I’m not big on resolutions. In fact the last resolution I made was a millennial resolution not to make any more New Year’s resolutions. I’m quite proud of the fact that I stuck to that one for seven years but, all good things must come to an end. I caught myself in the early hours of Jan 1st 2008 resolving to learn some Polish. I mean properly learn. Not just picking up odd phrases and words to do with buying beer and then trying to assemble them into ungrammatical sentences to fit any occasion. Naturally, being a lazy devil, I turned to the internet first rather than doing something sensible and time consuming such as walking over the road and booking a course of “Polish for Foreigners” at the local school. By the way, why do they insist on calling it “Polish for Foreigners?” I find it faintly insulting. English language schools don’t advertise “English for Foreigners” no matter where they are. Why do they have to bring up the “foreigners” part at all? I’m not sure I like being marketed to as a “foreigner.”
Anyway, I’m getting off the point. A google later and I was intrigued to discover numerous links to YouTube vids that suggested they could teach me Polish. And what did I find? As Frank Poole said “My God, It’s full of stars!” I’d like to share three of the best with you.
1. Learn to speak Polish with Zosia!
A tempting invitation. Zosia turns out to be about 15, but she’s clearly a natural. She knows exactly what she wants to say and has rehearsed in her mind exactly how she’s going to go about it. The intensity of her expression when she does the “and again” slow repeats is just priceless.
10/01/08 Zosia asked me to take it down. Who am I to refuse? You can still find her on YouTube though.
Anyway, Zosia has loads of vids on YouTube but only three others have anything to do with learning Polish. The best one is “Eyebrow Show” in which she appears to have gone completely insane but which demonstrates some wicked eyebrow control.
10/01/08 Zosia asked me to take it down. Who am I to refuse? You can still find her on YouTube though.
For some unknown reason Zosia has inhibited embedding, which is a shame. I’ve tried to get round this by nefarious means but who knows how long that will work. Enjoy this star of the future while you can.
2. Learn Polish with Idadeja
This girl has to be the most laid back voluntary teacher I’ve ever come across. In complete contrast to Zosia she clearly hasn’t given a moments thought as to what she’s actually going to say once the camera is rolling. “Let’s start maybe with the body parts” is probably one of the best early lines in a YouTube vid I’ve ever come across. It certainly made me sit up and take notice. It all goes quite well until we get to the cheeks, which sound oddly pronounced to me (ok, ok, to A actually). Once we get beyond the face and head however the whole thing breaks down and suddenly we’re into the colors of random things lying around on her desk. A floppy disc is initially identified as being the color of a flip flop, but she rallies and laughs it off with admirable fortitude. A is convinced that she’s not actually Polish because she gets the word for ‘cheeks’ wrong in a weird way, and it has to be said that her YouTube profile says she’s from the States. On the other hand, she speaks English with a Polish accent. Who knows.
In Idadeja’s second outing (it may not actually be her second, but it’s the second one I came across) she seems a little depressed at first but soon sets us straight by announcing that she’s suffering from period pains. In a slightly lackluster performance she runs us through Polish numbers from 1 to 20. Nothing new for me here I’m afraid, I mastered these playing poker back in the 90s. There is a another one in which she promises to teach me all about fruits and vegetables, but I haven’t seen it yet.
3. Learn how to speak Polish with xwtfitsalexx
Strange name, strange girl. I admit, for the first 30 seconds I thought she was the densest of dense Valley Girls, but then I got it. She’s actually pretty funny. I like the way she backs herself into difficult explanatory dead ends by saying “because” all the time: “To start off you have to know how to say ‘Hi’ because… well… everyone says ‘Hi’” or “…give me all your money, because that’s just handy.” There’s a pretty sharp comedy brain in operation behind this character. The comments on her vid indicate that a lot of people didn’t get this, and she actually uploaded a disclaimer vid in which she says ‘It was a joke you moronic retards’ but in far more polite terms. Oops a touch of Polish sensitivity on show I think.
Excellent facial observations
rotfl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hahaha
Jamie and youtube? are you getting bored?:D
Obie dziewczyny: “Idadeja” i “xwtfitsalexx” mówią z TEGO SAMEGO POKOJU! Zobacz na drzwi i włącznik światła za ich plecami. I taki sam mikrofonik.
Powodzenia!
Gdybyś chciał pogadać – daj proszę znać..
Sooory – pomyłiłem się – 2 nagrania są wykonywane przez tą samą osobę –
– zasugerowałem się opisami.. 
The last one is certainly not Polish.
‘Siema’ – you can only use it during the WOŚP great final. (January 13th)
Nobody says ‘Ja ciebie kocham’. Unless they’re foreigners.
Same thing with ‘Ja ciebie lubię’.
Jacek: I think you got a bit ahead of yourself there.
Klamka: You’re right, she isn’t. According to her follow up vid she’s a Polish-American and did the whole thing as a bit of a joke:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YKlm-FwbneA
polishpress: Not at all, I find YouTube surprisingly instructional. One day, if I’m feeling really mean, I might post some of the vids I found by searching for the term ‘pijak.’ That was some pretty hysterically funny stuff. Very very wrong, but hysterically funny nonetheless.
Datblog: Thanks. Zosia is particularly intriguing don’t you think. So intense and stern.
I quite like this one: I’ve often wondered about the appropriate thing to say when racing a Fiat 126 on a deserted estate in the evening.
I’ve found another vid, containg solely swear words. Will post upon request;)
pinolona:
“We ignite the car” – useful phrase if you’re a disaffected French-Muslim youth.
“We do car chase!”
“Cretin! He overtakes through the double continuous line!”
“Peasant woman!”
ich:
I’m sure it’s funny, but I have almost no idea what anyone is saying
Pawel: (hmmm, another identity switch)
Post away. But I doubt I’ll understand it.
Island, I hope Pawel hasn’t meant the wow-breaking record of the guy spurting 11 Polish f***s in ca 30 secs while talking Englishwise to a customer. Smart enough to have a chauffeur, eerily right-sided though. (Punch “Polacy in UK” in You(r)Tube.)
those are fantastic. god bless youtube and all who sail in her!
p.s. you’ve been tagged!
And you can learn “poland” on youtube ,too
http://pbn.home.pl/articles/around-poland/
ok, here you are:)
http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=1VXkTupU9T0&feature=related
and here’s ray, teaching scottish accent
http://pl.youtube.com/watch?v=ary0hEfXXhA
J
Yes my travels of late have left my head spinning culture shock wise. I think my month break in London and few days in the US including the cruise go me used to English again. Now my head is spiing trying to decipher Hebrew characters that make no sense. The Caribbean cruise was relaxing in that I was only sick for 2 days out of 9. I did enjoy just being warm. I am trying to think of something witty to say as I lay here in bed on a Friday morning here in Haifa. I know in a few hours the shops will close for Sabbath and if I want to eat I need to go out soon. Yesterday was a long day visiting friends in the south and having some good local beer(s). I am learning Israel has many good breweries and makes good wine too…. As you have spoke of rudeness and language I will just say I am learning what we see as rude many times is the accepted norm of communication… here in Israel and through out the Middle East loud argumentative talking/shouting is part of the normal… is you don’t talk like this you don’t get your way or get taken at the store, etc. To us it looks rude but that is the way it is. I was also given the cultural tip that here many people in authority and in general want to see how you stand up to them, so being rude or not giving answers to questions right off is way to earn respect and in the end get what you want. And you run into lots of places where you are question from the airports to just getting in the shopping center or renewing a visa. But as always I do find kindness everywhere, I just go I only speak English an am hungry… haven’t had anything too bad yet. Here in the north there appear to be 4 languages spoken and on various official signs… Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and English. Knowing that I failed to learn any Arabic in my recent travels I was just talking with friends about this subject of learning Hebrew like your learning Polish. So your YouTube tip was a gem.
This is just one link I found funny and watch to the very end for the Poland connection. These guys are pretty funny.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKFoeSGpjjs
Not sure if will learn much off these vids but will sure laugh a lot.
PP, speaking of Ray and broderlie accents: I wrote to a man once and he wrote me back. Nothing too unusual, but I stupidly destroyed the mail — and the man’s got his own vowel in Scotland!
Dear All,
This is what my linguistic conscience and education combined with the ear for languages ( I am modest today, aren’t I) must tell you: not just the word policzki /cheeks but ALL the words Idadeja manages to produce are pronounced INcorrectly. Her consonants are just a mess, especially the clusters of consonants ( like those in “brwi”) as well as her “cz”, “sz” and the like. One rarely hears such an awful thing!
Anyway, when I am a little under the weather and I want to lift my spirits I simply watch YouTube and all those “birdfeeders” and “birds in my garden” videos. They help me believe that I am not the only one who puts up all sorts of birdfeeders in the garden, spends lots of money on the food and on the birdwatching equipment. I may be the only person in this entire country who puts up bird boxes and plants shrubs in a public park, though.
Jolanta
By the by, re Jolanta’s commenting on consonant clusters.
Has anyone taken you in, native guys, with the half-lie that Polish, unlike English, is “what you see is how you spell” kind of language?
–> DS
his own vowel?
Jolanta:
Interesting. Are you saying that Idadeja isn’t Polish? I wonder why she’s pretending that she is, in that case.
Darth: The ‘what-you-see-is-how-you-spell-it’ idea is often touted by Polish speakers but never takes root with English natives because the letters you use don’t correspond to the letters we use. ‘Dziekuje’ works logically in Polish phonetics but is utterly meaningless to English speakers to whom it is literally unpronounceable.
Such is life.
=> PP:
Yes, his own vowel. Aitken’s vowel, it’s called, aptly.
=> Island
Life is more. What I meant was: even if you learn the phonetic representations of Polish letters, you still can’t read the way you spell. A die-hard example is “japko” ['yup-koh] (though the word spells “jabłko”, [an apple]). Devoicing is on and the “ł” letter’s off. Another example is “szejset” ['shey-set] (spell “sześćset” [six hundred]). — And yet, the idea of two kinds of [zh] sound (“rz”, “ż”) is sound. And the idea of two kinds of [x] (“ch”, “h”) is sound. And sound on.
Darthsida, if you do not stop leading our dear foreigners up the garden path right now, I swear that no matter where you are I will find you and teach you a lesson with my walking stick!
For the linguistic gods’ sake, who told you that jabłko should be pronounced japko and sześćset as szejset? It is not what the rules say but just what most people do. Some would tell you that it is a mark of a certain pauperisation of the language and claim that, for historical reasons, it was unavoidable. There are even research papers on the way communism affected the way Polish pronunciation began to change rapidly (the wiping out of the pre-war middle class, the rise of the common man in the 1940s and 1950s – it is food for language-orientated thought too).
Are you really trying to destroy the fruits of my lifetime labour (the hours I have spent teaching people NOT to say japko and szejset …) or are you simply in a jocular mood today?
On the other hand, one no longer should say “ja cię zbiję” because it has recently become closer to “ja cie zbije” and the way we are supposed to nasalise “piętnaście” ( and avoid the incorrect “piEtnaście” as well as the pretentiously clear “ę” at the same time) is a tricky one too.
Another problem is how to stress certain groups of words, for example nouns such as “fizyka”, “matematyka” or verbs in the plural in the past tense (the 1st and 2nd person in the perfective: poszliśmy, zrobiliście etc.). You do know it, don’t you?
Island, Idadeja sounds to me like a Polish person who was brought up abroad or a second generation emigrant; her Polish rings a bell in fact – it is very similar to the Polish of the American students of Polish origin who I occasionally meet.
PS. As far as language is concerned I am a stubborn and incurable purist, sorry.
DS —> I thought he was at least Ash or Schwa:)
—> I’m not convinced with your examples. These speaking styles (japko, szejset) are not obligatory in Polish in order to sound natural. Saying sześćset jabłko would only imply you’re a careful speaker.
Darth re Jolanta: Watch it mate, Jolanta has already stated that she’s a mohair-wearing-babcia-in-training – brown belt I think.
Darth and Jolanta: It may surprise you to learn that I’ve actually noticed some of these myself. When people teach you Polish words, such as ‘jabłko’ or ‘piętnaście’ they tend to pronounce them completely differently than they do when they actually use them. I’ve particularly noticed a lot of variation in the pronunciation of ‘pięć’ from something like ‘pinch’ (in English) to ‘pee-onch.’ Also ’sok jabłkowy’ seems to have a weird pronunciation.
I often thought that these must be accents (in the sense of regional variation in pronunciation) but people tell me isn’t so. In fact people tell me there aren’t really any marked regional accents in Poland (apart from extreme ones more akin to dialects) such as we have such a profusion of in the UK.
Jolanta, thank you for a refreshing touch of purism. My back, regrettably, can’t be at your service: it’s been taken by sticks of those saying that language rules should be less prescriptive and more descriptive. That I can’t be hypercorrect about phonetics. — So, I’m your ally with the fizyka stress. Send me on crusades for “opust” or “spolegliwy” or “widzę tę panią”, not to mention: “don’t mention poszłem”. But ‘japko’ is a lost battle. I won’t tell you what other battles we (sic) lost for I care about your how are you’s.
Of course there are (were) regional differences. Only in Poland the official language (like Received Pronunciation in English) was always considered as the only legitimate – and any other style of pronunciation was forbidden at school, the became nearly extinct.
And we go back to what has been said before, that what-you-see-is-how-you-spell-it does not really apply to Polish. Newsflash: it does. Or at least it’s not the case of black or white. There is a scale to this. English on that what-you-see-is-how-you-spell-it scale would get 2*, and Polish 8. Therefore you can’t really allow alternative ‘accents’, as this would ultimately equal different spelling and grammar.
Now only some babcias (incl. mine) still use regional versions. (dokucza mnie reumatyzm, świenta były i przeszły szczynśliwie)
*) recommend? rikomend, reekomend, reecomand, ricommend? reccomend? riccomend? reecommend? ackne? eknee? akney? ecknay? ecknie? aknie?
Darthsida, I must tell you the truth – my heightened sensitivity over the Polish phonetics stems from the fact that, from time to time, I am placed in front of a microphone and I have to address live audiences. They are never particularly receptive or sympathetic but some do seem quite appreciative of what I do. As my each and every pronunciation mistake is magnified to horrifying proportions by the microphone I have to be very careful of the way I speak (and get a little crazy about it).
Believe me, the “japko battle” has not been lost yet. One day, when I was on a tram knitting a sock for my nephew under the cover of the old pelisa, my ears pricked when I heard the wretched japko mentioned by a young lad with a shaven head. I stayed on the tram until the XY pętla (depot), then got off and followed the lad at a certain distance. I caught up with him between the picturesque stalls of the petla, cornered him with my walking stick and demanded an apology. He got scared stiff of my suprise appearance and of the teacher’s fury on my bespectacled face and of the powerful weapon under my arm (the Polish Language Dictionary in three toms) and the knitting pins … his knees buckled and he fell to the frozen ground of the pętla in XY. He started to beg my forgiveness and promised not to say “japko” ever again – victoria!
Author, congratulations on your comment.
I would love to say a few words about the question of accents in the Polish language but the sock is still in the early stages …
=> PP and Whoever Whom It May Concern
Re: “Newsflash: it does”
I dareguess, “what-you-see-is-how-you-spell-it” goes in every language you can see. So, what I meant was “what-you-see-is -how-you-pronounce-it”. Thanks for not noticing me bad!
Jolanta, I have expected you to be either a grammarian, or an editor for an audiobook publishing house, or a radio / public broadcasting / announcing person – whichever case: someone in love with her work. So, I’m not surprised, and if I were to be, I’d be surprised positively — as, hearing celebs speaking with accents gone wrong on Nationally Broadcast TV — I could come to thinking no one cares about accents and words any longer. It’s good to have you, so to [par excellence] speak.
Island, I apologize for Vader, the best-selling Polish music makers ever. For they spread Ynglish which socks. Constaining explisit lyrinx. But they make progress. Btw, you ever get irritated by foreigners singing out of RP tune?
Breaking news: Idadeja is Polish (according to her) but has been living in the US for four years.
Since she’s clearly young could this mean that her Polish pronunciation has changed in that time?
Darth: thankfully I’ve never heard or heard of Vader.
Nobody sings in RP, not ever Cliff Richard. I am unmoved by this phenomenon.
Author, if she is Polish,
1) she is either, well, how shall I put it … (is it possible to comment on somebody’s language in an ufavourable way and avoid offending that person’s background?)
2) or nobody ever paid attention to the way she learnt to speak
3) or her Polish teacher at school decided to conduct a pronunciation-orientated experiment (and made his pupils the innocent victims of his/her pedagogical enthusiasm).
Even if we put the question of the young lady’s organs of speech aside, the problem of her “poliki” remains a mystery. I cannot imagine an average Polish four-year-old saying things like this.
Frankly speaking, I think we should stop discussing Miss I.’s qualities simply because it is rude to talk about her behind her back (?) and also because it is pointless as, being just a digital body on the screen, she can tell us that has practised her surprising consonants under the command of Mr Miodek or that she has recently won the Polish Pronunciation Oscar.
Darthsida, thank you for thinking so highly of me. I am just a humble teacher of this and that-cum-occasional public speaker- cum-eager conservationist (and babcia of course!).
fyi, you can also learn Polish, Hebrew, Arabic and many other intro phrases via Itunes for FREE…. was just surfing for free Hebrew and remembered this post.
drawback you are no looking a pretty face. Just probably driving down the road looking an idiot as you talk to yourself while talking back to ipod…
I only have one simple remark loosely connected to the topic. Namely, I’ve never quite understood why you English natives tend to switch the [e] sound for shwa. For example in those Polish words that end with “e”: “stare” (“old”), “szare” (“grey”). It is my assumption, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you would probably write them down phonetically as stuh-ra and shuh-ra, thus implying the usage of the shwa. But why is that? Why so, if you do have a sound extremely close to Polish “e”?
This is by far the best there is from what I can see.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6s-vMd_pBks
Magauchsein has 20 units up on youtube
A hell of a lot cheaper than a Polish course, of which I have done 5.
I studied mainly with IKO in Warsaw and found them really good.
Island1, have you been here 10 years and don’t speak fluently? That doesn’t inspire me that my chances are high!
Learn Polish? Me? Had a laugh at your ‘infotaimentry’ and now less frieghtened (a little) and more encouraged (a lot) – cheers!
We have all seen the youtube videos. They are great for learning a few basics, what then what? Do they teach sentence structure or grammer? Do they even place the learner in a sititution where they can intact? If you don’t have money for continual classes, then finding a friend in the language you wish to study is the best method.
If you are looking to learn how to speak Polish, then becoming friends with a Polish speaker is a great way to do it. Since your looking online for pen pals let me recommend for you a great free resource for learning Polish.
http://www.languagelearninglab.com features free picture vocabulary lists and survival Polish. But what we are most excited about is our lessons program. We offer lessons of the Polish language for free and audio recordings for a small fee (but you should not need them if you know a Polish speaker!).
This will be a great way to make friends. Spend some time over Skype or in person going over a lesson, and then you can review on your own time for free from the website. That way, when you come back for your next meeting, you will be ready to move forward.