Compiled by Paul Barford
It is thought that lecturers using this book in their teaching (and others) may appreciate a guide to the pronunciation of the Polish names and terms such a work inevitably contains. Some of them may look a bit daunting to the uninitiated, but the pronunciation of Polish is almost entirely regular. The Polish language is written in the Latin alphabet with the addition (from the 14th and 15 th centuries) of a few additional letters, diacritical marks, and several characteristic two-letter combinations. The sounds they make may be approximated by the English speaker. The stress of words usually falls on the penultimate syllable.
Vowels
A — short vowel (hat); a — as in French “en”, or as in hance (nasal equivalent of “o”)
E — short e (bed, ten); — nasal e, as in French ‘vin’ (at end of a word however it is pronounced ‘e’) i (machine, feet, not as in ‘ship’) o - short (cot, not); 6 - (put, book); u - (put, book) ej — as in take; aj, as English ‘i’ in ‘like’.
Consonants
C - as “ts” (cats), never “k”,
Ch, h - as hard, fricative “h” (half )
C and ci - very soft “ch” (which)
Cz - as ch, harder than c (churlish)
Dz - ds (woods, beds)
Dz - j ( jump)
Dz, dzi - as ‘dg’ (budget, jam)
G — hard (go, girl)
J - ‘y’ (yellow, yet)
I - w (water, win)
N, ni — nasal, as in ‘onion’
R — this is rolled
Rz — ‘zh’ as in pleasure
S, si — soft ‘sh’ (she, surely)
Sz — hard ‘sh’ (sheep, shine)
W — always as ‘v’ (voice, van)
Y — i (rich, fit)
Z — as ‘s’ in ‘pleasure’
Z, zi very soft ‘s’ as in pleasure
World History
