By Ken, Teacher in Warsaw
Dzień dobry wszystkim!
Poland is a wonderful country full of amazing food, things to see, numerous nature spots and a rich history. One thing that native English speakers find extremely difficult is coming to terms with the basics of the Polish language. In this blog I will share with you some difficulties I’ve had, some interesting experiences and also my rather limited knowledge of the Polish language. You might need a “słownik”, or of course Google translate!
Pronunciation
It would take me all week to describe to you all of the problems I have had with pronouncing Polish, but in a nutshell a lot of the sounds sound very similar and are subtly different. It’s not helped that Polish uses letters that don’t exist in English, but we’ll come to that later. Going back to pronunciations, take for example the following structures: Rz, cz, ż, all of which are super common in Polish. Yes, the letter z is one of the more common letters so you’d better get used to seeing it!
If you pronounced them in English they would sound distinctly different. In Polish they sound a lot closer together and nothing like if you were to try to pronounce them in English. Rz is more like a “sh” sound, cz is more like a “ch” sound and ż……well it’s hard to explain, but it’s between a “zzz” and a “sh”. So saying words like “szczegóły”, the city “Szczecin” and the Polish goalkeeper “Wojciech Szczęsny” can be quite the mouthful! And no, none of the English commentators even come close to saying his name correctly!
However there are some easy pronunciations to get used to. Simply put, w = v and j = y. So whenever you’re listening to the English commentators say Lewandowski, you can sit there smugly knowing that it should be pronounced “Levandovski”. To give an easy example with how “j” is pronounced, the Polish for project is projekt and is pronounced “proyekt”. Similarly, Joanna is pronounced “yoanna”.
A funny mistake foreigners make is pronouncing the classic Polish dish kotlet schabowy, or pork chop in English. Of course, in English the sch part is pronounced “sk” as in school, but in Polish it sounds more like a soft “scch”. Again, it’s difficult to explain the sound without an audio clip! If you pronounce schabowy as “skarbowy”, it actually refers to taxes and nothing to do with food. Urząd skarbowy is tax office in English.
Polish names
Polish names can appear intimidating but they’re relatively easy. For men’s names we can shorten them using the -ek suffix. Of course, to be formal and polite we say their full name but to be friendly and casual we can use -ek in many cases.
For example:
- Jarosław = Jarek
- Przemysław = Przemek
- Tomasz = Tomek
And so on.
Here are some common women’s names. For example:
- Katarzyna = Kasia
- Małgorzata = Gosia
- Joanna = Asia
Note: “si” in Polish is pronounced “sh”. Yet another sh-like sound!
The last one confused me as it’s almost totally different from the original name. So much so, when one of the receptionists told me to phone Asia I thought they were jokingly trying to tell me to phone my family since I’m of Asian descent. Turns out they were telling me to phone Joanna!
Differences in the Polish alphabet
As mentioned before, the Polish alphabet features letters that don’t exist in English. These letters contain diacritics. In layman’s terms, diacritics are those little “things” above, in the middle or below a letter.
The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent) in the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź; the kropka (overdot) in the letter ż; the stroke in the letter ł; and the ogonek (“little tail”) in the letters ą, ę. And you guessed it – the pronunciations of these letters are ever-so-slightly different to their English counterparts. Who would guess that the letter ł would be pronounced “w” as in wet?
Also on a side note – Polish only has 3 tenses, past present and future. No such thing as past perfect, present perfect and so on! It’s one of the things Polish people have difficulties with when learning English.
Final thoughts
If you’re really serious about learning Polish and you don’t live in Poland yet I would highly recommend getting a Polish teacher as such is this wonderfully and painfully intricate language I would say that it’s nigh on impossible to learn without hearing a native speak it. Duolingo isn’t going to cut it! Try to surround and immerse yourself in the language as much as possible, and hopefully you’ll be able to pick up all of the subtle nuances. I’ve only just touched the tip of the iceberg, so good luck! It is super difficult but it can be done!
If you would like to immerse yourself even more and perhaps move to Poland, why not see what opportunities are available here?
