Polish belongs to the Western Slavic group of languages, together with Czech and Slovak. It is spoken by over 39 million people in Poland, over 4 million in the United States, and over 6 million elsewhere in the world. Unlike other Slavic languages, Polish has retained nasal vowels, ą and ê. Stress is usually applied to the penultimate (next to last) syllable. Polish capitalization and punctuation is similar to English, except that proper adjectives, and names of the months and of the days of the week are not capitalized, and commas are used with restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses. Modern Polish came into being in the 16th century. The following grammar guide is meant as a general overview of the parts of speech and their functions in Polish.
The Polish Alphabet:
| Letter |
Sound |
| A a |
like "a" in "father" |
| Ą
ą |
nasal, like the French "don" (gift) or
fiancé |
| B b |
like "b" in "ball." Pronounced as
"p" at ends of words |
| C c |
like "ts" in "Switzerland" |
| Ć
ć |
like "ch" in "chin" |
| D d |
like "d" in "dog." Pronounced as
"t" at ends of words |
| E e |
like "e" in "bet" |
| Ę
ę |
nasal, like the "en" in
"fen" |
| F f |
like "f" in "fox" |
| G g |
like "g" in "goat." Pronounced as
"k" at ends of words |
| H h |
like "h" in "house" |
| I i |
like "ea" in "mean" |
| J j |
like "y" in "boy" |
| K k |
like "k" in "kite" |
| L l |
like "l" in "love" |
| Ł
ł |
like "w" in "water" |
| M m |
like "m" in "mom" |
| N n |
like "n" in "not" |
| Ń
ń |
like "ny" in "canyon" |
| O o |
like "o" in "pot" |
| Ó ó |
like "oo" in "foot" but
shorter |
| P p |
like "p" in "peace" |
| R r |
a rolled "R," as in Russian or
Spanish |
| S s |
like "s" in "soft" |
| Ś
ś |
like "sh" in "shoe" |
| T t |
like "t" in "truck" |
| U u |
like "oo" in "foot" but
shorter |
| V v |
only in words of foreign origin |
| W w |
like "v" in "vine." Pronounced as
"f" at ends of words |
| X x |
only in words of foreign origin |
| Y y |
like "i" in "big" |
| Z z |
like "z" in "zoo" |
| Ź
ź |
like English "z" but much softer |
| Ż
ż |
like "s" in "pleasure" |
Digraphs
Polish also has sounds represented in writing by a combination of two letters, digraphs. There are seven digraphs in Polish:
| Letter |
Sound |
| Ch |
Like "h" in "huge" |
| Cz |
Like "ch" in "church" |
| Dz |
Like "ds" in "beds" pronounced
quickly |
| Dz |
Like "g" in "gentle" |
| Dz |
Like "g" in "gin". |
| Rz |
Like "s" in "pleasure" |
| Sz |
Like "sh" in "ash" |
Soft and hard consonants
Important feature of Polish consonants is the division into 3 categories: soft, hardened (these two types of consonants are called as palatal in linguistics), and hard consonants (also called non-palatal).
The soft consonants are represented by the letters:
s (or si), c (or ci), z (or zi), dz (or dzi), n (or ni), and j.
While the hardened consonants are represented by:
sz, z, cz, rz, dz, and l.
Finally the hard consonants are represented by:
b, d, f, g, h (ch), k. l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, and z.
Some of the hard consonants, specifically: p, b, k, g, f, v, m, n, c, s, and z, become soft when they are followed by a soft vowel. This change is called palatalization.
It is important to remember the distinction between soft and hard consonants, because the case endings depend not only on the gender of the noun but also on whether its root consonant is soft or hard.
Final consonants are always unvoiced, e.g. "raz" (once) is pronounced as "ras". Moreover consonants undergo voice assimilation; they take on the voice of the neighboring consonants, e.g. "wtedy" (then) is pronounced as "ftedy", "prosba" (request) is pronounced as "prozba".
In English, the role of words in a sentence is indicated by the word order. For example, the subject normally appears before the object. In the sentence, "Bob ate the fish," there is no confusion as to which is eating which. Most of the information conveyed by word order in English is conveyed in Polish by the grammatical endings of the words, so Polish word order is far more flexible. This means that, in Polish, more information can often be conveyed with fewer words than are needed in English. It also means that to understand a Polish sentence, one must understand the grammatical characteristics of each word. For this reason, our discussion of nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and numerals will center on grammatical endings.
The terms case, declension (decline), and agreement will be used throughout the discussion of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and numerals. There are seven cases in modern Polish, which apply to these parts of speech. The case of a word tells how it is being used in a sentence.
The seven cases and their most common meanings are:
| Nominative |
the subject of a sentence |
| Genitive |
possession; absence or negation; the object of some
verbs and prepositions |
| Dative |
the indirect object; used in impersonal
constructions; the object of some verbs and
prepositions |
| Accusative |
the direct object of most verbs; the object of some
prepositions |
| Instrumental |
shows the means by which an action is performed; the
object of some verbs and prepositions |
| Prepositional (also called
Locative) |
used only with certain prepositions, often showing
location |
| Vocative |
the person being addressed |
The nominative subject form is considered the root word and is the form found in the dictionary. The cases other than nominative are collectively called the oblique cases. The full declension of the noun, pronoun, adjective, or numeral is the application of the seven case endings.
Each word in a sentence reflects its role in the sentence with its ending. An adjective has the same case, number, and gender (when singular) as the noun that it modifies. In other words, adjectives agree with the nouns they modify. There is also agreement between subjects and verbs.