Polish 101

Polish Pronunciation

Several Polish letters cannot be easily viewed on the WWW. They will be represented by the ascii characters: a, an a with a tail curling to the right; e, an e with a tail; c' a c with acute accent; l/ an l with a diagonal slash through it; n' an n with an acute accent; s' an s with an acute accent; z' a z with an acute accent; and z. a z with a single dot over it.

CONSONANTS

LETTERPRONUNCIATION
B, F, K, L, M, P, S, Zjust as in English.
Cas the English 'ts' in cats.
CZas the English 'ch' in church.
DZas the English 'ds' in beds.
DZ.as the English 'j' in jam.
Gas the English 'g' in girl.
H or CHas the Scottish or German 'ch' in loch.
Jas the English 'y' in yet.
L/as the English 'w' in win.
Ras the Scottish or German 'r': trilled by vibration of the tongue.
SZas the English 'sh' in shut.
N, T, Das in English, but put your tongue against the front teeth and not against the teeth ridge
Wthe English 'v' in van
Z. or RZas the English 's' in pleasure.

Softened Consonants

A common phenomenon in the Slavic languages is "softening" or "softened" pronunciation of consonants. This is made by pronounced a slight 'y' immediately following the letter.

Example: NIE is pronounced NyEH

This occurance happens in the following letters:
C     written     C' or CI
N     written     N' or NI (as in the Spanish ñ)
S     written     S' or SI
Z     written     Z' or ZI (can also occur in the pair dz = dz' or dzi)

It is important to note the voiced consonants become devoiced at the end of words.

Example: CHLEB is pronounced CHLEP

VoicedDevoiced
BP
DT
GK
WF
Z, RZSZ

VOWELS

LETTERPRONUNCIATION
Aas the English 'u' in cult.
Eas the English 'e' in ten.
Ias the English 'i' in fit.
Oas the English 'o' in cot.
Uas the English 'oo' in boot.

Nazalized Vowels

Polish has two vowels which are nazalized. In theory, nazalization should occur by pronouncing a short French 'n' after the vowel. Such as in the French 'bon'. However, one can easily get away with just pronouncing an regular 'n' after the vowel.

NAZALIZED VOWELS

LETTERPRONUNCIATION
Apronounced like the English 'on'.
Ebefore a consonant: pronounced like the 'en' in English ten.
at the end of a word: pronounced like a normal Polish 'e'.

DIPTHONGS

LETTERPRONUNCIATION
AJas the English 'i' in like.
EJas the English 'a' in take.

STRESS

The stress falls in Polish on the next to last syllable.

Send all additional information to Jason Piasecki at jason@piasecki.org.