5 ms·
Odd, I don't speak Polish, but my mom and grandparents did. Even that small exposure was enough for me to get that pronunciation 100% correct. I wonder what the
by Intermernet 8y ago
Odd, I don't speak Polish, but my mom and grandparents did. Even that small exposure was enough for me to get that pronunciation 100% correct. I wonder what the minimum exposure to any given language is to allow someone to correctly guess pronunciation. I speak a little German and French but regularly get the pronunciation incorrect, but I didn’t grow up around native German and French speakers.
- Arbalest 8y agoIt helps a lot to have been exposed to it around 6-12 months. That's apparently when pronunciation subtlety is learnt.
- Intermernet 8y agoMakes sense. My grandmother would sing polish nursery rhymes to me at that age.
- idlewords 8y agoI bet you six meters of kiełbasa that you did not get that pronunciation 100% correct.
- Intermernet 8y agoI didn't think I would, but I did!
- YjSe2GMQ 8y agoPolish pronunciation is actually incredibly easy, there's a direct mapping (a mathematical function) from a simple partition of letters to phonems. Unlike in English, where we have weirdnesses like "vehicle" or "colonel". There's a price to pay for quick and massive import of words, lack of centralized language development coordination body and conquering the global stage of accents, I reckon. Example for the town: Mszczonów -> Mshchonooff (Americanized).
- Grustaf 8y agoIt’s not easy, it’s very very hard, even for other slavs, but it’s very predictable based on spelling.
- chungleong 8y agoI blame the Poles for the muteness of their non-slav neighbors.
- Grustaf 8y agoAh now I finally got it! Nemtsy, makes sense.