Польская орфография: система письма и особенности произношения

System of writing the Polish language

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 (or combinations of them) 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 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 (but see a special remark on ni below); 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 (e. g. Chojnice only has its first letter capitalised, and is sorted after Canki and before Cieszyn).

Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the above tables). This is due to the neutralization that occurs at the end of words and in certain consonant clusters; for example, the in klub ("club") is pronounced like a , and the in prze sounds like Less frequently, voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds; for example, the in także ("also") is pronounced like a The conditions for this neutralization are described under Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology.

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 ("oak") is pronounced , and in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced (the nasal assimilates with the following consonant). When followed by or , and in the case of , also at the end of words by most speakers (in a situation where the speaker pronounces the vowel nasally, it is nasalized only lightly), these letters are pronounced as just or .

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 ("could") and jabłko ("apple") is omitted in ordinary speech.

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 (for example, angielski "English"). Titles such as pan ("Mr"), pani ("Mrs/Ms"), lekarz ("doctor"), etc. and their abbreviations are not capitalized, except in written polite address. Second person pronouns are traditionally capitalized in formal writing (e. g. letters or official emails); so may be other words used to refer to someone directly in a formal setting, like Czytelnik ("reader", in newspapers or books). Third person pronouns are capitalized to show reverence, most often in a sacred context.

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 (combinations of letters), new letters (φ and ſ, no longer used), 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 (hačeks), as in the letter č. The other major Slavic languages which are now written in Latin based alphabets (Slovak, Slovene, and Serbo Croatian) use systems similar to the Czech. Sorbian spelling is also closer to Czech, though it does include more Polish elements than the aforementioned languages. Polish based orthographies are used for Kashubian and usually Silesian, both spoken in Poland.