The sound inventory of Polish contains two phonemes which are treated as vowels even though phonetically speaking, they are diphthongs in which a non-nasal vowel is followed by a nasal semi-vowel. They are "ą" /ɔ̃/ and "ę" /ɛ̃/. Polish speakers of English may sometimes mishear and mispronounce e.g. the English vowel /æ/ or the sequence /en/ as /ɛ̃/ and the diphthong /əʊ/ or the sequence /ɒn/ as /ɔ̃/. In some cases the problem appears to lie in misinterpreting English spelling rather than mishearing a given word. Here we omit cases where in many native English accents vowel allophones are actually nasalised (e.g. in southern dialects of American English).
N.B. There exist some borrowings from French in which the French nasal vowels close to /ɔ̃/ or /ɛ̃/ can be pronounced in a somewhat French manner. This group includes the words restaurant, genre, blancmange, croissant and pain (au chocolat), enfant (terrible).
Ex. In each set below there is pseudo-phonetic Polish transcription of common errors accompanied by the prescribed RP pronunciation in IPA. Write the words transcribed.
e.g. "kęt" /kɑːnt/ can't
a. "dęs" /dɑːns/ b. "częs" /tʃɑːns/ c. "frędz" /frendz/ d. "fręs" /frɑːns/
e. "pęz" /pænz/ f. "tęz" /tænz/ g. "hąk" /hɒŋk/ h. "dąt" /dəʊnt/
i. "łąt" /wəʊnt/ j. "łąt" /wɒnt/ k. "frąt" /frʌnt/ l. "ęt" /ænt/ m. "ęt" /ɑːnt/
n. "ęt" /ænd/ or weak forms /ən(d)/ o. "tąp" /tuːm/ p. "bąb" /bɒm/
q. "strąk" /strɒŋ/ r. "rąk" /rɒŋ/
KEY
a. dance, b. chance, c. friends, d. France, e. pans, f. tans, g. honk, h. don't, i. won't, j. want, k. front, l. ant, m. aunt, n. and, o. tomb, p. bomb, q. strong, r. wrong
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