In Polish, every letter or digraph is pronounced separately, even when the same letters are written one after the other. For example, if a Polish word contains "nn" or "ll", both letters are pronounced separately. The stress is Polish is also very regular: almost every Polish word is pronounced with the stress on the second-from-last (penultimate) syllable. In some foreign words the stress will fall on the third-from-last syllable, but this is rare.

There are several digraphs (two or more letters pronounced as one sound) in Polish. It is important to learn these digraphs, because they will be pronounced the same way every time you see them, and the pronunciations are not always intuitive. The table below presents how to pronounce each digraph separately.

ch Pronounced exactly like the Polish "h" letter (equivalent to the English "h" in "hello")

ci Pronounced exactly like the Polish "ć"

cz Pronounced with a lower tone than the Polish "ć". To pronounce it, start saying "ć" then stick your lips further out

dzi Pronounced like the American English word "gee"

dź, dz Pronounced like the "j" in the American English word "jeans"

dż A deeper sound than the "dź", it is pronounced like the "j" in the American English word "jungle", but with the lips further out

ni Pronounced like the Polish "ń"

rz Pronounced just like the Polish letter "ż"

si Pronounced like the Polish "ś"

sz Pronounced with a lower tone than the Polish "ś". To pronounce it, start saying "ś" then stick your lips further out

zi Pronounced exactly like the Polish "ź"

Major Exceptions to Be Aware Of:

There is a phenomenon in the Polish language known as devoicing. Devoicing happens when one of the letters b, d, g, w, or z occur at the end of a word. When this occurs, the consonant is softened and changes its pronunciation. For example, the letters b, d, g, w, and z would change their pronunciation to p, t, k, f and s.

The letters q, v, and x are not present in the native Polish alphabet, yet you may encounter them while reading a document in Polish or while traveling through Poland. The reason for this is that they are used only in words which are direct foreign loanwords, such as English words which have not had their spelling changed to follow Polish grammatical rules.

In certain situations, you will need to know how to pronounce these letters. The "q", which is rarely encountered in Polish, is pronounced as the English letters "kw". The "v" can be pronounced two ways: usually as a English "v" in English loanwords, but as an English "f" is words of German origin. The "x", which is fairly common in some written Polish documents, is pronounced as the English "ks".

Find more articles about the Polish language on the website of SlovoPol Group at http://www.slovopol.com. SlovoPol also provides professional low-cost Polish and English translations. Martin Cheslak is the author of this article, and has all rights to its distribution, except those granted to articlesbeyondbetter.com.