Polish Accent

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 postalveolar and alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and arguably two nasals in traditional speech, while the consonant system is much more complex.

Vowels

The Polish vowel system consists of six oral sounds. Traditionally, it was also said to include two nasal monophthongs, with Polish considered the last Slavic language that had preserved nasal sounds that existed in Proto-Slavic. However, recent sources present for modern Polish a vowel system without nasal vowel phonemes, including only the aforementioned six oral vowels.

Oral

Close

* is close front unrounded . It is somewhat more open than cardinal .
* ranges from almost close-mid near-front to (advanced) close-mid central or alternatively from near-close near-front unrounded to close-mid central unrounded . These descriptions are essentially equivalent. Traditionally, is used in narrow transcriptions (as if close central unrounded). Older sources describe this vowel as follows:
** According to , it is intermediate between cardinal and , but closer to the latter one. Alternatively, it is intermediate between cardinal and , but closer to the former. He places it on a vowel chart closer to .
** According to it is articulated with the centre of the tongue raised up and moved somewhat forward; the pharynx also widens. She places it on a vowel chart closer to .
** According to , it is near-close central unrounded , with a close-mid central unrounded allophone being optional before and in some unstressed positions. A realization close to near-close near front unrounded is present in northeastern dialects.
* is close back rounded . It is somewhat more open than cardinal , and intermediate between them in terms of labialization.
** There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
*** According to , it is close back somewhat fronted .
*** According to , it is close central .
*** According to , it is close centralized .

Mid

* is open-mid front unrounded . It is somewhat more open than cardinal .
** There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
*** According to , and , it is close-mid front unrounded .
*** According to , it is either mid front unrounded or mid retracted front unrounded .
*** According to the British phonetician John C. Wells, it is often noticeably centralized : somewhat closer to a central vowel in palatal contexts.
* is open-mid back. It is somewhat more open than cardinal , and intermediate between them in terms of labialization.
** There is no complete agreement about the rounding of :
*** According to , it is usually somewhat rounded , but sometimes, it is pronounced with neutral lips . In the latter case, the lack of rounding is compensated for by a stronger retraction of the tongue.
*** According to , citing , it is unrounded .
*** According to , it is simply "rounded" .
** There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
*** According to , it can be any of the following: open-mid centralized back rounded , raised open-mid back rounded or mid advanced back rounded
*** According to , it is close-mid advanced back rounded .
*** According to , it is close-mid central rounded vowel .
** According to , a close-mid back is a free variant before .

Open

* is open central unrounded . According to most sources, it is intermediate between cardinal and . However, describes it broadly as open front unrounded . Traditionally, is used even in otherwise narrow transcriptions.
** There is no complete agreement about the realization of between soft consonants:
*** According to , it is open front unrounded .
*** According to , it is open front unrounded or even near-open front unrounded . She uses for the main central allophone.
*** According to , it is near-open central unrounded .
*** According to , it is near-open near-front unrounded .

Distribution

The vowels and have largely complementary distribution. Either vowel may follow a labial consonant, as in ''mi'' ('to me') and ''my'' ('we'). Elsewhere, however, is usually restricted to word-initial position and positions after alveolo-palatal consonants and approximants , while cannot appear in those positions (see § Hard and soft consonants below). Either vowel may follow a velar fricative but after velar the vowel is limited to rare loanwords e.g. ''kynologia'' (' cynology') and ''gyros'' (' gyro'). Dental, postalveolar consonants and approximants are followed by in native or assimilated words. However, appears outside its usual positions in some foreign-derived words, as in ''chipsy'' (' potato chips') and ''tir'' ('large lorry', see TIR). The degree of palatalization in these contexts is weak. In some phonological descriptions of Polish that make a phonemic distinction between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, and may thus be treated as allophones of a single phoneme. In the past, was closer to , which is acoustically more similar to .

Nasal

Nasal vowels do not feature uniform nasality over their duration. Phonetically, they consist of an oral vowel followed by a nasal semivowel or (''są'' is pronounced , which sounds closer to Portuguese ''são'' than French ''sont'' – all three words mean '(they) are'). Therefore, they are phonetically diphthongs. (For nasality following other vowel nuclei, see § Allophony below.)

Phonological status

The nasal phonemes appear in older phonological descriptions of Polish e.g. , , . In more recent descriptions the orthographic nasal vowels ''ą'', ''ę'' are analyzed as two phonemes in all contexts e.g. , . Before a fricative and in word-final position (in the case of ''ą'') they are transcribed as an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant or . Under such an analysis, the list of consonantal phonemes is extended by a velar nasal phoneme or by two nasal approximants , .

Distribution

If analyzed as separate phonemes, 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 or followed by a nasal stop, nasal consonant homorganic with the following consonant. For example, ''kąt'' ('angle', 'corner') is , ''gęba'' ('mouth') is , ''pięć'' ('five') is and ''bąk'' ('bumble bee') is , as if they were spelled ''*kont'', ''*gemba'', ''*pieńć'' and ''*bonk''. Before or , nasality is lost altogether and ''ą'' and ''ę'' pronounced as oral // or //. The sequence is also denasalized to // in word-final position, as in 'I will be'.

Historical development

Distinctive vowel length was inherited from late Proto-Slavic, although in Polish only some pretonic long vowels and vowels with the Proto-Slavic accent, neoacute retained length. Additional vowel lengths were introduced in Proto-Polish (as in other West Slavic languages) as a result of compensatory lengthening when a yer in the next syllable disappeared according to Havlík's law. In Polish this only happened in penultimate syllables (which thus became final syllables) before a voicedness, voiced consonant (in other Slavic languages where a similar process occurred this could be more general).

The resultant system of vowel lengths was similar to what is today preserved in Czech language, Czech and to a lesser degree in Slovak language, Slovak, although the distribution of the sounds often differed (for example in Czech the old acute also lengthened vowels). In the emerging modern Polish, however, the long vowels were shortened again but sometimes (depending on dialect) with a change in quality (the vowels tended to become high vowel, higher). The latter changes came to be incorporated into the standard language only in the case of long ''o'' and the long nasal vowel. The vowel shift may thus be presented as follows:
* long oral > short oral (certain dialects: , )
* long oral > short oral (certain dialects: , or )
* long oral or > short oral or
* long oral > short oral (certain dialects: ), written ''ó''
* long oral > short oral , written ''u''
* long nasal > short nasal , written ''ą''

Note that the that was once a long is still distinguished in script as ''ó'', except in some words which were later respelled, such as , , (instead of etymological , , ).

In most circumstances, consonants were palatalization (sound change), palatalized when followed by an original front vowel, including the soft sign, soft yer (ь) that was often later lost. For example: ''*dьnь'' became ''dzień'' ('day'), while ''*dьnьmъ'' became ''dniem'' ('day' instrumental case, instr.).

Nasal vowels ''*ę'' and ''*ǫ'' of late Proto-Slavic merged (''*ę'' leaving a trace by palatalizing the preceding consonant) to become the medieval Polish vowel , written ''ø''. Like other Polish vowels, it developed long and short variants. The short variant developed into present-day ''ę'', while the long form became , written ''ą'', as described above. Overall:
* Proto-Slavic ''*ę'' > ''ię'' when short, ''ią'' when long (where the ''i'' represents palatalization of the preceding consonant)
* Proto-Slavic ''*ǫ'' > ''ę'' when short, ''ą'' when long

The historical shifts are the reason for the alternation (linguistics), alternations ''o'':''ó'' and ''ę'':''ą'' commonly encountered in Polish morphology: ''*rogъ'' ('horn') became ''róg'' due to the loss of the following yer (originally pronounced with a long ''o'', now with ), and the instrumental case of the same word went from ''*rogъmъ'' to ''rogiem'' (with no lengthening of the ''o''). Similarly, ''*dǫbъ'' ('oak') became ''dąb'' (originally with the long form of the nasal vowel), and in the instrumental case, ''*dǫbъmъ'' the vowel remained short, causing the modern ''dębem''.

Dialectal variation

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 nonstandard developments of historical long vowels (see previous section); for example, ''a'' may be pronounced with in words in which it was historically long.

Consonants

The Polish consonant system is more complicated; its characteristic features include the series of affricate consonant, affricates and palatal consonant, palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic Palatalization (sound change), palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish and Belarusian language, Belarusian.

Phonemes

The consonant phonemes of Polish are as follows:

The postalveolar sounds ''(sz, ż, cz, dż)'' and the corresponding alveolo-palatals ''(ś, ź, ć, dź)'' both sound similar to the English palato-alveolar consonants (the ''sh'' and ''ch'' sounds and their voiced consonant, voiced equivalents). The tongue shape of the postalveolar sounds is similar to the shape postalveolar approximant (one of the realizations of the English /r/ phoneme, see also Pronunciation of English /r/). The alveolo-palatal consonant, alveolo-palatals are pronounced with the body of the tongue raised to the hard palate but a greater area of the front of the tongue is raised close to the hard palate compared to the English palato-alveolar sounds. The series are known as "rustling" ''(szeleszczące)'' and "humming" ''(szumiące)'' respectively; the equivalent alveolar series ''(s, z, c, dz)'' is called "hissing" ''(syczące)''.

Polish contrasts affricates and stop–fricative clusters by the fricative components being consistently longer in clusters than in affricates. Stops in clusters may have either a plosive release accompanied by a weak aspiration or a fricated release (as in an affricate) depending on the rate of speech and individual speech habits.

* ('clean' fem.) vs. or ('three hundred').
* ('jam') with vs. or ('take a nap' imper. sing.).

Both realizations of stop-fricative clusters are considered correct and typically respelled as ''tsz'', ''d-ż'' and ''czsz'', ''dżż'' respectively in normative descriptions of Polish pronunciation. The distinction is lost in colloquial pronunciation in south-eastern Poland both being realized as simple affricates as in some Lesser Polish dialects. According to , , such a simplification is allowed in the standard language variety only before another consonant or before a juncture, e.g. ''trzmiel'' or ('bumblebee'), ''patrz'' or ('look', imper. sing.).

For the possibility of an additional velar fricative for , see #Dialectal variation_2, § Dialectal variation below. On the same grounds as for gives a phonemic status for speakers who have in their system.

Allophones

* are labial consonants, labial except before where they are palatalized .
* have a labiodental allophone , which occurs before labiodental consonants (as in ''symfonia'' 'symphony' or ''konfiguracja'' 'configuration'). Before fricatives, orthographic nasal consonants ''m'', ''n'' may be realized as nasal approximants , analogous to below. This occurs in loanwords, and in free variation with the typical consonantal pronunciation (e.g. ''instynkt'' 'instinct').
* are denti-alveolar consonants, denti-alveolar except before /i, j/ and postalveolar consonants. They are pronounced with the tip of the tongue very close or touching to the upper front teeth and partially the front of the alveolar ridge. In western and northern Poland, is maintained in native words across a morpheme boundary in ''nk'', e.g. ''sionka'' ('a small hallway') contrasts with ''siąka'' ('((s)he sniffs') . In other parts of Poland, the contrast is neutralized towards , i.e. is used for both. In foreign words ''nk, ng'' represent .
* are palatalized laminal alveolar before in recent borrowings. They are pronounced with the blade of the tongue very close or touching the alveolar ridge.
* are apical alveolar before apical postalveolar while is apical alveolar before .
* can be assimilated to affricates before , before and before .
* can be assimilated to before and to before .
* are variously described as Apical consonant, apical postalveolar or as (laminal) flat postalveolar. They are articulated with a flat, retracted tongue body, the tongue tip being raised and the entire blade moved up and back behind the corner of the alveolar ridge. A recent study shows that and the release of are predominantly alveolar, while the place of articulation of the stop in varies between alveolar and postalveolar. This agrees with characterizations of as alveolar in older sources. They may be described as Retroflex consonants, retroflex to indicate that they are not palatalized laminal postalveolar . Strictly speaking, this is at odds with the narrower definition of retroflex consonants as subapical consonant, subapical, in which the tongue curls back and its underside becomes the active articulator. Occasionally, were used in a similar vein.
* become palatalized laminal postalveolar before in recent loanwords.
* are alveolo-palatal . They are articulated with the blade of the tongue behind the alveolar ridge and the body of the tongue raised toward the palate. Before fricatives, is usually realized as a nasalized palatal approximant , for example, ''państwo'' ('state/country') , ''Gdańsk'' .
* are velar . Before fricatives and word-finally, is realized as Nasal labialized velar approximant, nasalized velar approximant . According to , this allophone is non-labialized .
* is primarily velar ; it has the strongest friction before consonants , weaker friction before vowels and weakest friction intervocalically, where it may be realized as glottal (this variant "may appear to be voiced"). has a voiced allophone , which occurs whenever is followed by a voiced obstruent (even across a word boundary), in accordance with the rules given under #Voicing and devoicing, § Voicing and devoicing below. For example, ''klechda'' 'legend, myth' is , ''dach'' ('roof') is , but ''dach domu'' ('roof of the house') is .
* before are postpalatal . If are acknowledged as phonemes they are as well, but their distribution is limited to contexts before . A postpalatal allophone of appears only in front of .
* is apical alveolar and becomes denti-alveolar before a following denti-alveolar consonant . A palatalized laminal or alveopalatal is used before .
* is apical alveolar. It has been traditionally classified as a trill , with a tap supposedly only occurring as an allophone or in fast speech. However, more recent studies show that is predominantly realized as a tap , sometimes as an approximant or a fricative, but almost never as a trill. One study found that in an intervocalic context a trilled occurs in less than 3% of cases, while a tapped occurred in approximately 95% of cases. Another study by the same researcher showed that in a postconsonantal position, is realized as a tapped in 80–90% of cases, while trilled occurs in just 1.5% of articulations. A palatalized laminal tap is used before in recent loanwords.
* is a palatal approximant . According to , is reduced and very short after consonants before vowels, for example ''miasto'' ('city') , ''piasek'' ('sand') .
* is a velar approximant . According to , is most commonly non-labialized ; a labialization being typical only before . A palatalized allophone before is given by .
* The approximants may be regarded as non-syllabic vowels when they are not followed by a vowel. For example, ''raj'' ('paradise') , ''dał'' ('he gave') , ''autor'' ('author') .
* are regularly devoiced after a voiceless obstruent and optionally after a voiced obstruent which was devoiced. For example, ''wiatr'' ('wind') is pronounced , while ''kadr'' ('a frame") can be pronounced or . (See #Voicing and devoicing, § Voicing and devoicing below.)

Distribution

Polish, like other Slavic languages, permits complex consonant clusters, which often arose from the disappearance of yers (see #Historical development, § Historical development above). Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as ''bezwzględny'' ('unconditional' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), ''źdźbło'' ('blade of grass'), ('shock'), and ''krnąbrność'' ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from a verse by Jan Brzechwa) is ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reeds').

For the restrictions on combinations of voiced and voiceless consonants in clusters, see #Voicing and devoicing, § Voicing and devoicing below. Unlike languages such as Czech language, Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants: the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel.

The consonant 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 #Distribution, § Distribution above.)

Voicing and devoicing

Polish obstruents (stops, affricates and fricatives) are subject to consonant voicing and devoicing, voicing and devoicing in certain positions. This leads to neutralization (linguistics), 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 Polish consonant clusters, including across a word boundary, the obstruents are all voiced or all voiceless. To determine (based on the spelling of the words) whether a given cluster has voiced or voiceless obstruents, the ''last'' obstruent in the cluster, excluding ''w'' or ''rz'' (but including ''ż''), should be examined to see if it appears to be voiced or voiceless. The consonants ''n, m, ń, r, j, l, ł'' do not represent obstruents and so do not affect the voicing of other consonants; they are also usually not subject to devoicing except when surrounded by unvoiced consonants. Some examples follow (click the words to hear them spoken):
* ('boat'), → before the voiceless ''k''
* ('jackdaw'), → before the voiceless ''k''
* ('also'), → before the voiced ''ż''
* ('as if'), → before the voiced ''b''
* ('bush'), → ; ''rz'' does not determine the voicing of the cluster
* ('to replay'), → & → ; ''w'' does not determine the voicing of the cluster
* ''dach domu'' ('roof of the house'), → ; the rule still applies across a word boundary

In some dialects of Greater Poland, Wielkopolska and the Kresy, eastern borderlands, 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 , , ''słoń'' , ''tnąc'' .

Utterance-finally, obstruents are pronounced voiceless. For example, the in ''bóg'' ('god') is pronounced , and the in ''zajazd'' ('inn') represents . If followed by a word beginning with a obstruent then the above cluster rules apply across morpheme boundaries. When the second word begins with a sonorant the voicing of any preceding word-final obstruent varies regionally. In western and southern Poland, final obstruents are voiced (''voicing pronunciation'') if the following word starts with a sonorant (here, for example, the in ''brat ojca'' 'father's brother' would be pronounced as ). On the other hand, they are voiceless (''devoicing pronunciation'') in eastern and northern Poland ( is pronounced ). This rule does not apply to prepositional clitics ''w, z, bez, przez, nad, pod, od, przed'' which are always voiced before sonorants.

Hard and soft consonants

Multiple palatalization (sound change), palatalizations and some depalatalizations that took place in the history of Proto-Slavic and Polish have 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 morphology (linguistics), morphological processes, but exact definitions of "soft" and "hard" may differ somewhat.

"Soft" generally refers to the palatal consonant, 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 , and might also be regarded as soft on this basis.

Consonants not classified as soft are dubbed "hard". However, a subset of hard consonants, ''c, dz, sz, ż/rz, cz, dż'', often derive from historical palatalizations (for example, ''rz'' usually represents a historical palatalized ''r'') and behaves 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.

The historical palatalized forms of some consonants have developed in Polish into noticeably different sounds: historical palatalized ''t, d, r'' have become the sounds now represented by ''ć, dź, rz'' respectively. Similarly palatalized ''s, z, n'' became the sounds ''ś, ź, ń''. The palatalization of labials has resulted (according to the main phonological analysis given in the sections above) in the addition of , as in the example ''pies'' just given. These developments are reflected in some Polish grammar#Regular morphological alternation, regular morphological changes in Polish grammar, such as in noun declension.

Phonological status of palatalized consonants

In some phonological descriptions of Polish, however, 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 analyzed not as but as , with a soft . These consonants are then also analyzed as soft when they precede the vowel (as in ''pić'' 'to drink'). Unlike their equivalents in Russian language, Russian, these consonants cannot retain their softness in the syllable coda (when not followed by a vowel). For example, the word for "carp" has the inflected forms ''karpia'', ''karpie'' etc., with soft (or , depending on the analysis), but the nominative singular is ''karp'', with a hard .

Similar considerations lead to two competing analysis of palatalized velars. In , all three palatalized velars are given phonological status on the grounds of their distribution and minimal contrasts between , , and , , e.g. ''giełda'' ('stock market'), ''magiel'' ('laundry press ') but ''giętki'' ('flexible'), higiena ('hygiene'). Phonemes , and do not occur before where they are separated by a distinct e.g. ''kiosk'' ('kiosk'), ''filologia'' ('philology'), ''Hiob'' ('Job (biblical figure), Job'). A system with and but without is given by , , and . This analysis is based on an assumption that there is actually no but only as ''chie'', ''hie'' occur only in loanwords. However, a decomposed palatalization of ''kie'', ''gie'' i.e. , in all contexts is a predominant pronunciation in contemporary Polish. Based on that, a system without palatalized velars is given by , and . In such a system palatalized velars are analyzed as , and before and , and before other vowels. This is the main analysis presented above.

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'' ('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).

Glottal stop

In more contemporary Polish, a phonetic glottal stop may appear as the onset of a vowel-initial word (e.g. ''Ala'' ). It may also appear following word-final vowels to connote particular affects; for example, ''nie'' ('no') is normally pronounced , but may instead be pronounced or in a prolonged interrupted . This intervocalic glottal stop may also break up a vowel hiatus, even when one appears morpheme-internally, as in ''poeta'' ('poet') or Ukraina ('Ukraine') . A relatively new phenomenon in Polish is the expansion of the usage of glottal stops. In the past, initial vowels were pronounced with an initial voiceless glottal fricative (so that ''Ala'' was pronounced ), pre-iotation (so that ''igła'' ('needle') was pronounced ), or pre-labialization (so that ''oko'' 'eye' was pronounced ).

Dialectal variation

In some Polish dialects (found in the Kresy, eastern borderlands and in Upper Silesia) there is an additional voiced velar fricative //, represented by the letter . It may be actually a voiced glottal fricative [] for some speakers, especially word-finally. In most varieties of Polish, both and represent .

Some eastern dialects also preserve the velarized dental lateral approximant, , which corresponds to in most varieties of Polish. Those dialects also can palatalize to in every position, but standard Polish does so only allophonically before and . and are also common realizations in native speakers of Polish from Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

notes that students of Polish philology were hostile towards the lateral variant of , saying that it sounded "unnatural" and "awful". Some of the students also said that they perceived the lateral as a variant of , which, he further notes, along with the necessity of deciding from context whether the sound meant was or , made people hostile towards the sound. On the other hand, some Poles view the lateral variant with nostalgia, associating it with the elegant culture of History of Poland (1918–39), interwar Poland.

In the Masurian dialect and some neighboring dialects, ''mazurzenie'' occurs: postalveolar merge with the corresponding dentals unless is spelled (a few centuries ago, it represented a fricative trill , distinct from ; only the latter sound occurs in modern Polish).

Stress

The predominant stress (linguistics), stress pattern in Polish is penultimate: the second-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress: in a four-syllable word, if the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first., deferring to for further discussion.

Each written vowel represents one syllable although the letter ''i'' normally does not represent a vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents either , palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis; see Polish orthography and the above). Also, the letters ''u'' and ''i'' sometimes represent only semivowels after another vowel, as in ''autor'' ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native ''nauka'' 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized ''Mateusz'' 'Matthew').

Some loanwords, particularly from classical languages, have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-last) syllable. For example, ''fizyka'' () ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. That may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement: ''muzyka'' 'music' vs. ''muzyka'' – genitive singular of ''muzyk'' 'musician'. When further syllables are added at the end of such words through suffixation, the stress normally becomes regular: ''uniwersytet'' (, 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive ''uniwersytetu'' () and derived adjective ''uniwersytecki'' () have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Over time, loanwords become nativized to have a penultimate stress.

Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings ''-by, -bym, -byśmy'' etc. Those endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress: ''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 as ''zrobiliśmy''). The 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. That 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 of the preposition.

See also

* Evolution of the Polish language
* Polish alphabet
* Polish orthography
* Help:IPA/Polish (a guide to pronunciation of Polish words as represented in Wikipedia articles)

References

Bibliography

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Historical phonology

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Further reading

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Polish Phonology
Polish language, phonology
Slavic phonologies