The bane of many eager Polish learners, the dreaded ‘R’ crops up in names (Renata, Maria), nouns (‘rama’, ‘prąd’) and verbs (‘robić’, ‘kierować’) – plus every other part of speech. It may be especially difficult for those coming from Germanic languages. In English, the ‘R’ sound is made with the tongue pulled back, in the middle of the mouth. The rolling ‘R’ is instead made by tapping the roof of your mouth. (We’ve got some advice that may help further, but it’s not the end of the world if you never master the trick. Some Poles struggle with it as well.)
The pesky ‘th’
Time for a sound that you’ll only find in English – try and find the common denominator in ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘those’, ‘fifth’ or ‘anathema’… There’s truly no end to the amount of words containing those two letters, ‘th’, and they can crop up at any point in a word. You might have noticed that it, too, can differ in pronunciation.
In English, the ‘th’ sound (not including examples such as the word ‘Thailand’) can be either voiced or unvoiced, though tongue and jaw placement doesn’t change between words such as ‘think’ or ‘that’ – it’s simply about the amount of air expulsion.
For the purposes of this article, this difference is negligible, as neither sound is readily available in Polish. In fact, these two letters never even make an appearance side by side. The closest you might find is in words such as ‘tchórz’ (coward) – though even then, there’s a pesky ‘C’ separating the two, not to mention a different pronunciation!
When Poles attempt these English words, they tend to fall back to familiar ground, instead utilising a hard ‘D’ or ‘T’ sound (like in do or too). You may also hear the ‘F’ sound, such as in ‘foot’. The correct pronunciation, which involves extending the tip of your tongue between your front teeth, is not a natural position for Polish speakers, requiring practice to master.
Consistency is key