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| Polish alphabet alfabet polski,abecadło | |
|---|---|
| Script type | |
| Languages | Polish |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | |
| Unicode | |
| Subset ofLatin | |
| This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
ThePolish alphabet (Polish:alfabet polski,abecadło) is thescript of thePolish language, the basis for thePolish system of orthography. It is based on theLatin alphabet but includes certain letters (9) withdiacritics: the stroke (acute accent orbar) –kreska:⟨ć, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź⟩; theoverdot –kropka:⟨ż⟩; and the tail orogonek –⟨ą, ę⟩. The letters⟨q⟩,⟨v⟩, and⟨x⟩, which are used only in foreign words, are usually absent from the Polish alphabet. Additionally, before the standardization of Polish spelling,⟨qu⟩ was sometimes used in place of⟨kw⟩, and⟨x⟩ in place of⟨ks⟩.[1]
Modified variations of the Polish alphabet are used for writingSilesian andKashubian, whereas theSorbian languages use a mixture of Polish andCzech orthography.
There are 32 letters in the Polish alphabet: 9vowels and 23consonants.
⟨q⟩,⟨v⟩, and⟨x⟩ are not used in any native Polish words and are mostly found in foreign words (such as place names) and commercial names. Inloanwords they are usually replaced by⟨k⟩,[a]⟨w⟩, and⟨ks⟩, respectively (as innikab 'niqab',kwark 'quark',weranda 'veranda',sawanna 'savanna',ekstra 'extra',oksymoron 'oxymoron'), although some loanwords retain their original spelling (e.g.,quiz,virga), and in a few cases both spellings are accepted (such asveto orweto,volt orwolt). In addition, they can occasionally be found in common abbreviations (e.g.,ksiądz 'priest' can be abbreviated as either⟨ks.⟩ or⟨x.⟩). As a result, they are sometimes included in the Polish alphabet (bringing the total number of letters in the alphabet to 35); when included, they take their usual positions from theLatin alphabet (⟨q⟩ after⟨p⟩;⟨v⟩ and⟨x⟩ either side of⟨w⟩).[2][3][4]
The following table lists the letters of the alphabet, their Polish names (see alsoNames of letters below), the Polish spelling alphabet name, thePolish phonemes which they usually represent (and rough equivalents for them), other possible pronunciations, and letter frequencies. Diacritics are shown for the sake of clarity. For more information about the sounds, seePolish phonology.
| Upper case | Lower case | Polish name | Usual value | Rough English (or other) equivalent | Other values |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | a | a | /ä/ | large | More frontal[a] between palatal or palatalized consonants |
| Ą | ą | ą | /ɔw̃/ | nasalo, as French bon (Depends on where it is in the word) | [ɔn],[ɔŋ],[ɔm]; becomes/ɔ/ before/w/ (seeNasal vowels) |
| B | b | be | /b/ | bed | [p] whendevoiced |
| C | c | ce | /t̪͡s̪/ | pits | [d̪͡z̪] ifvoiced. Forch, ci, cz seeDigraphs |
| Ć | ć | cie | /t͡ɕ/ | cheap (alveolo-palatal) | [d͡ʑ] ifvoiced |
| D | d | de | /d̪/ | dog | [d̺] before/d͡ʐ/;[t̪] whendevoiced;[t̺] before/t͡ʂ/.[1] Fordz etc. seeDigraphs |
| E | e | e | /ɛ/ | bed | [e] between palatal or palatalized consonants |
| Ę | ę | ę | /ɛw̃/ | nasale, as French cinq (Also depends on where it is in the word) | [ɛn],[ɛŋ],[ɛm]; becomes/ɛ/ word-finally and before/w/ (seeNasal vowels) |
| F | f | ef | /f/ | fingers | [v] ifvoiced |
| G | g | gie | /ɡ/ | go | [k] whendevoiced. Forgi seeDigraphs |
| H | h | ha | /x/ | Scotsloch | [ɣ] ifvoiced, may be glottal[ɦ] in a small number of dialects. Forch and(c)hi seeDigraphs |
| I | i | i | /i/ | meet | [j] before a consonant; marks palatization of the preceding consonant before a vowel (seeSpelling rules) |
| J | j | jot | /j/ | yes | |
| K | k | ka | /k/ | king | [ɡ] ifvoiced. Forki seeDigraphs |
| L | l | el | /l/ | light | May be[lʲ] instead in eastern dialects |
| Ł | ł | eł | /w/ | will | May be[ɫ̪] instead in eastern dialects |
| M | m | em | /m/ | men | [ɱ] before labiodental consonants |
| N | n | en | /n̪/ | not | [n̺] before/t͡ʂd͡ʐ/; can be[ŋ] before/kɡ/. Forni seeDigraphs |
| Ń | ń | eń | /ɲ̟/ | canyon (alveolo-palatal) | Can be[j̃] insyllable coda |
| O | o | o | /ɔ/ | (for accents without thecot-caught merger) long | [o] between palatal or palatalized consonants |
| Ó | ó | ó,o z kreską,o kreskowane oru zamknięte | /u/ | boot | [ʉ] between palatal or palatalized consonants |
| P | p | pe | /p/ | spot | [b] ifvoiced |
| (Q) | (q) | ku | /k/ | question | Only in some traditional loanwords asquasi- (where qu- is usually read as /kv/) and recent asquad,quiz (where qu- is usually read as /kw/). |
| R | r | er | /ɾ/ | American English aroma | Can also sometimes be an approximant, a fricative, and – rarely – a trill. SeePolish phonology. Forrz seeDigraphs |
| S | s | es | /s̪/ | sea | Forsz, si seeDigraphs |
| Ś | ś | eś | /ɕ/ | sheep (alveolo-palatal) | [ʑ] (cf. Ź) ifvoiced |
| T | t | te | /t̪/ | start | [t̺] before/t͡ʂ/;[d̪] ifvoiced;[d̺] before/d͡ʐ/.[2] |
| U | u | u,u zwykłe oru otwarte | /u/ | boot | [ʉ] between palatal or palatalized consonants, sometimes[w] after vowels |
| (V) | (v) | fał | /v/ | vow | Only in some traditional loanwords asvarsaviana,vel,vide, recent asvan,Vanuatu,vlog, some acronyms asTVP,VAT and in artistic forms, asvlepka and as aRoman numeral 5. |
| W | w | wu | /v/ | vow | [f] whendevoiced |
| (X) | (x) | iks | /ks/ | fox | Only in some loanwords asxenia, also historical letter for native words prior to 19th century, e.g.,xiążę,xięstwo (nowksiążę 'prince',księstwo 'duchy'), which remains in abbreviations of these words (sometimes usedx. instead ofks.), some names, as Xymena, Xawery, surnames as Xiężopolski, Axentowicz, Axer, names of some companies in Poland with-ex suffix and as a Roman numeral 10. |
| Y | y | igrek | /ɨ/[3] | bit | |
| Z | z | zet | /z̪/ | zoo | [s̪] whendevoiced. For digraphs seeDigraphs |
| Ź | ź | ziet | /ʑ/ | vision (alveolo-palatal) | [ɕ] whendevoiced. Fordź seeDigraphs |
| Ż | ż | żet orzet z kropką | /ʐ/ | vision | [ʂ] whendevoiced. Fordż seeDigraphs |
⟨é⟩ was historically used in native words prior to the 1891 spelling reform by theAcademy of Learning, e.g.,cztéry,papiéż (nowcztery 'four',papież 'pope'). Now it is used in some loanwords, e.g.,attaché,exposé,chargé d’affaires.
Fordigraphs and other rules about spelling and the corresponding pronunciations, seePolish orthography.
The spoken Polish names of the letters are given in the table underLetters above.
The names of the letters are not normally written out in the way shown above, except as part of certain lexicalized abbreviations, such asPekao (or PeKaO), the name of a bank, which represents the spoken form of the abbreviation P.K.O. (forPolska Kasa Opieki).
Some letters may be referred to in alternative ways, often consisting of just the sound of the letter. For example,⟨y⟩ may be called as it is pronounced:y rather thanigrek (from 'Greek i').
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 assamo ha ('h alone') to distinguish it from⟨ch⟩ (ce ha).⟨ż⟩ may be calledżet z kropką orzet z kropką ('z with an overdot') to distinguish it from⟨rz⟩ (er zet).⟨u⟩ may be calledu otwarte ('open u', a reference to its graphical form) oru zwykłe ('normal u') to distinguish it from⟨ó⟩, which is sometimes calledu zamknięte ('closed u') oró kreskowane,o kreskowane,o z kreską ('dashed ó', 'dashed o', 'o with a dash').
Polishalphabetical ordering uses the order of letters as in the table underLetters above.
Note that (unlike in languages such asFrench,Spanish, andGerman) Polish letters withdiacritics are treated as fully independent letters in alphabetical ordering. For example,być comes afterbycie. The accented letters also have their own sections in dictionaries (words beginning with⟨ć⟩ are not usually listed under⟨c⟩).
Digraphs 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 inCzech.
There are several systems forencoding the Polish alphabet for computers. All letters of the Polish alphabet are included inUnicode (blocksBasic Latin,Latin-1 Supplement andLatin Extended-A), and thus Unicode-based encodings such asUTF-8 andUTF-16 can be used. The Polish alphabet is completely included in theBasic Multilingual Plane of Unicode. The standard 8-bit character encoding for the Polish alphabet isISO 8859-2 (Latin-2), although bothISO 8859-13 (Latin-7) andISO 8859-16 (Latin-10) encodings include glyphs of the Polish alphabet. Microsoft's format for encoding the Polish alphabet isWindows-1250.
The Polish letters which are not present in theEnglish alphabet have the followingHTML codes andUnicode codepoints:
| Upper case | Ą | Ć | Ę | Ł | Ń | Ó | Ś | Ź | Ż |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTML entity | Ą Ą | Ć Ć | Ę Ę | Ł Ł | Ń Ń | Ó Ó | Ś Ś | Ź Ź | Ż Ż |
| Unicode | U+0104 | U+0106 | U+0118 | U+0141 | U+0143 | U+00D3 | U+015A | U+0179 | U+017B |
| TexPL | 129 | 130 | 134 | 138 | 139 | 211 | 145 | 153 | 155 |
| Result | Ą | Ć | Ę | Ł | Ń | Ó | Ś | Ź | Ż |
| Lower case | ą | ć | ę | ł | ń | ó | ś | ź | ż |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTML entity | ą ą | ć ć | ę ę | ł ł | ń ń | ó ó | ś ś | ź ź | ż ż |
| Unicode | U+0105 | U+0107 | U+0119 | U+0142 | U+0144 | U+00F3 | U+015B | U+017A | U+017C |
| TexPL | 161 | 162 | 166 | 170 | 171 | 243 | 145 | 177 | 185 |
| Result | ą | ć | ę | ł | ń | ó | ś | ź | ż |
For other encodings, seePolish code pages, but alsoCombining Diacritical Marks Unicode block.
A common test sentence containing all the Polish diacritic letters is the nonsensicalZażółć gęślą jaźń ('Yellow the ego with/of agusle').
