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The Polish alphabet scares people before they hear a single word: szczęście, przepraszam, chrząszcz. The good news is that Polish spelling is honest. Every letter and letter pair is read one way, so once you learn the rules from this lesson, you can read any Polish text out loud. English makes you memorize how each word sounds; Polish makes you learn one set of rules and then leaves you alone.
The Polish alphabet
Polish uses the Latin alphabet with 32 letters. Most of them sound the way you expect. Here are the ones that don’t:
| C c | like “ts” in “cats”: co [tso] – what |
| J j | like “y” in “yes”: jak [yak] – how |
| W w | like “v” in “voice”: woda [voda] – water |
| Ł ł | like “w” in “water”: ładny [wadny] – pretty |
| Y y | a short “i”, like in “myth”: syn [syn] – son |
| Ó ó | exactly like Polish U: góra [gura] – mountain |
| Ą ą | nasal “on”, like in French “bon”: mąka [monka] – flour |
| Ę ę | nasal “en”: ręka [renka] – hand |
| Ć ć | soft “ch”, like in “cheap”: być [bych] – to be |
| Ś ś | soft “sh”, like in “sheep”: śnieg [shnyeg] – snow |
| Ź ź | soft “zh”: źle [zhle] – badly |
| Ż ż | hard “zh”, like “s” in “pleasure”: żona [zhona] – wife |
| Ń ń | soft “n”, like “ny” in “canyon”: koń [kony] – horse |
The remaining letters (a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, z) sound close to their English versions. R is rolled, like in Spanish. G is always hard, like in “go”.
Letter pairs: sz, cz, rz, ch, dz, dż, dź
Polish writes several sounds with two letters. Read each pair as one sound:
SZ = hard “sh”: szkoła [shkowa] – school
CZ = hard “ch”: czas [chas] – time
RZ = the same sound as Ż: rzeka [zheka] – river
CH = the same sound as H: chleb [hleb] – bread
DZ = “ds” in “kids”: dzwonek [dzvonek] – bell
DŻ = “j” in “jam”: dżem [jem] – jam
DŹ = soft “j”: dźwięk [jvyenk] – sound
Two spelling notes that save you a lot of confusion later. First, Ó and U are the same sound, and so are RZ and Ż, and CH and H. Poles themselves make spelling mistakes with these pairs at school. Second, before a vowel the soft consonants Ć, Ś, Ź, Ń, DŹ are written as CI, SI, ZI, NI, DZI: ciocia [chocha] – aunt, siedem [shedem] – seven, zima [zhima] – winter.
Stress
Polish stress is boringly regular, and that’s a gift. Almost every word is stressed on the second syllable from the end: ko-BIE-ta (woman), war-SZA-wa, przy-ja-CIE-le (friends). You never have to guess or mark it. Compare that with Russian, where stress jumps around and changes the meaning.
Your first Polish words
Try reading these with the rules above, out loud:
Dzień dobry [jeny dobry] – good morning / good afternoon
Cześć [cheshch] – hi / bye
Dziękuję [jenkuye] – thank you
Proszę [proshe] – please / here you are
Przepraszam [psheprasham] – excuse me / I’m sorry
Do widzenia [do vidzenya] – goodbye
Notice that final Ę is pronounced as a plain E in everyday speech: proszę sounds like [proshe], not [proshen].
Exercise
Read these words out loud, then check yourself against the answers.
- szczur (rat)
- żaba (frog)
- łóżko (bed)
- dziewczyna (girl)
- chłopiec (boy)
- rzecz (thing)
- miłość (love)
- wrzesień (September)
- sześć (six)
- jajko (egg)
Answers:
1: [shchur]; 2: [zhaba]; 3: [wushko]; 4: [jevchyna]; 5: [hwopyets]; 6: [zhech]; 7: [miwoshch]; 8: [vzhesheny]; 9: [sheshch]; 10: [yayko]