Or, the most intimidating part of the Polish sound system. Seriously, even writing about them – and I’ve been able to pronounce them for years, so I pretty much take them for granted – feels intimidating.

So let’s all face them and get intimidated.

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CH – chodnik, chemia
pavement, chemistry

In modern standard Polish, ch is pronounced identically to h. It obviously makes the pronunciation aspect easier while messing up the simplicity of the spelling at the same time… For most Polish schoolkids, learning when to use ch and h is a painful process involving hours of writing mind-bogglingly boring dictations. The same goes for rz and ż, and for u and ó.

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In today’s overview of Polish consonants, we’ll only go through those written with one letter. That’s the easy part. No tricky digraphs – at least for now, though they are, of course, yet to come.

Listen and enjoy!

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B – banan, beczka
banana, barrel

C – córka, cebula
daughter, onion read all »

Polish pronunciation is easy – at least when you consider the letter-to-sound relationships. After you’ve learned how the specific sounds are articulated, you’ll be able to pronounce every word you come across. That’s the good news. The bad news is, well, that some sounds are more difficult than others. Most of those traps, I think, crop up in the consonant department; the vowel system is relatively easy, but the sounds still differ from their English counterparts. The best way to get used to them is through listening, so lower down you’ll find a little sample of the vowels and example words they appear in.

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