Polish phonology

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Contents 1 Vowels 2 Consonants 2.1 Consonant clusters 3 Stress 4 See also

[edit] Vowels

The Polish vowel system is relatively simple with only six oral and two nasal vowels. All Polish vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:

Polish oral vowels

Polish script	IPA	Description	English approximation	Polish example1
i	/i/	front close unrounded	seek	miś ('teddy bear')
e	/ɛ/	front half open unrounded	ten	ten ('this')
y	/ɨ/	central close unrounded	roses (depending on variety of English)	mysz ('mouse')
a	/a/	central open unrounded	cat, cot or cut (depends on variety of English)	kat ('executioner')
u / ó	/u/	back close rounded	boom, do, to	bum ('boom')
o	/ɔ/	back half open rounded	caught	kot ('cat')

The /ɛ/ has also a near-close allophone [e], pronounced before or after an alveolo-palatal consonant or /j/.

Unlike in other Slavic languages, the Proto-Slavic nasal vowels are preserved in Polish. However, nasality tends to be lost, especially at the end of a word. These vowels are never initial. In script they are marked by a diacritic known as ogonek.

Before all stops and affricates nasal vowels are now pronounced as vowel + nasal consonant (kąt pronounced as kont, gęba pronounced as gemba, ręce pronounced as rentse). At the end of the word nasal 'e' is pronounced as non-nasal 'e' by almost all native speakers. Practically nasal vowels survived in pronunciation only before fricatives and in (nasal ą) at the end of the word.

Unlike those in French, the nasal vowels in Polish are asynchronous, which means that in fact each nasal vowel is pronounced as an oral vowel followed by a nasal semivowel, or a nasal vowel followed by a nasal semivowel, for example ą is [ɔɰ̃] rather than [ɔ̃]. For the sake of simplicity these asynchronous nasal vowels will be henceforth represented as ordinary (synchronous) nasal vowels.

Polish nasal vowels

Polish script	IPA	Description	English approximation	Polish example1
ę	/ɛ̃/	nasal front half open unrounded	length	węże ('snakes')
ą	/ɔ̃/	nasal back half open rounded	nasal o (not a), as in long	wąż ('snake')

The length of a vowel is not phonemic in Polish, which means that how long a vowel is pronounced does not change the meaning of a word.

This was not the case in Proto-Slavic, which distinguished three vowel lengths - short, normal and long. There were two short vowels - hard (ъ) and soft (ь). Eventually, the short vowels either disappeared or turned into a normal e. In the former case two CV syllables became one CVC syllable. Disappearance of a short soft vowel caused the preceding consonant to become "softened" or palatalized. Example:

'Day' in nominative: dьnь → dzień;
'Day' in genitive: dьna → dnia

Meanwhile, long vowels were shortened to normal and simultaneously became higher - apart from the vowels which were already high - i and u. This vowel shift may be presented like this:

long a → normal o
long e → normal y or normal i
long i → normal i
long o → normal ó, indicates /u/
long u → normal u
long y → normal y

Note that the normal u which was once a long o is still distinguished in script as ó.

[edit] Consonants

The Polish consonant system is more complicated and its characteristic features are series of affricates and palatal consonants. Affricates are often marked by digraphs. Palatal consonants (known to Poles as "soft" consonants) are marked either by an acute accent or followed by an i. Like in English, voice is phonemic but aspiration is not.

Polish consonants

Polish script	IPA	Description	English approximation	Polish example1
b	/b/	voiced bilabial plosive	bus	bas ('bass')
p	/p/	voiceless bilabial plosive	spot	pas ('belt')
m	/m/	bilabial nasal	man	masa ('mass')
w	/v/	voiced labiodental fricative	vase	wór ('bag')
f	/f/	voiceless labiodental fricative	phase	futro ('fur')
d	/d/	voiced dental plosive	dog	dom ('home')
t	/t/	voiceless dental plosive	step	tom ('volume')
n	/n/	dental nasal	not	noga ('leg')
r	/r/	alveolar trill	rolled (vibrating) r as in arriba	krok ('step')
z	/z/	voiced alveolar sibilant	zero	zero ('zero')
s	/s/	voiceless alveolar sibilant	some	sum ('catfish')
dz	/ʣ/	voiced alveolar affricate	woods	dzwon ('bell')
c	/ʦ/	voiceless alveolar affricate	pots	co ('what')
l	/l/	lateral alveolar approximant	lock	pole ('field')
ź	/ʑ/	voiced alveolo-palatal fricative	where's your	źrebię ('foal')
ś	/ɕ/	voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative	sheer	śruba ('screw')
dź	/ʥ/	voiced alveolo-palatal affricate	would you	dźwięk ('sound')
ć	/ʨ/	voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate	what's your	ćma ('moth')
ż / rz	/ʐ/	voiced retroflex fricative	treasure	żona ('wife') rzeka ('river')
sz	/ʂ/	voiceless retroflex fricative	shoe	szum ('rustle')
dż	/dʐ/	voiced retroflex affricate	jam	dżem ('jam')
cz	/tʂ/	voiceless retroflex affricate	kitchen	czas ('time')
ń	/ɲ/	palatal nasal	el Niño	koń ('horse')
j	/j/	palatal approximant	way or yes	jutro ('tomorrow')
ł	/w/	labial-velar approximant	now or way	mały ('small'), łaska ('grace')
g	/g/	voiced velar plosive	god	gmin ('plebs')
k	/k/	voiceless velar plosive	rocket	kminek ('caraway'), buk ('beech tree')
h / ch	/x/	voiceless velar fricative	loch	hak ('hook') chór ('choir')

1. The semivowels /w/ and /j/ become non-syllabic vowels ([u̯] and [i̯] respectively) in the syllable coda.

Within this consonant system one can distinguish three series of fricatives and affricates:

• alveolar, aka "hissing" (ciąg syczący): z s dz c
• laminal retroflex, aka "rustling" (ciąg szumiący): ż sz dż cz
• alveolo-palatal, aka "hushing" (ciąg ciszący): ź ś dź ć

In some Polish dialects, for example Masurian, the consonants of the rustling series are replaced by those of the hissing series.

The phoneme /x/, apart from the voiceless allophone [x] has also a voiced allophone (voiced velar fricative) [ɣ], which appears obligatorily whenever /x/ is followed by an obstruent (also across a word boundary), e.g. dach is [dax] but dach domu is [daɣ dɔmu]. The occurrence of a voiced glottal fricative [ɦ] is now found only in the speech of those people from Eastern Borderland who distinguish between the pronunciation of <h> and <ch>, ([ɦ] is the former). The same can be said about the velarized alveolar lateral approximant, the so-called "dark l" ([ɫ]), which is an older pronunciation of "ł" (now usually [w]).

All palatal and alveolo-palatal consonants (that is ź ś dź ć ń j) as well as those preceding the vowel i are referred to as "soft" consonants. All the other consonants are "hard".

[edit] Consonant clusters

Polish, like other Slavic languages, permits complex consonant clusters, which historically arose after disappearance of certain short vowels (yers):

• bezwzględny [bɛzvzglɛndnɨ] "absolute"
• przestępstwo [pʂɛstɛmpstfɔ] "crime"
• Strwiąż [strfʲɔ̃ʂ] (name of a river)
• wstrząs [fst.ʂɔ̃s] "shock"

This is however not an exclusively Slavic feature; even bigger clusters can be found in Georgian or Salishan languages.

Polish distinguishes between affricates and plosive + fricative consonant clusters, for example:

• czysta [ˈtʂɨsta] ('clean' fem.) vs trzysta [ˈt.ʂɨsta] ('three hundred')
• dżem [dʐɛm] ('jam') vs drzem (part of word drzemka meaning 'nap' )[ˈd.ʐɛm], also the interrogative form of drzemać, 'to have a nap').

In consonant clusters all adjacent obstruents are either voiced or voiceless. To put it another way, a consonant cluster cannot contain both voiced and voiceless obstruents. All the obstruents are either voiced (if the last obstruent is normally voiced) or voiceless (if the last obstruent is normally voiceless). This is also true across a word boundary. Word-final obstruents are also pronounced voiceless if the following word starts with a vowel. This rule does not apply to sonorants - a consonant cluster may contain voiced sonorants and voiceless obstruents. It is worth noting, though, that some regional variations of pronunciation, especially in Western and Southern Poland, make voiceless obstruents voiced if the following word starts with a vowel or a consonantal sonorant (for example [ˈbrad ˈojca] instead of the expected [ˈbrat ˈojca])

Examples:

• łódka [ˈwutka] ('boat'), /d/ → [t] (k is normally voiceless)
• kawka [ˈkafka] ('jackdaw'), /v/ → [f] (k is normally voiceless)
• także [ˈtagʐɛ] ('also'), /k/ → [g] (ż is normally voiced)
• jakby [ˈjagbɨ] ('as if'), /k/ → [g] (b is normally voiced)
• król [krul] ('king'), /k/ does not change (r is a sonorant)
• wart [vart] ('worth'), /t/ does not change (r is a sonorant)

The consonants w and rz are normally voiced, but if a consonant cluster ends with w or rz and the preceding consonant is normally voiceless, then the whole consonant cluster is voiceless. W remains voiced after a voiceless consonant in dialects of Wielkopolska and Kresy Wschodnie, but is devoiced in other varieties.

Examples:

• krzak [kʂak] ('bush'), /ʐ/ → [ʂ] (k is normally voiceless)
• odtworzyć [ɔtˈtfɔʐɨʨ] ('to reproduce'), /d/ → [t] & /v/ → [f] (t is normally voiceless)

The most popular Polish tongue-twister, a fragment of the poem Chrząszcz by Jan Brzechwa, may serve as yet another example:

W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.

[fʂtʂɛbʐɛʂɨɲe xʂɔ̃ʂtʂ bʐmi ftʂʨiɲe]

In [the town of] Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed.

[edit] Stress

In Polish the stress falls generally on the penultimate (second to last) syllable, for example zrobił ('he did'), zrobili ('they did').

Exceptions in cultivated speech include:

• verbs in first and second person plural past tense, for example zrobiliśmy ('we did') - stress on the last but two syllable
• verbs in conditional, for example zrobiłbym ('I would do') - stress on the last but two syllable
• verbs in first and second person plural conditional, for example zrobilibyśmy ('we would do') - stress on the third syllable from the end (antepenultimate)
• some words borrowed from Latin (for example matematyka, fizyka) are also stressed on the antepenultimate (third syllable from the end), although this has been falling out of use during the last 50 years.

The explanation for the irregular verbal stress is that these endings are clitics, not verbal inflections: zrobili=śmy, zrobił=bym, zrobili=byśmy. They are remnants of the auxiliary być ('to be'). This can be demonstrated with phrases such as Kogo=ście zobaczyli? (in spoken Polish Kogo zobaczyli=ście?) ('Who did you see?'), where the clitic attaches to the word kogo 'who' rather than to a verb (Kogo zobaczyli=ście?), but kogo maintains its normal stress. However, these endings are in the process of being reanalyzed as suffixes, and as this happens, the stress is shifting to penultimate position in colloquial speech (though by prescriptive grammarians this is still considered an error): zrobiliśmy, zrobiłbym, zrobilibyśmy. [1]

[edit] See also

• Polish language