Talk:Polish phonology

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Regarding the following change, do you have any references for this? My sources say otherwise...

 09:38, 31 August 2006 82.139.47.117 (Talk) (→Consonants - Polish fricatives and affricatives 
 sz, cz, ż, dż are retroflex - they also are listed as such in examples in other parts of the article)

I really like this page and I think it should be linked with the polish IPA page (which is in a bad shape right now). Anyways, I'd like to use it in the future as a reference on the Polish transcription. Do you think it would be bad if another column with the transcription in Polish SAMPA was added? SAMPA is very popular in the few Polish corpora that exist, so it would be very useful...

--62.121.64.90 14:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

please notice that (at least in some regions) one could tell "h" from "ch" by the sound. Ch is soft (like in english 'loch'); H is hard (as in english 'hard' or 'horrible') - more 'from the back of your throath'

ok, but now even this difference is rather theoretical

Not really. In my family we still distinguish h from ch and it does not sound bizarre. Halibutt 20:11, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, the difference between "h" and "ch" was based on the voicing, i.e. - "h" was voiced (IPA: ɣ), whereas "ch" - voiceless (IPA: x). Today, you rarely hear that difference - maybe at school, presented by your Polish teacher, or by some older actor. Most people, when producing e.g. words "huta" and "strach" will make no distinction between those two:

"huta" -> ['xutɐ] "strach" -> [strɐx]

...or at least they won't find it awkward in any way.

Actually, there is another tendency you can observe - regardless of whether it's "h" or "ch", you are more likely to produce it as [[Voiceless glottal fricative|h] if it is followed by a vowel of any other approximation than 'close', which is caused by the common process of assimilation - economy of articulator movements. e.g.

"chata" -> ['hɐtɐ] "Hanna" -> ['hɐnnɐ]

...but then again in the proper name "Bohdan", "h" is pretty commonly pronounced as [ɣ] or for many, who don't feel comfortable with this dying-out-sound, as [g].

I think, that the best sollution would be to keep them separate in the table (in adjacent rows) and add the alternative pronounciations for each. Michau 02:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Polish "y" is not IPA [ɨ]

I'm strongly convinced, that Polish "y" is much more like [ɪ] and saying that it's being pronounced as [ɨ] seems simply ridiculous. It's "i", that is sometimes possibly produced this way, but definitely not "y"! Michau 02:53, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Frankly speaking, it all depends on whom you ask. AFAIK there's no single accepted IPA chart for the Polish language as the polonists are pretty immune to such novelties and until recently many of them preferred to stick either to their own systems or to some approximations. However, when it comes to this particular case, I can't really say whether the Polish "y" is closer to near-close near-front unrounded vowel or to close central unrounded vowel. The difference between them is so tiny that it's hard to tell anyway. Any specialists here? //Halibutt 22:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
According to what I've been learned, Polish "y" is definitely ɨ; Do you mean, by suggesting that it's pronounced like "ɪ", that English "ship" and Polish "szyb" have the same vowel? That's not possible. agnus 23:31, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm a linguistics student and native speaker of both German (which has [ɪ]) and Polish (with [ɨ]) - and though I have to say that the IPA chart characters are rather in flux, especially if it comes to vowels, the Polish "y" is definitly more an [ɨ] than an [ɪ]. Qubux 19:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Polish retroflexes are not laminal - [ɕ],[ʑ],[ʨ] and [ʥ] are

As the title reads.

...and yes, I read the retroflex consonant article stating otherwise, but I still oppose to that idea.

If a native Polish speaker pronounces retroflexes over-correctly, which is of course incorrect, then their tongue is curled quite notably(so not laminal).

In the case of the correct, mainstream pronounciation the sound is apical or slightly curled- not laminal.

There is another error of prounounciation - when the thongue tip is too far front and a whistling sound is produced. It is called "seplenienie" (infinitive "seplenić) - it's a speech impairment, still even then, although retroflex no more, it's rather apical. Maybe there are laminalizing versions of this impairment and maybe the people who first came up with the idea of Polish laminal retroflex consonants, examined one of those poor souls suffering from it. Who knows...

...anyway being a native Polish speaker I can assure you that I don't "laminate" my retroflexes and I don't think I know anyone who does. I would notice - assuming from the experiments with my tongue that I just carried out under influence of these articles.

Michau 03:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what to tell you. Stanisław Puppel, Jadwiga Nawrocka-Fisiak, & Halina Krassowska (1977) have X-ray images of all three sibilant series, and they're all obviously laminal. I rather doubt they'd use anyone with a speech impediment, or who spoke a non-standard dialect, but who knows. kwami 01:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronounciation

I always have a beef with pronounciation guides, and this one is no different :). This is mostly because the guide is dependent on not-so universal pronounciations in a language. For example, "what's your", "would you" and the like are fine and good, and in fact I agree with their usage, but it might not be entirely obvious to some speakers what is meant, esp. if the speaker pronounces "what's your" as [wats jor], as I do. Similarly, "loch" is never pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative in most English dialects, but rather [lak]. We should perhaps make a note of this in ths text somehow. True, the IPA symbols are given, but not everyone knows IPA, and then the examples in the IPA page probably reflect the pronounciations here, etc. Any suggestions on how to improve this? I think that for ć, "cheap" would be clearer (the same sound is produced, and the ability to distinguish the ć with cz is no different). --Vegalabs 23:19, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I see a problem in the vowels section for American readers: "cot" and "caught" are used as examples for two different Polish vowels; they can have identical pronunciation for some speakers. See Phonological history of English low back vowels#Cot-caught_merger--Theodore Kloba 20:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Citations

This article is helpful but really needs citations.William2233 05:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I work mainly over at Wiktionary, where we have a small but growing number of Polish words. So far I've been following the system outlined in this article for pronunciation (I speak a little Polish, but am no particular expert in the phonology). But a couple of contributors, one a native speaker, are insisting that /ʂ/ and /ʐ/ should really be /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. They point out that the pl article on Polish does not use retroflex symbols. In fact the dictionary of world languages on my desk also lists these sounds in Polish as /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. So can we have a few more sources in this article? Where is the information coming from, and how definitive/uncontroversial is it? Thanks. Widsith 17:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

  • "Phonetics and Phonology of Modern Polish Language" by Danuta Ostaszewska and Jolanta Tambor, PWN 2004, also uses symbols /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. agnus 13:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I think it's so because the symbols <ʃ> and <ʒ> - used in English transcription - are much more widely known that the symbols for retroflex consonants. I'm also a native speaker and I know that English postalveolar consonants definitely aren't pronounced identically as Polish <sz> and <ż> which are not palatalized. Also IPA isn't perfect - I think there's no consensus about what should IPA symbols <ʂ> and <ʐ> stand for (whether only for the sub-apical consonants or not). The English Wikipedia article about retroflex consonants defines them as coronal consonants articulated behind the alveolar ridge, which do not have the secondary articulation of palatalization what I believe is the case in Polish. Therefore I would rather let it be as it is/was. Pittmirg 14:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
Now the situation is completely messed up: <sz>, <ż>, <cz> and <dż> are described as "alveolar" [sic!], not even postalveolar, <sz> & <ż> have IPA glyphes for postalveolars, <cz> and <dż> for retroflexes...
I understand objections about the use of retroflex glyphes for this fricative/affricate series - I myself was very sceptic when I saw it first. But it is true: my German <sch> and my Polish <sz> are different. I wouldn't go as far as saying these sounds are truely retroflex as in Indian languages, but they are not truely postalveolar either. The best description may be postalveoretroflex. Unfortunately I haven't found a detailed description of Polish phonetics yet... Qubux 23:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] [c] and [ɟ] - probably a misunderstanding

This is the first and only time I've seen IPA [c] or [ɟ] described as part of the Polish sound system. I am quite convinced that the examples given are pronounced, respectively, with a palatalised "k" or "g" (IPA: [kʲ], [ɡʲ]). Would the proponent of the existence of [c] and [ɟ] in Polish care to point to a source? (Non-Internet preferred). Regards -- Bmucha

Wiktor Jassem in the June 2003 issue of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association ("Polish") puts these as palatal stops. He transcribes kieł as /cew/ and giełda as /ˈɟewda/. I imagine he uses <e> and <o> rather than <ɛ> and <ɔ> for ease of typesetting. In this particular article at least he doesn't go into detail about the specifics of those sounds.
However, Jolanta Szpyra in the June 1992 issue of Language ("Ghost Segments in Nonlinear Phonology: Polish Yers") calls pi, b, mi, wi, ki,gi "palatalized consonants (transcribed phonetically with an apostrophe)" and Kriedler cites Bethin (1992) in calling them "palatalized velars." I'm not sure about this one. I'm kind of busy right now but I can remind myself later to check out A historical phonology of the Polish language (1973) by Zdzisław and possibly Studies in abstract phonology (1980) by Gussmann. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 05:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the explanation. We, as Poles, have the opportunity to listen to these two palatal plosives in some of the languages in the region - Slovak (where they are written ť and ď) and Hungarian (written ty ang gy). At least to my ears, these sound quite different from Polish ki and gi. Maybe some more detailed research on this can be found. Regards -- Bmucha
All right, I checked out Gussmann and Zdzisław and they both describe the sounds as palatalized velar. Jassem 2003 seems to have sacraficed phonetic accuracy for ease of typing. I'll change the article accordingly. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 06:31, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Examples of the vowel "a"

I disagree with all the examples sorry..
u in cut is a kind of reduced vowel, definitely not a Polish a
o in cot is much closer to a Polish o than a
a in cat is not quite right either although it is closer than the other two suggestions.

In RP, cut is [kʰɐt] (this is not reduced). In dialects of the northern cities vowel shift, cot (and caught for that matter) is [kʰat], and in some British and Canadian dialects, the vowel in cat is [a]. Why don't we just pick something like RP or GA and go with the pronunciation in that dialect? Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 08:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] where's your, what's your...

It would be best to avoid examples like where's your, what's your and even would you because there are two ways of pronouncing each of those phrases which are equally common. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.104.146 (talk) 07:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New chart

I've created a simplified IPA chart for Polish, like those that exist for some other languages. Corrections/improvements welcome (but let's try to keep it un-technical;) ) I plan to use it as a place to link to in Polish transcriptions using the {{IPA-pl}} template (which is based on {{Plph}}), which have up to now been linked to Help:IPA.--Kotniski (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Very nice (I recently did something similar with Russian). I've put a comment in your talk page. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 21:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spaces in affricates

Sorry, they do have to be there (otherwise some browsers display nonsense), but I forgot they have to be no-break spaces. Give me a while to fish them out from somewhere.--Kotniski (talk) 14:16, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

No-break spaces? — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 02:55, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant zero-width spaces. They were actually already used elsewhere on the page - I think I've made all instances consistent now. --Kotniski (talk) 08:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I hadn't heard of that before. Interesting. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 13:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)