Why Polish Is One Of The Hardest Languages For Foreigners To Learn? Pronunciation

[@kaziupir]

It doesn't matter if you pronounce words perfectly, because anyway every Pole will be excited that you speak Polish.

[@gabrysiagornikowska1368]

Yes

[@karolinapilarek753]

That's right, we love foreigners who can speak in our language, even if it's only one-two words.

[@kaiser_landschaft7941]

Tak

[@ventriculus100]

To jest zaleta naszego języka. Niezależnie jak coś powiesz i tak zostaniesz zrozumiany, czego nie można powiedzieć o wielu innych językach.

[@BaiQla]

Potwierdzam! I confirm!

[@nonononono2]

As a polish person i am so not used to foreigners learning our language and it’s always such a positive experience hearing someone not native to polish speak it! you’re doing great and I wish you all the best!!

[@BrokuDrawsNMore]

Ja to samo mu życzę.

[@MakoSFSD]

+1

[@SlowPolish]

More and more people are learning it and especially now, when we have more foreigners in the country, many Poles discover the existence of Polish as a foreign language 😁.

[@pawelzielinski1398]

@@SlowPolish Yeah, it's not a big deal. Language is language. It does not make you any better or worse.

[@Gobio2]

@@BrokuDrawsNMore Ja mu tego samego życzę 😀

[@KNURKonesur]

I always loved the word ŻÓŁĆ as a word utilizing only the "special" letters of the alphabet :D

[@plammber]

chrząszcz is similar cuz its build with only specially connected letters that sounds different than it looks

[@kjkj4725]

And the meaning of this word perfectly describes mentality of many polish people xD

[@Qldragon]

@@kjkj4725 what do you mean?

[@86nivia]

@@kjkj4725 OMG it's so true, yet so, so, SO (!) sad :S

[@karolwozniak1674]

@@Qldragon it mean yellow or bile in english

[@nalq7935]

Your pronunciation's great! I come from Poland and I teach English here, and seeing all my Polish students struggling with English and looking at me like I'm crazy when I explain how to pronounce some English words there's only one thing I can tell you - don't be afraid to speak Polish! People tend to be really understanding when they see you're actually trying and putting some effort into speaking their mother tongue. As I said, you sound really great, and I wish we could meet and discuss our mother tongues and daily linguistic struggles. All the best! :)

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you, I have a lot to learn. I too know that look of confusion… as a teacher and student… again thank you for the encouragement.

[@sl2047]

@@peterholmanwashington Try one of the many African languages, e.g. Swahili. Have a nice trip.

[@byzuruu19]

O polak xd

[@pim69420]

@byzuruu XD

[@rafalkaminski6389]

both ż and rz are pronounced as s in measure, pleasure :)

[@joannazajac2619]

To make it even more confusing, there are some words, where 'rz' is not pronounced together, but as a 'r' and 'z', for instance 'zamarznięty' :D good luck!

[@adorinadorin]

Only few. Rather less than more

[@mikoajbadzielewski3396]

hew ju ewer hert ebałt wyjątek?

[@jakubstaszewski5965]

Hej, czy możesz podać inne przykłady (poza wyrazami pokrewnymi)? "Zbieram" takie różne wyjątki i językowe ciekawostki i chętnie poznam kolejne.

[@jakubstaszewski5965]

Ale to słowo (a dokładniej pokrewne) zostało właśnie powyżej podane. A mi chodzi o inne!

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

I just remembered there's a village called "Murzasichle" somewhere in the Tatras. Now that's a tongue twister!

[@plrc4593]

O kurcze, człowieku, podziwiam osoby takie jak Ty. Uczę się rosyjskiego i dzięki temu, że jestem Polakiem mam ogromny handicap - te różne wzory odmian, wymiany spółgłosek itp. są dla mnie mocno intuicyjne, a i tak jest ciężko (przez całą masę słów, które są do niczego niepodobne). Gdybym nie był Słowianinem to bym się prędzej zesrał niż nauczył języka słowiańskiego. Życzę sukcesów na youtube!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you!!!

[@ultrxlight]

handicap oznacza, że masz trudniej niż inni, a nie latwiej

[@plrc4593]

@@ultrxlight Nie. Handicap oznacza ułatwienie. Np. w go oznacza ułatwienie w postaci możliwości postawienia dodatkowych pionów przed grą.

[@ultrxlight]

@@plrc4593 jako osoba, która od 19 lat mieszka w UK - zapewniam Cię, że nie masz racji

[@ultrxlight]

@@plrc4593 z Oxford Languages: handicap /ˈhandɪkap/ a circumstance that makes progress or success difficult. "not being able to drive was something of a handicap" noun 1. utrudnienie 2. upośledzenie

[@MichalTerajewicz]

Oh, yeah. Chrząszcz is my favourite word to scare off any foreigner. 🤣 Please, don’t apologise for your pronunciation, you’re doing quite well! Go on for it!

[@埊]

also Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz

[@telemasz1086]

I knew an Englishman who was quite good at dealing with various polish tongue twisters - including the infamous "chrząszcz" - with one exception for the word "źdźbło".

[@sieciechful]

ŻÓŁĆ ;P

[@lubomirpetrowpahuta]

@@埊 Dalsza część jest równie "zabawna" ;)

[@lubomirpetrowpahuta]

@Base Security I tu jest dylemat. Przez "rz" czy przez "ż". ;)

[@piotrrybka318]

A few notes from a Polish teacher: , , , are not diphthongs, but digraphs, i.e. two letters representing generally one sound. Similarly is a trigraph, not a triphthong. It's a bit debatable if there are real diphthongs and triphthongs in Polish. However, words, where these may occur, are e.g. gĘś, bAJka, ENzym, AUto. People in Poland sometimes pronounce those letter by letter, which actually is wrong. If you listen to a natural way of pronouncing those you'll hear a combination of two sounds where I put capital letters. As for digraphs and trigraphs, you have them in English, e.g. SHow, cluTCH, riNG. It's the easiest way to represent sounds that were absent from Latin. Another way is to use diacritics. English spelling generally didn't choose that way but many European languages did, e.g. in German we have , . The only English word using a diacritic that I know of is naïve, but it's a special situation there. The two dots in naïve are called diaeresis and in many languages, it denotes a lack of a diphthong, so not /nejv/ but /najiv/. Remember not to confuse sounds with letters. Those are worlds apart. And don't get too attached to letter-sound equivalence. It's almost never automatic in any language. E.g. is either equal to or . In krzak (a bush) = , but in grzech (a sin) = . This strange behaviour results from a bit exceptional evolution of the sound we spell with , which was originally /r'/, compare Polish bRZeg (a bank, a shore) and English icebeRg where RZ and R have a common ancestor. Btw., quite nice Polish pronunciation you have :).

[@Gubbe51]

Gęś to jest tryftong? To jakaś nowa fonetyka?

[@piotrrybka318]

@@Gubbe51 Nie, tam można dopatrzeć się dyftongu w miejscu ę. A fonetyka jest współczesna ;)

[@Gubbe51]

@@piotrrybka318 chciałbym się dowiedzieć więcej o tym dyftongu.

[@jarlfenrir]

@@Gubbe51 generalnie ę i ą mogą być uznane za dyftongi, bo brzmią jakby jedna litera przechodziła tu w inną. Czytałem, że lingwiści coraz częściej uważają, że to podwójne brzmienie w języku polskim zanikło i już dyftongów nie ma, chociaż moim zdaniem ja dokłądnie tak te litery wymawiam - jak jeden dźwięk przechodzący w inny.

[@piotrrybka318]

@@Gubbe51 Właśnie jest to dyskusyjne. Nawet sama definicja dyftongu jest skomplikowana, bo pojawiają się w niej samogłoski niezgłoskotwórcze (nie tworzące sylaby), co trochę się wzajemnie wyklucza, bo samogłoski w zasadzie tworzą sylabę. Samo wyjaśnienie wymowy [u̯ j] i tego, czym się różnią od [i u] jest trudne. Do tego dochodzi fonologia, bo o ile jeszcze wyjaśnimy dyftong w fonetyce, to już w fonologii nie jest to takie oczywiste, czy takie [aj] w bajka lub [eu̯] w Europa jest jedną jednostką czy dwiema. A co do gęsi - może być wymawiana dwojako: [ɡeũ̯ś] lub [ɡej͂ś]. Wymowa [ɡe͂ś] z [e͂] - unosowionym [e] przez całą jej długość jest nienaturalna i hiperpoprawna (hiperpoprawność to popełnianie błędów językowych podczas próby ich uniknięcia). Trudno nawet osiągnąć [e͂], zwykle ludziom wychodzi coś bliższe [ee͂]. Naturalniejsze jest wstawienie po [e] unosowionej głoski [u̯] (w piśmie: >łu

[@matuklon]

I always admire foreigners who want to learn Polish! You don't understand how hard it is if you speak it as the first language. Your pronunciation is actually really good!

[@irishdancer7116]

Fun Fact: historically h and ch in a word were spoken differently, that you could tell wich one is used. H is more hard sound and ch softened. There are some people who still talk this way, but not many :)

[@Morrov]

Ż and RZ, U and Ó were different too. RZ was the same as the Czech Ř, and Ó I believe was a long "O". We've just lost these differences over the centuries. I do kinda wish we still had the Ř sound.

[@AOTBrightSide]

Yup, remember when my Polish teacher insist to pronunce hard "H" sound - "Hak" not "chak", "waHać" not "wachać" and... "CHełm" not "Hełm". It was in late 80's, but I remember lessons since then and still watch myself with that 😆

[@undefinednull5749]

@@AOTBrightSide ma ktoś nagranie może jak to ma brzmieć ? chciałbym to rozróżniać

[@AOTBrightSide]

@@undefinednull5749 prof. Bralczyk bardzo ładnie to wyjaśnia w tym filmie (od 0:47): kzbin.info/www/bejne/l2qzqqqPg76UeJo "Piję Herbatę, nie CHerbatę"

[@undefinednull5749]

@@AOTBrightSide dzięki, ale coś ledwo słyszę jeśli w ogóle. Poszukam sobie więcej o tym, bo ktoś napisał że słabo wymawia profesor tę różnicę.

[@leszekstefaniak6377]

super z Ciebie kolo, fajnie sie Ciebie słucha i ogląda. Wszystkiego najlepszego, zdrówka!

[@埊]

najpierw przeczytalem jako 'super z ciebie koło' potem zrozumialem.

[@wilczycawrazliwa163]

@@埊 A możesz się nie czepiać? W końcu ktoś napisał gościowi po polsku, co dla niego jest korzystne, bo czytając po polsku jednocześnie uczy się naszego języka. A nie jak większość Polaków popisujących się znajomością języka angielskiego.

[@sundaymorningslover]

@@wilczycawrazliwa163 twoja nazwa bardzo pasuje do twojego komentarza XDDD on sie nie czepial, on tylko nie zrozumial o co chodzilo

[@wilczycawrazliwa163]

@@sundaymorningslover To jego problem, że nie zrozumiał, więc po co o tym pisać? To co odzwierciedla lub nie odzwierciedla mój nick to już pozostawiam twojej wybujałej wyobraźni.

[@sundaymorningslover]

@@wilczycawrazliwa163 bo to publiczna sekcja komentarzy, moze pisac co chce XDDD

[@Draggrat]

Pole here. I wanted to say thank you for learning Polish! There are so few people interested in learning this language, that whenever I hear anyone try, my gratitude to this person shoots to the moon 🙂 You did great with PL pronunciation, I didn't have issues with understanding you at all. Have a great evening!

[@ficuslyrata6099]

Your pronounciation is pretty impressive :) It always melt my heart when foreigners learn polish is so nice.

[@peterholmanwashington]

Aww! Thank you!

[@bartoszbarc1097]

Zawsze jak oglądam tego typu filmy to czuje się jakbym był po drugiej stronie lustra XD

[@BaiQla]

Polska jenzyk cienszka jenzyk

[@aleksandratryniecka8940]

Wow you are such a positive person! Thank you so much for this beautiful video and for appreciating the Polish language! I appreciate you so much! You also encourage me to study new languages!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thanks for your comment! :)

[@roseblack3052]

Good for you for learning polish. Keep it up! You’re great!

[@thormusique]

No need to apologise at all, you've done a beautiful job! As others have said here, kudos to you for tackling such a relatively unpopular language. I'm a polyglot, but Polish was my first language, and I'm always in awe of folks who wish to learn it. Very nicely done. Cheers!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Cheers! :) Thanks for your comment!

[@bartoszsurlas8754]

Dude you are rockin, keep on going with that good work, I'm sure every polish citizen is proud of you how you handle polish language. You are extremely consious and openminded, you are trying to understand polish language and culture. Blessings for you man.

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you ☺

[@adamzkoszalina3074]

Your polish is is quite good man, you're not there yet but what I can see from your videos you're making great progress 💪 Trenuj dalej, nie poddawaj się a będzie elegancko - Super sprawa, że pomagasz ludziom, których marzeniem jest umieć mówić w moim języku ♡

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you :)

[@klaudiasob7325]

You are doing great, man! Keep going! I'm so proud of you. Our language is hard even for some native speakers

[@Margot4454]

It has always felt to me (as a native Polish speaker) that Polish grammar is the difficult for the foreigners thing. I see our native "sounds" are weird to an English native but it's only vice versa ! English diphthongs, vowels are not natural for a Polish native speaker and need to be drilled ... the usual stuff while one learns a foreign language. Of languages of Europe I have found Spanish and Italian phonetics the easiest, the English the most challenging. Aaaand don't even start on Polish spelling ! Or English rule No1 "There is more exceptions to any grammar/spelling/use of vocabulary rule than examples following the rule". Thank you very much for the most interesting vid !!

[@peterholmanwashington]

I totally agree with your statement, that English is also a difficult language to learn. Even as a native speaker, I still struggle with English pronunciation and spelling. Thank you for your comment.

[@oliwia_to_ja_nik]

Polish may be difficult even for the Poles, so I really admire everyone who is trying to learn it.

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you ! :)

[@particleartist9006]

It’s amazing how much I can learn about my language from someone that is actively learning it! Thank you, great video

[@goldbobak7416]

I am polish and I think your pronunciation is realy good. Our language is difficult even for some polish people.

[@gabrielschwarz8761]

Native Pole Here Bro! You explain this in really easy way, you are skilled language instructor or maybe you have natural gift to do that. Your pronunciation is way better than any poreigner speakers in know (Ukrainians, Turks, Egyptians, Bulgarians) You did awesome work by posting this, and much respect!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you! :)

[@mojyoqueen350]

Uffff... Glad i'm native speaker of polish. Also big bravo for you for being able to learn this language 👏You pronounce "dzieci" perfectly!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you ! :))

[@MsKsenna]

I discovered that an innocent word "chcę" is a real tongue twister for an English speaking person. Our pronunciation seems to be really hard, and grammar is awful. I really appreciate your effort to learn Polish :)

[@byzuruu19]

Ten poranek był bardzo dżdżysty, ale to nie przeszkadzało gżegżółkom radośnie gaworzyć Greetings from Polish

[@vasiliyfutsur2815]

Hcovn

[@vasiliyfutsur2815]

@@byzuruu19 a dla chego dzdzysty a nie dezdisty , od slowa dezd chyli desh , nu to v tedy deshisty . a dzdz to napravta zaval rozumu , chyli glupoty .

[@byzuruu19]

@@vasiliyfutsur2815 co

[@yuridenisov4751]

​@@byzuruu19 It is not easy for a Russian speaker to say this sentence fast and to understand it if it was said fast! And really: it is not easy for us Russians to pronounce the very used word dżdżysty, for example in "dziś dżdżysty dzień"

[@nebojsabobic6480]

I come from Serbia . And I traveled a lot in Europe.Speaking fluently English language. Last ten years of my life I live full time in Poland,Warsaw. I speak and write in Polish very good.When I just started living here I had a lot a LOT of problems with pronouncing. Just the name of the street I was living in, Chrościckiego took me a few months to pronounce.And my native language is similar to Polish because we come from same Slavic tribes that lived in Europe before. My native language has cirilic and latinic alfabet, written in four different types of letters . English language is technical language,so simple and easy to learn,but same doesn't go in Europe and so many different languages we have here :-)

[@AK-zo3ow]

Thank you so much for making this video, great job! ❤️❤️❤️

[@trycja5171]

Offtopic: you have a beautiful soft voice, I may start listen to it when I go to sleep

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you!

[@lady0shady]

I love watching people who appreciate Poland, our culture, language and, the most of all, atmosphere here ❤️. Polish people, like me, complain about everything 😅 it's very motivating and building the overall spirit 😊 thank you Peter!

[@aleksandraszczurowska2205]

Man that was really great!

[@ileeee69]

I'm from Poland and I can see you are doing great job, keep it up!

[@sandystanley1237]

My Polish dad made me, us, learn Polish.. W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie I Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie. Wół go pyta: ”Panie chrząszczu, Po co pan tak brzęczy w gąszczu?” ”Jak to - po co? To jest praca, Każda praca się opłaca.”

[@agnieszkamalicka7232]

Good for you for learning polish. I'm a native and I'm always impressed when people try to learn this language. I wouldn't be able to ;)

[@tubetotto]

Lovely video but I fundamentally oppose the myth of Polish language being somehow the top-elite hardest to learn etc... No no no!!! It's not easy. True, it's probably somewhere on average on the scale of "harshnest". Pronunciation socks, but you nailed the problem at 6:00. It's simply because you, English-speaking natives are not used to producing certain sounds!! The challenge is two side!, Poles find English sounds difficultie or (more often) aren't aware they pronounce English words incorrectly!!

[@poliglotkadominika]

Fantastyczna robota! Keep it up! You’re great! ❤️🥳 you have very good pronunciation! ❤️🇵🇱

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

I occasionally teach Polish to English-speaking people, and I've got to say, your pronunciation is very good! I've also got to say, in my experience grammar's the tough part. We get to the plurals, which is fine, then the nominative... And then we get to the part where the learners realize that it's declension tables all the way down. For example, in Polish, the ending of the adjective depends on the gender (which doesn't work the way most English-speaking people assume), the number (we have dual numbers), the case (there's 7 of them), and the degree. Fusional languages, woo! Edit: it's declension argh, it's not even that I should've known better, I do! my bad

[@feniks6681]

How they assume endings based on gender work ? :o

[@justynaaleksiejuk1802]

@@feniks6681 For example we have three words for adjective "green" - "zielony", "zielona", "zielone" and they are depends on the gender of the noun (male, female or neuter).

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

@@justynaaleksiejuk1802 And that's just adjectives - nouns are even more complicated. In the nominative, masculine nouns can be personal, animate, or inanimate (all have their own endings in the singular) - but for the plurals, personal masculine nouns get their own endings, while animate and inanimate masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns fall into another category. Unless we're talking about the number two, in which case it's DIFFERENT. Because... I dunno? I mean, to a native speaker of Polish like me, this all appears to make intuitive sense, but the more I think about how this is all divided up, the less sense I can make of it. For any bystanders not knowing what I'm talking about here, check the tables on the wiki article on Polish grammar, under Grammar -> Inflection, they have it all laid out. I'd paste a link, but YT doesn't like it much nowadays.

[@michaireneuszjakubowski5289]

@@feniks6681 Other than the fact that they assume they're laid out in a rational way... most commonly I think, people who haven't had much contact with languages other than English are often surprised that objects can vary in gender. So first, they're somewhat surprised to learn that there isn't only one ending for the plurals (not even close!) and that there are many endings of the words, for which there are declension tables, and the gender has to be memorized, as it can vary. This broadly applies to both adjectives (which I used as an example here) and nouns.

[@serat0947]

My husband is teaching me Polish and I really struggle with changing all the endings.

[@conar929]

You doing very well, keep learning.

[@konradzukowski213]

I just love the idea that Polish is so difficult that even Poles living here have trouble speaking properly. There have been many situations when I was talking with people who seem to struggle with some words, mainly due to the influence of other languages through out history such us Russian or German or just difficulty with pronouncing them so attempt to simplify it. And aside from the topic, no need to apologize for mispronouncing some words. We genuinely love to hear people from abroad even attempting to say some words as it feels truly heart-warming for us. Whenever one of my friends plans to visit Poland, I always tell them to at least a few words, mainly "Dziękuję". This way you can easily earn sympathy and respect from any Pole, no matter the age.

[@maggg.a]

What kind of nonsense is that! Poles speak their own mother language perfectly. What influences?? German or Russian influences are long gone and for good!

[@ololo518]

@@maggg.a No nation speaks their language perfectly. People make mistakes, in grammar, spelling and pronounciation. That's how we know how some ancient words sounded - because people were misspelling them the way they used to speak. And neither German nor Russian influences are gone. I'm currently learning German and I assure you there are many words (Schlam - szlam, błoto) that exist in Polish language. As from Russian now I can think of Kitajec, as a nickname to Chińczyk but I'm sure other exist too (my girlfriend says that construct "był on..." with flipped pronoun and verb is Russian influence). As well as French, English, Hebrew, Italian and many other influences, because that's how languages work.

[@maggg.a]

@@ololo518 I am fed up of posts claiming Polish is so difficult even native speakers have difficulties speaking it correctly. As you mentioned that might be the case in all countries, not only in Poland! I know there are many borrowed words from different languages, even my grandma uses quite few of them. I am aware of it though and I don't use them as I know Polish equivalent words! Education plus interest in laungeges helps too. Reading is another great source of improving your language, spoken or written! So please don't force those stereotypes on us claiming that Poles don't speak their language correctly as 1st this is simply not true ( although there is quite large of procentage they don't unfortunately) and the reason for that is that they are not interested, they skipped school, don't read books and are souronded by uneducated people. All languages borrow words from their neighbouring countries, not only Poland! My grandma was born in Germany ( now Poland) and her vocabulary consists of more than 10 % of German words that she learnt as a child, especially culinary words. I would say these words were only used by her and her family and were not widely spoken in our town and surroundings.

[@konradzukowski213]

@@maggg.a Wanna know why I worded my comment this way? It's a way to encourage people from aboard to learn. Polish is infamous because of the plethora of different versions the same word can have depending on the situation it's used and many sounds that seem to be nonexistent in other languages, those things can detour people from learning. You're right, the things i did mention in my comment are common in other languages as well. But it's much easier and more encouraging to say "Don't worry, you don't need to be perfect. People here are not perfect either despite speaking this language since birth" then this heavy wall of text you've posted.

[@Anita-bp4lc]

Don't apologize, you nailed it! 😀

[@NoUserU]

As a Pole I can confirm I don't even know some grammar of the Polish languague Edit: your pronounciations are really good as for an English speaker! Like seriously, you are really good at this. Also the "rz" is a mix of j, z and g. It also has a letter that basically sounds the exact same (but of course, grammar), ż.

[@hughmanatee5232]

I love seeing the language I use and find intuitive from the foreigner's perspective. It's amazing how much of a journey it is to spell some of our oddly specific letter combinations. Congratulations on your progress!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thanks for your comment!

[@anubisbutgay]

Bro you're doing great! I'm a pole and I'm proud of ya. You don't have to pronounce words perfectly to impress us haha

[@bombiczek123]

about the chrząszcz word. in this particular word "rz" i pronounced sofly exactly the same as sz. it's from simple reason: the combination of soft ch and voiced rz is unspeakable :D and we have many examples of that in word like kwadrat w>f żelazko z>s and many other i do not remember.

[@jarlfenrir]

Right, in polish there are rules of when a voiced letter is pronounced as unvoiced and vice versa. RZ is voiced version of SZ, and because before RZ there is unvoiced CH, RZ is also realized as unvoiced.

[@Kyori.K]

It’s complicated even for me 🤣 tak, polak. A co myślałeś?

[@yatseque]

By the way, most Poles make the same mistake by pronouncing them in the same exact way. So if a foreigner does that, most of us won’t even notice. Unless of course you’re one of those language nazis.

[@bombiczek123]

@@yatseque what ? No poles make this mistake i said it's unspeakable? Have you ever heard someone saying kWadrat or żelaZko you simpy can't. But if there is an example of this i will hear/read it with pleasure

[@yatseque]

@@bombiczek123 actually what i meant was how subtle the difference between dż and drz is, i wasn’t considering any other letter combination sorry for not stating it in my comment :)

[@G4nd4lf]

3:17 Actually 'dż' is exactly pronounce the same as english 'j' or 'ge'. So according to pronunciation word "Jelly" in polish would be written "Dżeli" and the word "Germany" would be "Dżermani".

[@morgana8037]

nope, it's not even close to be "exactly the same" I'm polish american, I know polish but I do speak and know it worse than I do English. it's a sound... king of in between dz with the dot and dz with the lil accent line. but still, it's very difficult to explain. I know polish people say these sounds like that, but whenever I hear jelly pronounced as "dzelee(with dz with dot)" or many other words I frankly hardly ever understand what you're sayin...

[@LearnGermanOutside]

It is so impressive to see you learn Polish. Have to say you are great and your pronunciation is so nice, keep doing it!

[@Inka_ink]

Wow! I love it when foreigners speak Polish 😍We have many fun words, like ździebełko, trzcina, gżegżółka etc.

[@haremsultana]

I am from Poland. I came here to learn English language. It is very interesting how other peoples deal with Polish language. Good job.

[@rebecca_stone]

This made me smile from ear to ear. You'll win the heart of any Pole just by trying, trust me. That's because we know that only the world's bravest souls would even try to learn our language!! I'm a native, and have remained fluent and bilingual even though I haven't lived in Poland since I was a toddler. I couldn't imagine learning it from scratch. The sounds, spellings and pronunciations are intimidating enough - the grammar is next level, esp for English speakers with no experience of grammar systems! Poles will find your pronunciation charming. Good on you!

[@Aliszynsable]

Huge props to you for including a section where you provide english equivalents of polish sounds in a given word! I feel like no one does this, but it makes practicing pronunciation a lot easier.

[@janszpalerski7934]

Hey this is akcualy good , could you say chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie w Szczebrzeszynie

[@panterus2019]

omg, You're sound amazing! i'm from Poland and when i hear u, i just smile. I rarely meet people who explain my language, because it is _so_ difficult that only Poles use it... It was nice to watch Your video, even though i didn't have to cuz i know how to speak... i really appreciate Your interest and willingness to explaining!! ♡

[@MariuszKozerski]

Your pronunciation of Polish words is almost perfect. People in Poland who learn english usually have a problem with pronunciation of english "th". We don't use such sound in our language so for us this is hard to say this properly.

[@AOTBrightSide]

For me, personally, it's impossible to pronounce the double "tt" of the American way. For some words it's "d" and "t" in one sound 😅 Years of learning and still can't do it, so I chose British "t" sound and I'm fine with that 🙂

[@michaelsixty-five2724]

Excellent video! Good luck in Poland.

[@binio28]

Fair play to you. I am Polish and I must say polish is the most confusing/difficult language I know. Good thing is that if you can learn polish you can learn any language. Good luck.

[@sunflowernctzen7990]

As a Pole, I greatly appreciate people who choose to spend their time learning our language. I know it is difficult for foreigners, but you still want to know how to speak this! It's nice to hear people with other native languages speaking Polish ❤️

[@Elajza7]

Miło się oglądało. ☺️

[@tylergates4075]

Pozdrawiam! Big respect to you for learning Polish. A very easy to pronounce word in polish is "Być"

[@natttttttt]

omg you’re so cute i love you already. i always get so happy and excited when i see foreigners being interested in my mother tongue and country. polish is very underestimated, heck even polish elders don’t know every rule in polish grammar, thats how hard it is. but keep it up ur doing great, and thank you sm for these videos!!

[@esflores5249]

The fun begins when you want to speak really correctly. „Ż” and „rz” represent a french „j” but „dż” and „drz” are different. In „dż” d and ż are closely connected so you say it like english „j” (dżem - jam). However in „drz” you slightly separate d and rz. It’s something like placing french „e” after d. To make it easier I would not consider „drz” as a single sound (drzewo - tree).

[@czarnyalibaba3688]

Try to say this sentence ,,W Szczębrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie''. Greetings from Poland, my town is Przystajń:)

[@GosiaSFyrrea]

In some regions (Cracow!) they pronounce "drzewo" like "dżewo" or "strzykawka" more like "szczykawka", also "trzy" sounds the same as "czy" :D

[@czarnyalibaba3688]

@@GosiaSFyrrea I know becouse I'm from Częstochowa region.

[@thepiratearr897]

Man, you are doing very well and taking the idea! Keep it going. It's really complicated and hard language (even most Poles speak it completely wrong) so don't give up! Additionally, don't be afraid using it (even if you are messing the pronunciation) 'cos Poles will be mostly happy that you are even trying. They may laugh at your pronunciation but mainly in a good way just because for us it sounds funny haha

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you! I'm always laughing too :)

[@Snoffcia]

It was lovely to hear you speak polish! You're doing great, and your pronunciation is really good for a foreigner (as many people already mentioned). Dear non polish speakers, never be afraid of trying, we Poles LOVE when someone is trying to speak our language.

[@klegdixal3529]

diphthongs are 2 vowels seamlessly going from one to the second without a syllabic split between them. the word you look for is a digraph. ą is a nasal o - in Polish usually realised with an m or n at the end like in Portuguese. Polish pronunciation isn't any more alien to you than say click consonants in Xhosa are for me :)

[@ernestgowczynski9828]

Święta krowa! Great video, great polish language and great monstera in background!

[@hughthompson4846]

I want to visit and maybe study in Poland in the future, love seeing all these kinds of videos. Thank you!

[@andrebrs1381]

I absolutely respect foreigners who learn Polish. It is a very difficult language and useful almost only in Poland, but they do it! This is very impressive!

[@krewetkashrimp]

Oh my, you look like a very nice person! I love like you explained everything in very calm way and you respect polish and trying your best in pronunciation as well I think I'll stay on this channel longer

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you!!

[@UBA-ZANETA]

Great job, Peter! Very impressive :)

[@antygona-iq8ew]

You beautifully explaining it.

[@konbokonbox2293]

Good effort bro, you could easily communicate in polish with the curent knowledge. Just for you to know we admire foreigners who even atempt to speak our language so we are very very forgiving in matter of pronunciation

[@delfinal7560]

I love your pronunciation, you did pretty good job with those words

[@szymonsobczak2307]

good stuff man, and you're doing really well. Glad you like it here! All the best!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you!

[@LubomirPotocki]

Pete! You are an excellent language butcher! We want MORE!

[@peterholmanwashington]

lol, I agree and I will give you more.😅

[@andrzejthethinone1577]

Your pronunciation is really good. Seriously.

[@patrykkarcz7859]

Your pronunciation - especially for the English speaker - is really decent, f.e. your "łyk", "mucha" are perfect. However, I have to disagree with pronuncing polish "sz" as english "sh". Polish "sz" is much harder, harsher than "sh". You can easily notice the difference between polish "ś" (very light, speaken with a middle of tounge toungue touching hard palate), polish "sz" (very harsh, lips slightly rounding, kinda like when you say "i" in the word "wish", or "y" in polish "łyk") and english "sh", which is right in middle between soft "ś" and hard "sz". So it's "ś" -> "sh" -> "sz". Same thing applies to other polish sounds, so: - "ć" is softer than english "ch", but "cz" is harder ("ć" -> "ch" -> "cz"), - "ź" is softer than english "zh" - or french "j", like in a name "Jacque", but "ż" or "rz" is harder ("ź" -> "zh" -> "ż"/"rz"), - "dź" is softer than english "ji" - like in a word "jiggle", but "dż" is harder - "dż" is the same sound as "j" in a word "jam" ("dź" -> "ji" -> "dż").

[@stevelknievel4183]

Rather than just describe sounds as being harder or softer than others, would it not be better to say what shape you have to make with your mouth and where your tongue should be in it? I've linked a list of all the sounds in Polish on Wikipedia which has further links to pages for each individual sound which describe how to make them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Polish

[@Ellestra]

While that is true for people who only know English "sh' is pretty good approximation - and they will be understood using it. Just like explaining 'si' as 'she'

[@paunitka7]

Exactly, that was just an approximation.

[@martita9673]

Your pronunciation is amazing!

[@gazerew]

First video of yours I see and I must say you seem like a great and nice guy and it's really nice listening to you! I also love your background, I wish my plants didnt die the second I buy them hahah

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you! :))🌻🌼

[@sylwuskak7065]

I really don't know why I'm watching a video about my own language :) But it was fun. And your pronunciation is really good :)

[@olowrohek9540]

Well done 👏

[@SherrieQ]

Wow, your pronunciation's great!!! I wish you all the best!!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you! ☺

[@narva6772]

Thanks to yt algorythm I had found this video and just wanted to say that your pronaunciation is phenomenal! I know how it feels to speak foreign language and how stressfull it can be but seriously YOU'RE DOING GREAT. Of course, you have trouble with dipthongs etc. but that's completely normal. It's almost impossible to pronounce every sound right while speaking foreign language. But regular sounds? With the 'simple' words at the beginning you sound 100% polish. You pronounce the 'r' and all of the 'hard' letters with this harsh polish accent. I don't know for how long you've been living here but damn, it's impressive. Also, most of the time, we're happy to hear foreigners trying speaking polish and we'll happily help you.

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you! I'm happy to see a comment like this

[@Aladjan]

Peter, you have nothing to apologize for :) you teach beautifully. what's the difference if, for example, in the word "dźwig" you say "dz" , „dź” or"dż"? everyone will understand. The same with the other words

[@AK-nd6jk]

Your pronunciation is so good!

[@TurquoiseKat]

I'm Polish and in my opinion you did a great job with explaining the difficulties of polish language :)

[@michaskonieczny1919]

There is one extra thing that makes pronunciation of 'rz' more difficult. Just compare 'marzec" and "marznąć". Here you got rz putted together, but in 'marznąć' rz is not together. Try to hear it on google translate. Have fun :)

[@JuliaElizabethGraves]

Hi! Native polish speaker here, and I just want to say that our language is a pain, and you’re doing great! Most of your pronunciation was good and you’re doing way better it at than me after a few glasses of wine 😂

[@Majkisrajki]

Hi a Little tip for ya In thr pronounciationa of "jestem" It's relatively simple you don't have to say Yesh-tem But the correct pronunciation is Yes-tem

[@joannabikowska3161]

You are doing great!!! I admire your patience! 😁❤️

[@tarjena]

Every word you say is true. The hardships of learning our beautiful yet difficult polish language may deter many people from learning it. And it's okay, 'cause only the ones with true purpose will acomplish this difficult task. As a native I'd say you're on the perfect way towards mastering the hardest aspects of Polish. The journey will be ups and downs but worth the effort. You're brilliant already! And be confident of that 'chrząszcz'! You've already hit 95% of the perfect pronounciation. You'll get there pretty soon! Love❤

[@peterholmanwashington]

I will be very confident after this comment! :) Thank you

[@wloczykij.pustynny]

good job, man! very well pronuncation. 👍👍

[@sylwiawajda9866]

At least in Polish... letters or letters that go together as a whole to make one sound (sz, cz, rz, dz, dż... itp.) are ALWAYS pronounced the same. Unlike in English where e.g. letter "i" is pronounced a lot of different ways: bird, weird, naive, Italy... In Polish, once you learnt how to pronounce all the sounds, you can read anything you want - even if you haven't heard this world ever before

[@SandMalin]

Marznąć?

[@sylwiawajda9866]

@@SandMalin znalazł się wyjątek jeden na milion

[@SandMalin]

@@sylwiawajda9866 mierzić?

[@sylwiawajda9866]

@@SandMalin o wow, dwa. Znajdź trzeci

[@SandMalin]

@@sylwiawajda9866 rzać

[@rafalmoravlog]

You pronounced very well. Polish is a very difficult language. Greetings

[@KwasiuYasiu]

Man, I am Polish and I am super delighted that somebody like you really cares about learning this language. There are multiple things you mention in a video that I did not have a clue about. But after I watched your video I realised that when you are being born as polish and you learn the sound of the language from the very beginning, there are certain aspects that are entirely unvisible to you. If I were to teach somebody to speak Polish I would say that I am unable to. From my perspective there are no rules in this language and the only way you can learn this language is to learn it at an early stage as you are a child, so that I really appreciate people who try. English is way different. English can be defined by the set of rules. There are certain irregularities but they are really minor in comparison to polish. Man I wish you all best luck!

[@ameria7764]

Bardzo fajnie mówisz po polsku :) podziwiam Cię ;>

[@Yssandra]

I think you did great job with polish pronunciation :D

[@nymphliae]

i adore your energy!!

[@peterholmanwashington]

Thank you!

[@bibletruth187]

Great video ,you made me smile )

[@vasilisa4325]

Don't hesitate to speak Polish! Speaking is a crucial aspect in learning a language, it's great that you attempt to pronounce it correctly. As we grow up we loose flexibility required to producing new sounds, so it's nothing to be ashamed of that we struggle to produce some of them. And unfortunetely, no matter how hard we try and for how long, we may never be able to learn those, and this is perfectly normal for any foreign language, no need to apologise :) I wish you good luck with Polish and hope you like living here

[@MCh-gq4bh]

I love Your pronunciation (🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😅😁😁🤣🙃🙃🙃😇😇😊😁😁😄). Thank you for making this video 💗.

[@martajumi.inranbows3285]

you are quite right but I think these extremely hard words are the minority of all words in Polish language and it is possible to learn a lot of words that are relatively easy :) to be honest as we are slavic we get similar problem with f.ex. pronunciation of German language, which is a more "hard" language to pronunce (for example many words which end with 3 consonants in a row which is relatively hard to pronunce for Polish people, as our language is much more soft and melodic). So, I guess, depending on the language we come from there will be always other language that will have this kind of pronunciation chalenges ;) anyway keep up with a good work! your channel is really fun! :) P.S. fun fact: because of Polish pronunciation and all the facts that you mentioned Polish are scoring in learning Chinese, because this is also language of many sounds with slight differences between them, as we get this "base" from our language we can adapt much easier than other nations ;)