Distribution

POLAND; Polish communities in the USA, Germany, Brazil, Canada and elsewhere.

Introduction

Polish is an Indo-European language, a member of the (West) Slavonic branch. As such, it is most closely related to Czech and Slovak, and more distantly to Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croat and Slovene.

Since the change of political system in 1989, when Poland began to tighten its links with the West, the role of English, always a popular language, has dramatically increased. English is now considered an essential part of a good education, and is widely taught in and out of schools. Many employers organise in-service EFL courses.

Because English, like Polish, is an Indo-European language, and because it is ever-present in mass culture and enjoys high prestige, Polish speakers, especially the young, do not find it particularly difficult.

Phonology

General

Polish learners of English often despair of the apparent lack of consistency between spelling and pronunciation. Learners at elementary levels expect each letter to be pronounced, and give Polish values to each letter. The multitude of stress patterns in English is also an unpleasant surprise to Poles, given the regular penultimate-syllable stress of their mother tongue. Their initial impression of English pronunciation is that ‘everything sounds together’ or that the English ‘eat their words’.

Features of the Polish pronunciation of English that contribute to a Polish accent in English include: the use of full instead of reduced vowels in unstressed syllables, giving the impression of ‘pronouncing too much’; certain intonation contours; a prominent rolled /r/ – especially word-finally; final devoicing (especially /s/ in place of /z/); and mispronunciation of th, /ŋ/ and sibilants.