10 Comments
How do you tell the difference between chce and chcę if they are pronounced the same?
a) context b) if there is subject "ten rolnik"- it has to be "chce" c) you can use pronoun on/ona/ono d) people can pronounce "ę" nasally, some do it always, some in words like this, some only when it is necessary to understand, some never e) you can use pronoun "ja"
in the course all sentences that could be interpreted both ways are not used as listening exercises.
24
How common are these differences with the "ę"? What determines the way it is pronounced, and in what kind of words is it necessary for a nasal pronunciation? Does the pronunciation of the "a" letter with the tail accent follow these same rules? Thank you so much for your help!
Ę at the end of a word pretty much sounds like E to the non-native Polish speaker. Before K it sounds like "eng": dziękuję sounds like "jengkuye". Before Ż, it sounds like "em" except stopping short of actually pronouncing the "m" part--similar to an English "w": ciężki sounds like "chemzhkee" but don't pronounce the "m," so it sounds similar to "che-w-zhkee". In general it frequently sounds like "en" and "em" in words--without pronouncing the "n" and "m" fully. There are some words where it is pronounced exactly as "em" or "en". It seems that this is determined by the least awkward variant, whichever the mouth finds easier to pronounce when the standard "eu" is uncomfortable.
As far as Ą, it sounds like the word "ohm"--again except not fully pronouncing the "m" part so like "oh-w". Ą sounds more uniformly across Polish words than Ę does.
With feminine nouns ending in -a it's mostly genitive singular = nominative/accusative plural. Since this is a negated sentence, plural would be "krów".
