Pronunciation difference between Ź and Ż?

wat is the difference between in pronunciation between Ź and Ż? i think all you can do is explain how to make them is the sounds are different. btw, how do u say Ń?

O.K. Hmmm. How can I make this simple to understand. The letter ż might sound like the "g" like in "genre" and the other letter "z" like "Zsa Zsa" like in "Zsa Zsa Gabor" or like "Dr. Zhiwago". Yes, stupid examples but..... The letter 4; could sound like in the word "coin".
That's the closest I came up with.

It's like w Szczebrzeźnie chrzążcz brzmi w tżcinie.

:)

HI,

Does anybody know a phonetic transcription system of Polish for non-Polish speakers?
Maybe we should ask prof. Miodek? Maybe he wrote a book about it or something?

It's actually "W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie" LOL Not that it makes it any easier :)

Gab, if you mean IPA?

Ż is something like in 'u[b]s[/]ually' but a bit harder.

Ź is a 'z' sound, but it is palatalized; i.e. if you say it, you say it like 'z', but you move the blade of your tounge up so that it is close to your hard palate. Then, it sound much 'softer'.

And here are recordings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BB

HI Switezianka,

I was looking for some pointers for the forum members learning Polish. Polish is my mother tongue. But thanx, anyways.

G.

Just to clarify, are the following associations also true?

ż = rz ?
ź(i) = z(i) ?

and the palatalization that you mentioned works also for the c and s versions? I wonder if I will ever be able to distinguish these sounds. Now I know how the Koreans feel with "l" and "r".

Yeah :)

This entire thread reminds us of how 'phonetic' Polish is :) --:)LOL!!!!

Trzy muwisz po polskó?

Boli mi rząb!
etc.....

Well there's IPA, which is international by definition, so it has all symbols necessary for a phonetic transcription of Polish.

I don't know if there are any practice books (similar to How Now Brown Cow for British English), but a good resource based on IPA that I know of is Słownik wymowy polskiej PWN (The dictionary of Polish pronunciation). It has lots of possible variants for most words, and it includes two very useful "From letter to phone" and "From phone to letter" reference tables. There's also a dual lanugage (Polish/English) overview of the trends in Polish pronunciation and of the phonetic transcription of Polish in general.

Unfortunately there haven't been any new editions published for years now - the one I have is from 1977 - but you might try your luck in online second-hand bookshops.

By the way, Marek, there's a marked difference in pronunciation between 'trzy' and 'czy'.

Tak clouddancer, masz rację a orthographia nie jest samo też. Ale wymowa potrawa jest prawie samo, n.p. 'potrzebuję' jak 'poczebuję' itd.

Colloquial phoneme reduction often elides consonant clusters in ordinary speech.

Sure, but you don't want to sound too colloquial. Recognizing and being able to imitate the variants is surely a useful skill, but there's little sense in learning the (substandard, if you're a prescriptivist) pronunciation associated with the uneducated as your main one.

I only hope that others in this forum using it to 'bone up' on their English skills take your advice equally to heart. When in Poland for the first time, I encountered so-called "English-language" students from the local university whose pronunciation was dreadful!! When I corrected them (after they took great liberties to correct my Polish, also unsolicited, by the way LOL) they replied that theirs was the standard way they recall having heard it. Trust me, it sounded more like a cut-rate imitation of President Bush singing country-western than the correct official American broadcaster diction of Walter Cronkite, Charles Collingwood etc. They, however, merrily insisted I was wrong and they were right :)

Now, is that the tail wagging the dog, or what?

I miswrote yesterday. I meant 'potoczna mowa', not 'wymowa potrawna' which of course makes no sense:)