The “Aha!” Moment with Polish Ortography
One of things I found most difficult about Polish is the consonants, which are often spelled with digraphs or come in clusters (you don’t say), or both (I’m looking at you, “Szczecin”). And while I’m not coming back to give it another try again soon, here’s an “aha!” moment that helped me nail them down.
Simplistically, take
- s, z, c, dz;
- ś, ź, ć, dź, and si, zi, ci, dzi;
- sz, ż, cz, dż
Every line from the list has consonants with the same place of articulation, and the items in the list differ in manner of articulation. Remember, this is a rough description:
(1) are dental — the tongue horizontal and touching the lower teeth. (2) are palatal — the tongue pointing to the hard palate behind your upper teeth. (3) are retroflex — the tongue curled up.
Then every line has four items where each, in order, are (a) a voiceless fricative, (b) a voiced fricative, (c) a voiceless affricate, (d) and a voiced affricate.
For line (1), imagine the typical English ⟨s⟩ and ⟨z⟩— where the latter is like bee buzzing, then ⟨c⟩ is like an English ⟨ts⟩, and for ⟨dz⟩, imagine it literally in English. Now do the same with your tongue pointing to the hard palate and the tongue curled up, and you’re good to go.
Pro tip: ⟨rz⟩ is realized the same way as ⟨ż⟩.
Polish phonology might be complex and the spelling thereof clu(s)ttered, but it’s beautifully structured.
It fits nicely in a 3×2×2 three-dimensional chart (three places, two manners, and two types of voicing). But I’ve no tools to draw that.
Written half awake at 4:00 in the nightbus from Warszawa to Rīga. Any mistakes are blamed onto bad sleep.
