Polish orthography

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 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 alphabet

The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska in the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź; the kropka in the letter ż; the stroke in the letter ł; and the ogonek in the letters ą, ę. There are 32 letters in the Polish alphabet: 9 vowels and 23 or 26 consonants.
The letters q, v, and x are used in some foreign words and commercial names. In loanwords q and v are often replaced by kw and w, respectively, and x by ks or gz.
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 as samo h to distinguish it from CH. The letter Ż may be called "żet to distinguish it from RZ. The letter U may be called u otwarte or u zwykłe, to distinguish it from Ó, which is sometimes called ó zamknięte, ó kreskowane or ó z kreską, alternatively o kreskowane or o z kreską. The letter ó is a relic from hundreds of years ago when there was a length distinction in Polish similar to that in Czech, with á and é also being common at the time. Subsequently, the length distinction disappeared and á and é were abolished, but ó came to be pronounced the same as u.
Note that Polish letters with diacritics are treated as fully independent letters in alphabetical ordering. For example, być comes after bycie. The diacritic letters also have their own sections in dictionaries. However, there are no regular words that begin with ą or ń.

Digraphs

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 ; 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.

Spelling rules

Graphemes and values

Grapheme	Usual value	Voiced or devoiced
b		if devoiced
c		if voiced
ć		if voiced
cz		if voiced
d		if devoiced
dz		if devoiced
dź		if devoiced
dż		if devoiced
f		if voiced
g		if devoiced
h		if voiced
ch		if voiced
j
k		if voiced
l
ł
m
n
ń
p		if voiced
r
s		if voiced
ś		if voiced
sz		if voiced
t		if voiced
w		if devoiced
z		if devoiced
ź		if devoiced
ż		if devoiced
rz		if devoiced

See palatalized consonants|below] for rules regarding spelling of alveolo-palatal consonants.
H may be glottal in a small number of dialects.
Rarely, is not a digraph and represents two separate sounds:

in various forms of the verb zamarzać – "to freeze"
in various forms of the verb mierzić – "to disgust"
in the place name Murzasichle
in borrowings, for example erzac, ''Tarzan''
Voicing and devoicing

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

Palatal and palatalized consonants

The spelling rule for the alveolo-palatal sounds,,, and is as follows: before the vowel the plain letters are used; before other vowels the combinations are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms are used. For example, the in siwy, the in siarka and the in święty all represent the sound.

Sound	Word-finally or before a consonant	Before a vowel other than	Before
	ć	ci	c
	dź	dzi	dz
	ś	si	s
	ź	zi	z
	ń	ni	n

Special attention should be paid to before plus a vowel. In words of foreign origin the causes the palatalization of the preceding consonant to, and it is pronounced as. This situation occurs when the corresponding genitive form ends in -nii, pronounced as, not with -ni, pronounced as . For examples, see the table in the next section.
According to one system, similar principles apply to the palatalized consonants, and, except that these can only occur before vowels. The spellings are thus before, and otherwise. For example, the in kim and the in kiedy both represent. In the system without the palatalized velars, they are analyzed as /k/, /ɡ/ and /x/ before /i/ and /kj/, /ɡj/ and /xj/ before other vowels.

Other issues with ''i'' and ''j''

Except in the cases mentioned in the previous paragraph, the letter if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents, but it also has the palatalizing effect on the previous consonant. For example, pies is pronounced . Some words with before plus a vowel also follow this pattern.
In fact i is the usual spelling of between a preceding consonant and a following vowel. The letter normally appears in this position only after, and if the palatalization effect described above has to be avoided. The letter after consonants is also used in concatenation of two words if the second word in the pair starts with, e.g. wjazd "entrance" originates from w + jazd. The pronunciation of the sequence wja is the same as the pronunciation of wia.
The ending -ii which appears in the inflected forms of some nouns of foreign origin, which have -ia in the nominative case, is pronounced as, with the palatalization of the preceding consonant. For example, dalii, Bułgarii, chemii, religii, amfibii. The common pronunciation is. This is why children commonly misspell and write -i in the inflected forms as armii, Danii or hypercorrectly write ziemii instead of ziemi.
In some rare cases, however, when the consonant is preceded by another consonant, -ii may be pronounced as, but the preceding consonant is still palatalized, for example, Anglii is pronounced.
A special situation applies to : it has the full palatalization to before -ii which is pronounced as – and such a situation occurs only when the corresponding nominative form in -nia is pronounced as, not as.
For example :

Case	Word	Pronunciation	Meaning	Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
Nominative	dania		dishes	Dania		Denmark
Genitive				Danii		of Denmark
Nominative	Mania		Mary	mania		mania
Genitive				manii		of mania

The ending -ji, is always pronounced as. It appears only after c, s and z. Pronunciation of it as a simple is considered a pronunciation error. For example, presji is ; poezji is ; racji is.

Nasal vowels

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 is pronounced, and in tęcza is pronounced . When followed by or, and in the case of, also at the end of words by most speakers, these letters are pronounced as just or.

Homophonic spellings

Apart from the cases in the sections above, there are three sounds in Polish that can be spelt in two different ways, depending on the word. Those result from historical sound changes. The correct spelling can often be deduced from the spelling of other morphological forms of the word or cognates in Polish or in other Slavic languages.

can be spelt either or.
* only occurs in loanwords; however, many of them have been nativized and are not perceived as loanwords. is used:
** when cognate words have the letter, or, e.g.:
*** wahadło – waga
*** druh – drużyna
*** błahy – błazen
** when the same letter is used in the language from which the word was borrowed, e.g. the Latinized Greek prefixes hekto-, hetero-, homo-, hipo-, hiper-, hydro-, also honor, historia, herbata, etc.
* is used:
** in all native words, e.g. chyba, chrust, chrapać, chować, chcieć
** when the same digraph is used in the language from which the word was borrowed, e.g. chór, echo, charakter, chronologia.
can be spelt or ; the spelling indicates that the sound developed from the historical long .
* is used:
** usually at the beginning of a word
** always at the end of a word
** in the endings -uch, -ucha, -uchna, -uchny, -uga, -ula, -ulec, -ulek, -uleńka, -ulka, -ulo, -un, -unek, -uni, -unia, -unio, -ur, -us, -usi, -usieńki, -usia, -uszek, -uszka, -uszko, -uś, -utki
* is used:
** when cognate words or other morphological forms have the letter, or, e.g.:
*** mróz – mrozu
*** wiózł – wieźć
*** skrócić – skracać
** in the endings -ów, -ówka, -ówna
can be spelt either or ; the spelling indicates that the sound developed from /r̝/.
* is used:
** when cognate words or other morphological forms have the letter/digraph,,,,,, e.g.:
*** może – mogę
*** mosiężny – mosiądz
*** drużyna – druh
*** każe – kazać
*** wożę – woźnica
*** bliżej – blisko
** in the particle że, e.g. skądże, tenże, także
** after,,, e.g.:
*** lżej
*** łże
*** rżysko
** in loanwords, especially from French, e.g.:
*** rewanż
*** żakiet
*** garaż
** when cognates in other Slavic languages contain the sound or, e.g. żuraw – Russian журавль
* is used:
** when cognate words or other morphological forms have the letter, e.g. morze – morski, karze – kara
** usually after,,,,,,,,, e.g.:
*** przygoda
*** brzeg
*** trzy
*** drzewo
*** krzywy
*** grzywa
*** chrzest
*** ujrzeć
*** wrzeć
** when cognates in other Slavic languages contain the sound or, e.g. rzeka – Russian река
Other points

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 and jabłko is omitted in ordinary speech.

Capitalization

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.
Titles such as pan, pani, lekarz, etc. and their abbreviations are not capitalized, except in written polite address. Second-person pronouns are traditionally capitalized in formal writing ; so may be other words used to refer to someone directly in a formal setting, like Czytelnik. Third-person pronouns are capitalized to show reverence, most often in a sacred context.

Names of people and things

The following are capitalized:

Given names and surnames
Nicknames and pseudonyms
Names given to animals and plants
Names of gods and other mythological beings
Names of fictional characters
Personifications of concepts
Names of religious and secular holidays
Brand names
Company names
Names of institutions, organizations, departments, and governments.
Names of prizes, honours, orders, and other awards.

The following are not capitalized:

Common names of beings or things
Names of days of the week, months, and seasons
Items whose names are derived from a brand name
Items whose names are derived from a proper noun
Adjectives derived from proper nouns
Names of rituals, customs, parties, and dances
Names of historic events
Names of time periods and eras.
Geographic and astronomical terms

The following are capitalized:

Names of planets, moons, stars, constellations, and other celestial bodies
Names of continents, oceans, seas, deserts, mountains, islands, etc.
Names of countries, regions, towns, villages, kingdoms, etc.
Names of compass points when they are an essential to the place's name e.g. Morze Północne
Wschód and Zachód when referring to the cultural East and West respectively.
Punctuation

Polish punctuation is similar to that of English. However, there are more rigid rules concerning use of commas—subordinate clauses are almost always marked off with a comma, while it is normally considered incorrect to use a comma before a coordinating conjunction with the meaning "and".
Abbreviations are followed by a period when they end with a letter other than the one which ends the full word. For example, dr has no period when it stands for doktor, but takes one when it stands for an inflected form such as doktora and prof. has period because it comes from profesor.
Apostrophes are used to mark the elision of the final sound of foreign words not pronounced before Polish inflectional endings, as in Harry'ego. However, it is often erroneously used to separate a loanword stem from any inflectional ending, for example, *John'a, which should be Johna.
Quotation marks are used in different ways: either „ordinary Polish quotes” or «French quotes» for first level, and ‚single Polish quotes’ or «French quotes» for second level, which gives three styles of nested quotes:

„Quote ‚inside’ quote”
„Quote «inside» quote”
«Quote ‚inside’ quote»

Some older prints have used „such Polish quotes“.

History

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, new letters, 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, as in the letter č. The other major Slavic languages which are now written in Latin-based alphabets 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.
The letter ƶ is a historical allograph for ż.

Computer encoding

There are several different systems for encoding the Polish alphabet for computers. All letters of the Polish alphabet are included in Unicode, and thus Unicode-based encodings such as UTF-8 and UTF-16 can be used. The Polish alphabet is completely included in the Basic Multilingual Plane of Unicode. ISO 8859-2, ISO 8859-13, ISO 8859-16 and Windows-1250 are popular 8-bit encodings that support the Polish alphabet.
The Polish letters which are not present in the English alphabet use the following HTML character entities and Unicode codepoints:

Upper case	Ą	Ć	Ę	Ł	Ń	Ó	Ś	Ź	Ż	Ƶ
HTML entity	Ą &Aogon;	Ć &Cacute;	Ę &Eogon;	Ł &Lstrok;	Ń &Nacute;	Ó Ó	Ś &Sacute;	Ź &Zacute;	Ż &Zdot;
Unicode	U+0104	U+0106	U+0118	U+0141	U+0143	U+00D3	U+015A	U+0179	U+017B	U+01B5
Result	Ą	Ć	Ę	Ł	Ń	Ó	Ś	Ź	Ż

For other encodings, see the following table. Numbers in the table are hexadecimal.

Character
Set

IBM 852

ISO 8859-13 and Windows-1257

ISO 8859-16

PN-T-42109-02:1984 "ZU0"

—

PN-T-42109-03:1986 "ZU2"

PN-I-10050:2002

43
08
27

4E
08
27

4F
08
27

53
08
27

5A
08
27

63
08
27

6E
08
27

6F
08
27

73
08
27

7A
08
27

IBM 775

CSK

Cyfromat

DHN

IINTE-ISIS

IEA-Swierk

Logic

Microvex

Ventura

ELWRO-Junior

AmigaPL

TeXPL

Atari Club

CorelDraw!

ATM

A common test sentence containing all the Polish diacritic letters is the nonsensical "Zażółć gęślą jaźń".