Thanks Kormosh - youlre making the effort worth while! ;-)

All right. So to start off, some necessary phonetic basics

The speech production mechanism

The sourse of air stream in both English and Polish is pulmonic and egressive, whihc means the air is expelled from the lungs. But while in English RP system consonants We're staring with consonants) can be done with the distinction into fortis(i.e those which require much energy) and lenis sounds, it is not so in Polish (there are of course different degrees of force but they are not as marked as for English) The air goes to the trachea and thriugh the trachea to the larynx, where vocal cords are situated. If they vibrate, the sound is voiced. Afterwards the air ispushed ibwards to the pharyngeal cavity and it can go either to the oral cavity or nasal cavity, depending ion the position of the velum. If it is raised, the escape will normally be oral. If it is lowered, nasal or nasalised sounds are produced. In the mouth cavity the most important articulator is the tongue, It is very felxible and can articulate agains a variety of other, passive articulators, such as:
the alveolar (teeth) ridge
the velum
the uvual (not especially important in the production of English or Polish sounds)
the hard palate
the lips
the teeth



Consonants.

Basic operative divisions, apart from the ones mentioned are into the manner and place of articulation.

Place of articulation
bilabial- the lips are the main arituclators, the air is build up behind them and is released plosively (bilabials are mainly plosives and one palatal glide is included there)

labio-dental- the upper teeth articulate with the lower lip

dental - the tongue articulates with the teeth, as in the English sounds in the words teeTH or THen

alveaolar - the tip and blade of the tongue articulate agaisnt the alveolar riddge

post-alveolar- the tip and blade of the tongue articulate agaisnt the rear part of the alveolar ridge

palato-alveaolar- the tip and blade of the tongue articulate agains the alveolar ridge while the front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate

palatal- the front of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate

velar- the back of the tongue is raised towards the soft palate (velum)

glottal - glottis is the opening between the vocal folds and there are two glottal sounds i n English - glottal plosive(stop) /?/ and the glottal fricative /h/


Manner of articulation:
Obstruents:
Plosives - a complete cloure is made at a point in the mouth and the air is released plosively
Affricates - a complete closure is made in the mouth, just like for plosives, but the organs separate slowly and the relase is made with a friction, like for fricatives
Fricatives - a narrowing is formed. Two organs approximnate close enough for the air to escape with friction
Sonorants - generally voiced, lenis sounds. Usually frictionless
Nasals - they are produced like plosives, only that the soft palate is lowered and air escapes through the nasal cavity

Laterals - partial closure is made, the air can escape on one or both sides of the contact, no friction

R-sound - in British RP it is a post alvealoar frictionless continuantm,which means that the tip and blade of the tongue articulate in the rear part of the alveolar ridge. The back of the tongue may be slightly velarised, i.e the back is raised towards the velum, and the centre of the tongue is slightly hollow, thaks to which the air can escape freely without friction In standard American the r-sound is retroflex, the tip of the tounge is curled back behidn the alveolar ridge.

Glides (Semi-vowels) /j/ and /w/ resemble vowels in that ih their production their is no obstructon to the air stream anbd no friction accompanies them. The tongue occupies a certain position but then quickly glides towards another. Bt they are consonant-like in that they have no syllabic function.

RP INVENTORY OF CONSONATS:

In the Received Pronunciation system there are the following sounds:

plosives:
-bilabials: p,b
-alveaolas t,d
-velars k,g
-glotttal stop /?/

affricates
only the palato-alveolar pair, as in the words CHair or juDGe

fricatives
-labio dentals f,v
-dentals, as in the words THen, THank (voiced-voicless pair)
-alveolars s,z
-palato-alveaolars, as in SHake reGime
glottal fricative /h/

NASALS

bilabial - m

alveaolar - n

velar - the special n, for instance in siNG

LATERALS
two main variants of laterla exist the clear, alveolar /l/ and the drak alveolar and velarised /l/

R-sound
in RP it is the post-alveaolr frictionless continuant.

Glides or semi-vowels
labio-velar /w/ (lips articulate but the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum)
and the palatal glide /j/

That;s RP.

Now the question is, what of Polish?

Polish sounds

plosives
bilabials - p, b (so what;s new, huh? ;-))
DENTAL - t,d
VELAR-k,g

affricates
DENTAL - c, dz
POST-ALVEOLAR cz, dż
PALATAL ć, dź

FRICATIVES
labio-dental f,v
DENTAL s,z
POST-ALVEOLAR sz,ż
PALATAL ś, ź
VELAR /x/ as in Scottish English, e.g in the word loch

NASALS
bilabials- m
DENTAL - n
PALATAL ń

R
In Polish the r sound is an alveolar roll (trill): the tio and blade of the tongue articulate against the alveolar ridge in a series of quick taps.

Glides
just as in RP - palatal and labio velar.


Now, we can already see the differences. And these differences may greatly influence our errors when learning Polish or English. For instance, we have a tendency to palatalise any sound and we have separate palatal sounds- it is not very common in the model types of English, such as RP. The unequal number if sounds may lead to difficulties in discrimanting and proplery using tgouse sounds, as they are foreign. However, it is perhaps even more difficult when the sounds are similar because no sound in these two languagues can be pronnuced the same. Why? Because the sounds I have discussed above are only models, basic units iof a language. In English, or in any language, no consonant is always pronounec in the same way - the pronunciation of a given consonat depends on the CONTEXT. We are talking, then, about PHONEMES, the baisc units of a language, which have been enummerated above and ALLOPHONES - the contextual variants of given sounds.

That's all what I wanted to say for now.

Next:
I'm going to discuss more differences between consonants.

How is it so far, Kormosh? Thanks for reading it if anyone got to this point.

Also, one thing is that I cannot operate with the proper symbils of sounds, simply because you wouldn;t display them. For me to use the phonetic symbols here or any where in the ent, you would have to download a specila set of fonts which are all phonetc symbols. They are avialable on various sites in the net. Unfortuantely, I don;t have any links for now, but I will try to privide some. In the eman time, I willh ave to simply give examples f the soubds I want to discuss. You only need to remeber there is no one-to-one correspondence between spelling and pronunciation, which emans a sound can be spelled in many different ways and the other way round: a letter or a sequence of letters may have a variety of pronunication. That;s why we use phonetic transcriptions. To overcme this.

Phew, I"m really done now!!


For soe greast resource on American sounds and much, much more, visit:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/

Highly recommneded site!!!