"Siedemnaście, osiemnaście, dziewiętnaście, dwadzieścia"
Translation:Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty
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I feel really bad if I think about all those non Polish speakers dealing with it. ;(
Yes, it is very hard for me to memorize everything, especially that Duo does not teach from 1-10, 11-20, etc. It jumps off from 1, then 4-5, then 17-20 that is why it is soooo confusing. And the spelling, too. :(
If you want to learn the Polish numbers from 1 to 100, I reccomend you Memrise to do it, because Duolingo it's better for learn words, but Memrise it's better for learn numbers.
"Czterdzieści dziewięć tysięcy trzysta sześćdziesiąt pięć szczebioczących szkrabów"
Třista třicet tři střibrnch střkaček stříkalo přes třista třicet tři střibrnch střech... Polish isn't the only language with horrible words :D
W Mszczonowieścicach, gmina Grzmiszczosławice, powiat Trzcinogrzechotnikowo ;)
Man who invented "szcz" was a genius.
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I almost feel like Polish should have used cyrillic script - instead of all the consonant sequences like sz, cz, szcz, etc. just have one bloody letter - ж, ч, щ...
The current system shows the phonological relationship between sibilants. The cyrillic script that you propose wouldn't be able to do that.
| dental/alveolar | alveolo-palatal | post-alveolar |
|---|---|---|
| c | ć | cz |
| s | ś | sz |
| z | ź | rz |
It's actually quite ingenious if you think about it.
If Polish used Czech orthography, sz and cz could each be spelled with one letter, and szcz with two (maybe one, if we invented a new letter). The Polish language, through its evolution, decided that using more basic letters just works best for them.
why is the 'ę' in 'dziewiętnaście' (and 'piętnaście') pronounced like a common 'e'?
While normally 'ę' only sounds like 'e' at the end of the word, I think it would actually be considered hypercorrectness to make a clear 'ę' in this particular word.
Similarly, Polish almost doesn't have any silent letters, but a few numbers have them, e.g. "pięćdziesiąt", "sześćdziesiąt", "dziewięćdziesiąt" in which you usually omit 'ć'. 'ę' should be pronounced clearly in 50 and 90 though.
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Is there an explanation of the drift from ę to e in piętnaście? It is not more difficult to pronounce the ę before the t.
The truth is, in pięćdziesiąt and dziewięćdziesiąt the letter ę is not pronounced as just a nasal e. There is a nasal n that comes right after it. My guess is that the -ntn- cluster in piętnaście would be a bit too much.