5 ms·

And yet - somewhat hilariously, Polish is one of the easiest languages out there in terms of knowing how to pronounce the written word. Spend a week or two pra

And yet - somewhat hilariously, Polish is one of the easiest languages out there in terms of knowing how to pronounce the written word. Spend a week or two practising a pronunciation guide and that's pretty much well it. Reading something out loud for the first time? Native level accuracy 95% of the time, easy. Compared with the absolute crap shoot which is English or - my nightmare - French, reading Polish out loud is an absolute walk in the park.

idlewords 9y ago
You're completely right. There's also a predictable syllable stress pattern. I taught a friend once to read Polish out loud fluently without understanding it.
magic_beans 9y ago
My mouth actually hurts when I speak French. Such unusual shapes for a native English speaker :\
- yetihehe 9y ago
  In a famous polish novel "Krzyżacy" French language is compared to shaking of tin bowls, so even Polish speakers have troubles.
blahedo 9y ago
English is indeed a crap shoot, but it's not entirely fair to put French in that bucket as well. Much as you describe for Polish, there is a highly consistent set of writing-to-sound rules for French that you can learn quickly. French's downfall is in the other direction: with multiple ways to write some phonemes and many contexts where letters are silent, hearing a word, even perfectly, is not nearly enough to know with any certainty how to spell it. But reading French out loud? Anybody with a week or two of practice should definitely be able to know how to pronounce well over 95% of what they read, even if they don't know what they're saying.
SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
Irish and Korean are also extremely regular. Hangul (Korean) is probably the easiest alphabet in the world to learn to pronounce. Irish suffers from the use of digraphs in modern use, but the older style of placing a dot on top of the letter instead of an h afterwards is much clearer IMO.

idlewords 9y ago

You're completely right. There's also a predictable syllable stress pattern. I taught a friend once to read Polish out loud fluently without understanding it.

magic_beans 9y ago

My mouth actually hurts when I speak French. Such unusual shapes for a native English speaker :\

yetihehe 9y ago
In a famous polish novel "Krzyżacy" French language is compared to shaking of tin bowls, so even Polish speakers have troubles.

blahedo 9y ago

English is indeed a crap shoot, but it's not entirely fair to put French in that bucket as well. Much as you describe for Polish, there is a highly consistent set of writing-to-sound rules for French that you can learn quickly. French's downfall is in the other direction: with multiple ways to write some phonemes and many contexts where letters are silent, hearing a word, even perfectly, is not nearly enough to know with any certainty how to spell it. But reading French out loud? Anybody with a week or two of practice should definitely be able to know how to pronounce well over 95% of what they read, even if they don't know what they're saying.

SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago

Irish and Korean are also extremely regular. Hangul (Korean) is probably the easiest alphabet in the world to learn to pronounce. Irish suffers from the use of digraphs in modern use, but the older style of placing a dot on top of the letter instead of an h afterwards is much clearer IMO.