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Polish
has many phonemes which are specific to the language, some of which
do not even exist in English. Polish uses the standard Latin
alphabet and these "special" phonemes are designated by
adding "markings", such as, accent marks, the slash, the
overdot and the "ogonek" (little tail) to existing
letters, resulting in the "modified" letters: Ą,
Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź and Ż, and
each has a sound distinct from its unmodified counterpart.
Aditional
phonemes are created by combining consonants into groupings like ch,
cz, rz, sz,
which also designate sounds which do not appear in English.
All vowels,
except the nasalized "little tail" [ Ą , ą ] and [ Ę , ę ] are "pure" vowels,
never diphthongs,
unless "influenced " by the immediately following consonant.
Please
click on the audio clips below to hear the pronunciation of each word and the
entire phrase.
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zginęła (zgee - NEHoo - wah)
Listen to
Zginęła
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NOTE: The nasalized
"little tail" /Ę/ in Polish is a diphthong made up of [Eh] +
[OO], where the [OO] is very minimized and is sounded nasally. The "slashed" /Ł/ is the Polish rendering of the "hard" [L] common in all Slavic
languages, but Poles normally pronounced this as an English [W] except in some Eastern
and Southern dialects of Polish, where it is still sounded like the Russian "hard" [L].
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