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 retroflex and palatal fricatives and affricates, and nasal vowels. The vowel system is relatively simple, with just six oral monophthongs and two nasals, while the consonant system is much more complex.
Vowels[]
The Polish vowel system consists of six oral monophthongs and two nasal diphthongs. Vowel nasality in Polish is partially preserved from Proto-Slavic, having been lost in most other modern Slavic languages.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | ɨ | u |
| Mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Consonants[]
The Polish consonant system is more complicated; its characteristic features include the series of affricates and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish and Belarusian.
The consonant phonemes of Polish are as follows:
| Labial | Dental, Alveolar |
Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | palatalized | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | kʲ | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡʲ | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ʂ | t͡ɕ | |||
| voiced | d͡z | d͡ʐ | d͡ʑ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʂ | ɕ | x | xʲ |
| voiced | v | z | ʐ | ʑ | |||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||