From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 44815
Date: 2006-05-31
2. You can hear how this vowel is pronounced from my pages on Polish grammar (http://www.aries.com.pl/grzegorzj/gram/unien/fonemy.html). The set of pages on Polish phonetics contains recorded examples of all Polish sounds. However, the records are in Windows Media Audio format (WMA), not in mp3 (or wav) due to better compression and less size. You will not have any problems with them if you use a PC + Windows.-----------------I listened to the recording and to my English(-speaking) ears the Polish alveolopalatals still sound the same as English palato-alveolars (and yes, I did confuse the term "alveolopalatal" with "palato-alveolar" on my thread about the Swedish palatal sounds -- I don't know if I'll ever remember the correct terminology (and I notice that you call the alveolopalatals also "postdentals", if I'm not mistaken. It's all quite confusing to a dabbler like myself)). I also could not find written transcriptions of the audio files about the Polish phonemes (except for one about assimilation), so when I heard the audio I could not tell whether I was hearing [cz] or [c'], [sz] or [s'], or [z*] or [z']. Perceiving and enunciating the difference will require care and practice for a non-native like me. However, I heard the Polish "y" and I can clearly distinguish it from Polish "i" and also from English /I/.I must say your website about Polish is most illuminating and interesting. Polish is a very interesting, beautiful, but rather complex language. I am not surprised that the preeminent artificial international language, Esperanto, came from the mind of a speaker of Polish. I would like to be able to say that I will learn Polish as well as you have learned English, but I don't think I'll find the time, at my age, or the proper materials here in Canada.Andrew