Polish phonology

For less technical descriptions of the Polish sounds presented here, see Polish alphabet and Help: IPA for Polish.

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 retroflex and palatal fricatives and affricates, and nasal vowels. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and two nasals, while the consonant system is more complex.

Vowels

The vowel system

Vowel diagram for Polish (excluding the two nasal vowels). From Jassem (2003:105)

The Polish vowel system consists of six oral monophthongs and two nasal diphthongs. Vowel nasality in Polish is preserved from Proto-Slavic, having been lost in most other modern Slavic languages.

Monophthong phonemes
Front Central Back
Close i ɨ u
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a

Close

Mid

Open

Example words (click on a word to hear its pronunciation)
IPA Polish script Example
/i/ i miś ('teddy bear')
/ɛ/ e ten ('this one')
/ɨ/ y mysz ('mouse')
/a/ a ptak ('bird')
/u/ u / ó bum ('boom')
/ɔ/ o kot ('cat')
/ɛ̃/ ę węże ('snakes')
/ɔ̃/ ą wąż ('snake')

The nasal vowels do not feature uniform nasality over their duration. Phonetically, they consist of an oral vowel followed by a nasal semivowel (so that is pronounced [sɔw̃], which sounds closer to Portuguese são [sɐ̃w̃] than French sont [sɔ̃] – all three words mean "[they] are"). Therefore, they are phonetically diphthongs.[8] (For nasality following other vowel nuclei, see under Consonant allophony below.) /ɛ ɨ ɔ ɛ̃ ɔ̃/ are also less commonly transcribed /e ɪ o ẽ õ/ respectively, for example by PWN-Oxford Polish-English Dictionary.[9]

Some speakers from southern and eastern Poland realize , ɔ, ɨ/ tenser than in Standard Polish, i.e. as [ɛ̝, ɔ̝, ɪ]. This is not very common, especially the last realization.

Vowel distribution

The vowels /ɨ/ and /i/ have largely complementary distribution. Either vowel may follow a labial consonant, as in mi ('to me') and my ('we'). Elsewhere, however, /i/ is usually restricted to word-initial position and positions after palatal consonants and the palatalized velars, while /ɨ/ cannot appear in those positions (see Hard and soft consonants below). In some phonological descriptions of Polish that make a phonemic distinction between palatized and unpalatized labials, [ɨ] and [i] may thus be treated as allophones of a single phoneme. However /i/ appears outside its usual positions in some foreign-derived words, as in czipsy ('potato chips') and tir ('large lorry', see TIR). The vowels /ɨ/ and /i/ are considered to rhyme in Polish poetry out of tradition, as in the past /ɨ/ was closer to [ɪ], which is acoustically more similar to [i].

The 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 /ɔ/ or /ɛ/ followed by a nasal consonant homorganic with the following consonant. For example, kąt is [kɔnt] ('angle'), gęba ('mouth') is [ˈɡɛmba], and pięć ('five') is [pjɛɲt͡ɕ],[10] as if they were spelled *kont, *gemba, and *pieńć. Before /l/ or /w/, the nasality is lost altogether and the vowels are pronounced as oral [ɔ] or [ɛ]. It is also very common to denasalize /ɛ̃/ to [ɛ] in word-final position.

Historical development

Distinctive vowel length had been lost in the late Proto-Slavic period, but was reintroduced in Proto-West-Slavic (including Proto-Polish) as a result of yer vocalization and disappearance. If a yer (or other vowel) disappeared, then the preceding vowel became long (unless it was also a yer, in which case it became a short e). All other vowels became short (except for yers, which disappeared in the respective positions). No matter what happened to it, soft yer (ь) usually palatalized the preceding consonant. For example: *dьnь became dzień ('day'), while *dьnьmъ became dniem ('day' instr.).

This system of vowel lengths is well preserved in Czech and to a lesser degree in Slovak. In the emerging modern Polish, however, the long vowels were shortened again, although 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, mostly for vowels located before voiced obstruents. The vowel shift may thus be presented as follows:

Note that the /u/ which was once a long /oː/ is still distinguished in script as ó. Former long /eː/ was written é until the 19th century (á for long /aː/ became disused sooner).

The history of the nasal vowels is as follows. The nasal vowels and of late Proto-Slavic merged ( leaving a trace by palatalizing the preceding consonant) to become the medieval Polish vowel /ã/, written ø. Like other Polish vowels, this developed long and short variants. The short variant developed into present-day /ɛ̃/ ę, while the long form became /ɔ̃/, written ą, as described above. Overall:

These historical shifts are the reason for the alternations o:ó and ę:ą commonly encountered in Polish morphology. For example, *rogъ ('horn') became róg (originally pronounced with a long o, now with /u/), while the instrumental case of the same word went from *rogъmъ to rogiem (with no lengthening of the o). Similarly *dãbъ ('oak') became dąb (originally with the long form of the nasal vowel), while in the instrumental *dãbъmъ the vowel remained short and we now have dębem.

Dialectal variation of vowels

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 non-standard developments of the historical long vowels (see previous section); for example, a may be pronounced with [ɔ] in words where it was historically long.

Consonants

The consonant system

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 which took place in Polish and Belarusian.

The Polish consonants are as follows:[11]

Labial Dental Alveolar Retroflex (Alveolo)-
palatal
Velar
palatalized plain
Nasal m [n] ɲ [ŋ]
Plosive voiceless p [t] k
voiced b [d] ɡʲ ɡ
Affricate voiceless t̪͡s̪ t͡ʂ t͡ɕ
voiced d̪͡z̪ d͡ʐ d͡ʑ
Fricative voiceless f ʂ ɕ x
voiced v ʐ ʑ [ɣʲ] [ɣ]
Trill/Tap ɲ
Approximant [] l j w

Alveolar [n t d] are allophones of /n t d/ before /t͡ʂ d͡ʐ/.[12] Denti-alveolar [] is an allophone of /l/ before dental consonants. /r/ is most often a tap [ɾ] in fast speech.[13]

The fricatives and affricates shown as retroflex may instead be transcribed as palato-alveolar consonants with /ʃ/, /ʒ/, etc. However, they are more accurately described as retroflex,[14] although they are laminal (like the retroflexes of Standard Chinese). They may therefore also be transcribed phonetically with the symbols ʐ̠ etc., indicating the laminal feature.

The phoneme /ɲ/ may be written with the non-standard symbol ȵ to indicate that it is alveolo-palatal, because ɲ represents a palatal nasal in standard IPA.

The phonemes /kʲ/ and /ɡʲ/ are less commonly transcribed as /c/ and /ɟ/ (i.e. as if they were palatal stops).

Example words (click on a word to hear its pronunciation)
IPA Polish script Example IPA Polish script Example
/m/ m masa ('mass') /d͡ʑ/ / dz(i) więk ('sound')
/b/ b bas ('bass') /t͡ɕ/ ć / c(i) ćma ('moth')
/p/ p pas ('belt') /ʐ/ ż / rz żona ('wife')
rzeka ('river')
/v/ w wór ('bag') /ʂ/ sz szum ('rustle')
/f/ f futro ('fur') /d͡ʐ/ em ('jam')
/n/ n noga ('leg') /t͡ʂ/ cz czas ('time')
/d/ d dom ('home') /r/ ń / n(i) koń ('horse')
/t/ t tom ('volume') /ɡʲ/ g(i) gips ('plaster cast')
/z/ z zero ('zero') /kʲ/ k(i) kiedy ('when')
/s/ s sum ('catfish') /a/ g gmin ('populace')
/d͡z/ dz dzwon ('bell') /k/ k kmin ('cumin'), buk ('beech tree')
/t͡s/ c co ('what') /x/ h / ch hak ('hook'), chór ('choir')
/r/ r krok ('step') /j/ j jutro ('tomorrow')
/l/ l pole ('field'), liść ('leaf') /w/ ł mały ('small'), łaska ('grace')
/ʑ/ ź / z(i) źrebię ('foal') /xʲ/ h(i) / ch(i) historia ('history'), chichot ('giggle')
/ɕ/ ś / s(i) śruba ('screw')

Note the distinction between the laminal retroflex sounds (sz, ż, cz, dż) and the corresponding alveolo-palatals (ś, ź, ć, dź) – both of these series sound similar to the English palato-alveolar consonants (the sh and ch sounds and their voiced equivalents). The alveolo-palatals are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised to the palate. The series are known as "rustling" (szeleszczące) and "humming" (szumiące) respectively; the equivalent alveolar series (s, z, c, dz) is called "hissing" (syczące).

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

Consonant allophony

/x/ has a voiced allophone [ɣ] that occurs whenever /x/ is followed by a voiced obstruent (even across a word boundary), in accordance with the rules given under voicing and devoicing below. For example, dach ('roof') is [ˈdax], but dach domu ('roof of the house') is [daɣ ˈdɔmu].

/x/ has the strongest friction before consonants [x̝], weaker friction before vowels and weakest friction intervocalically, where it may be realized as glottal [h]. The intervocalic variant "may appear to be voiced".[15]

/n/ has a velar allophone, [ŋ], which occurs before velar consonants (as in bank 'bank').

Non-palatal consonants are weakly palatalized when they precede /i/. This is far less audible than it is in Russian.

The approximants /j/ and /w/ may be regarded as non-syllabic vowels when not followed by a vowel. For example, raj ('paradise') [rai̯], dał ('gave') [dau̯], autor ('author') [ˈau̯tɔr].

Before fricatives, nasal consonants may be realized as nasalized semivowels, analogous to /ɔ̃/ and /ɛ̃/ (see The vowel system above). This occurs in loanwords, and in free variation with the typical consonantal pronunciation (e.g. instynkt [ˈiw̃stɨŋkt~ˈinstɨŋkt] 'instinct').[16] Similarly, the palatal nasal [ɲ] in coda position is in free variation with a nasalized palatal approximant [ȷ̃].[10]

Consonant distribution

Polish, like other Slavic languages, permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from the disappearance of yers (see Historical development above). Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔ̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from a verse by Jan Brzechwa) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔ̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed').

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

The consonant /j/ 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 Vowel distribution above.)

The palatized velar stops occur only before e (where they are spelt ki and gi) and before i (where they are spelt k and g; plain /k/ and /a/ do not occur in that position).

Voicing and devoicing

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 a Polish consonant cluster, including across a word boundary, the obstruents are either all voiced or all voiceless. To determine (based on the spelling of the words) whether a given cluster has voiced or voiceless obstruents, examine whether the last obstruent in the cluster, excluding w or rz (but including ż), appears to be voiced or voiceless. The consonants n, m, ń, r, j, l, ł do not represent obstruents, and therefore do not affect the voicing of other consonants; they are also usually not subject to devoicing except when surrounded by unvoiced consonants.[17] Some examples follow (click the words to hear them spoken):

In some dialects of Wielkopolska and the eastern borderlands, /v/ 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 król [krul], wart [vart], [ˈswɔɲ], tnąc [ˈtnɔnt͡s].

At the end of a word obstruents are pronounced voiceless, (unless followed by a word beginning with a voiced obstruent, in which case the above cluster rules apply). For example, the /a/ in bóg ('god') is pronounced [k], and the /zd/ in zajazd ('inn') represents a pronunciation like [st]. However, in some regional dialects, especially in western and southern Poland, final obstruents are voiced if the following word starts with a sonorant (here, for example, the /t/ in brat ojca 'father's brother' would be pronounced as [d]).

Hard and soft consonants

Multiple palatalizations and some depalatalizations that took place in the history of Proto-Slavic and Polish 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, although exact definitions of 'soft' and 'hard' may differ somewhat.

'Soft' generally refers to the palatal nature of a consonant. The alveolo-palatal sounds ń, ś, ź, ć, dź are considered soft, as normally is the palatal j. The l sound is also normally classed as a soft consonant – like the preceding sounds it cannot be followed by y, but takes i instead. The palatalized velars /kʲ/, /ɡʲ/ and /xʲ/ might also be regarded as soft on this basis.

Consonants which are not classed as soft are called 'hard'. However, there exists a subset of the hard consonants, c, dz, sz, ż/rz, cz, dż, which often derive from historical palatalizations (for example, rz usually represents a historical palatalized r), and which behave like the soft consonants in some respects (for example, they normally take e in the nominative plural). These sounds may be called 'hardened' or 'historically soft' consonants.

In some phonological descriptions of Polish, however, a greater number of 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 pies ('dog') is analysed not as /pjɛs/ but as /pʲɛs/, with a soft /pʲ/. These consonants are then also analysed as soft when they precede the vowel /i/ (as in pić /pʲit͡ɕ/ 'to drink'), although here the palatalization is hardly audible, especially in case of the retroflexes. 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 inflected forms karpia, karpie etc., with soft /pʲ/ (or /pj/, depending on the analysis), but nominative singular karp, with hard /p/.

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 tir /tʲir/ ('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).

The historical palatized forms of some consonants have developed in Polish into noticeably different sounds. Thus historical palatized t, d, r have become the sounds now represented by ć, dź, rz respectively. Similarly palatized s, z, n became the sounds ś, ź, ń. Palatization of labials has resulted (according to the main phonological analysis given in the sections above) in the addition of /j/, as in the example pies just given. These developments are reflected in some regular morphological changes in Polish grammar, such as in noun declensions.

Dialectal variation of consonants

In some Polish dialects (found in the eastern borderlands and in Upper Silesia) there is an additional voiced glottal fricative /f/, represented by the letter h. In standard Polish, both h and ch represent /x/.

Some eastern dialects also preserve the velarized dental lateral approximant, [ɫ̪], which corresponds with [w] in standard Polish. These dialects also can palatalize /l/ ([lʲ]) in every position, whereas standard Polish does so only allophonically before /i/ and /j/.[18] [ɫ̪] and [lʲ] are also common realizations in native speakers of Polish from Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

Rocławski (1976) notes that students of Polish philology were hostile towards the lateral variant of ł, saying that it sounded "unnatural" and "awful". Some of these students also said that they perceived the lateral ł as a variant of l, which, he further notes, along with the necessity of deciding from context whether the sound meant was /w/ or /l/ was what made people hostile towards this sound.[19] On the other hand, some Poles view the lateral variant with nostalgia, associating it with elegant pre-World War Two Polish culture.[20]

In the Masurian dialect and some neighbouring dialects, the phenomenon of mazurzenie occurs, whereby the retroflex /ʂ, ʐ, t͡ʂ, d͡ʐ/ merge with the corresponding dentals /s, z, t͡s, d͡z/, except when /ʂ/ is spelled rz, which a few centuries ago represented a palatalized trill /rʲ/, distinct from /ʂ/. In modern Polish, only the latter sound occurs.

More on clusters

Clusters are much different in Polish than English. Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. English, on the other hand, does not allow such complex clusters to exist word-initially or word-finally because the rules are much stricter. For example, for a three-consonant cluster to exist word-initially in English, it must have the fricative /s/ followed by a voiceless stop and a liquid or glide, for example, /spr/, /spl/, /skr/, /str/, /skw/ as in spring, splash, scream, string, squash.[21] Clusters can also occur between two or more words in Polish.[22] The name Anna in Polish exemplifies how consonants are also not syllabic in Polish—it is pronounced /ˈanna/ compared to English /ˈænə/. Consonant clusters do have rules in Polish as well, they are just not as strict as English. For example, a two-consonant cluster can be an obstruent followed by a sonorant, an obstruent followed by an obstruent, or /m/ followed by another sonorant. However, it is impossible to have a sonorant (other than /m/) followed by a sonorant or a sonorant followed by an obstruent, except in a special condition. The larger the consonant cluster, however, the more complex the rules become.[21]

Stress

The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first.[23]

Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent a vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/ or palatization of the preceding consonant; see Polish orthography). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author')

Some loanwords, particularly from the Classical languages, have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka (/ˈfizɨka/) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation, the stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet (/uɲiˈvɛrs̪ɨt̪ɛt̪/, 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu (/uɲivɛrs̪ɨˈt̪ɛt̪u/) and derived adjective uniwersytecki (/uɲivɛrs̪ɨˈt̪ɛt̪͡s̪kʲi/) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Over time, loanwords become nativized to have penultimate stress.[24]

Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy, etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zrobiłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zrobilibyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive grammars, the same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście, although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zrobiliśmy 'we did' is said to be correctly stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third).[25] These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of kogo zobaczyliście? ('whom did you see?') it is possible to say kogoście zobaczyli? – here kogo 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. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), przeze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable.

See also

References

Bibliography

  • Biedrzycki, Leszek (1963), "Fonologiczna interpretacja polskich głosek nosowych" [Phonological interpretation of Polish nasal vowels], Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego (in Polish), 22: 25–45 
  • Biedrzycki, Leszek (1978), Fonologia angielskich i polskich rezonantów. Porównanie samogłosek oraz spółgłosek [Phonology of English and Polish resonants. Comparison of vowels and consonants] (in Polish), Warsaw: PWN 
  • Dukiewicz, Leszek (1995), "Fonetyka" [Phonetics], in Dukiewicz, L.; Sawicka, I., Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego. Fonetyka i fonologia [Grammar of the contemporary Polish language. Phonetics and phonology] (in Polish), Kraków: Wydawnictwo Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN, pp. 7–103 
  • Gussmann, Edmund (2007), The Phonology of Polish, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-926747-7 
  • Hamann, Silke (2004), "Retroflex fricatives in Slavic languages" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (1): 53–67, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001604 
  • Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (1): 103–107, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001191 
  • Linde-Usiekniewicz; et al. (2011), Wielki Słownik Polsko-Angielski [Great Polish-English dictionary] (in Polish and English), Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, ISBN 978-83-01-14136-3 
  • Morciniec, Norbert; Prędota, Stanisław (2005), Podręcznik wymowy niemieckiej, Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, ISBN 83-01-14503-X 
  • Rocławski, Bronisław (1976), Zarys fonologii, fonetyki, fonotaktyki i fonostatystyki współczesnego języka polskiego [Outline of phonology, phonetics, phonotactics and phonostatistics of the contemporary Polish language] (in Polish), Wydawnictwo Uczelniane Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego 
  • Rubach, Jerzy; Booij, Geert E. (1985), "A grid theory of stress in Polish", Lingua, 66: 281–319, doi:10.1016/0024-3841(85)90032-4 
  • Sadowska, Iwona (2012). Polish: A Comprehensive Grammar. Oxford; New York City: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-47541-9. 
  • Urbańczyk, Stanisław, ed. (1992), Encyklopedia języka polskiego [Encyclopedia of the Polish language] (in Polish) (2nd ed.), Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, ISBN 83-04-02994-4 
  • Wierzchowska, Bożena (1971), Wymowa polska [Polish pronunciation] (in Polish), Warsaw: PZWS 

Further reading

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