Polish alphabet and pronunciation: all 32 letters
Polish looks scary on paper but is very regular once you know the rules. Here are the 32 letters, the digraphs, English sound matches and common beginner traps.
The Polish alphabet has 32 letters. Nine of them carry diacritics, and a handful of two-letter combinations stand for single sounds. That is most of what makes a word like Szczecin look impossible.
Polish spelling is far more consistent than English. Once you know what each letter and digraph does, you can read almost any word out loud correctly, even one you have never seen. Learning the rules takes an afternoon. Getting your mouth to follow them takes longer.
The 32 letters
A Ą B C Ć D E Ę F G H I J K L Ł M N Ń O Ó P R S Ś T U W Y Z Ź Ż
Nine are vowels: a, ą, e, ę, i, o, ó, u, y. The other 23 are consonants.
Q, V and X are missing. They turn up only in foreign words and names. Native Polish words use k, w and ks for those sounds, which is why a Polish taxi is a taksówka.
The nine letters with diacritics
| Letter | Sound (approximate) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ą | nasal “o”, close to French bon | są (they are) |
| ć | soft “ch”, tongue pressed flat behind the teeth | być (to be) |
| ę | nasal “e”; at the end of a word usually a plain “e” | język (language) |
| ł | “w” as in water | ładny (pretty) |
| ń | “ny” as in canyon | koń (horse) |
| ó | “oo” as in boot, same as Polish u | mój (my) |
| ś | soft “sh” | śniadanie (breakfast) |
| ź | soft “zh” | źle (badly) |
| ż | “s” in pleasure | żaba (frog) |
The accent mark over ć, ń, ś and ź means “soft”. Before a vowel, Polish usually writes the same soft sounds with an i instead: ci, dzi, ni, si, zi. So the ś in śniadanie and the si in siostra (sister) are the same sound.
The nasal vowels change before some consonants. Ą before b or p sounds like “om”, so dąb (oak) comes out close to “domp”. Ę before cz, t or d sounds closer to “en”: tęcza (rainbow) is roughly “TEN-cha”.
Digraphs: two letters, one sound
| Digraph | Sound (approximate) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ch | “ch” in Scottish loch | chleb (bread) |
| cz | “ch” in church | czas (time) |
| sz | “sh” in shoe | szkoła (school) |
| rz | “s” in pleasure, same as ż | rzeka (river) |
| dz | “ds” in adds | dzwon (bell) |
| dź | soft “j”, the voiced partner of ć | dźwięk (sound) |
| dż | “j” in jam | dżem (jam) |
Put sz and cz together and you get szcz, roughly the “sh ch” in fresh cheese. Say that phrase quickly and you are most of the way to Szczecin.
The other letters, for English speakers
Most remaining letters sound roughly as you would guess. These ones do not:
| Letter | Sound (approximate) | Example |
|---|---|---|
| c | “ts” in cats, never “k” or “s” | co (what) |
| e | “e” in bed | ten (this) |
| g | always hard, as in go | gitara |
| h | same as ch | herbata (tea) |
| i | “ee” in meet | mi (to me) |
| j | “y” in yes | jak (how) |
| r | rolled or tapped, never silent | ryba (fish) |
| u | “oo” in boot | ul (beehive) |
| w | “v” in van | woda (water) |
| y | close to “i” in bit | my (we) |
These are approximations. Polish ś and sz are two different sounds, and so are ć and cz, even though English has only one letter pair for each. The soft ones are made with the middle of the tongue raised; the hard ones with the tip curled up. You will not get them perfect on day one, and people will understand you anyway.
Six traps that catch almost everyone
W is a V
Woda is “voda”, Warszawa is “var-SHA-va”.
Ł is a W
So Wrocław sounds roughly like “VROTS-waf” and Łódź sounds roughly like “wooch”. The letter that looks like an L is the one that doesn’t sound like one. In a few eastern dialects older speakers still keep an L-like sound, but modern standard Polish uses “w”.
Rz and ż are the same sound
They are spelled differently for historical reasons, which matters for spelling tests and not at all for speaking. After p, t, k and ch, rz loses its voice and becomes sz: przez (through) sounds like “pshes”, trzy (three) like “tshy”.
Ó and u are the same sound
Same story: two spellings, one “oo”. Mój and mu share the vowel.
Ch and h are the same sound
In standard Polish both are the rough “ch” of loch. Some eastern dialects still separate them, but you don’t need to.
Final consonants go voiceless
Voiced consonants go voiceless at the end of a word. Chleb ends with a “p” sound and Łódź with a “ch” sound, not a “j”. That is why the city comes out as “wooch”.
Stress is on the second-to-last syllable
This rule saves you more guessing than anything else in Polish pronunciation. Stress almost always falls on the penultimate syllable:
- POL-ska (Poland)
- dzię-KU-ję (thank you)
- War-SZA-wa (Warsaw)
- u-ni-wer-SY-tet (university)
The stress moves when the word grows. Kraków is KRA-kow, but “in Kraków” is w Kra-KO-wie.
There are a few exceptions. Borrowed words ending in -yka or -ika take stress one syllable earlier in careful speech, so matematyka is ma-te-MA-ty-ka. The same goes for past-tense verbs ending in -liśmy and -liście: byliśmy (we were) is BY-li-śmy. In everyday speech plenty of Poles regularise these to the usual pattern, so if you forget, nobody will flinch.
How to practise
Reading lists of sounds only goes so far. What helps is saying real words out loud, many times, with a model to check against.
- Learn the digraphs first. Once cz, sz and rz stop looking like noise, long words break apart into readable chunks.
- Read city names. Gdańsk, Poznań, Kraków, Łódź, Wrocław, Szczecin. You will hear them constantly in Poland, and between them they cover most of the tricky letters.
- Mark the stress on new words yourself until the penultimate rule is automatic.
- Listen before you speak. Hearing a word first stops you from locking in an English reading of the letters.
Our Android app Jestem: Learn Polish Words is built around that last step. It teaches everyday vocabulary for life in Poland (shopping, work, documents, health, travel) with translations in English, Russian or Ukrainian, and the app interface itself is available in English too. The cards include pronunciation hints with the stressed syllable marked, and there are listening exercises where you pick the word you hear. The audio uses your phone’s text-to-speech, so you need a Polish voice installed.
If you read Russian or Ukrainian, we also have two free word lists on the site, 30 words for shops and transport with examples: польские слова с переводом and польські слова з перекладом. Our guide to learning Polish vocabulary as a Russian or Ukrainian speaker covers the false friends that trip up speakers of those languages.
Start with dzień dobry (good day). It has a dź sound, a soft ń, and stress on the second-to-last syllable of each word: DZIEŃ DO-bry.