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And Polish has the added benefit of being completely impossible to pronounce for stupid foreigners. I remember practicing to say Hello ("Cześć") for half an eve

• mootothemax 16y ago
  And Polish has the added benefit of being completely impossible to pronounce for stupid foreigners Hrm, not sure I entirely agree with you there, and I'm both stupid and living as a foreigner in Poland :) The writing system is fantastic in that regard, you can look at a word and have a very good idea of how it should sound. For me, there's only one really difficult sound and that's ń: the best description I've heard of it is the first N in onion. But it's still a bugger to pronounce and hear the difference between, say, koń (horse) and koni (horses).
  • pavel_lishin 16y ago
    This just means that Polish is a phonetic language - like Russian, my native language, which is 99% phonetic - but that doesn't mean that English speakers can easily make the required sounds. I don't think I've ever met any American who can pronounce ы - though it's fun watching them try.
    • getsat 16y ago
      Hah! My Russian tutor says that my accent (which is mimicry based on Russian from songs, films, etc.) sounds almost native EXCEPT for how I pronounce ы. I can't quite get it down correctly. :(
• tripa 16y ago
  Polish has the great advantage of being highly regular: you learn a few rules, you shape your mouth innards the right way, and you can read out anything. Compare that to french, chinese or english...