Foreigners Trying to Pronounce the Names of Polish Football Players 

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Rz/Ż - Same pronunciation. Like G in mirage Sz - Sh like in shell Cz - Tch like in itch Dż/Drz - Same pronunciation. Like J in Jazz Ch - H like in hell I - E like in easter W - V like in vector Ł - W like in winner Ą - Ow like in lower Ę - Eu hard E like in elephant and hard u like ruler Ó/U - Same pronunciation. Either like hard u in ruler or double o in book In general most letters are pronounced the same but in hard way like G is still G but like in glue, not like in gene. Y is like in name Lynn not like in yeti. A is like in Anna not Amy

Many foreigners don't understand that the combinations of consonants behave as 1 sound. That's the main issue here.

The funniest thing was when Bob pronounced a given name in a wrong way and when finally it was pronouced correctly by the Polish lector he still declared victory not able to recognize the difference between his and the proper pronounciation. E.g. Klich: it ends with an 'h' not a 'k'. Milik: 'i' in Polish is pronounced similarly to English 'ee' like in words: 'meal' or 'leak', but not like in words 'mill' or 'lick'. Thus Milik sounds like: 'Mealeak' instead of 'Millick'.

Funny fact about Blaszczykowski when he started playing for BvB, his last name was so hard to pronounce that he had Kuba on his shirt (Kuba is a diminutive of Jakub) also the German commentators called him Kuba

You are saying that Polish pronouncation is completeley different to the written language. That couldn't be further from the truth. Actually it is very consistent. While English is probably the least consistent when it comes to pronouncation and writing

In Polish you read every letter and cz, sz, ch, rz, ż, dż, dź, dz, ą, ę, ć, ś, ź have their own unique sounds. As you spell the word, you will see that they pronounce each letter exactly.

Actually Polish is almost fully phonetic language, so it's written exactly how it's pronounced, except some palatalizations, assimilations and those digraphs, which scare English speakers with so many zeds. English pronounciation after the great vowel shift is a mess. You even got y, which sometimes serves as a consonants and sometimes as a vowel.

Ta Niemka zaskakująco dobrze wymawia i to z akcentem.

Kownacki certainly does not have an "S", but there is a "C". KownaCki. You read that "C" as a separate letter, not as "K". In turn, "RZ" and "SZ" are similar in pronunciation. "RZ" is pronounced harder than "SZ". However, when you pronounce it as part of a whole word, it's hard for foreigners to pick it up. In Przemysław it is not P + R + Z but P + RZ, and it there is "P before "RZ" it makes "RZ" sound softer and more like "SZ" (Of there was "B" before, then "RZ" would sound harder.

You don't own the Latin letters. In some languages letters correspond to different sounds than in your language.

You did pretty well. It's funny when you state that the names are wiritten completely different to how they're prononunced. No, in fact, they are pronounced just how they are written - if you're Polish you know which letters correspond to which sounds. In English a word "bow" can have different pronounciations, while in Polish once you learn the rules of reading certain letters there is no problem afterwards. That's why we do not organise spelling bees - it only makes sense when children learn to write, but once they learn the letters, there is no need, they just know the spelling (sometimes they make spelling mistakes regarding "ó" and "u", "ch" and "h" or "rz" and "ż" as they sound pretty the same). Szczęsny is difficult beacuse it starts with sz cz cluster. Just think of word "SHoe" or "Shell" - it''s similar to Polish "sz", while first sound of "CHarm" is similar to Polish "cz".

Hey Rob. Polish "C" sounds like "TS". Therefore Kownacki sounds like Kovnatsky😅

Polish spelling still makes much much more sense and is much more regular than the English one

Its so much fun to watch your videos as a Polish guy, good job Rob!

You got this wrong: English is written different than it's pronounced, Polish is written EXACTLY as it's pronounced.

Francuzkom szło na prawdę nieźle (pomijając czeszki, wiodomo :D )

Whenever I see a foreigner attempting to pronounce a Polish word, I recall the Star Wars scene when Obi Wan says “Donʼt try it” to Anakin... but your attempts actually werenʼt bad, chapeau bas, Rob

a guide for english ppl how to say them: 1. Kshishtof Pyongtek 2. Dahveed Kovnahtskee 3. Gzhegosh Krihovyahk 4. Pyotr Zhyeleeñskee 5. Ahrkahdyoosh Meeleek 6. Voychyeh(u pronounce the h at the end) Shchengsni 7. Mahteoosh Kleeh(u pronounce the h at the end) 8. Yahkoob Bwahshchikofskee 9. Pshemiswahf Frahnkofskee 10. Robert Levahndofskee

The lady from Germany and the lady from the Czech went best in my Polish opinion ;)

Zabawne było widzieć, jak z innych krajów łamią sobie języki przy próbie wymawiania nazw tych piłkarzy 🙂

Kownacki -> you need to say the "C"! Krychowiak -> don't say "C"! very easy :D

Love this! As an aside and as a tennis fan, it is always fascinating seeing the various pronounciation of the women's world number 1 player- Iga Swiatek. Despite being pronounced 'shvee-awn-teck', confirmed by the player herself, it always drives me crazy hearing even commentators butchering her name!

23:00 Well..... don't wanna be rude Rob, but you're completely wrong about the differences of written and pronounced Polish..... once you know how to properly pronounce w, ł, ch, sz, cz and bunch of other Polish hieroglyphs like ą, ę and ć you could pass as a Pole every way you go in Poland..... and not because we're drunk most of the time, which is true, but because of you've learned pronałseeyeyszyon.... easy, no? fun fact.... actually it's English that's so much different from written and spoken one, hence so many dyslexic kids in the UK...... but please, don't quote me on that

In polish language we have some special signs on some letters like: - Ą, which you pronounce like on/om - Ę, which you pronounce like en (you read it like "an") /e (you read it like "a" in English) - (when it's on the end of the word, like "cię" (it means "you")) - Ó which sounds normally like u, but it's like only written letter - Ż - it is like "zh" (I've taken this pronouncing from Russian words written in latin alphabet but you should hear it to understand it) - DŻ, which is pronounced like "G" in english - DŹ (a softer version of "dż") - Ł - spelt like "wh" in English words like "why" or "what" - Ń - like "knee" in English language -SZ - it's easy, it's like "sh" - CZ - like "ch" in "cheese" - Ś - softer version of "SZ" - Ć - softer version of "CZ". When you also see "ci", it's like the same, but with "ee" (pronounced like English) As much as you hear polish language daily and read the texts in polish, you probably see it. The biggest problem is with letters like: ch/h, rz, etc. It's more like orthographic problem, but in spelling there is no difference. - CH/H - like you spelled in the video - RZ is like Ż Good like in learning polish language

English: Why PRZ is spelled like PSH it doesnt make any sense Also English: Yea Read and Read are pronounced differently

7:18 - funny enough, 'ch' is actually the only case in Polish language where we have a silent letter and it's purely because we dropped one singular sound from Polish speech: In the past 'ch' made a k-ish sound (it was like 'kh', but with emphasis of 'h', not 'k'), but as there were no words even close enough is sound for the difference to ever matter it just got merged into pure 'h' sound, leaving us with silent C letter in those words as they lost the conveyed meaning of the sound. The discussion if we should.simplify the language and drop this silent letter is reignited every few years, but it's never taken too seriously and so far the consensus is to leave it as it's somewhat usefull for polish ortography. Other than this specific cbonation of letters, which is 'ch', there are no silent letters in Polish. And thankfully C is always silent in that combination. If not for that and the fact we exchange 'rz' to 'sz' if it's after few selected letters for ease of speech, Polish would be a perfectly written language where every letter always makes a sound and always the same one (digraphs like 'rz', 'sz', 'cz', 'dz', 'dż' and 'dź' are counted as singular letters), but we're still close enough to the point that if you learn Polish alphabet, then you can read aloud basically anything in Polish perfectly without ever hearing anything in Polish, nor checking any dictionaries.

Rob, you're actually completely wrong. The Polish pronunciation is exactly the same as in writing. We all know that pronunciation in English sometimes doesn't make sense, but in Polish you really just need to learn how to pronounce a few of these sounds and read exactly what is written.

Piotr is Peter in Polish :)

C is pronounced {ts}, like in Botswana, but without prolonged friction on the {s} part, it's more a plosive than a fricative.

I think the must important thing to remember for English speakers is that POLISH LETERS DON'T CHANGE THEIRS SOUND WHEN IS IN DIFFERENT WORDS always the same, no mater what.

5:37 - -ski also exists in Polish and is pronounced differently to -cki. S is like sssnake sound and C is like the sound this metal dish of percusion makes (idk how it's called in English). It's a difference in sound any Polish pwrson would hear. Similarly you seem to not hear the difference between 'rz' and 'r', and 'cz' and 'c', while for Poles those are sounds that are ease to distinguish.

The funniest thing is that many people in the world had polish ancestors so they own polish surnames and they pronounce it wrong :D

After watching this episode I see how Polish language is so tricky 🙈

Love your videos. I love watching foreign people who watch something about Poland

Hi, about different pronouncing of "rz" with other consonatnts. We make it as easy as possible. So, if the neighbouring consonant is a voiced one like G, B or D we pronounce "rz" like zh, if there is a voiceless one like p or t, we say "sh". So Grzegorz is Gzhegozh and Przemysław is Pshemysuav.

If a Hogwarts student had spoken Polish in the girls' bathroom on the second floor where Martha's ghost was, he would have accidentally opened the passage to the Chamber of Secrets. There are so many "sz" "cz" "rz" "ch" "prz" "brz" that it sounds like the speech of snakes.

So basically: Szczęsny is Sh-Tsh-En-Snyh (not entirely it's En because you don't read N fully). Kownacki is Ko-V-Nat-Skyh, Krychowiak is Kryh-kho-viakh, Zieliński is Zye-Lin-Skih and the hardest one, Błaszczykowski is something like Bua-Sh-Tshy-Kov-Skih. Well maybe it's not entirely how a Pole would pronounce that but it's as close as it can be. By the way I had no idea that Rob is a football coach. I am too! 👊

Polish may have some weird prenounciations but i have one suggestion: whenever you are in Polish restaurant, even if you have English menu but you see that there is Polish original name, then while you order just try to say "Polish version" and ask if that was correct, it might be nothing or maybe a little embarassing for you but for us you will always be this nice foreigner that at least tried ^^

Actually, in polish C is pronounced kinda like TS. So you'd read Kownacki like KOVNATSKI 😅

Ą is like French "-on" in "bon" and "ę" is similar to French "-in" in e.g. "fin", often they sound (and are pronounced) like "on/ en". "C" sounds like "ts". "SZ" similar to English "SH" and "CZ" like "CH" in "check", while "CH" sounds exactly the same as "H", "Ż/RZ" is like French "J" in "Jean", "DŻ" like English "J" in "John". Vowels are always pronounced the same clear way: a- like in "Pamela", e- like in Betty, o- like in "pot", i- like the first "e" in Peter. "Y" is more difficult, similar to "i" in "film" but more back, deeper in the throat. Anyway, you did well. Cluster of "szcz" /sh-tch/ is extremely difficult for anyone especially with germanic mothertongue. As it gets to "PRZ-", "rz" sounds here like "sz"/sh/ because it follows voiceless consonant "p"- it's impossible to produce voiced consonant right after voiceless one.

You tried :) Polish phonetics is quite tricky, and we have some sounds in the language that, for example, are not present in English - so to pronounce them correctly, you just have to learn and practice. The second bane of foreigners are exceptions to the rules in the language. Once I substituted for a friend at the University of Warsaw and taught Polish to foreigners for a semester. It was very nice, mixed group, but everyone managed to speak English somehow, so I could explain something in English if needed. And when we were saying goodbye at the end, I asked - what do you remember best from our classes? And then one Italian with a smile on his lips replied: "You saying: we have a rule for this in the language, but..." :)

Klich it's not sounds like click. That is not your victory 😂

Czech girls got everything perfect

23:25 - that's LITERALLY the only case where anything is pronounced not like it's written in Polish. RZ after P or K. And the thing is, then it's always pronoinced like SZ. We have no GOFI in Polish.

Ch - h like hover Cz - ch like check Sz - sh like shower When you have p before rz you say p + sh like shower

Rob, it is not Polish language that lacks vowels (English has 5 and Polish has 9 vowels :D), only some polish words are super-consonanty.

Przemysław is the one of the oldest Polish names. In UK a lot of Brits use a very short and very easy version of this name - Prim.

Fun fact. Some time ago my friend saw a part of Polish language book for foreigners. According to it, only native Poles are able to hear the difference between "SZ" and "RZ" or "Ż". Well, no, the difference is quite obvious, especially when you hear those sounds separately. It's just that sometimes, especially when talking fast, the difference becomes less apparent, I guess.

big thing in polish language is that you say stuff in quick syllables more then you say the entire word at once Wojciech Szczęsny "Woj-ciech, Szczę-sny"

Your level of "language sensitivity" is still way above that of a typical Brit and that says a lot about the general British population 😉

Super!!

I had a good fun with it:)

At school some use pictures of how teeth and tongue have to be to make certain sound. Xd

If "Szczęsny" is an international nightmare, I'm glad he wasn't called "happy". That would be Wojciech Szczęśliwy.

When you mentioned Lewandowski, I remembered the sentence: "You are who people think you are". :D

The problem is, I think, in the frequences spectrum we (i.e. Poles) use in our language. This spectrum is larger than in English, French or German languages. We easily can pronouce sounds which are impossible to pronounce for major part of people living in west of Poland. Many years ago I worked as a tutor of Russian in France. My pupil said: Russian sounds like falling leaves in autumn, there is many sounds lik "s", "sh", "shch" etc. The Polish is similar but the spectrum is narrower than in Russian, some Russian sound do not exist in Polish. It all makes that we can easily learn English pronounciation but we have the problems with Russian pronounciation (like ypu have wit Polish).

In Polish you don't have to learn any rules just read one letter after another and you will be close enough and learn how specific leters combine

I'm Pole and l've just pissed my pants. 😆🤣😂🤣🤣🤣😂🤣🤣 You all guys are sooo sweet! SUBSCRIBED

We r appreciated your effort to say it correctly 🤣

Typical British person, you are reading C as K and arguing there is not S. 😂😂

8:26 Ń is like you would say Ni (say Ni loudly now and compare) you have word "Nie" = "No" and you can hear on the start Ń when you say "Ni" e

Man, with all the love, "you didn't need the R in Piotr" is such a British thing to say. :D Oh these poor Rs. Though we ate the second E because we don't believe in vowels, so I certainly can't judge!

Rob : "Polish language is not helping itself"😂😂🤣🤣🤣😁😅 Spot On !!! 👍🏻🙂 (I'm Polish)

it was fun :)

Ha ha ha superb

When I used to live in UK I was laughing when my mates at work couldnt pronounce polish "c" at all, then I realized u dont even have this sound in english😅

Piotr Zielinski comes from same town I was born in 1962 I and currently live in US.

In Southampton there was also a legendary Polish player called Grzegorz Rasiak🙌

Ą and Ę is nosal, like in french. That's why PiĄtek not PiAtek. This ą and ę are there not to look nice but because it's different sounds than a and e.

Dziś Kuba Błaszczykowski po raz ostatni zagrał w naszej reprezentacji. Dziś był mecz Polska - Niemcy (Polska wygrała 😁😁😁😁) i żegnał się z reprezentacją, wzruszająca chwila.

When you said Klich totally wrong (cause you said Klick) but still felt like a winner 😂

the "ą"and "ę" can be a bit tricky to pronounce and even more so to explain, but they are often simplified to "on"/"om" and "en"/"em"

23:02 How we Poles see English language xd

Lubię patrzeć jak obcokrajowcy się męczą z wymową tak prostych dla mnie wyrazów

Fun fact Krzysztof Piątek you can translate Kristoffer Friday

13:18 Ło żesz! HAHAHAH

,,Rz" sounds like ,,ж" in Russian or like ,,j" in french, but after ,,p" sounds like ,,sz"/,,sh"

The "final boss" should be: Kazimierz Węgrzyn

5:26 you have Dawid Kowna C K I we produce it as c (c) ki (I is and softening ) and we say Cki c k i (you can say I same as I (and in English) it's same letter but with softening to K)

CH is never a K in polish, and there is no difference between CH and H in polish, it is always pronounced as a 'h' + vowel behind it, as you said in 7:15

23:11 no in Polish alfabet is just pronounced diffrently

Wojciech Szczęsny - his last name is very hard but you try speak this syllabes Sz | cz | ę | s | ny - if you try this way i guarantee, you speak this corretly. Ę is very soft letter so, initially you can try pronounce this like "en"

Przemysław greets grom Władysławowo.😂

Rob you should do this but not just polish footballers, there would be a video somewhere.

maaan xD you are saying "yes, I say it right" whenever you spell it wrong xD

If Szczęsny was spelt using English-spelling rules it be "shchen-sny" while you pronounce it more like "shesh-nee"

Tre amuza vi estas, kara. :D

main problem is that english speaking people read -ck as k. So Galecki for example. insted of Galetsky they read Galecki. In polish we pronouns every letter theres no silent letters. Exeptions are Kashubian names like Paschke when sch is pronouns as sz (sh in english) Names whith dt ant the end we read like english speakers.

In Polish, you speak the word simply as you see it. You pronounce every letter, you don't cut anything, you don't add anything. And these letters like: ń, ą, ę are enough to emphasise to sound correct. Of course its hard to say letters as Poland people say, but it is a good start.

Try to read them like that Krzysztof Piątek - Kshishtof Pyontek Dawid Kownacki - Daaveed Kovnatski Grzegorz Krychowiak Gzhegosh Krihowyak Piotr Zieliński - Pyotr Zyelinski (there's no similar sound to Polish zi or ź in English) Arkadiusz Milik - Arkaadyush Meeleek Wojciech Szczęsny - Woytsieh Shchensny Mateusz Klich - Mateush Kleeh Jakub Błaszczykowski - Yakub Bwashchikofski Przemysław Frankowski - Pshemiswaf Frankofski (look at my name, it shortens to Przemek /pshemek/) And of course, you pronounced Lewandowski correctly :) They're not pronounced completely different from spelling. In fact, Polish pronunciation is really simple if you know the sounds. For example, E is always E like in English 'back'. English pronunciation, on the other hand, is hilarious. First example, Mercedes. Each E is pronounced differently 😂😂 Polish sounds, just like English, become voiced or voiceless depending on the letter surrounding them. For example 'rz' is voiced in the word 'rzecz' /jech/ (j like in jargon) which means 'a thing' and voiceless in the word 'krzesło' /ksheswo/ which means 'a chair'. The same situation with a letter W. Look at Polish surnames. All of them which end with -wski are pronounced /fski/ cause it's easier to soften V into F. And then there's a very popular surname like Kowalski /Kovalski/ in which it's easy to pronounce voiced sound. I can give you thousands of examples :)

For future in polish ą is read om/on and ę is em/en

I'll tell you as a Polish native and a person with a master's degree in my language - it's freakin' hard to learn Polish. Even philologists of Polish are shocked what we've invented through the history of our language 😅😂 so don't worry about any mistakes. Just remember: practice makes perfect 😊

No, you dont have Krzysztof or Grzegorz right, because you say 'r' inted of 'rz'

RZ very often inside of the word is pronunced the same as SZ

13:27 - Wojciech Chrzestny 😂

That "rz" is pronounced diffrend when next to it is diffrent letter and almost every special letter that we have in our alfabet they pronounce difrently when next to it is diffrent letter

So true, the more You hear the commentators pronounce the name the more You believe it's the right one. I must say You got most of them right or at least acceptable right. Learn the name Przemysław, it's quite a popular name in Poland.

One of most famous Polish football player was Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz, but no-one mentioned about him 🤷🏻‍♂️🤨🙄🤦🏻‍♂️😉

IMO, very nice. But some tips: {ą} and {ę} are nasal; {ą} sounds like /õn/ and {ę} like /ẽn/; {rz} can be /ʒ/ as well as /ʃ/ (when follows a voiceless consonant) - like in "drzewo" - /dʒεvo/ or "trzymać" - /tʃymatɕ/. In Polish, we have also distinction between soft and hard consonants: for a "hardener" stands letter "z" (but just with "c" - /tʃ/ - , "s" - /ʃ/ - , "r" - /ʃ/ or /ʒ/ - 《explained above》) there isn't dyphtong "zz" for /ʒ/ sound (the dyphtong exists, but just in borrowings like "pizza" or in the word "zza" - being pronounced as it's written - meaning "from behind") - instead "zz" we have letter /ż/ (probabbily borrowed from Maltese language). The soft consonants are marked by an acute above like "ćma" /ɕma/ - a moth or "źrebię /ʑrεbjẽn/ - a foal, but there is a trap, when writing: according to someone's writing character, the letter "ź" (soft z /ʑ/) can be mistaken with "ż" (hard z /ʒ/), because often a dot above z is written as a short vertical line that causes some people to write "ƶ" instead "ż". But there are some linguistic doubts, if sign "ƶ" is an equivalent of "ż" or of just "z". And I know one case of combination this two signs "Ƶ̇" - used in a logo of Polish beer "Żywiec" that is brewed in a city of the same name and now it is well known worldwide (I guess, that even in UK) because it is a patron of a concerto "Męskie Granie Orkiestra" (Men's Playing Orchestra the name could be confusing, because not only men participate in it).