|B, F, K, L, M, P, S, Z||just as in English.|
|C||as the English 'ts' in cats.|
|CZ||as the English 'ch' in church.|
|DZ||as the English 'ds' in beds.|
|DZ.||as the English 'j' in jam.|
|G||as the English 'g' in girl.|
|H or CH||as the Scottish or German 'ch' in loch.|
|J||as the English 'y' in yet.|
|L/||as the English 'w' in win.|
|R||as the Scottish or German 'r': trilled by vibration of the tongue.|
|SZ||as the English 'sh' in shut.|
|N, T, D||as in English, but put your tongue against the front teeth and not against the teeth ridge|
|W||the English 'v' in van|
|Z. or RZ||as the English 's' in pleasure.|
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
|A||as the English 'u' in cult.|
|E||as the English 'e' in ten.|
|I||as the English 'i' in fit.|
|O||as the English 'o' in cot.|
|U||as the English 'oo' in boot.|
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.
|A||pronounced like the English 'on'.|
|E||before a consonant: pronounced like the 'en' in English ten.|
|at the end of a word: pronounced like a normal Polish 'e'.|
|AJ||as the English 'i' in like.|
|EJ||as the English 'a' in take.|
The stress falls in Polish on the next to last syllable.
This page compiled by Timothy Kroll.