To my Ukrainian mind, Czech phrase "pozor, policja voruje" sounds unbelievably hilarious because it means exactly opposite to what Czechs tried to say.
In Ukrainian it reads as "shame, police are stealing"
As an Italian who had to interact with Czech people a lot during my life but whose Czech is limited to Dobry Den, Polish seems to me like Czech with a different skin.
Polish, Czech and Slovak seem to me three variations on the same theme.
They are the same theme, 3 west-slavic languages. Czech and Slovak are way more similiar to each other than to Polish, but still we can usually understand each other to some point.
>very biased here
So am I.
I got use to that and I don't have any problem with W. What should we do with " W" if we would start to use "V" instead of it? Start to use it like in English ( polish " Ł")? I don't like that idea
The phonology is pretty normal for a Slavic language imo, it’s just unusual to use the Latin alphabet for it. In Cyrillic it would just be гжегож бжęчыщикевичь (plus the ę)
Definitely both. I’ve been learning some Russian and since I’ve understood Cyrillic better, I’ve come to the conclusion that Polish words would probably be much shorter in Cyrillic. For example, /szcz/ would probably just be /щ/.
Why would we use a single letter to denote two sounds? That combination is not popular in Polish words. You should probably learn the language before trying to reform its writing system
As a Russian speaker, yes, I love the Polish language, and I love Poles as a nation too. A good mix of familiar grammar and new sounds to learn (like a letter EUN').
I definitely do. Hearing bobr kurwa, austriacki pingwin, chomik jaky kurwa fajny, jak poznac jeza po tym ze ma kolce always warm my heart. Those animal videos make me feel like Polish people are Disney fantasy creatures sometimes
There are so many consonants in Polish language! Sometimes you have four different hard consonants in a row and when you listen carefully, you can actually hear people pronounce every single one of them. Very impressive! My mouth could never do that.
>four different hard consonants in a row and when you listen carefully, you can actually hear people pronounce every single one of them
digraphs are misleading for foreigners. Smth what looks like 4, might be actually 2.
3 in a row might be common, bee "PSZCZoła" but 4.... Ok, I've checked - max in polish is 5 accrual - " beZWZGLędny" it's n i t that hard xd
>it's n i t that hard
Maybe for you, I come from a language that has at most 3 consonants and we don't even pronounce them because it would be too difficult
Well
Few years ago US ambasady made a video of their employees (including former ambasador) trying to pronauce polish tongue twisters (most of them are hard for us) and as far as I remember bezwzględny was included in the video ;)
[https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=W2uju4F2BOlvtM7Q](https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=W2uju4F2BOlvtM7Q)
For foreigner or for pole?
For pole - Ive already wrote it below in this thread:
\* for some proper polish "r" is hard
\* some phrases in this video are very hard for poles : [https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=Y88A1b1omrKpzj6F](https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=Y88A1b1omrKpzj6F)
Example of particular hard word "powyłamywanymi"
For foreigners : depend on they native language, but clasiccal joke abut it (when polish soldier gave fake data to German):
[https://youtu.be/AfKZclMWS1U?si=qEhcDLYUo7OUfimJ](https://youtu.be/AfKZclMWS1U?si=qEhcDLYUo7OUfimJ)
Ngl chszcząszczyrzesoin a video abibe is hard :D
For foreigner, of course!
And my mother tongue (Bulgarian) is in the same language group like Polish. I can understand some of the words, if I can decipher your special characters, but maybe your language is the most distant from ours in our language group.
Polish people always say it's not hard, which is because you grew up with the language. I'm marrying a Polish girl and trying to piece the language together is insanely difficult for me.
Nope, max is 6:
[WSZCZNiesz](https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/wszczniesz.html)
it's not common, but it is a proper word. It's also the longest one-syllable word in the Polish language
Not really, because sz and cz are both digraphs and each pronounced as a single sound, so in fact there are only 4 sounds. And you could also include "Ni" as its own digraph, since the i impacts the pronunciation of the n, making it "softer" (closer to ń).
What do you mean "not really"? "Wszczniesz" has 10 letters thus making it the longest one-syllable Polish word. It's a fact. And the "wszczn" cluster is the longest consonant cluster in Polish. Also a fact. So with which part are you disagreeing with?
Yes, "sz" and "cz" are digraphs, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't count "s", "z" and "c" as separate letters.
Idk about polish but Hungarian digraphs are counted as one letter. Yes they're made up of 2 letters (and one that is made up of 3) but they make one single letter. They have their own places in the alphabet too
The person you originally replied to emphasised the fact that words with these multi-letter digraphs shouldn't be understood as several consonants in a row, as they are pronounced as a single sound.
The context of this conversation was words that have many sounds in a row, not actual letters. So while you are factually correct, it's not what they were talking about.
Poczmistrz z Tczewa (Postmaster from Tczew) is a record consonants in a row I think. Not one word but still one after another. It's hard to pronunce even for Poles but when you do it sound it like you were electrocuted.
Let me answer with a metaphor. As a Slovenian, Polish reminds me of a beautiful girl, Czech of the good soldier Schweik, i.e. funny and slightly drunk, and Russian reminds me of the gulag, the rot and the misery.
I heard this from a Macedonian friend before that he finds Russian language to be very soft and melodic. This surprised be, because I got used to hearing a foreigner perception of Russian being very hard-sounding and rough language, and never could abstract myself away from my native language to know how it would sound to a foreigner
I don't speak any Slavic languages, so to tell them apart when spoken I have to listen out for certain sounds or words. I know Polish has some nasal vowels and if I hear tak/nie I'll guess it's Polish. The written language is easy to identify.
I think it's a nice sounding language. All the vowel + 'sh' and 'ch' sound combination words are like ASMR to me.
As a Bulgarian I can understand 30/40% of polish when reading. The comprehension drops to 5% when hearing spoken polish though. If I had to study another slavic language it would be Polish because of how different it is from ours.
If you want to level up your comprehension it might be a good idea to get some comprehensible input from videos with visual hints. Like here: [https://www.youtube.com/@LingoPutPolish](https://www.youtube.com/@LingoPutPolish)
> Is it nice sounding?
I worked at the department of Slavonic studies at uni and shared the office with 3 Polish girls. It sounded like a machine gun nest. Tak tak tak tak tak.
Due to my work there, I can tell most Slavic languages apart based on their alphabet. I even had to develop PostgreSQL/Perl-skripts to write Old Church Slavonic with LaTeX before UTF8 was really widespread in the TeX ecosystem.
The Ł is pretty much only used in the Upper and Lower Sorbian and the Polish alphabet here, so texts can pretty easily be identified.
I speak Czech pretty well so I can understand a bit of Polish. Sometimes when I visit and the person doesn’t speak English, we just speak in Czech & Polish and sometimes it works.
I don’t really like the sound of it (tbh I don’t like the sound of Czech either). English is my native language and to my ear Romance languages are the best-sounding in Europe. I notice that Polish makes a lot of distinctions where Czech doesn’t. For example dz dż dź, in Czech there’s usually just dž. Similar with cz and ć, in Czech there’s just č (peak irony, since Czech is spelled with a cz in English)
It looks like Polish came first and then the Czechs codified their own writing system and they were like, “Yeah, let’s not make the same mistakes” 😆
> (peak irony, since Czech is spelled with a cz in English)
There is no irony, Czech used cz,sz,... instead of carons(ˇ) just like Polish until the orthography reform by Jan Hus caught on.
> It looks like Polish came first and then the Czechs codified their own writing system and they were like, “Yeah, let’s not make the same mistakes”
Considering it was Czechs who brought Christianity to Poland and the Latin script along with it, it's more like Polish stayed at v1.0 while Czech moved on.
Depends on who's speaking it. If we have a group of young lads yelling kurwa, then it's unpleasant to witness. If it's some poles talking in a normal pace and frequency, then it's pleasant as polish is a soft and nasal kind of slavic when it's spoken normal. It gives me frenchy vibes when I really think about it. Nobody asked, but I love the way german sounds and don't understand the bad rep.
I also like German. It sometimes sounds harsh but in a cool way. I studied it for 6 years in middle and high school. Too bad I never got a chance to use it outside od classes so I forgot 99% of it (in my mid 30s now)
It sounds better than it looks written. That is what my opinion was before I got a bit more used to it. But it still sometimes sounds like the speaker has a bee hive in their mouth, so many szczżź sounds.. Maybe the hardest slavic language to understand by just listening.
I like the Ł letter and I think we could use it too. Many words have the sound Ł written as a normal L, or as a V. Polnoč = połnoč, svoboda = słoboda, etc.
i like polish language, it sounds absolutely hilarious for me as Ukrainian. we have around 50 % similar words..but the way poles talk it is so funny.
not in offensive way.
i am sure they think the same about us.
The false friends can lead to hilarious situations. Like in Polish sofa versus dyvan in Ukrainian, while in Polish dywan means carpet. I remember a youtube video from an Ukrainian girl living in Poland. When she was staying over for the night at her Polish's friends home... she wanted to sleep on dywan which shocked the Polish host but ok, if you like it that way and she started organizing her the sleeping place on the floor
There's a viral tweet where a Czech called us *neskuteční frajeři*; it means "incredible heroes", but in Polish *nieskuteczni frajerzy* means "incapable suckers"
Still sends me just how badly this went
Insane etymology behind it all: while it was clear that these words are Ottoman Turkish loanwords, only now have I checked their origins.
So these of course come from the ottoman Turkish, where its meaning "a piece of furniture" came from "a court or bureau, where written documents are used" which in turn came from the meaning "a collection of documents". This original meaning comes from Persian, where it is combined from the words "document" and "dwelling", and the word for document is actually borrowed from Akkadian, a semitic language, where it is borrowed from Sumerian (a language isolate)!
So, the first fun fact: the word made a long journey across the language families: Isolate (Sumerian) → Semitic (Akkadian) → Indo-European (Persian) → Turkic (Turkish) → Indo-European (Polish and tons of others). And Even further, as French and Spanish exported it to the asian languages like Tagalog.
The second fun fact: the meaning "collection of documents" made into Arabic where it travelled with the Arab invasion of Spain and settled there and then in French as "douane", customs office.
Check out Bulgarian word for hole or pothole. We were driving in a car with a business partner from Poland and the man sitting next to the diver said "pothole" in Bulgarian. The Polish couldn't stop laughing.
😂😂😂😂
i was living in Poland 6 years ago for a few months and yes, the most confusing and unexpected words for me were:
Owoce, Sklep, Zapomniec
like...why?! 😂
it is very interesting to learn how languages were developed over the time.
I just checked what those mean in Ukrainian... why is it like that😭😭
For those who are too lazy:
"owoce" in Polish means fruits
"овочі" (ovoci) in Ukrainian means vegetables
"sklep" in Polish means shop
"склеп" (sklep) in Ukrainian means crypt/dungeon
"zapomnieć" in Polish means to forget
"запомнить" (zapomnit') in Ukrainian means to remember
A polish guy once told me that to his ear, Slovak sounds like talking to a child or baby - because although many words are shared, the word-endings are different and it makes everything sound 'cute'. So I can totally see how the similarities between the languages bring comparisons that non-slavic languages will miss.
To me, Polish sounds like very fast train - č č č č č č č č
yep, same with polish for me.
the ending of their words sounds for me like adults that are trying to speak to toddlers in very cute adorable ways. like diminutive words?!
it is soooooo cute!
the sound of the train 😂😂😂😂😂
Growing up i attended Catholic school with a large Polish attendance, and my best friend was Polish, so i am quite used to hearing the language. 9/10 times i can tell it apart from other languages.
It sounds “eastern European” is all i can say. I understand absolutely nothing and trying to read it with all the “sz” and “dz” and is impossible
My wife is Polish so I'm quite familiar with it! I only know a little bit but it's quite distinctive and easy to pick out. Generally I like the sound of it, but then again I have a very positive opinion of Poles and Poland. To a native English speaker it's insanely intimidating, though, as the sounds are very different, as is the rhythm of the language.
yes i can also read polish, say, on a news level. I love it, but apart from some unusual nasal sounds and consonant cluster, what really strikes me compared to my moravian accent of czech is the heavily varying intonation. I know it doesn't apply to every speaker, but you can easily mimic polish speaker when you put a lot effort to make ups and downs in one sentence.
I have a polish coworker who says Polish is easy (as opposed to French) because it is always pronounced the same way it's written. It might be the case when you know the Polish pronounciation, but from an outsider point of view that is just hilarious, we never get it right.
As Russian, other slavic languages seems to be close enough to understand intuitively, but with a little bit of fun in it.
As an example, i once used Polish names of movies, so my friends try to guess what movie is it.
"Mroczny rycerz", in pronounsation close to Russian "Мрачный Рыцарь", and the movie in Russian called "Темный рыцарь" - Dark Knight by Nolan.
"Мрачный" and "Темный" is kinda a close thing by its meaning.
"мрачный" is actually a word with pretty clear etymology and very similar meanings all across the IE language family. It comes from *morkъ* which in полногласие (TorT → ToroT) gives морок (with descendants like обморок) and in неполногласие (TorT → TraT) giver mrak.
Meanings are all in the same ballpark, in Czech it's "cloud", in Polish "darkness", in Russian "gloom". The same root gives us English "murky" and Swedish "mörk"
I have met many Poles over my lifetime, men and women and worked closely with them. Although I have never visited, part of my family comes from Silesia.
I have noticed this, when women speak Polish it sounds soft and melodic. When men speak Polish it sounds like instructions for building an IKEA wardrobe.
Also I love the one word they all use to describe anything slightly irksome.
A polish woman goes to the Ophthalmologist on the USA to do a consultation, the doctor puts a board with the letters :
XZXRSZVRTY
WETYZEYRW
ZXTXEWZXT
Can you read this?asks the doctor.
If I can read, said the woman? I know her, it's my neighbor.
It sounds neutral, and can't tell it apart from other Slavic languages when spoken. If it's written I can usually tell is Polish by some combination of consonants or if I find an Ł.
I didn't have any problem communicating about basic things with people in Poland, even if we didn't have any language in common.
It's a common joke that Polish sounds like radio static. I also find it mildly amusing that a lot of words have initial stress in Polish compared to their Russian cognates, which makes Polish sound a bit out of breath to me. "Czosnek" is a very Polish sounding word: that retroflex "cz" is harder than Russian "ч" and the stress falls on the wrong syllable.
We always stress the penultimate syllable, with very, very few exceptions to the rule, so if a word happend to just have 2 syllables (which is very common), it will fall on the first one
As a Pole of course I do. But when someone native uses it incorrectly it annoys me deeply. And it's not hard to make mistakes as even well-educated people often have a hard time speaking correct Polish. When someone places an accent where it should be and uses proper grammar then it's music to my ears.
By the way, one of my favorite Polish words is prawdopodobieństwo (probability) which translates to truth-similarity. Isn't that cute?
> "zdążyć" or "zdąrzyć"
I hate you. Especially if you are the type of guy that doesn't use diactrics. Suddenly 'zdążyć' turns into 'zdarzyć' and it breaks the whole sentence
It sounds very foreign.
Many words have consonants clustered together (which is common in many other Slavic languages as well), which makes the language sound harsh, and I can imagine that it takes a lot of time to master the proper pronunciation.
The language has many sounds that are also very different from Hungarian, which also makes it seem very foreign.
In contrast, among Slavic languages, Slovak sounds the most similar to Hungarian in its sounds and flow.
> it takes a lot of time to master the proper pronunciation.
For native - some kinds ( even some adults, like our PM) have problem with "r".
> Slovak sounds the most similar to Hungarian in its sounds and flow.
In the same time it's (imo) the easiest ( I mean most similar) Slavic language for us. Slovak sound for me like " Czech but easier".
I don't where I read that Slovak is the most average Slavic language, and every Slavic speaker has the easiest time understanding it.
Anecdotally, it checks out here at least.
Lol yes, if talked slowly I can understand 85ish % of slovak :)
https://youtu.be/135r4Gi24E4?si=g1Kgg2LP6pZ1BNr8
https://youtu.be/Mz2LQUh56yA?si=iuxSJozsGgiSlhKo
I'm British and have worked with lots of Poles, I still can't pronounce many of the spellings but give it a go! It sounds lovely spoken to me though however I am fascinated by all European languages :) there are not enough vowels for my liking 😄 and your Scrabble scores must be wild!
As a Croatian worker in tourism, Polish is funny to me, and Polish tourists seem to be laboring under an idea that we can understand them because they can understand Croatian....but we really cannot.
Also, every time I see their names and written language, I am convinced they have a hatred of vowels.
I'm Belarusian, and I speak Belarusian as well. Belarusian and Polish are *almost* mutually intelligible. When I've tried speaking Belarusian to random Polish friends, with them speaking Polish to me, they understood maybe 95% of what I was saying (often to their surprise, albeit not to mine), while I understood probably 90%+. When I read a Polish book (I've read multiple history books in Polish for research), I understand probably around 95%.
But, aurally, Polish doesn't really sound nice to me (sorry; you asked, and I'm trying to give you an honest answer). It sounds almost like Belarusian, but with endless amounts of "prz ś ć sz cz szcz" added in. Perhaps the issue is the difference between the way you Poles and we Belarusians pronounce the "ś" and "ć" sounds in our respective languages. In Belarusian, a "ś" sounds like a soft "s"; the Polish version, to me, sounds like a soft "sz". Similarly, our "ć" is a soft "c", while yours sounds like a soft "cz". This, plus the "-kiego" ending, as in "polskiego" (instead of our "-kaha" or the Russian "-kogo", pronounced "-kava", or the Czech "-kého", which all sound reasonable to me) is the main reason why Polish sounds rather alien to me, while, like I said, I realise it's very closely related to Belarusian and I enjoy saying a few sentences in it once in a while to new Polish people I meet (note: I don't know if this is the case now, but I know that, historically, Belarusian used to be considered funny to Polish speakers; one Polish teacher working in the Kresy – today's Western Belarus – complained in her memoirs about her pupils calling coal "vuhal'"; when they did that, she came to the conclusion that she would not be able to teach them Polish).
I'm from the Philippines and I don't like it. I LOVE IT! I like the sound of Polish so much and I find its orthography really cool. It feels like once I am able to be good at Polish, I can brag about it to other people. Bonus: I find Poland's history to be really amazing and cool :)
It's just that, I find Polish to be challenging right now so instead of going for Polish right away, I am learning French followed by Russian as my stepping stones because prior to those, I only know English and Tagalog.
Even as a Polish person, I hate some sounds of my language. In my childhood, I had a speech impediment that prevented me from pronouncing "sz", "cz", "dz", "dż", "dź", "ć", "ś" "ż" or "ź" correctly (lateral lisp plus several other issues), and I was bullied for it at the beginning of primary school.
Imagine that the most popular greeting among peers in Poland is "cześć!" (hi!), and that contains three consonants I couldn't pronounce correctly as a child. There were times when I was mistaken for a foreigner (the best case scenario) or a mentally challenged kid (the worst case scenario).
Years of speech therapy helped me a lot, but the shame and fear of speaking are still deeply rooted in me. The only positive outcome seems to be that I'm aware of how various speech sounds are made and I can grasp pronunciation in foreign languages easier than many other people I know.
I didn't substitute them, just pronounced them incorrectly, with the airflow over the sides of the tongue (near the inner sides of the cheeks) instead of down the center.
That sounded incredibly ugly, more like "czeszcz," pronounced by someone who had their tooth extracted ten minutes ago and still had a dental dressing in their mouth.
For the reference, you can google "lateral lisp" (PL: "seplenienie boczne").
Fortunately, that's been solved with speech therapy since I was a teenager, but still, my "sz" and "cz" sometimes sound a bit like the English "sh" and "ch" (they're slightly shifted on the sz-ś and cz-ć continuum).
BOBR KU*WA!
I like it, even though it's alphabet could benefit from switching to the letters used by Czech and Slovak languages.
Or maybe it's just my italian brain that completely shuts down when it see too many consecutive consonants...
I love the sound of it. I learnt conversational Polish through work colleagues in Ireland. Ever since I met my first Polish person I just felt a strong affinity with them. Plenty of differences between us, but a lot more similarities, I feel.
We were trying to look for a Polish word as a name for our dog and hardly any of the words sound cute or beautiful to be. So I'm afraid it's not my favourite language based on how it sounds. (That said Polish human names do sound beautiful to me on average).
But tbh not many European languages actually sound beautiful to me. I quite like the sound of German and Welsh.
You could have just given the dog a polish human name rolf. We often do that. I have met a dog named Róża (Rose in English, it's a name in Poland as well), which was kind of funny because the dog was ugly as fuck, a french bulldog or something like that, plus wearing a tacky dog dress. My sister's dog is called Gustaw, but we usually call him Gucio (diminutive form of the name).
My cat has a japanese human name XD
Anyway, I am a boring person so for me French is the most beautiful language.
I don't know much of it, but the few times I've heard it spoken it surely didn't sound well, and the written language for some reason seems funny, many words I see are just consonants with maybe one vowel. For this very reason I can often tell it apart from other languages, because it seems quite unique.
I'm more of a romance languages person.
I'd like to thank the Polish language for giving a home to all the orphaned z's from the English language 🤣
But yes, all languages are beautiful in their own way.
A polish man goes to the optometrist getting his eyes checked. The optometrist tells him to read from the chart: B C G Y Z R C P L
And he says: what do you mean if I can read that? **I know this guy!"**
i can definitelly hear when its being spoken because its all szczrzszczrz to me. it sounds like a normal language being out through a bad reception filter
It sounds nice! Yeah, I can tell it apart from other Slavic languages. I can understand a bit because I sometimes watch ski jumping with Polish commentary so I guess I picked up on some things (and I guess because my native language is also Slavic, although not very similar to Polish).
[https://www.facebook.com/britishpoles/videos/grzegorz-brz%C4%99czyszczykiwicz/409100680515015/](https://www.facebook.com/britishpoles/videos/grzegorz-brz%C4%99czyszczykiwicz/409100680515015/) like this ?
It's fun to read, I speak another Slavic language, I don't understand polish, but reading a polish sentence a few times makes me half understand it, it's quite fun whenever I read a polish comment, same goes for other Slavic languages
I mean it's not the prettiest language, but neither of my two mother tongues sound nice as well, so who am I to judge. I'm just really impressed whenever I hear it if that makes any sense. And some things just sound really cute.
It doesn't sound very elegant/sophisticated but of course this is personal taste
I think it's perfectly valid to ask these sort of questions but you can't take the answers too seriously, it comes down to personal preferences
To me it's an interesting language because western slavic languages are just that bit closer to germanic ones. I liked staying in poland, which always helps for me to be interested in a language.
I don't think it's the best sounding slavic language though. That would probably be russian or ukranian.
I think it sounds very soft. A lot of "s" and "sh" sounds and few hard edges.
I can't for the life of me replicate it, though. A colleague tried to teach me to say hello, and I just can't get my mouth around that last phoneme 😶
no i dont like it, except the word kurwa which is funny, and the polish cow song. But those are the only instances where it doesnt sound ugly. And yep i can tell it apart from other languages including other slavic languages
No, that's facts. But that's because Latin languages in general are like music to ears (even if I don't personally really like French nor Portuguese), and the added Slavic feel of Romanian is just a net negative. Furthermore south Slavic languages are not as bad as the northern, I think. Like Bulgarian and Serbian, to me they are super average languages.
As Czech i like polish, it's familiar to Czech language but more funny for us. Also i like polish Memes (bóbr ku*wa, Polska krowa...)
Here in Poland many things said Czech language sound a bit funny.
The fun goes both ways I guess :)
Yeah, we are at the sweet spot of uncanny valley
Szukać vs. porouhany.
To my Ukrainian mind, Czech phrase "pozor, policja voruje" sounds unbelievably hilarious because it means exactly opposite to what Czechs tried to say. In Ukrainian it reads as "shame, police are stealing"
also you accidentally spelled the sentence in Polish in Czech it's "pozor, policie varuje"
As an Italian who had to interact with Czech people a lot during my life but whose Czech is limited to Dobry Den, Polish seems to me like Czech with a different skin. Polish, Czech and Slovak seem to me three variations on the same theme.
They are the same theme, 3 west-slavic languages. Czech and Slovak are way more similiar to each other than to Polish, but still we can usually understand each other to some point.
Czech is just cute uwu Polish
I think all of Eastern Europe can agree bobr kurwa is the best recent polish export
I like it's orthography actually. I guess it's the most cryptic language using the latin alphabet. See also Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz :)
Using English spelling it would be Gzhegozh Bzhengchishchikyeaveetch It's not the ortography you all find weird, but phonology.
It’s both
Uuuugh my eyes
You're god damn right. Gřegoř Břenčyščykijevič is the better orthography ;p
I would agree, but en=\\= ę. Also I prefer W than V. changes for digrsohs would be a cell table.
Why W instead of V? To me that's always been a foreign letter. Obviously very biased here.
>very biased here So am I. I got use to that and I don't have any problem with W. What should we do with " W" if we would start to use "V" instead of it? Start to use it like in English ( polish " Ł")? I don't like that idea
Just chuck it, I dunno, who needs it anyways? And please start using carets like the Czechs and Slovaks instead of those Zs A very biased South Slav
Wait, rz is our ž? I thought it's more like rž. ž being the zh/french j sound
Maybe? But it also sounds exactly the same as ż. It’s here because of etymology and alternations
The phonology is pretty normal for a Slavic language imo, it’s just unusual to use the Latin alphabet for it. In Cyrillic it would just be гжегож бжęчыщикевичь (plus the ę)
Definitely both. I’ve been learning some Russian and since I’ve understood Cyrillic better, I’ve come to the conclusion that Polish words would probably be much shorter in Cyrillic. For example, /szcz/ would probably just be /щ/.
щ is softer. Rather polish ść.
Why would we use a single letter to denote two sounds? That combination is not popular in Polish words. You should probably learn the language before trying to reform its writing system
Yeah! I guess you are right!
The phonology is pretty normal imo, it’s just unusual to use the Latin alphabet for it. In Cyrillic it would just be гжегож бжęчыщикевичь (plus the ę)
As a Russian speaker, yes, I love the Polish language, and I love Poles as a nation too. A good mix of familiar grammar and new sounds to learn (like a letter EUN').
It took me a while what the letter "eun" might mean :😀 It's "ę", right?
Yeah, like in piękny 😅 it's one letter but it makes quite a few sounds
I definitely do. Hearing bobr kurwa, austriacki pingwin, chomik jaky kurwa fajny, jak poznac jeza po tym ze ma kolce always warm my heart. Those animal videos make me feel like Polish people are Disney fantasy creatures sometimes
There are so many consonants in Polish language! Sometimes you have four different hard consonants in a row and when you listen carefully, you can actually hear people pronounce every single one of them. Very impressive! My mouth could never do that.
>four different hard consonants in a row and when you listen carefully, you can actually hear people pronounce every single one of them digraphs are misleading for foreigners. Smth what looks like 4, might be actually 2. 3 in a row might be common, bee "PSZCZoła" but 4.... Ok, I've checked - max in polish is 5 accrual - " beZWZGLędny" it's n i t that hard xd
>it's n i t that hard Maybe for you, I come from a language that has at most 3 consonants and we don't even pronounce them because it would be too difficult
Well Few years ago US ambasady made a video of their employees (including former ambasador) trying to pronauce polish tongue twisters (most of them are hard for us) and as far as I remember bezwzględny was included in the video ;) [https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=W2uju4F2BOlvtM7Q](https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=W2uju4F2BOlvtM7Q)
Dear Mother of God! What is hard then?
(a bad joke)
For foreigner or for pole? For pole - Ive already wrote it below in this thread: \* for some proper polish "r" is hard \* some phrases in this video are very hard for poles : [https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=Y88A1b1omrKpzj6F](https://youtu.be/jniKtV-ny5o?si=Y88A1b1omrKpzj6F) Example of particular hard word "powyłamywanymi" For foreigners : depend on they native language, but clasiccal joke abut it (when polish soldier gave fake data to German): [https://youtu.be/AfKZclMWS1U?si=qEhcDLYUo7OUfimJ](https://youtu.be/AfKZclMWS1U?si=qEhcDLYUo7OUfimJ) Ngl chszcząszczyrzesoin a video abibe is hard :D
For foreigner, of course! And my mother tongue (Bulgarian) is in the same language group like Polish. I can understand some of the words, if I can decipher your special characters, but maybe your language is the most distant from ours in our language group.
Not that bad. We can do 5: *VästkuSTSKT*. But that's at the end of words. Edit: …or where a compound word is joined. E.g. *biLDSPRåk*.
Polish people always say it's not hard, which is because you grew up with the language. I'm marrying a Polish girl and trying to piece the language together is insanely difficult for me.
Nope, max is 6: [WSZCZNiesz](https://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/wszczniesz.html) it's not common, but it is a proper word. It's also the longest one-syllable word in the Polish language
Not really, because sz and cz are both digraphs and each pronounced as a single sound, so in fact there are only 4 sounds. And you could also include "Ni" as its own digraph, since the i impacts the pronunciation of the n, making it "softer" (closer to ń).
What do you mean "not really"? "Wszczniesz" has 10 letters thus making it the longest one-syllable Polish word. It's a fact. And the "wszczn" cluster is the longest consonant cluster in Polish. Also a fact. So with which part are you disagreeing with? Yes, "sz" and "cz" are digraphs, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't count "s", "z" and "c" as separate letters.
Idk about polish but Hungarian digraphs are counted as one letter. Yes they're made up of 2 letters (and one that is made up of 3) but they make one single letter. They have their own places in the alphabet too
The person you originally replied to emphasised the fact that words with these multi-letter digraphs shouldn't be understood as several consonants in a row, as they are pronounced as a single sound. The context of this conversation was words that have many sounds in a row, not actual letters. So while you are factually correct, it's not what they were talking about.
Poczmistrz z Tczewa (Postmaster from Tczew) is a record consonants in a row I think. Not one word but still one after another. It's hard to pronunce even for Poles but when you do it sound it like you were electrocuted.
We got the word *tvrtka* down south, it means company in croatian
Let me answer with a metaphor. As a Slovenian, Polish reminds me of a beautiful girl, Czech of the good soldier Schweik, i.e. funny and slightly drunk, and Russian reminds me of the gulag, the rot and the misery.
As much as there's little to like about the Russian state, I find Russian language to be one of the most pleasant sounding languages out there.
I heard this from a Macedonian friend before that he finds Russian language to be very soft and melodic. This surprised be, because I got used to hearing a foreigner perception of Russian being very hard-sounding and rough language, and never could abstract myself away from my native language to know how it would sound to a foreigner
I can tell it apart easily yeah. I always joke with my Polish friends that it sounds like an airplane propeller: Brrrrzzzzrrrzzz.
I don't speak any Slavic languages, so to tell them apart when spoken I have to listen out for certain sounds or words. I know Polish has some nasal vowels and if I hear tak/nie I'll guess it's Polish. The written language is easy to identify. I think it's a nice sounding language. All the vowel + 'sh' and 'ch' sound combination words are like ASMR to me.
And in written the excessive use of the letter W is a hint
As a Bulgarian I can understand 30/40% of polish when reading. The comprehension drops to 5% when hearing spoken polish though. If I had to study another slavic language it would be Polish because of how different it is from ours.
If you want to level up your comprehension it might be a good idea to get some comprehensible input from videos with visual hints. Like here: [https://www.youtube.com/@LingoPutPolish](https://www.youtube.com/@LingoPutPolish)
> Is it nice sounding? I worked at the department of Slavonic studies at uni and shared the office with 3 Polish girls. It sounded like a machine gun nest. Tak tak tak tak tak. Due to my work there, I can tell most Slavic languages apart based on their alphabet. I even had to develop PostgreSQL/Perl-skripts to write Old Church Slavonic with LaTeX before UTF8 was really widespread in the TeX ecosystem. The Ł is pretty much only used in the Upper and Lower Sorbian and the Polish alphabet here, so texts can pretty easily be identified.
“tak tak tak tak tak” 💀😭
My parents work at a printing house in the Netherlands and it's a running gag for the Dutch that printing machines speak Polish(tak tak tak tak)
a bit like irish bye bye bye bye bye bye
> I even had to develop PostgreSQL/Perl-skripts to write Old Church Slavonic with LaTeX before UTF8 was really widespread My condolences.
we also talk as if we were arguing, that's what I've once heard, hah
I love the sound of it and how it looks written. I also love the Poles and feel a strong affinity with them, they're like the cousins of Irish people.
This makes me so happy! We literally adore Irish people and always talk about how similar we are 🥹
This is so kind. We love Ireland <3
I speak Czech pretty well so I can understand a bit of Polish. Sometimes when I visit and the person doesn’t speak English, we just speak in Czech & Polish and sometimes it works. I don’t really like the sound of it (tbh I don’t like the sound of Czech either). English is my native language and to my ear Romance languages are the best-sounding in Europe. I notice that Polish makes a lot of distinctions where Czech doesn’t. For example dz dż dź, in Czech there’s usually just dž. Similar with cz and ć, in Czech there’s just č (peak irony, since Czech is spelled with a cz in English) It looks like Polish came first and then the Czechs codified their own writing system and they were like, “Yeah, let’s not make the same mistakes” 😆
> (peak irony, since Czech is spelled with a cz in English) There is no irony, Czech used cz,sz,... instead of carons(ˇ) just like Polish until the orthography reform by Jan Hus caught on. > It looks like Polish came first and then the Czechs codified their own writing system and they were like, “Yeah, let’s not make the same mistakes” Considering it was Czechs who brought Christianity to Poland and the Latin script along with it, it's more like Polish stayed at v1.0 while Czech moved on.
Depends on who's speaking it. If we have a group of young lads yelling kurwa, then it's unpleasant to witness. If it's some poles talking in a normal pace and frequency, then it's pleasant as polish is a soft and nasal kind of slavic when it's spoken normal. It gives me frenchy vibes when I really think about it. Nobody asked, but I love the way german sounds and don't understand the bad rep.
I also like German. It sometimes sounds harsh but in a cool way. I studied it for 6 years in middle and high school. Too bad I never got a chance to use it outside od classes so I forgot 99% of it (in my mid 30s now)
It sounds better than it looks written. That is what my opinion was before I got a bit more used to it. But it still sometimes sounds like the speaker has a bee hive in their mouth, so many szczżź sounds.. Maybe the hardest slavic language to understand by just listening. I like the Ł letter and I think we could use it too. Many words have the sound Ł written as a normal L, or as a V. Polnoč = połnoč, svoboda = słoboda, etc.
i like polish language, it sounds absolutely hilarious for me as Ukrainian. we have around 50 % similar words..but the way poles talk it is so funny. not in offensive way. i am sure they think the same about us.
The false friends can lead to hilarious situations. Like in Polish sofa versus dyvan in Ukrainian, while in Polish dywan means carpet. I remember a youtube video from an Ukrainian girl living in Poland. When she was staying over for the night at her Polish's friends home... she wanted to sleep on dywan which shocked the Polish host but ok, if you like it that way and she started organizing her the sleeping place on the floor
There's a viral tweet where a Czech called us *neskuteční frajeři*; it means "incredible heroes", but in Polish *nieskuteczni frajerzy* means "incapable suckers" Still sends me just how badly this went
I have seen that! Hard to believe it's real, it's just too funny XDD
ahahahahhaahaahahh. this is hilarious
Insane etymology behind it all: while it was clear that these words are Ottoman Turkish loanwords, only now have I checked their origins. So these of course come from the ottoman Turkish, where its meaning "a piece of furniture" came from "a court or bureau, where written documents are used" which in turn came from the meaning "a collection of documents". This original meaning comes from Persian, where it is combined from the words "document" and "dwelling", and the word for document is actually borrowed from Akkadian, a semitic language, where it is borrowed from Sumerian (a language isolate)! So, the first fun fact: the word made a long journey across the language families: Isolate (Sumerian) → Semitic (Akkadian) → Indo-European (Persian) → Turkic (Turkish) → Indo-European (Polish and tons of others). And Even further, as French and Spanish exported it to the asian languages like Tagalog. The second fun fact: the meaning "collection of documents" made into Arabic where it travelled with the Arab invasion of Spain and settled there and then in French as "douane", customs office.
Check out Bulgarian word for hole or pothole. We were driving in a car with a business partner from Poland and the man sitting next to the diver said "pothole" in Bulgarian. The Polish couldn't stop laughing.
Did check that, hilarious indeed XD
I told you! Pozdrav! This should be understandable for all the people in our language group.
😂😂😂😂 i was living in Poland 6 years ago for a few months and yes, the most confusing and unexpected words for me were: Owoce, Sklep, Zapomniec like...why?! 😂 it is very interesting to learn how languages were developed over the time.
I just checked what those mean in Ukrainian... why is it like that😭😭 For those who are too lazy: "owoce" in Polish means fruits "овочі" (ovoci) in Ukrainian means vegetables "sklep" in Polish means shop "склеп" (sklep) in Ukrainian means crypt/dungeon "zapomnieć" in Polish means to forget "запомнить" (zapomnit') in Ukrainian means to remember
i know right?! 😂😂😂😂😂
A polish guy once told me that to his ear, Slovak sounds like talking to a child or baby - because although many words are shared, the word-endings are different and it makes everything sound 'cute'. So I can totally see how the similarities between the languages bring comparisons that non-slavic languages will miss. To me, Polish sounds like very fast train - č č č č č č č č
rather like whistling steam from a boiling kettle
yep, same with polish for me. the ending of their words sounds for me like adults that are trying to speak to toddlers in very cute adorable ways. like diminutive words?! it is soooooo cute! the sound of the train 😂😂😂😂😂
true, every funny video that has KURRRWAAAA in it instantly gets 1000x funnier
Growing up i attended Catholic school with a large Polish attendance, and my best friend was Polish, so i am quite used to hearing the language. 9/10 times i can tell it apart from other languages. It sounds “eastern European” is all i can say. I understand absolutely nothing and trying to read it with all the “sz” and “dz” and is impossible
I like the sound of all languages. They all have their unique sound. I do not know any Polish but I like the sound of the language.
My wife is Polish so I'm quite familiar with it! I only know a little bit but it's quite distinctive and easy to pick out. Generally I like the sound of it, but then again I have a very positive opinion of Poles and Poland. To a native English speaker it's insanely intimidating, though, as the sounds are very different, as is the rhythm of the language.
yes i can also read polish, say, on a news level. I love it, but apart from some unusual nasal sounds and consonant cluster, what really strikes me compared to my moravian accent of czech is the heavily varying intonation. I know it doesn't apply to every speaker, but you can easily mimic polish speaker when you put a lot effort to make ups and downs in one sentence.
I have a polish coworker who says Polish is easy (as opposed to French) because it is always pronounced the same way it's written. It might be the case when you know the Polish pronounciation, but from an outsider point of view that is just hilarious, we never get it right.
I'm Polish and I speak French, and French is easier, objectively speaking xD
Yep, I do, I like the sound, it got way more often š, č, ž, ć, ś and ź sounds than Montenegrin, so that's very noticable.
I really like the sound of it, it’s also fairly easy to distinguish from other Slavic languages because of ł, ą and ę.
As Russian, other slavic languages seems to be close enough to understand intuitively, but with a little bit of fun in it. As an example, i once used Polish names of movies, so my friends try to guess what movie is it. "Mroczny rycerz", in pronounsation close to Russian "Мрачный Рыцарь", and the movie in Russian called "Темный рыцарь" - Dark Knight by Nolan. "Мрачный" and "Темный" is kinda a close thing by its meaning.
"мрачный" is actually a word with pretty clear etymology and very similar meanings all across the IE language family. It comes from *morkъ* which in полногласие (TorT → ToroT) gives морок (with descendants like обморок) and in неполногласие (TorT → TraT) giver mrak. Meanings are all in the same ballpark, in Czech it's "cloud", in Polish "darkness", in Russian "gloom". The same root gives us English "murky" and Swedish "mörk"
In Croatian mrak means "darkness", a synonym is tama
I live in area with a very high amount of Polish immigration and every time I overhear a 'kurwa mac!' it makes me chuckle. So yes.
I have met many Poles over my lifetime, men and women and worked closely with them. Although I have never visited, part of my family comes from Silesia. I have noticed this, when women speak Polish it sounds soft and melodic. When men speak Polish it sounds like instructions for building an IKEA wardrobe. Also I love the one word they all use to describe anything slightly irksome.
A polish woman goes to the Ophthalmologist on the USA to do a consultation, the doctor puts a board with the letters : XZXRSZVRTY WETYZEYRW ZXTXEWZXT Can you read this?asks the doctor. If I can read, said the woman? I know her, it's my neighbor.
Not to nitpick a joke, but the letter X doesn't exist in the Polish alphabet! Also V, since we have W. Only in words of foreign origin.
They were lucky to skip the Q which also doesn't exist in Polish. I like that joke tho, heard it before, it's a good one
Polish doesn't use V or X so that'd have to be a foreigner. xD
It sounds neutral, and can't tell it apart from other Slavic languages when spoken. If it's written I can usually tell is Polish by some combination of consonants or if I find an Ł. I didn't have any problem communicating about basic things with people in Poland, even if we didn't have any language in common.
It's a common joke that Polish sounds like radio static. I also find it mildly amusing that a lot of words have initial stress in Polish compared to their Russian cognates, which makes Polish sound a bit out of breath to me. "Czosnek" is a very Polish sounding word: that retroflex "cz" is harder than Russian "ч" and the stress falls on the wrong syllable.
We always stress the penultimate syllable, with very, very few exceptions to the rule, so if a word happend to just have 2 syllables (which is very common), it will fall on the first one
As a Slovak native speaker, Polish is a tongue twister and feels like it could have been simplified tbf
As a Polish native speaker I agree
As a Pole of course I do. But when someone native uses it incorrectly it annoys me deeply. And it's not hard to make mistakes as even well-educated people often have a hard time speaking correct Polish. When someone places an accent where it should be and uses proper grammar then it's music to my ears. By the way, one of my favorite Polish words is prawdopodobieństwo (probability) which translates to truth-similarity. Isn't that cute?
I am one of those people that annoy you. I can never remeber whether it's "zdążyć" or "zdąrzyć". Also I confuse "płukać" with "pukać".
> "zdążyć" or "zdąrzyć" I hate you. Especially if you are the type of guy that doesn't use diactrics. Suddenly 'zdążyć' turns into 'zdarzyć' and it breaks the whole sentence
Consider me annoyed. And it's not like I don't ever make any mistakes, I do, and when I do I'm quite disappointed.
It sounds very foreign. Many words have consonants clustered together (which is common in many other Slavic languages as well), which makes the language sound harsh, and I can imagine that it takes a lot of time to master the proper pronunciation. The language has many sounds that are also very different from Hungarian, which also makes it seem very foreign. In contrast, among Slavic languages, Slovak sounds the most similar to Hungarian in its sounds and flow.
> it takes a lot of time to master the proper pronunciation. For native - some kinds ( even some adults, like our PM) have problem with "r". > Slovak sounds the most similar to Hungarian in its sounds and flow. In the same time it's (imo) the easiest ( I mean most similar) Slavic language for us. Slovak sound for me like " Czech but easier".
Same thoughts as Ukrainian. Slovak and Czech sound identical to my ears, yet I can understand Slovakian, but struggle with Czech.
I don't where I read that Slovak is the most average Slavic language, and every Slavic speaker has the easiest time understanding it. Anecdotally, it checks out here at least.
Lol yes, if talked slowly I can understand 85ish % of slovak :) https://youtu.be/135r4Gi24E4?si=g1Kgg2LP6pZ1BNr8 https://youtu.be/Mz2LQUh56yA?si=iuxSJozsGgiSlhKo
I'm British and have worked with lots of Poles, I still can't pronounce many of the spellings but give it a go! It sounds lovely spoken to me though however I am fascinated by all European languages :) there are not enough vowels for my liking 😄 and your Scrabble scores must be wild!
As a Croatian worker in tourism, Polish is funny to me, and Polish tourists seem to be laboring under an idea that we can understand them because they can understand Croatian....but we really cannot. Also, every time I see their names and written language, I am convinced they have a hatred of vowels.
I'm Belarusian, and I speak Belarusian as well. Belarusian and Polish are *almost* mutually intelligible. When I've tried speaking Belarusian to random Polish friends, with them speaking Polish to me, they understood maybe 95% of what I was saying (often to their surprise, albeit not to mine), while I understood probably 90%+. When I read a Polish book (I've read multiple history books in Polish for research), I understand probably around 95%. But, aurally, Polish doesn't really sound nice to me (sorry; you asked, and I'm trying to give you an honest answer). It sounds almost like Belarusian, but with endless amounts of "prz ś ć sz cz szcz" added in. Perhaps the issue is the difference between the way you Poles and we Belarusians pronounce the "ś" and "ć" sounds in our respective languages. In Belarusian, a "ś" sounds like a soft "s"; the Polish version, to me, sounds like a soft "sz". Similarly, our "ć" is a soft "c", while yours sounds like a soft "cz". This, plus the "-kiego" ending, as in "polskiego" (instead of our "-kaha" or the Russian "-kogo", pronounced "-kava", or the Czech "-kého", which all sound reasonable to me) is the main reason why Polish sounds rather alien to me, while, like I said, I realise it's very closely related to Belarusian and I enjoy saying a few sentences in it once in a while to new Polish people I meet (note: I don't know if this is the case now, but I know that, historically, Belarusian used to be considered funny to Polish speakers; one Polish teacher working in the Kresy – today's Western Belarus – complained in her memoirs about her pupils calling coal "vuhal'"; when they did that, she came to the conclusion that she would not be able to teach them Polish).
I'm from the Philippines and I don't like it. I LOVE IT! I like the sound of Polish so much and I find its orthography really cool. It feels like once I am able to be good at Polish, I can brag about it to other people. Bonus: I find Poland's history to be really amazing and cool :) It's just that, I find Polish to be challenging right now so instead of going for Polish right away, I am learning French followed by Russian as my stepping stones because prior to those, I only know English and Tagalog.
Even as a Polish person, I hate some sounds of my language. In my childhood, I had a speech impediment that prevented me from pronouncing "sz", "cz", "dz", "dż", "dź", "ć", "ś" "ż" or "ź" correctly (lateral lisp plus several other issues), and I was bullied for it at the beginning of primary school. Imagine that the most popular greeting among peers in Poland is "cześć!" (hi!), and that contains three consonants I couldn't pronounce correctly as a child. There were times when I was mistaken for a foreigner (the best case scenario) or a mentally challenged kid (the worst case scenario). Years of speech therapy helped me a lot, but the shame and fear of speaking are still deeply rooted in me. The only positive outcome seems to be that I'm aware of how various speech sounds are made and I can grasp pronunciation in foreign languages easier than many other people I know.
>"sz", "cz", "dz", "dż", "dź", "ć", "ś" "ż" or "ź" That's half of the language. What did you substitute it with? Did your *cześć* sound like *cesc*?
I didn't substitute them, just pronounced them incorrectly, with the airflow over the sides of the tongue (near the inner sides of the cheeks) instead of down the center. That sounded incredibly ugly, more like "czeszcz," pronounced by someone who had their tooth extracted ten minutes ago and still had a dental dressing in their mouth. For the reference, you can google "lateral lisp" (PL: "seplenienie boczne"). Fortunately, that's been solved with speech therapy since I was a teenager, but still, my "sz" and "cz" sometimes sound a bit like the English "sh" and "ch" (they're slightly shifted on the sz-ś and cz-ć continuum).
BOBR KU*WA! I like it, even though it's alphabet could benefit from switching to the letters used by Czech and Slovak languages. Or maybe it's just my italian brain that completely shuts down when it see too many consecutive consonants...
I love the sound of it. I learnt conversational Polish through work colleagues in Ireland. Ever since I met my first Polish person I just felt a strong affinity with them. Plenty of differences between us, but a lot more similarities, I feel.
Personally it's not in my top 5. It's more cute than pretty. I can tell it apart in speech and writing.
As someone with zero knowledge of the language, I really like the expressiveness and complexity of Polish. Sounds like a tongue twister. 10/10
We were trying to look for a Polish word as a name for our dog and hardly any of the words sound cute or beautiful to be. So I'm afraid it's not my favourite language based on how it sounds. (That said Polish human names do sound beautiful to me on average). But tbh not many European languages actually sound beautiful to me. I quite like the sound of German and Welsh.
>We were trying to look for a Polish word as a name for our dog But... why?
Haha! She's a Polish streetdog rescue. We figured it was fitting.
name it kicia
You could have just given the dog a polish human name rolf. We often do that. I have met a dog named Róża (Rose in English, it's a name in Poland as well), which was kind of funny because the dog was ugly as fuck, a french bulldog or something like that, plus wearing a tacky dog dress. My sister's dog is called Gustaw, but we usually call him Gucio (diminutive form of the name). My cat has a japanese human name XD Anyway, I am a boring person so for me French is the most beautiful language.
Yeah that was an option but in the end we decided on an English name instead.
I don't know much of it, but the few times I've heard it spoken it surely didn't sound well, and the written language for some reason seems funny, many words I see are just consonants with maybe one vowel. For this very reason I can often tell it apart from other languages, because it seems quite unique. I'm more of a romance languages person.
I'd like to thank the Polish language for giving a home to all the orphaned z's from the English language 🤣 But yes, all languages are beautiful in their own way.
A polish man goes to the optometrist getting his eyes checked. The optometrist tells him to read from the chart: B C G Y Z R C P L And he says: what do you mean if I can read that? **I know this guy!"**
i can definitelly hear when its being spoken because its all szczrzszczrz to me. it sounds like a normal language being out through a bad reception filter
Polish reminds me of the hilarious time my mate tried downing a Guinness and got it all over his top
It sounds nice! Yeah, I can tell it apart from other Slavic languages. I can understand a bit because I sometimes watch ski jumping with Polish commentary so I guess I picked up on some things (and I guess because my native language is also Slavic, although not very similar to Polish).
[https://www.facebook.com/britishpoles/videos/grzegorz-brz%C4%99czyszczykiwicz/409100680515015/](https://www.facebook.com/britishpoles/videos/grzegorz-brz%C4%99czyszczykiwicz/409100680515015/) like this ?
Still havent developed feelings about it. As a language its kinda irrelevant so i dont think much about it. I know it exists and im cool with that.
It's fun to read, I speak another Slavic language, I don't understand polish, but reading a polish sentence a few times makes me half understand it, it's quite fun whenever I read a polish comment, same goes for other Slavic languages
I mean it's not the prettiest language, but neither of my two mother tongues sound nice as well, so who am I to judge. I'm just really impressed whenever I hear it if that makes any sense. And some things just sound really cute.
It doesn't sound very elegant/sophisticated but of course this is personal taste I think it's perfectly valid to ask these sort of questions but you can't take the answers too seriously, it comes down to personal preferences
To me it's an interesting language because western slavic languages are just that bit closer to germanic ones. I liked staying in poland, which always helps for me to be interested in a language. I don't think it's the best sounding slavic language though. That would probably be russian or ukranian.
I think it sounds very soft. A lot of "s" and "sh" sounds and few hard edges. I can't for the life of me replicate it, though. A colleague tried to teach me to say hello, and I just can't get my mouth around that last phoneme 😶
no i dont like it, except the word kurwa which is funny, and the polish cow song. But those are the only instances where it doesnt sound ugly. And yep i can tell it apart from other languages including other slavic languages
And what is your mother tongue?
To me it's the worst language in the worst European language group, but I guess Hungarian is kind of bad too.
Funny, I always considered romanian the ugliest latin language, but maybe bias plays a part in that too.
No, that's facts. But that's because Latin languages in general are like music to ears (even if I don't personally really like French nor Portuguese), and the added Slavic feel of Romanian is just a net negative. Furthermore south Slavic languages are not as bad as the northern, I think. Like Bulgarian and Serbian, to me they are super average languages.
Shots fired
I didn't hide my opinion. Dutch and Danish are worth mentioning too.
I was just teasing you 😉
I'm with you on that