Polish phonology

The phonological system of the Polish language is similar in many ways to those of other Slavic languages, although there are some characteristic features found in only a few other languages of the family, such as contrasting postalveolar and alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and arguably two nasals in traditional speech, while the consonant system is much more complex.

Vowels

File:Polish vowel chart (with allophones).svg

Polish oral vowels depicted on a vowel diagram, from Template:Harvcoltxt. Main allophones (in black) are in broad transcription, and positional allophones (in red and green) are in narrow transcription. Positional variants (in red) appear in palatal contexts.

The Polish vowel system consists of six oral sounds. Traditionally, it was also said to include two nasal monophthongs,Template:Sfnp with Polish considered the last Slavic language that had preserved nasal sounds that existed in Proto-Slavic. However, recent sources present for modern Polish a vowel system without nasal vowel phonemes, including only the aforementioned six oral vowels.Template:Sfn

Oral vowels Front Central Back Close Template:IPA link Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn Template:IPA link Mid Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn Open Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn

Nasal vowels Front Back Mid (Template:IPA linkTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn) (Template:IPA linkTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn)

Oral

Close

• is close front unrounded Template:IPAblink.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp It is somewhat more open than cardinal Template:IPAblink.
• ranges from almost close-mid near-front Template:IPAblink to (advanced) close-mid central Template:IPAblinkTemplate:Sfn or alternatively from near-close near-front unrounded Template:IPAblink to close-mid central unrounded Template:IPAblink.Template:Sfnp These descriptions are essentially equivalent. Traditionally, Template:IPAblink is used in narrow transcriptions (as if close central unrounded). Older sources describe this vowel as follows:
  • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is intermediate between cardinal Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink, but closer to the latter one. Alternatively, it is intermediate between cardinal Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink, but closer to the former.Template:Sfnp He places it on a vowel chart closer to Template:IPAblink.
  • According to Template:Harvcoltxt it is articulated with the centre of the tongue raised up and moved somewhat forward; the pharynx also widens. She places it on a vowel chart closer to Template:IPAblink.
  • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is near-close central unrounded Template:IPAblink, with a close-mid central unrounded Template:IPAblink allophone being optional before and in some unstressed positions. A realization close to near-close near front unrounded Template:IPAblink is present in northeastern dialects.
• is close back rounded Template:IPAblink.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp It is somewhat more open than cardinal Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink and intermediate between them in terms of labialization.
  • There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is close back somewhat fronted Template:IPAblink.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is close central Template:IPAblink.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is close centralized Template:IPAblink.

Mid

• is open-mid front unrounded Template:IPAblink.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp It is somewhat more open than cardinal Template:IPAblink.
  • There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt and Template:Harvcoltxt, it is close-mid front unrounded Template:IPAblink.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is either mid front unrounded Template:IPAblink or mid retracted front unrounded Template:IPAblink.
    • According to the British phonetician John C. Wells, it is often noticeably centralized Template:IPAblink: somewhat closer to a central vowel Template:IPAblink in palatal contexts.
• is open-mid back.Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp It is somewhat more open than cardinal Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink and intermediate between them in terms of labialization.
  • There is no complete agreement about the rounding of :
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is usually somewhat rounded Template:IPAblink, but sometimes, it is pronounced with neutral lips Template:IPAblink. In the latter case, the lack of rounding is compensated for by a stronger retraction of the tongue.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, citing Template:Harvcoltxt, it is unrounded Template:IPAblink.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is simply "rounded" Template:IPAblink.
  • There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it can be any of the following: open-mid centralized back rounded Template:IPAblink, raised open-mid back rounded Template:IPAblink or mid advanced back rounded Template:IPAblinkTemplate:Sfnp
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is close-mid advanced back rounded Template:IPAblink.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is close-mid central rounded vowel Template:IPAblink.
  • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, a close-mid back Template:IPAblink is a free variant before Template:IPAblink.

Open

• is open central unrounded Template:IPAblink. According to most sources, it is intermediate between cardinal Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink. However, Template:Harvcoltxt describes it broadly as open front unrounded Template:IPAblink. Traditionally, Template:IPAblink is used even in otherwise narrow transcriptions.
  • There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is open front unrounded Template:IPAblink.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is open front unrounded Template:IPAblink or even near-open front unrounded Template:IPAblink. She uses Template:IPAblink for the main central allophone.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is near-open central unrounded Template:IPAblink.
    • According to Template:Harvcoltxt, it is near-open near-front unrounded Template:IPAblink.

Distribution

Positional allophones in (alveolo-)palatal contextsTemplate:Sfnp

Phoneme	Typical Spelling	Phonemic position	Allophone
	y		Template:IPAblink
	i		Template:IPAblink
	e, ę*		Template:IPAblink
	ie, je ię*, ję*		Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink
			Template:IPAblink
	a		Template:IPAblink
	ia, ja		Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink
			Template:IPAblink
	o, ą*		Template:IPAblink
	io, jo ią*, ją*		Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink
			Template:IPAblink
	u, ó		Template:IPAblink
	iu, ju ió, jó		Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink
			Template:IPAblink
"C" represents a non-(alveolo)-palatal consonant only. "(C)" represents a non-(alveolo)-palatal consonant, a vowel, utterance boundary. "Ç" represents an alveolo-palatal consonant or . ę*, ą* represent followed by

The vowels and have largely complementary distribution. Either vowel may follow a labial consonant, as in mi ('to me') and my ('we'). Elsewhere, however, is usually restricted to word-initial position and positions after alveolo-palatal consonants and approximants , while cannot appear in those positions (see § Hard and soft consonants below). Either vowel may follow a velar fricative but after velar the vowel is limited to rare loanwords e.g. kynologia ('cynology') and gyros ('gyro').Template:Sfnp Dental, postalveolar consonants and approximants are followed by in native or assimilated words. However, appears outside its usual positions in some foreign-derived words, as in chipsy ('potato chips') and tir ('large lorry', see TIR). The degree of palatalization in these contexts is weak.Template:Sfnp In some phonological descriptions of Polish that make a phonemic distinction between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink may thus be treated as allophones of a single phoneme. In the past, was closer to Template:IPAblink, which is acoustically more similar to Template:IPAblink.

Nasal

Nasal vowels do not feature uniform nasality over their duration. Phonetically, they consist of an oral vowel followed by a nasal semivowel Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink (są is pronounced , which sounds closer to Portuguese são than French sont – all three words mean '(they) are'). Therefore, they are phonetically diphthongs. (For nasality following other vowel nuclei, see § Allophony below.)

Phonological status

The nasal phonemes appear in older phonological descriptions of Polish e.g. Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt. In more recent descriptions the orthographic nasal vowels ą, ę are analyzed as two phonemes in all contexts e.g. Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt. Before a fricative and in word-final position (in the case of ą) they are transcribed as an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant or . Under such an analysis, the list of consonantal phonemes is extended by a velar nasal phoneme or by two nasal approximants , .

Distribution

If analyzed as separate phonemes, nasal vowels do not occur except before a fricative and in word-final position. When the letters ą and ę appear before stops and affricates, they indicate an oral or followed by a nasal consonant homorganic with the following consonant. For example, kąt ('angle', 'corner') is , gęba ('mouth') is , pięć ('five') is and bąk ('bumble bee') is ,Template:Sfnp as if they were spelled *kont, *gemba, *pieńć and *bonk. Before or , nasality is lost altogether, and ą and ę are pronounced as oral Template:IPAslink or Template:IPAslink. The sequence is also denasalized to in word-final position, as in Template:Wikt-lang 'I will be'.

Polish vowels

IPA	Polish script	Example
	i	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('teddy bear')
	e	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('this one')
	y	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('mouse')
	a	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('bird')
	u/ó	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('boom')
	o	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('cat')
(or )	ę	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('snakes')
(or )	ą	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('snake')
(or )	ę	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('goose')
(or )	ą	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('gander')

Historical development

Distinctive vowel length was inherited from late Proto-Slavic, although in Polish only some pretonic long vowels and vowels with the neoacute retained length. Additional vowel lengths were introduced in Proto-Polish (as in other West Slavic languages) as a result of compensatory lengthening when a yer in the next syllable disappeared according to Havlík's law. In Polish this only happened in penultimate syllables (which thus became final syllables) before a voiced consonant (in other Slavic languages where a similar process occurred this could be more general).Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The resultant system of vowel lengths was similar to what is today preserved in Czech and to a lesser degree in Slovak, although the distribution of the sounds often differed (for example in Czech the old acute also lengthened vowels). In the emerging modern Polish, however, the long vowels were shortened again but sometimes (depending on dialect) with a change in quality (the vowels tended to become higher). The latter changes came to be incorporated into the standard language only in the case of long o and the long nasal vowel. The vowel shift may thus be presented as follows:Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

• long oral > short oral (certain dialects: , )
• long oral > short oral (certain dialects: , or )
• long oral or > short oral or
• long oral > short oral (certain dialects: ), written ó
• long oral > short oral , written u
• long nasal > short nasal , written ą

The that was once a long is still distinguished in script as ó, except in some words which were later respelled, such as , , (instead of etymological , , ).

In most circumstances, consonants were palatalized when followed by an original front vowel, including the soft yer (ь) that was often later lost. For example: *dьnь became dzień ('day'), while *dьnьmъ became dniem ('day' instr.).

Nasal vowels *ę and *ǫ of late Proto-Slavic merged (*ę leaving a trace by palatalizing the preceding consonant) to become the medieval Polish vowel , written ø. Like other Polish vowels, it developed long and short variants. The short variant developed into present-day ę, while the long form became , written ą, as described above. Overall:

• Proto-Slavic *ę > ię when short, ią when long (where the i represents palatalization of the preceding consonant)
• Proto-Slavic *ǫ > ę when short, ą when long

The historical shifts are the reason for the alternations o:ó and ę:ą commonly encountered in Polish morphology: *rogъ ('horn') became róg due to the loss of the following yer (originally pronounced with a long o, now with ), and the instrumental case of the same word went from *rogъmъ to rogiem (with no lengthening of the o). Similarly, *dǫbъ ('oak') became dąb (originally with the long form of the nasal vowel), and in the instrumental case, *dǫbъmъ the vowel remained short, causing the modern dębem.

Dialectal variation

Polish dialects differ particularly in their realization of nasal vowels, both in terms of whether and when they are decomposed to an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant and in terms of the quality of the vowels used.

Also, some dialects preserve nonstandard developments of historical long vowels (see previous section); for example, a may be pronounced with in words in which it was historically long.

Consonants

The Polish consonant system is more complicated; its characteristic features include the series of affricates and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish and Belarusian.

Phonemes

The consonant phonemes of Polish are as follows:Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

		Labial	Dental/ alveolar	Post- alveolar	(Alveolo-) palatal	Velar
						plain	palatalized
Nasal		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn
Plosive	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link	(Template:IPAlinkTemplate:Efn)
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link			Template:IPA link	(Template:IPAlinkTemplate:Efn)
Affricate	voiceless		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn	Template:IPA link
	voiced		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn	Template:IPA link
Fricative	voiceless	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn)
	voiced	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link	Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn	Template:IPA link	(Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn)	(Template:IPA linkTemplate:EfnTemplate:Efn)
Vibrant			Template:IPA linkTemplate:Efn
Approximant			Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link	Template:IPA link

Polish consonants

IPA	Polish script	Example	IPA	Polish script	Example
	m	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('mass')		ń/n(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('horse')
	b	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('bass')		ź/z(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('foal')
	p	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('belt')		ś/s(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('screw')
	w	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('bag')		dź/dz(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('sound')
	f	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('fur')		ć/c(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('moth')
	n	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('leg')		ż/rz	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('wife')
	d	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('home')		sz	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('rustle')
	t	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('volume')		dż	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('jam')
	z	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('zero')		cz	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('time')
	s	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('catfish')		n(k)/n(g)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('bank') Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('gong')
	dz	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('bell')		g	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('populace')
	c	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('what')		k	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('cumin')
	r	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('year')		h/ch	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('hook') Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('choir')
	l	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('leaf')	()	g(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler (or ) ('marketplace') Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler (or ) ('philology')
	j	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('tomorrow')	()	k(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler (or ) ('when') Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler (or ) ('kiosk')
	ł	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('grace')	()	h(i)/ch(i)	Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler (or , ) ('hieroglyph') Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler (or ) ('monarchy')

The tongue shape of the postalveolar sounds is similar to the shape postalveolar approximant Template:IPAblink (one of the realizations of the English phoneme, see also Pronunciation of English /r/). The alveolo-palatals are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised to the hard palate but a greater area of the front of the tongue is raised close to the hard palate compared to the English palato-alveolar sounds. The series are known as "rustling" () and "soughing" () respectively; the equivalent alveolar series (Template:Vr) is called "hissing" ().

Polish contrasts affricates and stop–fricative clustersTemplate:Sfnp by the fricative components being consistently longer in clusters than in affricates.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Stops in clusters may have either a plosive release accompanied by a weak aspiration or a fricated release (as in an affricate) depending on the rate of speech and individual speech habits.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('clean' fem.) vs. Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler or ('three hundred').
• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('jam') with vs. Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler or ('take a nap' imper. sing.).

Both realizations of stop-fricative clusters are considered correct and typically respelled as tsz, d-ż and czsz, dżż respectively in normative descriptions of Polish pronunciation.Template:Sfnp The distinction is lost in colloquial pronunciation in south-eastern Poland both being realized as simple affricates as in some Lesser Polish dialects. According to Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt, such a simplification is allowed in the standard language variety only before another consonant or before a juncture, e.g. or ('bumblebee'), or ('look', imper. sing.).

For the possibility of an additional velar fricative Template:Sfnp for Template:Angbr, see § Dialectal variation below. On the same grounds as for Template:Harvcoltxt gives a phonemic status for speakers who have in their system.

Allophones

• are palatalized before .
• have a labiodental allophone Template:IPAblink, which occurs before labiodental consonants (as in 'symphony' or 'configuration').Template:Sfnp Before fricatives, orthographic nasal consonants m, n may be realized as nasal approximants , analogous to below. This occurs in loanwords, and in free variation with the typical consonantal pronunciation (e.g. 'instinct').
• are denti-alveolar except before and postalveolar consonants. They are pronounced with the tip of the tongue very close or touching to the upper front teeth and partially the front of the alveolar ridge.Template:Sfnp In western and northern Poland, is maintained in native words across a morpheme boundary in nk, e.g. ('a small hallway') contrasts with ('((s)he sniffs') . In other parts of Poland, the contrast is neutralized towards , i.e. is used for both.Template:Sfnp In foreign words Template:Vr represent .
• are palatalized laminal alveolar before in recent borrowings. They are pronounced with the blade of the tongue very close or touching the alveolar ridge.Template:Sfnp
• are apical alveolar Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp before apical postalveolar while is apical alveolar Template:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp before .
• can be assimilated to affricates before , before and before .Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
• can be assimilated to before and to before .Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp
• are variously described as apical postalveolar Template:Sfnp or as (laminal) flat postalveolar. They are articulated with a flat, retracted tongue body, the tongue tip being raised and the entire blade moved up and back behind the corner of the alveolar ridge. A recent studyTemplate:Sfnp shows that and the release of are predominantly alveolar, while the place of articulation of the stop in varies between alveolar and postalveolar. This agrees with characterizations of as alveolar in older sources.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp They may be described as retroflex Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfn to indicate that they are not palatalized laminal postalveolar . Strictly speaking, this is at odds with the narrower definition of retroflex consonants as subapical, in which the tongue curls back and its underside becomes the active articulator. Occasionally, were used in a similar vein.Template:Sfnp
• become palatalized laminal postalveolar Template:Sfnp before in recent loanwords.Template:Sfn
• are alveolo-palatal . They are articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. Before fricatives, is usually realized as a nasalized palatal approximant Template:IPAblink,Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp for example, ('state/country') , .
• are velar . Before fricatives and word-finally, is realized as nasalized velar approximant Template:IPAblink. According to Template:Harvcoltxt, this allophone is non-labialized Template:IPAblink.
• is primarily velar Template:IPAblink; it has the strongest friction before consonants Template:IPAblink, weaker friction before vowels Template:IPAblink and weakest friction intervocalically, where it may be realized as glottal Template:IPAblink (this variant "may appear to be voiced").Template:Sfnp has a voiced allophone Template:IPAblink, which occurs whenever is followed by a voiced obstruent (even across a word boundary), in accordance with the rules given under § Voicing and devoicing below. For example, 'legend, myth' is , ('roof') is , but ('roof of the house') is .
• before are postpalatal .Template:Sfnp If are acknowledged as phonemes they are as well, but their distribution is limited to contexts before .Template:Sfnp A postpalatal allophone Template:IPAblink of appears only in front of .
• is apical alveolar Template:IPAblink and becomes denti-alveolar Template:IPAblink before a following denti-alveolar consonant . A palatalized laminal Template:IPAblink or alveopalatal Template:IPAblink is used before .Template:Sfnp
• is apical alveolar. It has been traditionally classified as a trill Template:IPAblink, with a tap Template:IPAblink supposedly only occurring as an allophone or in fast speech.Template:Sfnp However, more recent studies show that is predominantly realized as a tap Template:IPAblink, sometimes as an approximant or a fricative, but almost never as a trill. One study found that in an intervocalic context a trilled Template:IPAblink occurs in less than 3% of cases, while a tapped Template:IPAblink occurred in approximately 95% of cases. Another study by the same researcher showed that in a postconsonantal position, is realized as a tapped Template:IPAblink in 80–90% of cases, while trilled Template:IPAblink occurs in just 1.5% of articulations. A palatalized laminal tap Template:IPAblink is used before in recent loanwords.Template:Sfnp
• is a palatal approximant Template:IPAblink. According to Template:Harvcoltxt, is reduced and very short Template:IPAblink after consonants before vowels, for example ('city') , ('sand') .
• is a velar approximant Template:IPAblink. According to Template:Harvcoltxt, is most commonly non-labialized Template:IPAblink; a labialization being typical only before . A palatalized allophone Template:IPAblinkTemplate:Sfnp before is given by Template:Harvcoltxt.
• The approximants may be regarded as non-syllabic vowels when they are not followed by a vowel. For example, ('paradise') , ('he gave') , ('author') .
• are regularly devoiced after a voiceless obstruent and optionally after a voiced obstruent which was devoiced.Template:Sfnp For example, ('wind') is pronounced , while ('a frame") can be pronounced or . (See § Voicing and devoicing below.)

Distribution

Polish, like other Slavic languages, permits complex consonant clusters, which often arose from the disappearance of yers (see § Historical development above). Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as ('unconditional' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), ('blade of grass'), Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('shock'), and ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from a verse by Jan Brzechwa) is Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reeds').

For the restrictions on combinations of voiced and voiceless consonants in clusters, see § Voicing and devoicing below. Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants: the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel.

The consonant is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede i or y. (For other restrictions on consonants appearing before i or y, see § Distribution above.)

Voicing and devoicing

Voicing of final obstruentsTemplate:Sfnp

Position		Example	Sandhi
Final	Initial		Voicing pronunciation	Devoicing pronunciation
Word final obstruent or obstruent +	Sonorant:	('a ginger cat') ('a small debt') ('a speckled cat') ('Luke's debt') ('Eve's cat') ('Eve's husband')
	Voiceless obstruent:	('the Year of the Dragon') ('a table corner') ('the wind rustles') ('a film frame')
	Voiced obstruent:	('give Zosia (some) advise') ('a good year') ('go right now') ('a brown fence')
Prepositional clitic: w, z, bez, przez, nad, pod, od, przed	Sonorant:	('from the mother') ('from a meadow') ('from the father')
	Voiceless obstruent:	('at/by the fence')
	Voiced obstruent:	('beneath a bell tower')

Polish obstruents (stops, affricates and fricatives) are subject to voicing and devoicing in certain positions. This leads to neutralization of voiced/voiceless pairs in those positions (or equivalently, restrictions on the distribution of voiced and voiceless consonants). The phenomenon applies in word-final position and in consonant clusters.

In Polish consonant clusters, including across a word boundary, the obstruents are all voiced or all voiceless. To determine (based on the spelling of the words) whether a given cluster has voiced or voiceless obstruents, the last obstruent in the cluster, excluding w or rz (but including ż), should be examined to see if it appears to be voiced or voiceless. The consonants n, m, ń, r, j, l, ł do not represent obstruents and so do not affect the voicing of other consonants; they are also usually not subject to devoicing except when surrounded by unvoiced consonants.Template:Sfnp Some examples follow (click the words to hear them spoken):

• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('boat'), → before the voiceless k
• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('jackdaw'), → before the voiceless k
• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('also'), → before the voiced ż
• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('as if'), → before the voiced b
• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('bush'), → ; rz does not determine the voicing of the cluster
• Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler ('to replay'), → & → ; w does not determine the voicing of the cluster
• ('roof of the house'), → ; the rule still applies across a word boundary

In some dialects of Wielkopolska and the eastern borderlands, remains voiced after voiceless consonants.

The above rule does not apply to sonorants: a consonant cluster may contain voiced sonorants and voiceless obstruents, as in Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler , Template:ErrorTemplate:Category handler , , .

Utterance-finally, obstruents are pronounced voiceless. For example, the in ('god') is pronounced , and the in ('inn') represents . If followed by a word beginning with an obstruent then the above cluster rules apply across morpheme boundaries. When the second word begins with a sonorant the voicing of any preceding word-final obstruent varies regionally. In western and southern Poland, final obstruents are voiced (voicing pronunciation) if the following word starts with a sonorant (here, for example, the in 'father's brother' would be pronounced as ). On the other hand, they are voiceless (devoicing pronunciation) in eastern and northern Poland ( is pronounced ). This rule does not apply to prepositional clitics which are always voiced before sonorants.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Hard and soft consonants

Multiple palatalizations and some depalatalizations that took place in the history of Proto-Slavic and Polish have created quite a complex system of what are often called "soft" and "hard" consonants. These terms are useful in describing some inflection patterns and other morphological processes, but exact definitions of "soft" and "hard" may differ somewhat.

"Soft" generally refers to the palatal nature of a consonant. The alveolo-palatal sounds Template:Vr are considered soft, as normally is the palatal Template:Vr. The Template:Vr sound is also normally classed as a soft consonant: like the preceding sounds, it cannot be followed by Template:Vr but takes Template:Vr instead. The palatalized velars , and might also be regarded as soft on this basis.

Consonants not classified as soft are dubbed "hard". However, a subset of hard consonants, Template:Vr, often derive from historical palatalizations (for example, Template:Vr usually represents a historical palatalized Template:Vr) and behaves like the soft consonants in some respects (for example, they normally take Template:Vr in the nominative plural). These sounds may be called "hardened" or "historically soft" consonants.

The historical palatalized forms of some consonants have developed in Polish into noticeably different sounds: historical palatalized t, d, r have become the sounds now represented by Template:Vr respectively. Similarly palatalized Template:Vr became the sounds Template:Vr. The palatalization of labials has resulted (according to the main phonological analysis given in the sections above) in the addition of Template:IPAl-pl, as in the example just given. These developments are reflected in some regular morphological changes in Polish grammar, such as in noun declension.

Phonological status of palatalized consonants

In some phonological descriptions of Polish,Template:Sfnp however, consonants, including especially the labials m, p, b, f, w, are regarded as occurring in "hard" and "soft" pairs. In this approach, for example, the word ('dog') is analyzed not as but as , with a soft . These consonants are then also analyzed as soft when they precede the vowel (as in 'to drink'). Unlike their equivalents in Russian, these consonants cannot retain their softness in the syllable coda (when not followed by a vowel). For example, the word for "carp" has the inflected forms , etc., with soft (or , depending on the analysis), but the nominative singular is , with a hard .

Similar considerations lead to two competing analyses of palatalized velars. In Template:Harvcoltxt, all three palatalized velars are given phonological status on the grounds of their distribution and minimal contrasts between , , and , , e.g. ('stock market'), ('laundry press ') but ('flexible'), ('hygiene'). Phonemes , and do not occur before where they are separated by a distinct e.g. ('kiosk'), ('philology'), ('Job'). A system with and but without is given by Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt and Template:Harvcoltxt. This analysis is based on an assumption that there is actually no but only as chie, hie occur only in loanwords.Template:Sfnp However, a decomposed palatalization of kie, gie i.e. , in all contexts is a predominant pronunciation in contemporary Polish. Based on that, a system without palatalized velars is given by Template:Harvcoltxt, Template:Harvcoltxt and Template:Harvcoltxt. In such a system palatalized velars are analyzed as , and before and , and before other vowels.Template:Sfnp This is the main analysis presented above.

The consonants t, d, r (and some others) can also be regarded as having hard and soft forms according to the above approach, although the soft forms occur only in loanwords such as ('large lorry'; see TIR). If the distinction is made for all relevant consonants, then y and i can be regarded as allophones of a single phoneme, with y following hard consonants and i following soft ones (and in initial position).

Glottal stop

In more contemporary Polish, a phonetic glottal stop may appear as the onset of a vowel-initial word (e.g. ). It may also appear following word-final vowels to connote particular affects; for example, ('no') is normally pronounced , but may instead be pronounced or in a prolonged interrupted . This intervocalic glottal stop may also break up a vowel hiatus, even when one appears morpheme-internally, as in ('poet') or ('Ukraine') . A relatively new phenomenon in Polish is the expansion of the usage of glottal stops. In the past, initial vowels were pronounced with an initial voiceless glottal fricative (so that was pronounced ), pre-iotation (so that ('needle') was pronounced ), or pre-labialization (so that 'eye' was pronounced ).

Dialectal variation

In some Polish dialects (found in the eastern borderlands and in Upper Silesia) there is an additional voiced velar fricative Template:IPAslink, represented by the letter Template:Angbr. It may be actually a voiced glottal fricative [[[:Template:IPA link]]] for some speakers, especially word-finally.Template:Sfnp In most varieties of Polish, both Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr represent Template:IPAslink.

Some eastern dialects also preserve the velarized dental lateral approximant, , which corresponds to in most varieties of Polish. Those dialects also can palatalize Template:IPAblink to Template:IPAblink in every position, but standard Polish does so only allophonically before Template:IPAslink and Template:IPAslink.Template:Sfnp Template:IPAblink and Template:IPAblink are also common realizations in native speakers of Polish from Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

Template:Harvcoltxt notes that students of Polish philology were hostile towards the lateral variant of Template:Angbr, saying that it sounded "unnatural" and "awful". Some of the students also said that they perceived the lateral Template:Angbr as a variant of Template:Angbr, which, he further notes, along with the necessity of deciding from context whether the sound meant was or , made people hostile towards the sound.Template:Sfnp On the other hand, some Poles view the lateral variant with nostalgia, associating it with the elegant culture of interwar Poland.

In the Masurian dialects and some neighboring dialects, occurs: postalveolar merge with the corresponding dentals unless is spelled Template:Angbr (a few centuries ago, it represented a fricative trill similar to Czech ⟨ř⟩, distinct from ; only the latter sound occurs in modern Polish, with the exception of a small number of dialects).

Stress

The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate: the second-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress: in a four-syllable word, if the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first.

There must be a syllable for each written vowel except when the letter i precedes another vowel (in that case the i represents either , or palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both, depending on analysis; see Polish orthography and the above). Also, the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels after another vowel, as in ('author'); these semivowels mostly occur in loanwords (so not in native 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized 'Matthew').

Some loanwords, particularly from classical languages, have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-last) syllable. For example, () ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. That may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement: 'music' vs. – genitive singular of 'musician'. When further syllables are added at the end of such words through suffixation, the stress normally becomes regular: (, 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive () and derived adjective () have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Over time, loanwords tend to become nativized to have a penultimate stress.Template:Sfnp

Another class of exceptions to the usual stress pattern is verbs with the conditional endings etc. Those endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress: ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable and ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive grammars, the same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so 'we did' is said to be correctly stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as ).Template:Sfnp The irregular stress patterns in the presence of these verb endings are explained by the fact that the endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of ('whom did you see?') it is possible to say – here retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns.

Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were a single word. That applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as ('to her'), ('on us'), ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable of the preposition.

See also

• Evolution of the Polish language
• Polish alphabet
• Polish orthography
• Help:IPA/Polish (a guide to pronunciation of Polish words as represented in Wikipedia articles)

Bibliography

Historical phonology