Pronunciation: the digraphs
May 20
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.