video. Except wait, in the video, he says you are supposed to pronounce polish a with a tail as ou and polish with a tail es eou, so which is it? I did notice that in Grzegorz Brzeczyzczykiewicz (I probably wrote it wrong but you know what I mean) it seems like he's pronouncing an "n" somewhere in his surname even though it doesn't seem to be written there
I didn't think Czechs needed an explanation of the Polish writing system. It's broadly similar, except the Czech háček usually becomes a z in Polish, i.e. č ř š = cz rz sz, Czech v is a Polish w, and Czech ů is Polish ó. Czech ň is Polish ń. Slovak ť or Russian ть is Polish ć, whereas Polish ś and ź find equivalents in Cyrillic сь and зь.
@@andrejlizon8675 a with tail (ą) is pronounced similar to "on", e with tail is similar to "en". In both cases the sound is shorter and more nasal than with n. You can ask Google translate to pronounce bąk vs bongo to notice the difference. One noticeable exception is end of word where there is a reduction of ą and ę to almost o and e respectively.
ą. - au
ę - eu
Nie czytaj on en em an itp. Tak czytają tylko ruskojęzzyczni.
I’ve no intention of learning Polish. I’ve never had any intention of learning Polish. Your video popped into my feed. I was intrigued. I loved your opening statement about your qualifications and immediately subscribed. Who knows, I might even give learning Polish a whirl, just to be chic! 😂
Please make many more videos and much more often. As an English person with many polish friends, these videos are helping immensely. Plus I say to get myself out of trouble when I introduce myself as Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz.
7:10 Some examples of "zee" pronunciation would be:
- zignorowany
- zintegrowany
Etc.
Alright, let me try to put my education to good use and explain (and correct) some of this stuff more like a linguist would - there's a chance some of you are also language nerds and got curious about Polish spelling and pronunciation:
1:35 Devoicing, the process through which voiced consonants (d, b, v, etc) turn voiceless (t, p, f), is actually one of the most distinct features of Polish phonology. I don't know the details, but in general, if you have a consonant cluster (a couple of consonants in a row) and at least one of the consonants is voiceless, all other become voiceless too. The same thing happens at the beginning of 'wstrzemięźliwie' - besides the «w», rz gets devoiced to sz/sh /ʃ/, which OP seems to have missed. Besides that, all voiced final consonants also get devoiced, so for example, bóg is pronounced /buk/.
2:20 the Polish «c» is an affricate, that is, 'ts' sort of 'pronounced at the same time'. The English «ch» is also an affricate - 'tsh' pronounced at the same time.
3:10 this goes for many other Polish sounds, not just cz, ch and ć. 'Softer' here means that you press your tongue flat against the palate, 'harder' means that you make your tongue more upright and touch the palate only with the very tip. (This is a gross oversimplification and may not even be fully accurate, describing this thing is a mess)
4:08 It's actually not that dumb - the same goes for u and ó. Rz and ó undergo apophony while ż and u don't. An example of apophony would be 'oo' changing into 'ee' in 'blood' and 'bleed' or 's' into 'c' in 'advise' and 'advice'. It happens a lot in Polish. That's why it's "BÓBR kurwa" and then "o ty chuju BOBRZE" - «ó» turns into «o» and «r» into «rz». This doesn't happen with «ż» and «u». It's a nightmare to learn for a Polish native speaker learning to write, but I imagine it's actually quite useful for foreigners leaning the language.
1:21 5:35 6:35 Ą and ę are a mess and I don't think I can't explain it simply. They have traditionally been described as nasal vowels, but more accurately they can be described as o /ɔ/ and e /ɛ/ followed by a homorganic nasal consonant, that is one that becomes a /m/ before b and p; /n/ before t, d, s, and other consonants made with the tip of the tongue on the front of the palate; and /ŋ/ (the English 'ng' as in 'doing') before k and g. (If you know some Japanese then yes, that's the same thing that happens with ん, more or less.)
But it's even more complicated, because often that nasal sound will be an approximant, a semi-consonant like the English 'y' and 'w'. So in the case of "wstrzemięźliwy", the sound can be a /ɲ/ (doesn't exist in English, the Polish «ń», Spanish «ñ» or French/Italian «gn»), a nasalized 'y' /j̃/ or a nasalized 'w' /w̃/.
At the end of words, ą becomes /ɔŋ/ ('ong') while ę loses its nasal sound and is pronounced like a regular «e». Some people insist on pronouncing it as 'eng' /ɛŋ/, but it's generally considered a hypercorrection. 5:42 that 'it should always sound the same' is actually a common misconception and a feature of speech of pretentious assholes.
6:28 «i» is actually not a vowel in this position, it's the consonant /j/, like the English «y» in 'yes'
7:08 as the OP and others pointed out, «zi» pronounced 'zee' appears when the prefixes z- and roz- are attached to verbs beginning in «i», like in 'zignorować'. I can't think of any other cases where that happens, but there may be some more.
8:24 There's no difference between them in modern Polish, but Czech and Slovak have retained this distinction
9:56 as you may have noticed, «drz» and «dż» are actually not the same, despite «rz» and «ż» being so. One of the rarest features of the Polish language is that we differentiate affricates and their respective consonant clusters. 'Drzem' is different from 'dżem' and 'trzy' is different from 'czy'. So «cz» is 'tsh' "pronounced at the same time" - an affricate, like the English 'ch'; while «tsz» is 'tsh' "pronounced one after the other", or usually more like "chsh" - a consonant cluster. While this distinction is rare in English and may not be made by some speakers at all, you may still hear a difference in how you pronounce "batch it" and "batshit".
«Dż» and «drz» are the voiced equivalents of «cz» and «tsz» respectively. «Dz» and «dź» are affricates.
If you're wondering why the hell I would write all that, I have a lot of homework and I needed to find some way to procrastinate. Enjoy
What a fantastic read, thank you. Only now have I realised that I pronunce ę as e in the word endings
thank you, very cool (1st yr student of english philology)
:þ
Brilliant humour! Loved it!❤
It's your pronunciation system that has made us such good friends for a thousand years.
És itt a magyar kiejtés, összehasonlításképpen: Vsisci scsodzse gvoascsouv fscsemiözslive pscsouvi.
Ironically, your videos have actually been one of the most helpful things trying to learn Polish lol.
one thing worth mentioning: polish has this thing called final devoicing, meaning that if a word ends in a consonant, it will be read without the vocal folds vibrating. it can be most easily seen with voiced consonants that have voiceless counterparts (b-p, g-k, d-t, w-f, z-s, ż/rz-sz, ź-ś, dż-cz, dź-ć). so the word 'chleb' isn't read as 'hleb' but as 'hlep'; 'sekretarz' is read with 'sz' at the end, 'miód' with 't' etc.
and if in a word, a voiced sound is next to a voiceless one, the voiced will become voiceless: wszyscy→fszyscy; podstępny →potstępny; żabka→żapka
side note: if you're not sure if a consonant is voiced or not, a quick way to check is to cover your ears with your hands, or place a hand on your throat around where adam's apple is located, and say the sound. if you feel vibrations it's voiced :)
Other thing worth mentioning: it doesn't really matter and probably comes naturally when you use the language for a while.
You can pronounce it just as it's written and it will be perfectly understandable, but it might sound a bit weird and be a bit harder to pronounce.
@080 it's like when some polish people speaking english say 'thinkink' instead of 'thinking' etc., it's natural for us
@@nambu1080 Don't care about it. "wszyscy→fszyscy" will make automatically when you speaking faster.
for the people saying that you shouldn't care about it, because it's natural - it's natural in polish but not in english and many other languages. someone not aware of it might try pronouncing the word a harder way, thinking that's how it said, when in reality it's pronounced in an easier way that is actually correct. obviously you'd probably still be understood, but what's the harm in knowing how to say something correctly?
And there is initial devoicing in "wszyscy", that's why it's fszyscy, the voiceless sz make the w voiceless too.
We have a similar thing with the “v” and “f” in Slovak, it’s called “spodobovanie”, which translates to “assimilation of voicing”, its meaning is to make speaking some words easier. For example, word “všetko” (means “everything” or “all” in Slovak), is read like “fšetko”, because the V is harder to pronounce. The “š” is just read as “sh” in English word “shell”, or “sz” in Polish as mentioned in the video.
Editing the comment second time, this video is very fascinating, even for me as a Slovak. The most surprising thing for me was that you guys don’t have words with “zi”, we do say “zima” (winter) as “zeema” (but the “ee” is short, like you pronounced it in the video).
we have such words - mostly when you have latin word with z- prefix added. Like "zignorować" or "zinterpretować".
9:01 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
its very cool you have the confidence to make these videos without higher education. higher education is incredibly overrated and you clearly have a passion for teaching. earned my sub and respect
As someone who can read the IPA and has a decent(-ish) understanding of Polish phonology you did a surprisingly good job at explaining the sounds.
Judging by how he pronounces polish, he must be from Poland, so I guess he knows what he is talking about ;)
@@jarlfenrirI'm not talking about the pronunciation I'm talking the way he explains to foreigners how to make the sounds which while not perfect is not that bad.
May I take a bit of an issue with your use of English grammar?
@@andruloniCould you please point out the specific parts in which I used incorrect/unnatural grammar?
@@kakahass8845 ' as someone who can read IPA (...) you did a surprisingly good job'
logically parsing the sentence would imply the vid author reads IPA and understands Polish phonology, yet you're still surprised at the capability to share the knowledge.
I've been learning Polish for 2 months now, and this channel is a blessing. Very silly and entertaining to watch. Bardzo dziękuję!
i jak Ci idzie?
@@brzesbnik4482Dobrze, mam jeszcze troche problemow z pisaniem zdan, ale wszystko rozumiem bo jestem z Ukrainy
@@LuniFoxo no i gitara. powodzenia życzę
@@LuniFoxo Tylko nie zapomnij jak bedziesz sie przeprowadzac do Polski to tylko na Chrząszczyrzewoszyce powiat Łękowody i zmien nazwisko na Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz
@@rafalchybowskinie będę tego wszystkiego czytać 💀💀
Bardzo mi się podobało. Dobra robota. Mieszkam w Polsce 5 lata i umiem mówić po polsku. This was a hilarious way of teaching someone. And makes perfect sense. Loved it.
Your videos are unironically awesome to watch, although polish isnt always so simple, as it takes some time to fully get... certain grammatical concepts, pronounciation (except the softening and shit) it very straight forward
8:17 "It's exactly the same as in English, except it has two variants. [...] But honestly I can't hear the difference, so most likely neither will you."
While true in Polish, in Czech language there is a difference. The "H" sound is produced in larynx with your throat vibrating when you say that sound. And "CH" is produced in your palate; your vocal chords don't vibrate when pronouncing this letter. Which means there is an audible difference between "hladit" and "chladit" or between "hodit" and "chodit" in this language.
This makes me believe Polish had a similar difference, but just simplified it into a single sound over the time. I'm pretty sure it's gonna be something similar for the RZ / Ż duo, but I'd have to be a linguist to be able to explain that one. Which I am not.
Either way, I'm just very glad to see another video from you. They're always a treat to watch.
The difference still existed in Polish a couple decades ago. Now it's only present in the eastern dialects in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. My grandfather travelled to Cyrillic-usinf countries for his job and he saw the change happen when his surname stopped being written with г and started being written with х.
The difference seems to have been preserved in the Silesian language and the silesian dialect of polish too
I believe the difference in Polish was between /ç/ and /x/ or maybe /x/ and /h/
Probably polish rz was read smth like czech ř but dunno 🤷♀️
@@karczameczkaPretty sure that's exactly what happened.
I'm really loving these "how to read keyboard smashing", please, do more!
Brilliant, subscribed. I never through that Polish as a language actually existed I thought it was a joke on the English. You have made it very much simpler and I now think I may be able to learn it thank you
Awesome. VERY Entertaining. For someone who doesn't know Polish at all it moves really fast. I understand a little Polish so I was able to keep up.
Miłość nie jest nam obca
Znasz zasady, znam je ja
Ze wszystkich poświęceń, o których myślę Nie dostałabyś ich od innego faceta
Chcę ci tylko powiedzieć, jak się czuję
Chcę, abyś zrozumiała
Nigdy z ciebie nie zrezygnuję
Nigdy cię nie zawiodę
Nigdy nie ucieknę i porzucę
Nigdy nie dam ci powodu do płaczu
Nigdy się nie pożegnam
Nigdy cię nie okłamię i zranię
Znamy się od dawna
Zostałaś zraniona
Ale jesteś zbyt nieśmiała żeby to przyznać Oboje wiemy co się dzieje
Znamy tę grę i w nią zagramy
I jeżeli zapytasz mnie co czuję
Nie mów mi że tego nie widzisz
Nigdy z ciebie nie zrezygnuję
Nigdy cię nie zawiodę
Nigdy nie ucieknę i porzucę
Nigdy nie dam ci powodu do płaczu
Nigdy się nie pożegnam
Nigdy cię nie okłamię i zranię
Nigdy z ciebie nie zrezygnuję
Nigdy cię nie zawiodę
Nigdy nie ucieknę i porzucę
Nigdy nie dam ci powodu do płaczu
Nigdy się nie pożegnam
Nigdy cię nie okłamię i zranię
didn't expect to get rickrolled in polish, lol
@@ayamii37 We got Rysiek wyrolowany
Bez drogi polski Ryszard rollada
人类，波兰国就说了“wlasnie zostaliscie wszyscy zrikrollowani”在波兰语。
@@ditozys3490 Po prostu Norwegia
2:31 blud did us dirty 💀
Dzizas
I was in contact with quite a few people from poland, chezhia and Slovakia. My observation is cyrrillic alphabet is the one for them. If I write the polish words in cyrrillic they sound so natural and easy. We can trace the roots of the problem back to 9th century AD and the failed mission to Moravia of Cyrril and Methodius. Their students were prosecuted and while fleeing, some (Kliment, Konstantin, Naum, Angelarii) were welcomed in Bulgaria and spread the glaggolic script. Then the Cyrrillic alphabet was constructed as an upgrade. Warm regards and respect from a fellow bulgarian.
Love how I watched the whole video even though I already know Polish (haha świetne wideo!)
As a Mandarin speaker I'm surprised by how many sound I can pronounce in this crazy language, like rz is equivalent to zh (jh), ś is equivalent to x (si), ć is equivalent to q (ci) and so on. But of course the consonant clusters is basically impossible to say to me lol.
Im Polish and honestly, I found most of it not realllybhard to roughly pronounce once I noticed that many constants are quite simmilar to Polish ones, especially those that English speakers struggle with.
4:20 - as a child i red Tarzan as "TaŻan" - from rolling over in something. It made sense.
it was actually pronounced that way normally about 100 years ago
@@respectthefish4992im not that old
Go-dzi-la have this too :)
I think in one of the Tytus comic books they actually wrote "tażan" once as a joke.
@@respectthefish4992 My grandfather always said it like that.
это самое понятное и забавное видео о польском произношении)
спасибо! мои зубы всё ещё выпадают при попытке прочитать что-то на польском, но глаза уже почти перестали косить)
а если серьёзно, видео классное и очень полезное для тех, кто хочет сам выучить язык с нуля.
I'm a Brazilian portuguese speaker and I just can't pronounce "wszyscy", it's literally impossible for me.
You made me try it for 10 minutes straight and all I can say is a broken "fshistzi". There are lots of people with Polish surnames here, you can already imagine how we butcher the pronunciation.
But at least your vowels are not mentally challenged like in English. 10/10.
As someone who was present most of the time during the occupation, I can indeed confirm Polish people did eat their vowels :/
We will eat you now
come on! we had nothin else to eat because of what you did!
That's why we made your clerks write "Brzęczyszczykiewicz"s over and over
Usually they just eat pierogi, potatoes and sour milk
what? Are you maybe as old as a balded parrot of sir Darwin? 🧐
I feel like many people who watch your videos have no interest in learning Polish or to visit Poland any time soon (myself included). Goes to show how entertaining these videos are
I'm pretty sure many people here are from Poland and just watch it for entertaiment
Me as well :))
I'm both, except I'm a little too broke yet to do any of that and make use of it
Z tobą będąc Polakiem, nauczyłem się polskiego na nowo, dzięki!
A bardziej na serio to te materiały serio uczą i pomimo tego, że znam polski, to dzięki temu filmowi lepiej zrozumiałem angielski- więc działa to w dwie strony :P
Wow this is really intricate. Good job coming up with some compelling lore for this "Polish" language.
i'm so glad to know i wasn't reading polish wrong this whole time!!!! I've always found it funny how people freak out looking at polish words and when I was a kid I didn't even question it... but that's just what happens when you learn the language as a wee little kid through elementarz and iconic polish short-stories and poetry. though uh, I definitely can't speak. reading and writing is the only thing I'm decent at.
3:58 "genre" in English uses ż/rz sound
It's also how 's' in treasure and pleasure sounds because English makes no sense.
Because genre is a French word 😉
"It makes sense if you don't think about it" is my favorite thing I have heard today
Currently learning Polish, and this video helped me a lot with my pronunciations!
大家都慷慨地抚摸着克制的蜜蜂：Everyone is generously caressing some self-restrained bees
Fair to say that is a grammatically correct sentence in Chinese, even up to the usage of structural particles
: )
On the 'w' changing into an 'f':
What was touched upon in the video is devoicing [ubezdźwięcznienie] of voiced consonants like 'w' into 'f', 'd' into 't', 'rz' into 'sz', 'dz' into 'c'. It's pretty similar to devoicing in English - change of a voiced consonant [dźwięczna głoska] into a voiceless [bezdźwięczna] one.
There's also the opposite process, which is voicing [udźwięcznienie] - 'f' into 'w' and so on.
There's quite a few different types of both of those, but the good thing is that almost all of them happen naturally as you speak - it would be inconvenient or difficult in some words or combinations of words to say them perfectly as they "should" be pronunced, so they get simplified to flow more naturally.
A few examples:
'grób' (grave) -> "gróp" (this and the next one are examples of the very common end-of-word devoicing),
'wąż' (snake) -> "wąsz",
'jabłko' (apple) -> "japko" (the 'ł' also gets left out, just gets in the way when speaking quickly),
'prośba' (request) -> "proźba" (a fairly common type of voicing - the 'ś' gets voiced into 'ź' in anticipation of 'b', a voiced obstruent - a sound that is produced by obstructing airflow; try saying "śb" and "źb" quickly and see which flows better and feels more connected).
"ubezdźwięcznienie" looks like a word that could have a glorious appearance in the video as well...
I just discovered this channel. As a Polish speaker, this is the best shit I've seen. Shared it with everyone. Please make more!!! ❤
Absolutely loved this rant of a lesson!
9:01 -- minecraft old damage sound button
Why am I even watching this? I'm Polish. 😂 I like your sense of humour.
Fajne przykłady podajesz, nie ma zadęcia jak na innych lingwistycznych kanałach. Masz talent i zadatki na dobrego nauczyciela. 💪🏻
It's just fun to see your own language picked apart. Gallagher (watermelon smashing guy) had a bit where he would point out the absurdities of English. Stuff like how one and won sound the same, but tomb and comb don't, but comb and poem DO.
Please make more of these videos they are hilarious 🤣🤣
👏👏👏
"Truly English makes no sense and should be abolished" 10/10 x)
Every one of two lines here is my favourite :D Aaaand I hoped for Monty Phyton reference and there is!
Pozdrowienia ze Szczecina, chłopie 👍
When we (Poles) are watching English TV shows, the spelling contests often make raise of eyebrows eyebrows. No such thing in Polish, every word sounds exactly as it is spelled.
Let me remind you of DYKTANDO. Which is basically the same thing just in written form.
1:27 Both u/ó and ż/rz used to have different sound.
in some words you naturally pronounce them the old way
Some dialects still use the old pronunciation, additionally, in Ukrainian language which have similarities with Polish these letters still have an old sound as well.
Rz used to be softer than ż and ó was closer to o than u (simplified explanation) Some people decide to use the old pronunciation.
I got to love how easily decipherable polish pronunciation are.
I act as a living census and I don’t think one person has ever pronounced it right on their first try
When the Russia-Ukraine war started we got a Ukrainian classmate. He got away mere weeks before hitting 18 years old but then had to move back after reaching his 18 here.. stopped getting replies a few weeks after he had to return..
Despite never being to Slovakia before, he learned very fast. Once I asked him how is he able to master this language when I - a native speaker struggle myself.
He told me they had mandatory Polish back at his old school and (his words) once you master that bullshit all Slavic languages are too easy.
I miss you Денис.. I hope you are okay buddy..
Well, glad to see that we've become a benchmark for difficulty in the Slavic world, I suppose.
Im gonna guess that the reason why W becomes like an F is cause SZ is a voiceless sound so its easier to pronounce them together if the whole thing is voiceless.
this is the exact reason. In word like "wrzód" you would pronounce w correctly, becasue it's followed by voiced rz.
It also happens later in the video with fschemmienzhlivvay or whatever at 6:00
@nrirI think the rule is actually the other way around. You pronounce "rz" normally as a "ż/rz" sound because it follows a voiced "w" consonant. If for example a "t" (voiceless) was before "rz" you would have to pronounce "rz" as "sz" because voicless t transform the voiced rz that follows it to voiceless sz. (So Trz would sound the same as Tsz). I mean it's kinda complicated so your logic is probably quite correct too
@@mysteriousdoge1298 No, they are correct, it's the so called "ubezdźwięcznienie wsteczne" - "reverse voicelessness", voicing of the cluster is determined by its ending.
@@abarette_Yeah, this abomination you just spawned looks even worse than the real deal.
This was almost painless, really funny, made me think of ze Frank, And I probably would have learned something if I didn't know most of it already. Unfortunately the parts that I don't know yet, I still didn't learn. Apparently I have trouble with softer and harder sounds like sz /si . When I say them they both sound the same. When I hear them, they both sound the same to me. Also I have a problem with now I wish I could remember what it was... Oh right! Things like zdz. Back in the '80s before I gave up I was very proud of my ability to finally pronounce the word for book. I think I got it right. I didn't have anybody to test it out on. But it certainly was intimidating to begin with. Most of this sentence is just as intimidating honestly actually it's worse. Except for the first word which I already know. I checked to see if there was more or how often you post and I'm not convinced. It's springtime and the pollen is killing me and my schedule is off and I fell asleep somewhere between 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. and didn't wake up until almost 9:00 p.m. and I'm going to be up the rest of the night so I might as well do something productive because I'll probably sleep all of tomorrow and the rest of my life is ruined. In the meantime I need to find someplace creative to share this. It really is funny. And also I belong to a group where people post Polish words and then other people complain that they should also post the pronunciation and then people come back and say If you didn't go and look it up yourself then you aren't going to learn it anyway and as I hear Polish people do, their follows 322 comments of people arguing with each other. So maybe it will be good or maybe it will be bad or maybe it won't be approved by the moderators who knows. Also I misspelled the word there. But it wasn't me. I know it's wrong. I was using voice to text. And they chose the wrong form. I'm embarrassed to think people will think I'm illiterate but it's too much work to go back and long press until I can select the entire word and fix it. So let's just assume that I know it's wrong.
Do you think you might be back sooner than 3 years from now?
I'm trying to put out at least 1 video each month this year, hopefully more. And what a comment, makes me feel strangely fortunate to have a keyboard.
As a Pole I'm really confused how anyone could not hear the difference between sz and ś or cz and ć but i guess it's because it's my native language and my brain is wired differently and hears the difference instantly. I have problems with english vowels too. Sometimes it's hard to hear difference between some of them.
I speak both English and Spanish with excellent pronunciation. I have learned to sing songs in Latin, French, German, and even one kind of Filipino dialect. Never in all my years have I had such a struggle to make combinations of consonant sounds like this. Polish is truly another form of beast
Thank you, very helpful. Greetings from Lublin