Why you sound Polish: distinct features of Polish-accented English
If you’re reading this, you’re probably Polish and probably speak English fairly proficiently, albeit with an accent. Having lived in Poland for a few years, I’m well acquainted with the fairly high levels of English proficiency but also the Polish accent, which by the way, I find quite endearing.
Nevertheless, you may want to reduce your accent to sound more native. Especially since native English speakers keep asking you where in “Eastern Europe” you’re from. Shudders. Well, it could be worse. They could be asking you where in Russia you’re from!
Jokes aside, let’s talk about the features of the Polish accent, which, while having commonalities with other Slavic accents, do have their distinct features that give them away.
Pronouncing “th” /θ/ as “f” /f/
While the English sound “th” is fairly difficult for English learners (only 7% of the world’s languages have this sound), Poles substitute this sound with a different sound that other ESL students do, substituting “th” /θ/ with [f], instead of the more common mispronunciation as [s]
Polish-accented “th” /θ/
thing → *fing
thank → *fank
Typical ESL-accented “th” /θ/
thing → *sing
thank → *sank
Poles have told me that they were taught to pronounce this an /f/. Presumably, this is because it’s close enough, and in fact, some native English dialects such as London English and African American English do do this. Furthermore, it rarely hinders communication, but it is one of the most noticeable features of Polish-accented English and fairly simple to train.
Placing stress on the wrong syllable
The next problem is word stress. Word stress refers to certain syllables in a word being more prominent. For example the word “banana” is stressed ba-NA-na not BA-na-na. Languages often indicate a syllable is stressed with it being louder and differently pitched (English has a couple other features, but we’ll get to that in a moment). Polish word stress predictable 99.9% of the time: It’s always on the penultimate syllable. English word stress, however, is unpredictable. Compare the following:
Stress for “photo” derivations
pho.to
pho.to.graph
pho.to.gra.phy
pho.to.gra.phic
pho.to.gra.phi.ca.lly
pho.to.gra.phee
Stress for „wybrać” derivations
wy.bór
wy.bie.ra
wy.bie.ra.jąc
wy.bie.ra.ją.cy
wy.bie.ra.ją.ce.go
As we add more and more syllables to the end of the Polish words, the stressed syllable keeps its spot as the second-to-last. The main stress in the English words, on the other hand, jump around in a seemingly chaotic manner. While there are certain common stress patterns such as affixes and word-origins that can give you clues to where the stress is, for the most part you just have to memorize English stress.
Because English stress is unpredictable while Polish stress is completely predictable, Poles tend to stress the wrong syllables. Furthermore, many of my Polish students don’t even know what stress is because they’ve never needed to consider it, what with it being completely predictable in Polish. This is why Polish-accented English mispronounces words, pronouncing them with Polish stress patterns:
PRObably → *proBAbly
REStaurant → *resTAUrant
Moreover, for the Poles who do know about word stress, I’ve been told that Polish teachers often tell them that if in doubt, English nouns tend to have stress on the first syllable, which, while true, often leads to words like comPUter stressed incorrectly as *COMputer, due to Poles overgeneralizing this slight tendency of English nouns to have first-syllable word stress
Equal lengths for stressed and unstressed syllables
Vowel lengths differ in English and in Polish. This is an additional indicator of stress in English that Polish does not share: the fact that English stressed syllables are longer. Listen carefully to how we speak. It will sound a bit like this:
aMEEEEEErica, comPUUUUUUter, beLIEEEEEVE
This is because English is what’s called a heavily stress-timed language, meaning that stressed syllables are longer, whereas unstressed syllables are shorter. Polish is more syllable-timed, meaning stress and unstressed syllables are more equal in duration. Because of this, Poles will pronounce English words in a more staccato rhythm.
To help you envision how this sounds, just imagine a Russian- or Ukrianian- accented Polish accent
Typical 🇵🇱 Polish rhythm
„dzień dobry, mam na imię Adrian”
🇷🇺 🇺🇦 East Slavic-accented Polish rhythm
„dzień doooooobry, maaaaam na iiiiiimię Aaaaaaadrian”
🇺🇸 Standard English rhythm
“Helloooo, my naaaame is Aaaaadrian”
That is sometimes why you might say they sound like they’re singing. This is because Eastern Slavic languages like Russian and Ukrainian, like English, are a lot more stress timed than Polish is. And because of that, this feature is another feature of Polish-accented English.
Want to improve your pronunciation or accent?
Now you know about some major features of a Polish accent. Some features like the “th” sound being pronounced [f] is simple enough, theoretically, but take practice to get that automatic muscle memory. Other features are more troublesome, like lengthening those stressed syllables. It takes a combination of understanding the theory and practice, because you need to know not just HOW to pronounce the sound also WHERE the sound change occurs.
I’ve helped numerous Slavic speaking students improve their accent to be more easily understood and, more importantly, feel more confident. I speak several Slavic languages and have studied a few more and do consider them one of my accent training specialties, in fact! You can book an intro call with me to see if accent training is for you, or check out some of my self-paced video products. You can also sign up for my newsletter to get the latest tips and stay up to date with new training! Let’s make your accent amazing!