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- "Ona pije mleko."
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This is the exact translation in Serbian too. (eng. she drinks milk - srb. ona pije mleko)
Does Polish have the same palatisation as in Russish? So, is "mleko" to be pronounced like "mljeko" or is it elsewhere always marked in the orthography?
479
No, L (unless before i) is not a palatal sound. In context of English, it's called light L.
Pronouncing L as a palatal sound may be interpreted as having come from the East.
Russian "moloko" doesn't palatalize the L. The word for lion, лев, "liew," in Russian, (spelled in Polish) does palatalize the L.
However, having said that, the Polish "L" does have a retroflex pronunciation to it, compared to an English "L" or a Russian unpalatalized Л, meaning that the tip of the tongue curls backward, touching the alveolar bone behind the teeth. In an English "L" and Russian unpalatalized Л, the tongue touches the teeth. In a palatalized Russian Л (ль, ля, ле, ли, лё, лю), the tongue curls backward even further than the Polish "L," so the pronunciation of the Polish "L" falls somewhere between an English "L" and a Russian palatalized Л
Polish uses "i" to make those lighter sounds. There is no "i" in "mleko," so it's pronounced without palatisation :).
Since this is the Polish course, the TTS shouldn't have said anything in English. In case you meant that the voice said "je" instead of "pije", rest assured, I just checked both voices and they clearly say "pije". Besides, I'm not aware of any language in which you "eat milk".
The ę and e sound are mixed up in this app. Where it should be ę or ą it's pronounced as e or a, and visa versa. It makes translating from sound challenging.
vice versa*
In this course, the ending Ę is pronounced the same as E. But the first-person perspective of many verbs ends in Ę while the third-person perspective ends in E. Ja piję. On/ona/ono pije. (They sound the same in this course.) Ą always sounds different than A.
Just to add: if ę is the last sound of the word, it actually sounds like a normal e for most people, it is considered hypercorrection to nasalize it clearly there. So we could say that "piję" (I drink) and "pije" (he/she/it drinks) do sound the same or almost the same.
