Asklemmy

One small data point I'm able to offer

My family is polish, were a few generations removed from the old country, no one really speaks more than a handful of words of polish. There's a pretty decent amount of people with polish ancestry around us in the Philly area, and one thing that kind of sticks out to me is "kielbasa"

The pronunciation around here has been sort of twisted into something like "ku-bah-see" and it's pretty universal around these parts, not sure how widespread that is in the rest of the country.

I think "kielbasy" is the actual Polish plural for kielbasa, so I suppose that's part of how the pronunciation got twisted.

Bonus fun fact- there is/was a Polish organized crime group active in parts of Philly that was sometimes known as the "kielbasa posse" which rhymes when pronounced that way.

I'm also pretty sure the pronunciations of "babcia" and "dziadek" (grandmother and grandfather) in my family are more than a bit off from standard polish too, though I think that comes down to more to just us trying to say polish words with an American accent.

I've been told my polish sounds "old". I know only a little bit, learned from grandparents and great grandparents. However they were speaking in the early 1900s when they left Poland for the US, that's the Polish I grew up hearing.

I grew up in the Midwest where there were quite a few 2nd, 3rd, + generation Polish Americans. Now I live on the East Coast where there are more people who immigrated from Poland in the last ~20 years in addition to the generational families and they sound quite a bit different from what I grew up with.

(ponieważ mówisz o języku polskim i wiem, że mówisz po polsku)

moja rodzina (macocha i tata) mówi po polsku z amerykańskim akcentem. moja macocha jest native speakerem języka polskiego i nauczyła się angielskiego jako dziecko. ponieważ dorastała w chicago, jej angielski stał się lepszy niż jej polski i teraz mówi z amerykańskim akcentem.

mój tata nauczył się polskiego od mojej macochy, on jest amerykaninem i też nauczył się od kogoś z amerykańskim akcentem.

I don't know, but if there is one, I'd expect one to be in New Jersey.

Maybe? My family is from the southern Appalachians, but we've spread all over.

One ancestor married and had kids with a polish lady, and moved to Pennsylvania. So, that branch tended to marry with other polish descended people more often than not. Their accent is different from people I've known from Pennsylvania, which includes some of my wife's family.

So I tend to believe that the polish american accent does exist. Thing is, I don't know enough about Chicago's history to even start to pick away at their accents and how they came about. But I would still say that if there's been a significant Polish population there, it's almost certain that there is one