Polish orthography


Polish orthography is the system of writing the Polish language. The language is written using the Polish alphabet, which derives from the Latin alphabet, but includes some additional letters with diacritics. The orthography is mostly phonetic, or rather phonemic – the written letters correspond in a consistent manner to the sounds, or rather the phonemes, of spoken Polish. For detailed information about the system of phonemes, see Polish phonology.

Polish alphabet

The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska in the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź; the kreska ukośna in the letter ł; the kropka in the letter ż; and the ogonek in the letters ą, ę. There are 35 letters in the Polish alphabet: 9 vowels and 26 consonants.

Bold Ones Not Used Native Words

The letters q, v, and x are used in some foreign words and commercial names. In loanwords they are often replaced by kw, w, and, respectively.
When giving the spelling of words, certain letters may be said in more emphatic ways to distinguish them from other identically pronounced characters. For example, H may be referred to as samo h to distinguish it from CH '. The letter Ż may be called "żet z kropką" to distinguish it from RZ '. The letter U may be called u otwarte or u zwykłe, to distinguish it from Ó, which is sometimes called ó zamknięte, ó kreskowane or ó z kreską, alternatively o kreskowane or o z kreską. The letter ó is a relic from hundreds of years ago when there was a length distinction in Polish similar to that in Czech, with á and é also being common at the time. Subsequently, the length distinction disappeared and á and é were abolished, but ó came to be pronounced the same as u.
Note that Polish letters with diacritics are treated as fully independent letters in alphabetical ordering. For example, być comes after bycie. The diacritic letters also have their own sections in dictionaries. However, there are no regular words that begin with ą or ń.

Digraphs

Polish additionally uses the digraphs ch, cz, dz, dź, dż, rz, and sz. Combinations of certain consonants with the letter i before a vowel can be considered digraphs: ci as a positional variant of ć, si as a positional variant of ś, zi as a positional variant of ź, and ni as a positional variant of ń ; and there is also one trigraph dzi as a positional variant of dź. These are not given any special treatment in alphabetical ordering. For example, ch is treated simply as c followed by h, and not as a single letter as in Czech or Slovak.

Spelling rules

GraphemeUsual valueOther values
a
ą,, ; merges with before
e
ę,, ; merges with before and often word-finally
i before a vowel; marks palatalization of the preceding consonant before a vowel
o
ó
u after vowels
y

See [|below] for rules regarding spelling of alveolo-palatal consonants.
H may be glottal in a small number of dialects.
Rarely, isn't a digraph and represents two separate sounds:
letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds. This is due to the neutralization that occurs at the end of words and in certain consonant clusters; for example, the in klub is pronounced like a, and the in prze- sounds like. Less frequently, voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds; for example, the in także is pronounced like a. The conditions for this neutralization are described under Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology.

Palatal and palatalized consonants

The spelling rule for the alveolo-palatal sounds,,, and is as follows: before the vowel the plain letters are used; before other vowels the combinations are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms are used. For example, the in siwy, the in siarka and the in święty all represent the sound.
SoundWord-finally
or before a consonant		Before a vowel
other than 		Before
ćcic
dździdz
śsis
źziz
ńnin

Special attention should be paid to before plus a vowel. In words of foreign origin the causes the palatalization of the preceding consonant to, and it is pronounced as. This situation occurs when the corresponding genitive form ends in -nii, pronounced as, not with -ni, pronounced as . For examples, see the table in the next section.
Similar principles apply to the palatalized consonants, and, except that these can only occur before vowels. The spellings are thus before, and otherwise. For example, the in kim and the in kiedy both represent.

Other issues with ''i'' and ''j''

Except in the cases mentioned in the previous paragraph, the letter if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents, but it also has the palatalizing effect on the previous consonant. For example, pies is pronounced. Some words with before plus a vowel also follow this pattern.
In fact i is the usual spelling of between a preceding consonant and a following vowel. The letter normally appears in this position only after, and if the palatalization effect described above has to be avoided. The letter after consonants is also used in concatenation of two words if the second word in the pair starts with, e.g. wjazd "entrance" originates from w + jazd. The pronunciation of the sequence wja is the same as the pronunciation of wia.
The ending -ii which appears in the inflected forms of some nouns of foreign origin, which have -ia in the nominative case, is pronounced as, with the palatalization of the preceding consonant. For example, dalii, Bułgarii, chemii, religii, amfibii. The common pronunciation is. This is why children commonly misspell and write -i in the inflected forms as armii, Danii or hypercorrectly write ziemii instead of ziemi.
In some rare cases, however, when the consonant in case is preceded by another consonant, -ii may be pronounced as, but the preceding consonant is still palatalized, for example, Anglii is pronounced.
A special situation applies to : it has the full palatalization to before -ii which is pronounced as - and such a situation occurs only when the corresponding nominative form in -nia is pronounced as, not as.
For example, :
CaseWordPronunciationMeaningWordPronunciationMeaning
Nominativedaniadishes DaniaDenmark
GenitiveDaniiof Denmark
NominativeManiaMary maniamania
Genitivemaniiof mania

The ending -ji, is always pronounced as. It appears only after c, s and z. Pronunciation of it as a simple is considered a pronunciation error. For example, presji is ; poezji is ; racji is.

Nasal vowels

The letters and, when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, in dąb is pronounced, and in tęcza is pronounced . When followed by or these letters are pronounced as just or.

Homophonic spellings

Apart from the cases in the sections above, there are three sounds in Polish that can be spelt in two different ways, depending on the word. Those result from historical sound changes. The correct spelling can often be deduced from the spelling of other morphological forms of the word or cognates in Polish or in other Slavic languages.
The letter represents in the digraphs and in loanwords, for example autor, Europa; but not in native words, like nauka, pronounced.
There are certain clusters where a written consonant would not normally be pronounced. For example, the in the words mógł and jabłko is omitted in ordinary speech.

Capitalization

Names are generally capitalized in Polish as in English. Polish does not capitalize the months and days of the week, nor adjectives and other forms derived from proper nouns.
Titles such as pan, pani, lekarz, etc. and their abbreviations are not capitalized, except in written polite address. Second-person pronouns are traditionally capitalized in formal writing ; so may be other words used to refer to someone directly in a formal setting, like Czytelnik. Third-person pronouns are capitalized to show reverence, most often in a sacred context.

Punctuation

Polish punctuation is similar to that of English. However, there are more rigid rules concerning use of commas—subordinate clauses are almost always marked off with a comma, while it is normally considered incorrect to use a comma before a coordinating conjunction with the meaning "and".
Abbreviations are followed by a period when they end with a letter other than the one which ends the full word. For example, dr has no period when it stands for doktor, but takes one when it stands for an inflected form such as doktora and prof. has period because it comes from profesor.
Apostrophes are used to mark the elision of the final sound of foreign words not pronounced before Polish inflectional endings, as in Harry'ego. However, it is often erroneously used to separate a loanword stem from any inflectional ending, for example, *John'a, which should be Johna.
Quotation marks are used in different ways: either „ordinary Polish quotes” or «French quotes» for first level, and ‚single Polish quotes’ or «French quotes» for second level, which gives three styles of nested quotes:
  1. „Quote ‚inside’ quote”
  2. „Quote «inside» quote”
  3. «Quote ‚inside’ quote»
Some older prints have used „such Polish quotes“.

History

Poles adopted the Latin alphabet in the 12th century. However, that alphabet was ill-equipped to represent certain Polish sounds, such as the palatal consonants and nasal vowels. Consequently, Polish spelling in the Middle Ages was highly inconsistent, as different writers used different systems to represent these sounds, For example, in early documents the letter c could signify the sounds now written c, cz, k, while the letter z was used for the sounds now written z, ż, ś, ź. Writers soon began to experiment with digraphs, new letters, and eventually diacritics.
The Polish alphabet was one of two major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Slavic languages, the other being Czech orthography, characterized by carons, as in the letter č. The other major Slavic languages which are now written in Latin-based alphabets use systems similar to the Czech. However a Polish-based orthography is used for Kashubian and usually for Silesian, while the Sorbian languages use elements of both systems.

Computer encoding

There are several different systems for encoding the Polish alphabet for computers. All letters of the Polish alphabet are included in Unicode, and thus Unicode-based encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16 can be used. The Polish alphabet is completely included in the Basic Multilingual Plane of Unicode. ISO 8859-2, ISO 8859-13, ISO 8859-16 and Windows-1250 are popular 8-bit encodings that support Polish alphabet.
The Polish letters which are not present in the English alphabet use the following HTML character entities and Unicode codepoints:
Upper caseĄĆĘŁŃÓŚŹŻ
HTML entityĄ
Ą		Ć
Ć		Ę
Ę		Ł
Ł		Ń
Ń		Ó
Ó		Ś
Ś		Ź
Ź		Ż
Ż
UnicodeU+0104U+0106U+0118U+0141U+0143U+00D3U+015AU+0179U+017B
ResultĄĆĘŁŃÓŚŹŻ

For other encodings, see the following table. Numbers in the table are hexadecimal.
character
set		ĄĆĘŁŃÓŚŹŻąćęłńóśźż
ISO 8859-2A1C6CAA3D1D3A6ACAFB1E6EAB3F1F3B6BCBF
Windows-1250A5C6CAA3D1D38C8FAFB9E6EAB3F1F39C9FBF
IBM 852A48FA89DE3E0978DBDA586A988E4A298ABBE
Mazovia8F95909CA5A398A0A1868D9192A4A29EA6A7
Mac848CA2FCC1EEE58FFB888DABB8C497E690FD
ISO 8859-13 and Windows-1257C0C3C6D9D1D3DACADDE0E3E6F9F1F3FAEAFD
ISO 8859-16A1C5DDA3D1D3D7ACAFA2E5FDB3F1F6F7AEBF
IBM 775B580B7ADE0E3978DA3D087D388E7A298A5A4
CSK808182838485868887A0A1A2A3A4A5A6A8A7
Cyfromat808182838485868887909192939495969897
DHN808182838485868887898A8B8C8D8E8F9190
IINTE-ISIS808182838485868788909192939495969798
IEA-Swierk8F80909CA599EB9D92A09B829FA4A287A891
Logic808182838485868788898A8B8C8D8E8F9091
Microvex8F80909CA593989D92A09B829FA4A287A891
Ventura9799A5A6928F8E90809694A4A791A2848287
ELWRO-JuniorC1C3C5CCCECFD3DAD9E1E3E5ECEEEFF3FAF9
AmigaPLC2CACBCECFD3D4DADBE2EAEBEEEFF3F4FAFB
TeXPL8182868A8BD391999BA1A2A6AAABF3B1B9BB
Atari Club C1C2C3C4C5C6C7C8C9D1D2D3D4D5D6D7D8D9
CorelDraw!C5F2C9A3D1D3FFE1EDE5ECE6C6F1F3A5AABA
ATMC4C7CBD0D1D3D6DADCE4E7EBF0F1F3F6FAFC

A common test sentence containing all the Polish diacritic letters is the nonsensical "Zażółć gęślą jaźń".