Comments on: The trip to the British embassy

By: aika

aika — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:36:33 +0000

“fear” is quite easy. Try “fair” and “fare” (http://www.howjsay.com/index.php). ^_^

Apart from the vowels we also have a major problem with “th” (some people pronounce it more like “d”, other like “w” or “f”, the most surprising – like “z”) – it requires using one’s tongue in a completely new way. However I imagine learning one “th” is still easier than learning all “ż”, “sz” etc. in mature age.

Another surprise awaiting a Pole is that when he finally learns to pronounce “r” somewhat similar to English natives, it turns out that quite often he shouldn’t pronounce it at all, leaving just a suggestion of something “r-like” (like in “source”). Now THIS is difficult, as in Polish “r” is a very dominating sound, giving flavour to most our swear words.

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:15:58 +0000

I once called the consultate to ask for their help getting my TRC in the time laid down by Polish law. The woman on the phone told me that they didn’t do that. I pointed out that their website said they could. She said that they wouldn’t. I asked for her name. She asked why I wanted it. I said I wanted to know exactly who I should complain about. She said her name was “Consular Section”. I asked if that was her first name or her surname. She said “First name Consular. Surname Section.” I wrote to the Head of Mission to complain about the refusal to help and the obvious lie told to me. It was only in her third email to me that the Head of Mission finally apologised for a member of her staff lying to me.

By: Sylwia

Sylwia — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:24:04 +0000

LOL So how do you read wąwóz, węch, siąść, robią?

By: adthelad

adthelad — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 08:29:40 +0000

Correct accent – no, authentic accent – yes. However, Michał is right there is correct pronunciation. It just takes a good ear and not many people have one. My dear wife Iza has a fantastic ‘ear’ for music and hence for language.

Michal’s example is perfect except not entirely precise. I notice that that most common Polish ‘tone deafness’, with regard to the ‘a’ sound is not as suggested between back and ‘beck’ (as I’m inclined to think the ‘e’ sound is more school taught when learning to say ‘a’ in the ‘ej’ form, and then applied across the board, than a result of natural polish pronunciation), it’s the difference between back and buck. So, and Iza puts it down to being lazy, i.e. reverting to kind, she sometimes says hut instead of hat. Strange thing is it never happens with certain words. She’ll never, for example, say cut when she means cat.

As a matter of interest the English language has 33 vowel sounds unlike 6 in the Polish (a, e, i, o, u, y,). You can argue about the concept of ‘imaginary nasal vowels’, ą and ę, with this guy http://free.of.pl/g/grzegorj/gram/gram01.html :)

By: Ania

Ania — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:46:20 +0000

My only embassy experience was the US embassy in Warsaw when I wanted a student visa for my senior year. It all went pretty quickly but abruptly? (obcesowo). No American smiles but also no obstacles.
My Father’s experience when he visited a friend in Chicago was much worse, as a man of fourty back then he had to show his hands to prove he was not a worker and a potential ‘illeg’. Good thing he already were an entrepreneur, because he got to be all lofty on them. If his hands had been rough, who knows?

By: Sylwia

Sylwia — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:24:35 +0000

I had once a very Polish experience with the Polish embassy in Prague. It looked exactly what a Polish embassy should look a few years after the end of communism – people, furniture, attitudes et al.

A friend and I went there because after just a few days in Prague it appeared that we ran out of money (we were high school students). By ‘ran out of money’ I mean that we didn’t even have for a metro ticket or a roll, not to mention a ride to Warsaw. We were admitted to the ambassador himself, who gave us a lecture on Poles abroad and how everyone comes to him for money because we’re all irresponsible. Then he gave us the money.

A half an hour later, fully determined to prove the Polish ambassador right, we decided to spend the money on one more night in Prague. The next morning we had just enough korunas for a shared plate of knedliki outside of town. Hitchhiking took us back to Poland.

Thank goodness no one told us to look up ‘I ran out of money’ on their kombinować FAQ list.

By: Scatts

Scatts — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:23:59 +0000

I would like to tell you of my bosses recent, ongoing in fact, experiences with the British Embassy but it’s personal stuff so I shan’t. Suffice to say he is not entirely complimentary about the way his issue has been handled and from the sounds of it he’s completely justified.

Problem was exacerbated by the consul moving office mid issue-resolution and seemingly downing tools for as long as it took to make the move.

By: Bartek Uśniacki

Bartek Uśniacki — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:40:29 +0000

in my Polish perception “beck” has a short typical ‘e’ like in “bed”, “back” is a bit longer and pronounced otherwise, but it’s hard to grasp or describe, it takes either years of contact with the language or being a native to see (or hear) the difference.

Can the Poles who teach English explain it? At first I thought I was a rhetorical question but maybe they can, the other matter is the students will catch on it. To boot there’s a fact of anatomy – a Pole has developed the ability of speaking out letters like “ś”, “ź”, over which the foreigners lose sleep, but it can be practised…

By: Michael Dembinski

Michael Dembinski — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:41:52 +0000

No such thing as a correct English accent, but Polish (where each vowel has but one value) speakers need to be aware of the multiplicity of values that each English vowel sound has. Try saying “Back”, for example. (No, not beck, BACK) To make the ‘a’ sound, your jaw has to really stretch open, something that no Polish vowel sound calls for. So if your facial muscles are not used to that effort from early childhood, you’ll not be able to do it without conscious effort and practice.

Why is this important? Because of the danger of being misunderstood.
Look at words like fear/fair/fur or full/fool/fuel, for example, which sound quite different to the British listener, and which mean different things. “Fur trade coffee? You trade coffee for animal pelts?”

By: Bartek Uśniacki

Bartek Uśniacki — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:30:23 +0000

Island1 – thanks for the clarification – British sense of humour differs much from the Polish one, that’s sometimes a gulf between them – sometimes we don’t understand each other because of this. I got to like the certain features of your (national?) sense of humour – if you ridicule the accents – it occurred to me it’s your way of coping with sometimes excessive importance attached to it in the past. If it’s true that your accent speaks volumes about you (your parentage, social class/status, etc.) it couldn’t passed without being ridiculed… Secondly, since decades English has been becoming the lingua franca in international organisations, businessmen etc. – this process entailed some simplification, language was influenced by the other languages and very often mangled (every learner does it at the beginning, the matters get worse if they never stop…) – so you had to somehow cope with thousands of people speaking the way they can.

Accent – I speak with probably the Polish one, I’ve never tried to take off anyone’s accent – it’s pointless. The only crucial thing when you speak is not to distort the words so that you interlocutors can’t understand you, correct pronunciation is also necessary, it gives the testimony of the learner – I certainly wouldn’t like to be perceived as a ‘linguistic slob’.