Originally the post had another, unrelated pronunciation note. Then I actually checked and it turned out I was completely and utterly wrong. I really shouldn't ever give out advice on anything related to phonemics, given my incurable wooden ear.
Auschwitz. Initial vowel sound as proscribed does not follow pattern of Austria/Australia/Aurora/August; I thought it would. CBC newscasters were saying it a lot last week when Harper was visiting and it really grated -- "why are you pretending to be German all of a sudden?".
They seemed divided on how to handle the letter "w", though. But it's a more subtle effect.
Yes, I use Polish a lot, and yes it's rusty, phonemically especially my pronunciation of dentals apparently (t/d -- English's made them softer, more alvolear I guess). Also: vocabulary gaps, calque idioms, all sorts of markers of being out of the loop.
Yeah pronouncing loanwords is always tricky. There are often many pronunciations, varying between the original one in the original language (which normally few speakers of the borrowing language can pronounce) and a totally Anglicized or converted pronunciation, usually somewhere in the middle. Over time, one more or less standard pronunciation settles in popular usage, whether it's consistent or correct or not
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Do you ever still use Polish? If you went back to Poland, do they ask stuff like "hey are you a native speaker or not?" because of any rusting?
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They seemed divided on how to handle the letter "w", though. But it's a more subtle effect.
Yes, I use Polish a lot, and yes it's rusty, phonemically especially my pronunciation of dentals apparently (t/d -- English's made them softer, more alvolear I guess). Also: vocabulary gaps, calque idioms, all sorts of markers of being out of the loop.
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