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- "On pokazywał mi coś w menu."
22 Comments
373
Hi there. On the Polish pronunciation aspect of this sentence- I'm hearing "meni" for menu on the regular (speed) recording. Is it just my ear? Would that be what I would hear everyday in Poland if people were speaking at a regular pace? Thanks.
Yes, we pronounce it as 'meni' with an accent on the last syllable. It's French pronunciation. Or rather what we think is French pronunciation, 'cause apparently it's now how they would say it. But still, I'd be quite surprised to hear it pronounced differently.
- 373
Ok. I often think I hear sounds of a mixture of French, Italian, Russian, and a bit of English when Polish is being spoken. Polish is definitely unique. The more I learn the more I've come to appreciate it. Thanks for all your help Marek.
- 435
Lol, the French 'u' is pronounced like the German 'ü'.
You make that sound by shaping the inside of your mouth (tongue and jaw position) as if you were saying a long "EEE" in English, but your lips are shaped as if you were making an "uuu" sound (the vowel sound in "food", "shoe", or "too", or the first two 'u's in "lugubrious", lol).
You can do it yourself by making the "EEE" sound, then gradually purse your lips for "uuu" without moving your tongue.
If that combination "ue" sound doesn't exist in your language (e.g., Polish), it's easy to see how it could be heard as just a weird "EEE". :-)
It's no different than being an English speaker and trying to recognize the difference between "sz" and 'ś', or "rz" and 'ź'... or even "czy" and "trzy"... :-)
- 435
But it was 'ź', not 'ż'... maybe I should have used a larger font, but I've no idea how to do that in here.
Also, I had a Polish friend quite emphatically tell me that "czy" (one consonant sound) is not pronounced the same as "trzy" (two consonant sounds), even though in normal conversation they will end up the same.
Yes, I'd also say that "trzy" and "czy" shouldn't really be the same, although in rapid speech they may be almost undistinguishable.
How are they different in pronunciation? It seems to me that they're both /tʂɨ/. Sometimes it seems in our literate minds, because we know how a word looks written down, that we are saying it how it's spelled when in actuality our actual lips, tongue, teeth, jaw, etc., positions are making a different physical noise than our brain is calculating according to the written word. For example, in many Russian words, unstressed vowels а, о, э, or {е or и (with palatalized consonant)}, are pronounced as phoneme /ɪ/ in a similar fashion as many unstressed English vowels are pronounced as /ə/ in many words. We can think in our minds that we are saying "pencil" /'pɛn-sɪl/ when we are actually saying /'pɛn-səl/ or "roses," we think /'roʊ-zɛz/ when we're actually sayinɡ /'roʊ-zɪz/. It can play tricks on our minds. Are czy and trzy actually different? How?
Furthermore, trzy and czy can phonetically merge in some dialects, but, personally, I'd advise you to make a distinction here.
- 435
va-diim, when someone says "czy", the "sh" sound starts immediately. The tongue releases from the "t" position on the roof of the mouth and you're already making the "sh" sound. In fact, part of what makes the English "ch" sound the way it does is the way the "sh" sound changes as the tongue is pulling away from the roof of the mouth.
When saying "trzy", there is a noticeable "t" followed by a noticeable "sh". The tongue releases from the roof of the mouth behind the teeth to make and complete the "t" sound first, then the "sh" starts.
So it's strange but the /ʂ/ in trzy /tʂʂɨ/ is held longer than in czy /tʂɨ/. I would have expected something else to have been different than the length of the voiceless fricative, maybe the degree of strength in the /t/ sound.
Yes, Marek, that's correct. There is no perfective/imperfective aspect in English. It's determined by the context.
"He showed me something at lunch today," is a perfective aspect.
"He showed me something many times," is imperfective aspect.
- 295
I gave the answer 'he showed me something on the menu' and it was accepted as correct. . . but, I am currently learning about polish aspect so should I have been marked as incorrect here as I think I have given a perfective answer 'he showed' (completed action) when pokazywał is an imperfective verb or am I looking too deep here :-)
I agree, that shouldn't have been accepted. If he "showed you" successfully, than that should be "pokazał".
Well, the "showed" variant stays, because as I was told we don't have any guarantee that the action was not completed. Anyway, you got the difference right.
- 521
Trying to get my head around this argument. Are you saying that if "on pokazywał" was completed that the translation would need to be "he showed me"? That's a strange position to take. Using "was showing" doesn't imply that the action was not completed. Changing to the simple aspect is not necessary to avoid the suggestion that the action was incomplete.
Also, with the simple aspect of showed and the fact that the object is something on a menu it is almost certain that "he showed me" would be perfective, as Glyn said. With all of that, I don't think "he showed me" is a realistic translation.
- 1190
Why not "has shown"? E. g. it's okay to say "have shown" instead of "were showing" for pokazywaliśmy?
- 373
Just like “ce” and “ts” : “since /scents....you have to understand the language enough to know in what context the person is speaking, and then you’ll know which word applies.
"since" is pronounced /sɪns/ not /sɪnts/, but in Polish "ce" and "tse" are the same
- 373
Yes. All I’m saying is that I don’t believe most people could tell the difference phonetically between sense /scents/ since without context. Especially, throwing into the mix the different native and foreign accents.
