Things Polish people who speak English language say

This sentence is: Czy pani mowi po angielsku
Your pronounciation: Ci pani mowi po angielsku

The initial part of your pronounciation sounds like "cipa" which is a polish word for "c*nt"

The reason why you pronounce it incorrectly is because you were probably told that english 'ch' like in 'chip' is an equivalent to polish 'cz'. It's not true though, just like english 'sh' like in 'ship' is not an equivalent of polish 'sz'.

English 'ch' is situated somewhere between polish 'ć' (ćwierć) and polish 'cz' (czwarty) and usually sounds a bit more like the former than the latter and that results in such confusion. The best way to get rid of it is to learn correct pronounciation of 'cz' from native speakers or good language tutorials.

I have met very few foreigners in my life that spoke polish so I might be wrong here but I would say that the lack of distinction between 'cz' and 'ć' (just like between 'sz' and 'ś' and so on...) is probably the most common mistake made by them. :)

v. good expenation arkady.

And this is _not_ true. The stress in foreign words, like physics, mathematics etc. is 1 syllable earlier (so it's matematyka, not matematyka). The same is with 'detachable/floating' (for the lack of terminology :) ) endings, like '-śmy', where the stress in the word with and without the suffix is the same (so byli -> byliśmy and not byliśmy).

Yeah... Try this: Trzy cytrzystki... ;)

I think I am quite proficient in the Polish language. However I can't say the word 'four', 'forty four' and so on. It's a nightmare!

I find it very difficult to hear the difference, although I think I know what the difference is.
If you don't have a sound in your own language, it is often much harder to hear it in other people's.

Well, the main difference is where your tongue is, when you pronounce it. In 'cz' it lays down with tip touching your palate, with 'ć' whole tongue is up. Or that's what I can observe :).

******* hell, Polish is the ugliest and the most annoying language in the world! I ******* hate the sound of it!

There are uglier languages....

lets harpoon tom instead of harpooning whales

hi. I'm new here at this forum. But since i was 3 i have been talking fluently in polish with my mother and grandparents. Every summer I stay the whole 2 and a half months there. I think Polish people have a huge pride in there country and in their language. Since kindergarden I've been going to Polish school every saturday and I absolutley love polish language/people.
czesc gabii

That's nice :-)

I used to go to Polish School on a Saturday, I loved it !

Yes, I will be eat later. This is a common mistake.

Not pluralising is so common it's not even funny.

Other common mistakes i noticed also are :
e.g. 'i wait for the bus' or 'i waiting' instead of 'i am waiting/i'm waiting'..
also of course the lack of definite or indefinite articles (which i personally think is quite catchy lol - who needs 'em anyway!!) and.. 'why you won't go?' instead of 'why won't you go?'.. but these are all totally understandable given the fact that in Polish you can use the same version of the present tense both ways, def/indef articles dont exist and that you can ask a question with the same structure as 'why you won't go?'..

Actually its a little bit helpful when my boyfriend/friends say something not quite right in English.. cos im thinking.. hm what's the Polish equivalent, and its helping me learn! :-D

Or pluralising too much e.g. childrens, teeths.

Damages (not claiming them), e.g many damages. Informations is another pet favourite. Advices, woosh, I'm off...u got me started

i used to say "ree-sipt" instead of receipt (putting the accent on the wrong part of the word), or "queesh" instead of quiche, crumbles instead of crumbs... my bloke has a whole list of the things i said in a weird way, he loves it when i get something wrong.

One of my polish friends always used to say 'terrorist' when talking about 'theorists' which was a right laugh for the whole class when we were doing a presentation on motivational theory. At first she didn't take it well but after a while she even found it funny.

Another one was 'shit' instead of 'sheet' so she would say 'can i have that shit' meaning sheet. which also sounded a little strange. I recognise some of the ones mentioned above to that are frequently used by polish people when speaking english :)

not going to mention can't and c*nt...

U just did. Not to mention can't and c*nt is better. The funniest one lately has been buttman. I was confused, who the hell is buttman? It turns out that they meant Batman.

i wasn't going to mention that one myself but now it has, that was one in the back of my mind while i was typing above :) was that a mistake you made or was it somebody else??

My missus still struggles with receipt/recipe and uses them interchangably.

I also heard a Polish guy ask me to pass him the sisters. He meant scissors.

I had a problem with "focus" for a long time and I was made of when takin gphotography courses:)

DouBt is another one. I really respect the Polish teachers I work with, they are skilled, but some teachers here teach pron and they shouldn't. How can u teach doubt as douBt?

we were in a pub about 3 years ago with some guys from work and one was being cheeky and called me a b*tch, so in return i called him a c*nt. back then i didnt know it was so bad, cos in Poland when you call someone cipa among friends they would take it as a joke. my mates were speechless haha. i do have difficulty trying to pronounce can't so it doesnt sound rude!

Mistakes that most foreigners make also are:

Bom-bing and bom-ber.

cheap/chip/sheep- these all sound the same.

lol i think you can call that lost in translation :) I hope all is well now. I guess that some words will always be difficult as when you've said it wrong so many times you can't change to the correct way of saying something so easily.


yeah thats one i've heard for sure

oh yeah, they all love me haha. and with the can't, well, i've never heard about "c*nt" before i came to England so all these years i've been saying c*nt instead of can't and when my friends try to make me hear the difference i just cant get it. its like with bore and boar.

are you sure about that??

You have to pronounce all the silent letters.
Half. Salmon. Debt. Psychopath.

You must also put the stress on the wrong syllable as much as possible.
The Polish penultimate syllable is undobBtedly a popular one, but so is the first syllable.

There is no 'a', there is no 'the', but there might be some 'some'.

You must also diminish the very wide English palette of vowels sounds, to about 5 or 6.

From these notes, if you're not Polish, you may be half way to pretending that you are.
Just read most of the rest of the forum to find out what else you have to do.


Is there something else you're not telling us?
Would it help if I said that one is longer and further back in the mouth than the other.

Sorry about that sudden load of filth. I don't know what came over me.