Talk:Polish phonology

Old discussion

Regarding the following change, do you have any references for this? My sources say otherwise...

 09:38, 31 August 2006 82.139.47.117 (Talk) (→Consonants - Polish fricatives and affricatives 
 sz, cz, ż, dż are retroflex - they also are listed as such in examples in other parts of the article)

I really like this page and I think it should be linked with the polish IPA page (which is in a bad shape right now). Anyways, I'd like to use it in the future as a reference on the Polish transcription. Do you think it would be bad if another column with the transcription in Polish SAMPA was added? SAMPA is very popular in the few Polish corpora that exist, so it would be very useful...

--62.121.64.90 14:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

please notice that (at least in some regions) one could tell "h" from "ch" by the sound. Ch is soft (like in english 'loch'); H is hard (as in english 'hard' or 'horrible') - more 'from the back of your throath'

ok, but now even this difference is rather theoretical

Not really. In my family we still distinguish h from ch and it does not sound bizarre. Halibutt 20:11, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, the difference between "h" and "ch" was based on the voicing, i.e. - "h" was voiced (IPA: ɣ), whereas "ch" - voiceless (IPA: x). Today, you rarely hear that difference - maybe at school, presented by your Polish teacher, or by some older actor. Most people, when producing e.g. words "huta" and "strach" will make no distinction between those two:

"huta" -> ['xutɐ] "strach" -> [strɐx]

...or at least they won't find it awkward in any way.

Actually, there is another tendency you can observe - regardless of whether it's "h" or "ch", you are more likely to produce it as [[Voiceless glottal fricative|h] if it is followed by a vowel of any other approximation than 'close', which is caused by the common process of assimilation - economy of articulator movements. e.g.

"chata" -> ['hɐtɐ] "Hanna" -> ['hɐnnɐ]

...but then again in the proper name "Bohdan", "h" is pretty commonly pronounced as [ɣ] or for many, who don't feel comfortable with this dying-out-sound, as [g].

I think, that the best sollution would be to keep them separate in the table (in adjacent rows) and add the alternative pronounciations for each. Michau 02:37, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Polish grammar books (e.g. Gramatyka opisowa języka polskiego. (1968). Warszawa: Państwowe Zakłady Wydawnitcw Szkolnych.) consider ch and h the same sound (i.e. [x] in most contexts) in the common Polish language. The words druhowi 'friend, boy scout (dative)' and ruchowi 'movement (dative)' are considered to have the same [x] (intervocally). This is how I speak. My grandmother, however, clearly distinguishes h as a voiced fricative (I'm not sure of the position though).
Naturally, both ch and h, whether the same or different, undergo assimilation in consonantal clusters as well as lenitions as mentioned above in such words as chata and Hanna.--Jeziorko (talk) 03:20, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

And are you sure that final -ch is obligatorily pronounced as [ɣ] if the following word begins with a voiced consonant? It's logical and coherent with what I know about phonetic assimilations in Polish, but somehow I am not convinced if I my [x] is really voiced in such positions. Do you have any references about that? --Botev (talk) 12:37, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

According to the same source (mentioned above), voicing assimilation between words is uniform throughout the Polish varieties if the second word begins with an obstruent; e.g., chęć walki → xeńʒˊ valḱi [sic] (i.e. [xɛɲd͡ʑ valkʲi]). So stary dach domu /starɨ dax dɔmu/ 'the old roof of the house' would be [starɨ daɣ dɔmu]. Assimilations differ if the second word begins with anything else: Małopolski and Wielkopolski dialect regions tend to continue voicing finals, but other regions devoice finals. I know that this analysis sounds weird when you already naturally speak the language. I'm not 100% convinced myself, but I understand that these assimilations are never 'heard'. In careful speach they disappear unnoticed, and either way they add very little difference. I shall be taking advanced phonetics in the following academic year, so maybe I can see into it in more depth later.--Jeziorko (talk) 18:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

OK. Maybe there are some other features involved here, something like tenseness or similar, that would make a difference between the [d͡ʑ]-sounds in [xɛɲd͡ʑ vʲɛŋkʂa] (chęć większa) and [d͡ʑvʲɛŋk] (dźwięk)? --Botev (talk) 19:32, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Polish "y" is not IPA [ɨ]

I'm strongly convinced, that Polish "y" is much more like [ɪ] and saying that it's being pronounced as [ɨ] seems simply ridiculous. It's "i", that is sometimes possibly produced this way, but definitely not "y"! Michau 02:53, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Frankly speaking, it all depends on whom you ask. AFAIK there's no single accepted IPA chart for the Polish language as the polonists are pretty immune to such novelties and until recently many of them preferred to stick either to their own systems or to some approximations. However, when it comes to this particular case, I can't really say whether the Polish "y" is closer to near-close near-front unrounded vowel or to close central unrounded vowel. The difference between them is so tiny that it's hard to tell anyway. Any specialists here? //Halibutt 22:34, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

According to what I've been learned, Polish "y" is definitely ɨ; Do you mean, by suggesting that it's pronounced like "ɪ", that English "ship" and Polish "szyb" have the same vowel? That's not possible. agnus 23:31, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm a linguistics student and native speaker of both German (which has [ɪ]) and Polish (with [ɨ]) - and though I have to say that the IPA chart characters are rather in flux, especially if it comes to vowels, the Polish "y" is definitly more an [ɨ] than an [ɪ]. Qubux 19:47, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I also agree with y [ɨ]. Ukrainian, e.g., has и [ɪ], which sounds different from the Polish y. Also, the symbol [ɪ] is a secondary symbol of the IPA, so I wouldn't use it if not necessary. Finally, if you look at the vowel graph in the article, you can see that y is exactly on the central line, just slightly lowered.
With respects to comparisons with English, please note that certain English varieties do have [ɨ] in certain environments, so this may be misleading here.--Jeziorko (talk) 02:54, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Article currently uses Close central unrounded vowel symbol for that vowel, however File:Polish vowel chart.svg used in article suggests that its height is between near-close and close-mid, while its backness is between near-front and central. Near-close central unrounded vowel, represented as < ɪ̈ > (centralized ɪ) or < ɨ̞ > (lowered ɨ), or Close-mid central unrounded vowel, represented as < ɘ > may be more correct symbol for vowel shown on chart, possibly with some more diacritics. --Drundia (talk) 14:40, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Sources use [ɨ]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:22, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Didn't source also use /e/ and /o/? as File:Polish_vowel_chart.png says? --Drundia (talk) 02:11, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The specific source for the vowel chart used those, though I've seen more sources that use /ɛ/ and /ɔ/. When it comes to the y vowel, though, I've never seen anything other than ɨ and instances of ɨ in other languages are occasionally described as being like the Polish y vowel. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:59, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

I do know what you guys are all on about. You're not THAT wrong. The Polish y is NOT 100% the same as the IPA ɨ. However, you will find the 100% matching ɨ sound in Russian, because this IS the consonant ы as you can hear in Russian word for dinner, дышать. But the Polish y is not THAT dark. Drundia is right: it's somewhere in-between. Amen to that! -andy 217.50.43.11 (talk) 22:03, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Ƶ§œš¹, the sources don't help when they only know Polish and have no other language as a reference. So they are entitled to write anything they like. In comparative phonetics, there are unavoidably differences. --Explosivo (talk) 19:39, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Explosivo: Vowels of world's languages are first and foremost compared to cardinal vowels, not vowels of other languages. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:00, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: I'm talking about phonetics, not phonology. In case of the latter you often create very abstract systems and set up conventions subsequent writers just copy, thus establishing traditions in that language, and only in that language. That means the symbols you use to transcribe are not used the same as the symbols for the cardinal vowels. As you probably know, no language has a perfect set of cardinal vowels because every utterance is unique. The same person can't produce sounds with the same acoustic and articulatory properties twice in their life. However, there are only a handful of IPA symbols. Let's say Polish writers have opted for the symbol “ɨ” because it would be tedious to consistently add diacritics or to use central vowel symbols that few people understand. Russian writers use “ɨ” as well, but the Russian sound is considerably closer to the ideal “ɨ” of IPA. Russian "ы" and Polish “y” are also cognates, but that doesn't mean they are pronounced or behave the same (Russian stressed “ы” tends to diphthongize, whereas Polish “y” is quite steady). --Explosivo (talk) 21:08, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Explosivo: So am I! Cardinal vowels are exclusively a phonetic tool and have nothing to do with phonology. Please read the article about them. They are a set of reference points that help phoneticians from around the world analyze vowels of world's languages. Cardinal vowels are not vowels of any particular language. Also, this: The same person can't produce sounds with the same acoustic and articulatory properties twice in their life. is an extremely dubious statement. Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:19, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:I know that cardinal vowels are not related to particular languages, but the sources Ƶ§œš¹ found probably refer to "ɨ" in Polish phonology, so of course I was referring to that. Writing "ɨ" is a Polish tradition. As you have seen, other people with different backgrounds don't perceive it as "ɨ" because they follow their traditions. A central vowel like "ɨ" is hard to locate, don't tell every instructor puts their tongue at the same millimeter (exactly between "i" and "u", that is beyond human precision) to show their students, everyone goes in biased to some extent. This is where the whole confusion starts. The statement you are questioning is not dubious at all. In fact, it's the fundament of phonology. Two products from the same factory don't even have the same number of atoms; we neglect it because it's not important for our practical use. That's the same with phonology: sounds with different tongue positions, volumes, pitch, length are sorted into one single phoneme. --Explosivo (talk) 22:11, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Explosivo: You're still confusing cardinal vowels, phonemes and allophones. Polish /ɨ/ can't be identified with any of the cardinal vowels because it is between cardinal [e] and cardinal [ɨ] (words of the late Wiktor Jassem). Nobody is saying that Polish /ɨ/ has the quality of cardinal [ɨ], it is lower and possibly more front. If you don't trust the cardinal vowel system then that's your business, but that is not a valid reason to change anything on Wikipedia.

The same person can't produce sounds with the same acoustic and articulatory properties twice in their life was about phonetics, not phonology, so, again, you're confusing concepts. It is not the fundament of phonetics at all; it's simply not true, not the way you worded it. It's true that phonemes of world's languages typically have a limited allophonic range of realizations. If humans 'couldn't produce sounds with the same acoustic and articulatory properties twice in their life', there would be no such things as languages and not even random nonsensical sounds. Because guess what - some of the latter would have to be repeated at some point. Mr KEBAB (talk) 22:35, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:I never stated the opposite and I never advocated to change anything. I just wanted to clarify some confusions in a discussion other people had.

I'm not confusing concepts since I was explaining how the two are intertwined. Of course, both came up. Your voice is different everyday, you may not use the muscles with the exact amount of effort, but it will fluctuate around something that people will understand. Moreover, it's not even defined where one sound starts and the other ends in an utterance. --Explosivo (talk) 22:49, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Explosivo: (Please do not reply inside my messages.) The differences / fluctuations you're talking about are much smaller than you think and they're ignored by phoneticians, as they're irrelevant in almost all cases. The quality of voice is rarely discussed and probably even more rarely transcribed. Also, I'd like to see a citation for 'your voice is different everyday'. You throw around all these statements without sources to back them up. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:12, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:That's what I said, it's not important for practical use, so it's usually not considered. That was just an example. The uniqueness of an utterance is probably somewhere in Luciano Canepari's work. Part of his books are accessible on his website. He has created his own system with symbols you can't even type because he felt IPA was not refined enough. He tried to use his symbols consistently while comparing numerous languages. Perhaps crazy but somewhat insightful. --Explosivo (talk) 23:31, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

If that's what you meant then fair enough. I'm aware of Canepari, but there are problems with him not citing other sources and using only his ears to determine the exact phonetic quality of sounds, which is an incredibly bad idea. AFAIK, he claims that he can distinguish hundreds of vowel qualities by his ears alone, which to me is equal to claiming that he is God (it's simply impossible for a human to do that). Take his work not with a grain but a truck of salt. There may be some truth to his research, but you should always compare it with what other, more reputable sources say. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:41, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

From "Accents of English I" Chapter 1.2.4. Non-contrastive distribution by John C. Wells (following the University College London 'phonetic' tradition of Daniel Jones, I think these people are reputable enough): Beyond a certain level of articulatory precision, of course, every speech sound is subject to free variation, since no repetitions of the same word are perfectly identical in physical terms. Obviously, therefore, we need to consider here only grosser differences. --Explosivo (talk) 12:57, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

@Explosivo: I was just talking in general, but thanks for the quotation. I obviously agree with Wells, I've already said that (see above). Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:16, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Polish retroflexes are not laminal - [ɕ],[ʑ],[ʨ] and [ʥ] are

As the title reads.

...and yes, I read the retroflex consonant article stating otherwise, but I still oppose to that idea.

If a native Polish speaker pronounces retroflexes over-correctly, which is of course incorrect, then their tongue is curled quite notably(so not laminal).

In the case of the correct, mainstream pronounciation the sound is apical or slightly curled- not laminal.

There is another error of prounounciation - when the thongue tip is too far front and a whistling sound is produced. It is called "seplenienie" (infinitive "seplenić) - it's a speech impairment, still even then, although retroflex no more, it's rather apical. Maybe there are laminalizing versions of this impairment and maybe the people who first came up with the idea of Polish laminal retroflex consonants, examined one of those poor souls suffering from it. Who knows...

...anyway being a native Polish speaker I can assure you that I don't "laminate" my retroflexes and I don't think I know anyone who does. I would notice - assuming from the experiments with my tongue that I just carried out under influence of these articles.

Michau 03:35, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what to tell you. Stanisław Puppel, Jadwiga Nawrocka-Fisiak, & Halina Krassowska (1977) have X-ray images of all three sibilant series, and they're all obviously laminal. I rather doubt they'd use anyone with a speech impediment, or who spoke a non-standard dialect, but who knows. kwami 01:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I always have a beef with pronounciation guides, and this one is no different :). This is mostly because the guide is dependent on not-so universal pronounciations in a language. For example, "what's your", "would you" and the like are fine and good, and in fact I agree with their usage, but it might not be entirely obvious to some speakers what is meant, esp. if the speaker pronounces "what's your" as [wats jor], as I do. Similarly, "loch" is never pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative in most English dialects, but rather [lak]. We should perhaps make a note of this in ths text somehow. True, the IPA symbols are given, but not everyone knows IPA, and then the examples in the IPA page probably reflect the pronounciations here, etc. Any suggestions on how to improve this? I think that for ć, "cheap" would be clearer (the same sound is produced, and the ability to distinguish the ć with cz is no different). --Vegalabs 23:19, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I see a problem in the vowels section for American readers: "cot" and "caught" are used as examples for two different Polish vowels; they can have identical pronunciation for some speakers. See Phonological history of English low back vowels#Cot-caught_merger--Theodore Kloba 20:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Citations

This article is helpful but really needs citations.William2233 05:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi, I work mainly over at Wiktionary, where we have a small but growing number of Polish words. So far I've been following the system outlined in this article for pronunciation (I speak a little Polish, but am no particular expert in the phonology). But a couple of contributors, one a native speaker, are insisting that /ʂ/ and /ʐ/ should really be /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. They point out that the pl article on Polish does not use retroflex symbols. In fact the dictionary of world languages on my desk also lists these sounds in Polish as /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. So can we have a few more sources in this article? Where is the information coming from, and how definitive/uncontroversial is it? Thanks. Widsith 17:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

• "Phonetics and Phonology of Modern Polish Language" by Danuta Ostaszewska and Jolanta Tambor, PWN 2004, also uses symbols /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. agnus 13:57, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
• I think it's so because the symbols <ʃ> and <ʒ> - used in English transcription - are much more widely known that the symbols for retroflex consonants. I'm also a native speaker and I know that English postalveolar consonants definitely aren't pronounced identically as Polish <sz> and <ż> which are not palatalized. Also IPA isn't perfect - I think there's no consensus about what should IPA symbols <ʂ> and <ʐ> stand for (whether only for the sub-apical consonants or not). The English Wikipedia article about retroflex consonants defines them as coronal consonants articulated behind the alveolar ridge, which do not have the secondary articulation of palatalization what I believe is the case in Polish. Therefore I would rather let it be as it is/was. Pittmirg 14:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Now the situation is completely messed up: <sz>, <ż>, <cz> and <dż> are described as "alveolar" [sic!], not even postalveolar, <sz> & <ż> have IPA glyphes for postalveolars, <cz> and <dż> for retroflexes...

I understand objections about the use of retroflex glyphes for this fricative/affricate series - I myself was very sceptic when I saw it first. But it is true: my German <sch> and my Polish <sz> are different. I wouldn't go as far as saying these sounds are truely retroflex as in Indian languages, but they are not truely postalveolar either. The best description may be postalveoretroflex. Unfortunately I haven't found a detailed description of Polish phonetics yet... Qubux 23:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

There is already some mention in the article "Sibilant consonant" about various 'retroflex' sibilants. It is all a matter of how precise you want to get with the phonetic transcriptions. The symbols [ʃ, ʒ] are used in the most broadest terms. When distinguishing the Polish from English or German comes into light, the symbols [ʂ, ʐ] are used. Further, when it comes to more wide-scope transcriptions (encompassing true-retroflex languages), we run into problems with simple symbols. We can use IPA diacritics, but, I think, this would amount to using them also on other phones, such as the mid vowels, which vary greatly in height, as well as the low vowel, which varies greatly in front-back position.
I speak both Polish and English, and to me there is a big difference between English sh (as in shell) and Polish sz (as in szelest). Lip rounding perhaps is also an issue, although I can't say as I'm not an expert in the matter (and possibly the English sh also has lip rounding).--Jeziorko (talk) 18:16, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

I do agree that the sh-sound in Polish and English are quite different (like in words shell and szelest you mention). Someone has also argued that there is a difference between those sounds in Polish and German - well, I don't hear the difference myself (although fluent in English and German I am a native speaker of Polish only) but I definitely do not think that the German and English sh-sounds are the same (like in shell and schellen). Therefore, since the German sch-sound is commonly noted as [ʃ] I don't see a reason we shouldn't note the Polish sz-sound the same way. Especially that most Polish books I've come across do so. In my opinion it would be enough to make a note in this article that the English and Polish [ʃ] are different. --Botev (talk) 12:10, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

You have a point, Botev. You are turning back to practicality: if we can use the very common [ʃ, ʒ] for sz and ż since there are no other Polish sounds that sound similar (ś and ź are farther off), then why bother with more details?
Let's consider a good scenario: A person who doesn't know Polish wants to pronounce a Polish word. If they attempt at the [ʃ, ʒ], they will get close enough to be understood by a native speaker, don't you think? As long as they are aware of ś and ź [ɕ, ʑ] as being different from sz and ż, equating the latter two with [ʃ, ʒ] is okay, I think.
What is the intended goal of having these phonetic guides and are they to be the same throughout all Wikipedia and Wiktionary pages, regardless of the technicality of each article?--Jeziorko (talk) 19:40, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

[c] and [ɟ] - probably a misunderstanding

This is the first and only time I've seen IPA [c] or [ɟ] described as part of the Polish sound system. I am quite convinced that the examples given are pronounced, respectively, with a palatalised "k" or "g" (IPA: [kʲ], [ɡʲ]). Would the proponent of the existence of [c] and [ɟ] in Polish care to point to a source? (Non-Internet preferred). Regards -- Bmucha

Wiktor Jassem in the June 2003 issue of the Journal of the International Phonetic Association ("Polish") puts these as palatal stops. He transcribes kieł as /cew/ and giełda as /ˈɟewda/. I imagine he uses <e> and <o> rather than <ɛ> and <ɔ> for ease of typesetting. In this particular article at least he doesn't go into detail about the specifics of those sounds.

However, Jolanta Szpyra in the June 1992 issue of Language ("Ghost Segments in Nonlinear Phonology: Polish Yers") calls pi, b, mi, wi, ki,gi "palatalized consonants (transcribed phonetically with an apostrophe)" and Kriedler cites Bethin (1992) in calling them "palatalized velars." I'm not sure about this one. I'm kind of busy right now but I can remind myself later to check out A historical phonology of the Polish language (1973) by Zdzisław and possibly Studies in abstract phonology (1980) by Gussmann. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. We, as Poles, have the opportunity to listen to these two palatal plosives in some of the languages in the region - Slovak (where they are written ť and ď) and Hungarian (written ty ang gy). At least to my ears, these sound quite different from Polish ki and gi. Maybe some more detailed research on this can be found. Regards -- Bmucha

All right, I checked out Gussmann and Zdzisław and they both describe the sounds as palatalized velar. Jassem 2003 seems to have sacraficed phonetic accuracy for ease of typing. I'll change the article accordingly. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 06:31, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

The IPA [c, ɟ] were used in some (older) phonemic analyses of the Polish sound inventory. They were probably used because they are 'cardinal' symbols in the IPA charts. This, e.g., applies to vowel symbols (and especially in phonemic transcriptions), where a cardinal vowel symbol lying closest to the actual sound of the language is used if it isn't already more closely neighbouring another sound of the language. (Why, e.g., in English the vowel in food is transcribed with [u] even though the actual sound is much fronted (in most varieties of English, relative to other European languages, such as French and Polish, which have an actually back vowel [u])?)
I would not, however, use IPA [c, ɟ] for Polish gi and ki because these can be easily shown with the palatizing symbol ([ɡʲ, kʲ]) and they (at least historically) weren't distinct phonemes (although one may argue this today).--Jeziorko (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

There's a subtle difference between palatalized velar and palatal; as with the case of English /u/, it's somewhat subject to the scholar's preference. In this case, most of the literature uses palatalized velar so that's why we should use it? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there is a decent difference between the two. Personally, to my ear, the actual IPA [c, ɟ] sound as if they belong in one group with all the coronals ([t, d, tʲ, dʲ, t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ], quite different from [k, ɡ, kʲ, ɡʲ].
Use [kʲ, ɡʲ].--Jeziorko (talk) 02:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree 100%. I am fluent in German, so I know the [ç] sound. If I use the same place of articulation and pronounce a voiceless stop there (the only way I can make the [c] sound I am not really familiar with), then what I get is quite different from the [kʲ] sound I use in Polish. Indeed, it may sound a little bit like [t͡ɕ] to untrained Polish ears just like [ç] often sounds for Poles like [ɕ]. Therefore I strongly insist on marking the k` and g` sounds in Polish as [kʲ] and [gʲ] respectively. --Botev (talk) 12:21, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

By the same token I have changed ç to xʲ (I'm pretty sure German Chirurg and Polish chirurg are pronounced differently) and ʎ -> lʲ (unsure, but I think there is no harm in writting [lʲ] instead of [ʎ]). --Botev (talk) 21:43, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I've reversed your change of ç to xʲ and ʎ -> lʲ as it seems from your comment above that it's based more on OR deduction and guesswork rather than sourcing. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:29, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

OK. But please - could someone check it? I think this is just the same approximation as in the case of [c] and [ɟ]. To me it seems rather odd to pronounce German [ç] in Polish. Also I read on the Polish talk page that [l] is "almost hard" even before [i] (statement based on some sources) and that would make the transcription ʎ and even lʲ questionable. --Botev (talk) 10:47, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

If you want to consider that Polish has no true palatal consonants, but rather palatalized (post)alveolar ([nʲ, (tʲ), (dʲ), t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ, ɕ, ʑ, (rʲ), (lʲ)]) and palatalized velar ([(ŋʲ), kʲ, gʲ, xʲ, (ɣʲ)]) (i.e., they all have a secondary (approximating) articulation at the palatal region, but their primary place is elsewhere), I think so too, but I regret not having any source...--Jeziorko (talk) 19:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the [lʲ] when preceding [i], as in lipa [lʲipa] 'linden tree', the phenomenon is alive in standard Polish. My grandmother, having studied Polish philology and taught the language, retained nevertheless her dialectal lack of this sound ([lipa]), which she says was greatly frowned upon in the academia and is clearly distinguished by ear.--Jeziorko (talk) 20:40, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I 100% agree. I'm Polish and I see, that in words like git a toungue isn't touching a palate. Chicken4PL (talk) 18:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Examples of the vowel "a"

I disagree with all the examples sorry..
u in cut is a kind of reduced vowel, definitely not a Polish a
o in cot is much closer to a Polish o than a
a in cat is not quite right either although it is closer than the other two suggestions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.104.146 (talk) 07:21, 22 October 2007

In RP, cut is [kʰɐt] (this is not reduced). In dialects of the northern cities vowel shift, cot (and caught for that matter) is [kʰat], and in some British and Canadian dialects, the vowel in cat is [a]. Why don't we just pick something like RP or GA and go with the pronunciation in that dialect? Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

In GA, the a-sounds in diphthongs are the closest you can get to the Polish a: English dye and Polish daj; alternatively, the short a between two obstruents: English sad and Polish sad.
In general though, if you stick with any one variety, you will always get other varieties that pronounce things differently, but, yes, I don't see a better way than picking a generalized GA and a generalized RP (or just one of them), with additional notes to clarify if necessary.--Jeziorko (talk) 20:15, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

where's your, what's your...

It would be best to avoid examples like where's your, what's your and even would you because there are two ways of pronouncing each of those phrases which are equally common. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.112.104.146 (talk) 07:37, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

New chart

I've created a simplified IPA chart for Polish, like those that exist for some other languages. Corrections/improvements welcome (but let's try to keep it un-technical;) ) I plan to use it as a place to link to in Polish transcriptions using the {{IPA-pl}} template (which is based on {{Plph}}), which have up to now been linked to Help:IPA.--Kotniski (talk) 14:26, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Very nice (I recently did something similar with Russian). I've put a comment in your talk page. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:59, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Spaces in affricates

Sorry, they do have to be there (otherwise some browsers display nonsense), but I forgot they have to be no-break spaces. Give me a while to fish them out from somewhere.--Kotniski (talk) 14:16, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

No-break spaces? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:55, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant zero-width spaces. They were actually already used elsewhere on the page - I think I've made all instances consistent now. --Kotniski (talk) 08:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of that before. Interesting. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 13:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

West-Slavic vowel length

In the section pertaining to the West-Slavic vowel length, it is not the case that long vowels were created only in syllables preceding yer-containing syllables. Previous stress patterns had also an effect on lengthening or not lengthening a vowel. For example, mąka 'flour' contains the long version of the Slavic 'hard' nasal vowel without preceding a yer-containing syllable, while męka 'torment, suffering' contains the short version of the Slavic 'hard' nasal vowel in the exact same environment. If we compare this to Ukrainian (which doesn't have a metrically-fixed stress system as Polish does), we see that there is a different stress pattern on each of the two words: мука́ (muká) 'flour' and му́ка (múka) 'torment'. We can also see in the cognates góra / гора́ (horá) 'mountain' that the pattern holds: vowels were also lengthened in syllables preceding stress-containing syllables.

The lengthening of vowels in syllables preceding yer-containing syllables is also in itself limited. We usually do not find ó before voiceless stops, but usually do find it before voiced stops: bok 'side' / Bóg 'God'; rok 'year' / róg 'horn'; płot 'fence' / płód 'phœtus'; lot 'flight' / lód 'ice'. The only places I've seen ó preceding voiceless stops or affricates in one-syllable words (i.e. words which had to have lost their final yer) is in certain verb forms where the voiceless stop or affricate is an amalgamation of an old consonantal cluster; e.g. móc 'to be able' derives from mogt(i). There might be other words, but I haven't found any so far.

There exist other forms with ó preceding final voiceless stops: stóp, wrót, skrót, obrót, robót, włók. QrczakMK (talk) 20:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, in all those examples: Bóg, róg, płód etc., the stops are voiceless due to final devoicing. I don't know if it's important, though. --Botev (talk) 12:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

For the purposes of lengthening of vowels they count as voiced. Before a final voiced consonant, except nasal consonants, o has been usually changed into ó. Before a final voiceless consonant o usually remains. As it has been said, there are exceptions. QrczakMK (talk) 22:01, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Finally, long vowels were created out of the merging of two vowels; e.g. gra 'she/he plays' had a long á (cf. dialect gro < grá) because it is a retraction of earlier graje. The same effect is present throughout the adjective declension as this system derives from the Slavic long-form (compound-form) definite adjective declension; e.g., dobry, dobra, dobre 'good' < dobrý, dobrá, dobré < dobryjь, dobraja, dobroje. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeziorko (talk • contribs) 21:03, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

diphthongs?

How should vowels followed by ł be represented in IPA? For example, the name Paweł, is it pavɛw or pavɛu̯ ? I looked at diphthong but Polish is not mentioned. Kasnie (talk) 00:12, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I want to say [pavɛw] but I could be wrong. It really doesn't make a difference. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:14, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I would do Polish pronunciation: [[] , but I don't think the "w" is bad either.--Kotniski (talk) 08:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess to answer the question of whether one should use either, it depends on what you're using it for. For Wikipedia pages, w is better. Though Kotniski's use of the Polish IPA template makes me think that the template is actually set for [u̯] right now. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:01, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Not really, it can equally well be used to produce Polish pronunciation: [[] if you prefer.--Kotniski (talk) 07:10, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I guess I'll stick to w, unless we get new information. Thanks everyone! --Kasnie (talk) 13:50, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, I've made a new template, {{IPAr}}, that used like this: {{IPAr|pl|'|p|a|w|e|ł}} or {{IPAr|pl|'|p|a|w|e|U}} produces [ˈpavɛw] or [ˈpavɛu̯] (i.e. it inserts the square brackets, as might be expected). It might also be extended to other languages in the future.--Kotniski (talk) 13:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Again incidentally, I've looked on the Polish article on diphthongs pl:Dwugłoska and it says that Polish has diphthongs in borrowed words like automat - doesn't mention cases like Paweł. However on the phonetics page pl:Fonetyka języka polskiego it says that pronouncing a "u" in "auto" rather than an /ł/ is an error. Implying, if we are to believe both statements, that the "u" in auto is regarded as a realization of /ł/ AND is vocalic. This implies to me that /ł/ would have to have the vocalic pronunciation ([u̯], perhaps) in cases like Paweł too. But I can't find any statement of that directly. --Kotniski (talk) 14:19, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

And I looked at a Slavic linguistics book later that mentioned in passing that words like "dał" have diphthongs (so I presume the same would apply to Paweł).--Kotniski (talk) 08:58, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Please do not use tie-bars!

Both IE and the LATEST development build of Firefox do not display them correctly, and I only get garbage on screen. Only Opera displays them correctly. I'm talking about the retroflex consonants and the character between d​ and ʐ̠, Please also see [[1]], where they use one annotation which should be sufficient. [edit] come to think of it, I will change this now according to the other page. -andy 92.230.23.0 (talk) 16:57, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks all right to me in IE6 (though that might be because I installed an extra font at some point). When I've seen them in Firefox the tie-bars seem to be shifted to the right a bit, but still display as tie-bars - is this what you mean, or is it even worse in the latest build? (The tie-bars are generally desirable, since Polish distinguishes [tʂɨ] (trzy) from [t͡ʂɨ] (czy).)--Kotniski (talk) 17:27, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

In my version of IE, the tie bar is just a little off, though the problem really isn't version of IE but the fonts you have available. I, for example, have Arial Unicode. For a while, one of my computers didn't have this font and displayed the tie bars as boxes.— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:02, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, so my point STAYS! If it is dependent on font whether tie bars can be properly rendered or not, they should be avoided! BTW, before hastily reverting my edits (I *think* it was you), have you ever bothered to check out the way they do it in [[2]]? -andy 92.229.166.42 (talk) 00:43, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, there are arguments on both sides. If they really mess up the display for large numbers of users, then we should let them go. But if the damage is slight, or the numbers of users affected small, then we should retain them. Omitting them reduces the information content - as I pointed out above, the tie-bars do carry pertinent information, even at phonemic level.--Kotniski (talk) 11:02, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

While it's unclear how many people who come to Wikipedia will see tie bars exactly or near exactly as they are meant to be presented, there are two additional things to consider:

1. As time goes on, this number can only increase.
2. It doesn't matter how it shows up; even if it's t□s, readers will (or, at least, should) understand tht t□s indicates the affricate and ts indicates a stop fricative cluster. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:52, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Too many L phonemes

Surely there is no phoneme /ʎ/, as we currently have appearing in several places? The "l" sound of lipa realizes the same phoneme as that of pole, doesn't it?--Kotniski (talk) 12:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I believe you're right. [ʎ] may appear as an allophone of /l/ before /i/, but it's not a phoneme. The soft/hard pair here is between /l/ and /w/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Right, I've removed the /ʎ/'s, and also tidied up a few other things that looked strange or out of place on this page.--Kotniski (talk) 10:42, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Good job. We'll have to do some research see if there actually is an allophonic [ʎ] or [lʲ] — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:42, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Are sz, ż, rz and all similar really retroflex?

[3] (listed in bibliography) in its abstract summary contains a sentence "Velarization and incompatibility with front vowels are introduced as articulatory criteria for retroflexion, based on cross-linguistic data." (my emphasis). However all of them can be followed by Polish <e> (for people not familiar with Polish there are some examples in article) which represents a front vowel (in particular according to this article), <si> and <zi> are already combinations with <i> which represents a front vowel as well (this one is rather unquestionable), meaning that they are in fact compatible with front vowels. Also, the tongue isn't curled even as much as for English [ɹ] which isn't even retroflex, let alone retroflex [ɻ], the resulting retroflex fricatives may sound as something average between Polish <sz> and <ch>, which I believe it shouldn't be. Those sounds should use symbols for postalveolar fricatives with some diacritics (possibly one for laminal: /ʃ̻ / /ʒ̻ /). --Drundia (talk) 01:35, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

There have been discussions of this at Talk:Russian phonology. I recommend you take a look at the Hamann article you link to and not just the abstract because the author talks about the different types of retroflex consonants. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm still concerned that symbols for retroflex consonants are likely the most acoustically ambigous symbols in IPA. The tongue has quite a lot of freedom to move further back while retaining retroflex form to produce sounds acoustically ranging from postalveolars to uvulars. That's a good 4 different distinguished consonants if the tongue was retracted rather than retroflexed. (I don't know all possible languages and don't know whether more retracted retroflex consonants are feasible, however I find that tongue can move further back than Hamann article suggests) However that incompatibility criterium suggests that [ʐɛ] as in <rzeka> is simply unpronouncable. I'm currently reading that article, and get impression that it is not necessarily final authority for determining correct symbol for Wikipedia articles. He mentions that literature disagrees about what those symbols should represent, he also mentions that earlier researches suggested different classifications for those sounds. Lastly I don't know what Hamann has to do with Slavic languages, for some reasons local scientists didn't adopt IPA, and I currently have impression that one of the reasons could be that IPA simply doesn't have enough symbols to represent variety of Slavic sounds. --Drundia (talk) 17:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

There's a bit of variety in what "retroflex" means though I've never heard of retroflex uvulars. Retroflex consonants are always postalveolar. I believe Hamann makes the point that languages that develop an alveolopalatal series that contrasts phonemically with a postalveolar series shift the latter to retroflex in order to maximize acoustic contrasts. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 05:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

"The phonology of Polish" Edmund Gussmann

In my opinion it's one of the best english sources for polish phonology. That's why i'll change this page according to it. The changes will be for example:

1. no retroflex consonants (according to source polish doesn't have any)
2. polish <y> symbolizes according to "The phonology of Polish" front half-close retracted vowel, so it's possible to use <ɪ> which is near-close near-front vowel. As you might see I haven't chosen <e̱> because of two things. One is Jessem (2003) graph presented on this page (i don't have access to this article :-( ) and second is graph in the book "Fonetyka i fonologia współczesnego języka polskiego" by Danuta Ostaszewska and Jolanta Tambor, which looks like Jessem's graph presented here. According to these and despite the fact that polish <y> is written as <ɨ> it isn't central and it isn't close, which are properties of this IPA phone. Second source which says that polish <y> is front half-close retracted vowel is "The slavonic languages". Because it's retracted I've chosen near-front. Near-close was chosen instead of close because of presented graphs and my opinion according to which authors of those books haven't done any distinction between close and near-close, although it's obvious from graphs they present. Second possibility is <ɨ̞>. It would work better with current practice in polish phonology, but would be unsourced, because everywhereit's written that <y> is front retracted vowel, not central. Of course it's similar that's why i need your opinion if i could assume that in this case front retracted=central. If everybody agree we could use <ɨ̞> which work better with current practices of phonology of polish. In my opinion second choice is better, but I would like to know if it won't qualify as unsourced. Of course we would use /ɨ/ for phonemic considerations, but most common pronounciation is [ɨ̞]. Please express your opinion on this controversial issue.

The source is: "The phonology of polish" P.S. Sorry for my english. Do you have any comments?

123unoduetre (talk) 16:40, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Also very nice explanation of this problem in "The phonology of polish" page 1.

123unoduetre (talk) 17:20, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I believe the whole idea to represent Polish and Russian postalveolars as retroflexes was started by Silke Hamann in several works in 2002-2004. As far as I see the book you suggest was first published in 2007 and didn't quite adopt that approach for Polish. But the whole "retroflex = postalveolar that isn't palatalized" seems to be actively used in some articles and pages, though some other articles and pages still mention only prototypical retroflexes. On top of that I can't quite understand how can one make a laminal fricative kind of constricion in postalveolar area without tongue dorsum approximating the palate. But hey, they are well educated linguists, perhaps they know better.

As for vowel denoted by <y> as you can see there have been several discussions on this matter even here. Everyone knows it's not /ɨ/, but still transcribes it that way. --Drundia (talk) 23:10, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I've changed article. It took much time and much work but it's ready now. I've read previous discussions about these issues. I hope some solutions i've adopted would work for for this article. If not, I'm ready for discussion, I'll try to defend my opinion of course :-) Everybody please read the article through and maybe suggest some improvements. Thank you.123unoduetre (talk)

I reverted your edits, though we can restore them if we agree to their content. After a quick look at The Phonology of Polish it seems as though you're confusing phones with phonemes. The table edits you made also weren't very good as, for example, they implied that Polish contrasts /ʃʲ/ and /ɕ/ which is most certainly false.

Hamann's work was convincing enough that we transcribe Russian hard postalveolars as retroflex. I don't see a reason to do Polish differently, especially in phonetic transcriptions.

Even if [ɨ] isn't technically accurate for <y>, I think we should transcribe it as such for the sake of simplicity much like we do with the nasal vowels.

I'll take a deeper look at Grassman's work soon. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:02, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok. Is it possible you provide some important citations from Hamann's work to support this conclusion. I don't have access to it. As far as /ɨ/ is concerned you might notice i've changed only pronounciation of this phoneme, not the phoneme itself. This way i could use /ɨ/ for phonemes, but [ɨ̞] for corresponding most common phone, so we have best from both worlds :-) As far as /ʃʲ/ and /ɕ/ are concerned i can assure you that polish contrasts them (I'm native). Of course these works only in borrowings, but still. Let's look to such minimal pair: /suʃʲi/ (loanword, 'sushi') /suɕi/ (property of 'suseł' masculine plural of 'suchy' just not to make it so complicated :) --Botev (talk)). In polish they contrast. Also japanese names would sound funny with polish /ɕ/, like Mitsubishi. Of course its arguable if they aren't simply /suʃi/ and /suɕi/, because of /i/ phoneme. But look how polish people pronounce japanese names. /joʃʲi/ ("Yoshi"). Genitive is /joʃʲɛɡo/. Google search: http://www.google.pl/search?q=Yoshiego. "The phonology..." also points that such phonemes are present only in loanwords, but still they're present in polish. We might only argue if loanwords are part of polish, or not. But the most important clue is that they go through inflection, which is a sign of domestication of such words. In my opinion what is written in "The phonology of Polish" is quite accurate. You might notice, that such nonexistent phonemes as /dzʲ/ are marked as potential only. I suppose author is right in this case. What do you think? (I can change my version of article to mark such phonemes as present in loanwords only. Do you agree?)123unoduetre (talk) 11:12, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Look through the pages 5-7. The "loanphonemes" are marked as present in loanwords only. I could mark them so in my table, or remove them. But still I prefer leaving them, because although they're rare, they are there.123unoduetre (talk) 11:27, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Nice example my friend pointed me to is <Lancia> (name of the car company) transcribed as /lant͡ʃʲa/. Of course it neither can be transcribed as /lant͡ɕa/ nor as /lant͡ʃʲia/.123unoduetre (talk) 13:05, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

As far as retroflexes vs. postalveolars discussions i think both would work, because we could call them either advanced retroflexes or retracted postalveolars. I don't know how could they be laminal, but maybe Hamann gives some arguments.123unoduetre (talk) 13:18, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Ostaszewska, Tambor "Fonetyka i fonologia współczesnego języka polskiego" (2000) also support my claim, as they notice that "Słownik wymowy polskiej" uses <ʃ>. It's also common in Internet to see it, for example this page: http://grzegorj.w.interia.pl/gram/en/ipa.html Also polish page: http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fonetyka_j%C4%99zyka_polskiego uses <ʃ> version. Could you provide more sourced which uses retroflex signs for polish? I'll try to find more sources which document my point of view too.123unoduetre (talk) 13:46, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Hamann also noted that Russian and Polish postalveolars differ from each other like velarization and apicality are more true for Russian than Polish. One of criteria was the retraction of [i] into [ɨ], but as far as mentioned book says, these two languages have different [ɨ]s, so we may note that Russian has bigger retraction than Polish. Hamann also mentioned several cases of /ʃʲ/ and /ɕ/ contrasting. As it comes to retraction of vowels, a notable difference is that it occurs in loanwords in Russian, but not in Polish, the presence of such retraction in native words may indicate some historic process, rather than something usable for modern classification. Also if such criteria that defined postalveolars as retroflexes were extended on all speech sounds, we could end up doubling number of columns in IPA chart.

Lastly to my favorite part (yes, that's OR!). If we take for example English, French, Polish and Ukrainian ones, I would say that the difference is just amount of "softness", on the other hand Russian ones actually make quite a distinct sound, acoustically they are like "hard" counterparts to palatal fricatives. --Drundia (talk) 15:50, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Another source which uses <ʃ> versions is http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=73596&dirids=1 but I must admit it's quite old (1982) p. 127123unoduetre (talk) 17:14, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Here too: http://pantheon.yale.edu/~gjs42/files/BLS.pdf p. 6123unoduetre (talk) 17:35, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Because sources tend to gloss over phonetic particularities of postalveolars, it's no surprise that more sources will use <ʃ> or <š> as their symbol. To have any weight, a source would really have to address Hamann's claim and counter it. We can't just look at the character being used as evidence of one kind of phonetics or the other since typographic concerns are a factor in which character is used. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:06, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Hamann's claims were based on several arguable features of Polish language. The qualty of so-transcribed Polish [ɨ] is quite different of Russian one (Gussman mentions it), which makes "vowel retraction" different (Hamann's work assumed that the symbols represent same sound), note that they behave differently as it comes to new loans. Posteriority is arguable, Gussman chose to say it's "alveolar", not "postalveolar". Hamann collected the information on sounds that were already classified as retroflex (and almost didn't find anything common in them, apparently everyone used that symbol for whatever they wanted), and established general criterium that [ʂ]=[ʃˠ]. The problem with "laminal retroflex" is that she defined that is should be at least apical, didn't she?. --Drundia (talk) 21:46, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes you're right of course, look into what i've written below (I was writing it while you were writing your response)

But in these sources (and I must admit they're better) retroflex is claimed:http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/papers/zaspil/articles/zp28/325.pdf or used http://people.ucsc.edu/~padgett/locker/sibilantpaper03.pdf.

This source is particularly good and gives references: http://www.phonetik.uni-muenchen.de/~hoole/kurse/artikul/polish_fricatives.pdf References are: http://books.google.pl/books?id=h1byJz_rWUcC&lpg=PA1&ots=3JUX2tzD7d&dq=%22The%20Sounds%20of%20the%20World's%20Languages%22&pg=PA154#v=onepage&q=&f=false and http://books.google.com/books?id=5wQ_Rp1i6SoC&lpg=PR1&dq=vowels%20and%20consonants&hl=pl&pg=PA151#v=onepage&q=&f=false and i suppose they explain it nicely. "Vowels & consonants" does is particularly well: they are more retracted than english [ʃ] but tongue tip isn't curled up as much as "true" retroflexes. Also first source (article) gives nice summary of it: "For this sound V&C uses the retroflex symbol. L&M use the alveolar symbol with the non-standard subscript dot (e.g [ṣ]), while explicitly labelling it flat postalveolar (in the table below we have used the standard retroflex symbol)." (p. 155) I suppose it's conclusive what sound it is, but we have to reach conclusion which sign to use for representation of it. Either /ʃ/ and [ʃ̱], or /ʂ/ and [ʂ̟]. But when using second option we have to use /ʃʲ/ for palatalized version as Hamann points to (p. 20) (http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/papers/zaspil/articles/zp28/325.pdf)123unoduetre (talk) 21:13, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've changed my opinion. Now I argue for retroflex signs. I suppose we agreed on this issue. What about others?123unoduetre (talk) 21:39, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Following articles explain it nicely, and i assume they're best source:

1. http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~hamann/Hamann2002SlavicRet.pdf
2. http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~hamann/Hamann2003Diss.pdf

Now i must admit i was wrong in contrasting /ʃʲ/ and /ɕ/. According to second article (p.46) [ʂʲ]=[ʃ]. It's obvious now that [ʃʲ]=[ɕ]. Correct transcription for my previous examples would be /suʃi/ and /suɕi/, /joʃi/, /joʃɛɡo/, /lant͡ʃa/. In such case i argue for: /ʂ/, /ʃ/, /ɕ/. (/ʃ/ only in loanwords). Do you agree?123unoduetre (talk) 00:05, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

/ʂ/, /ʃ/, /ɕ/ sounds a lot more likely (and I suspected it was as much before you said so). It's curious that loanwords from Japanese would have /ʃ/ since [ɕ] is the Japanese sound. In the coming days, I'll continue to incorporate Grassman and the other sources you've provided. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:17, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

It's probably because the Japanese words are not actually borrowed from Japanese directly - they first go through English. Also, the spelling sh suggests to many Poles the /ʂ/-sound (then palatalized to /ʃ/), rather than /ɕ/. I think that would be the most likely explanation why we pronounce /suʃi/ and not /suɕi/ as expected. --Botev (talk) 22:11, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Consonant chart

Polish consonants

	Labial		Dental/ (Alveolar)	Retroflex/ 1 (Palato-Alveolar)	(Alveolo-) Palatal	Velar
	plain	palatalized				plain	palatalized
Nasal	m	mʲ 2	n		ɲ	ŋ 2
Plosive	p  b	pʲ 2  bʲ 2	t  d			k  ɡ	kʲ  ɡʲ
Fricative	f  v	fʲ 2  vʲ 2	s  z	ʂ  ʐ	ɕ  ʑ	x  (ɣ)3	xʲ 2  (ɣʲ)3
Affricate			t͡s  d͡z	t͡ʂ  d͡ʐ	t͡ɕ  d͡ʑ
Trill			r
Approximant			l		j	w

1. The retroflex consonants are also transcribed with /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/. However current studies show that laminal retroflex are more accurate.
2. Some approaches considers these as allophones of their plain counterparts (or claims they're not phonemic in the case of /ŋ/).
3. Note about ch and h.

Do you have any suggestions? I suppose it will need slight modifications. 123unoduetre (talk) 15:12, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Gussman called [c ɟ ç] palato-velars, so they are advanced velars, or retracted palatals. I don't know if that's any different from [kʲ gʲ xʲ] --Drundia (talk) 21:54, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I think they are different. For an untrained Polish ear the German [ç] sounds actually more like [ɕ] than [xʲ], and [c] / [ɟ] sound like [t͡ɕ] and [d͡ʑ] respectively. It's curious actually, but you notice it on the way Polish learners pronounce German words with [ɕ] (ich as [iɕ]) or Hungarian words with [t͡ɕ] and [d͡ʑ] (vogyok as [vod͡ʑok]). Also Polish words pronounced with [c ɟ ç] sound quite strange to me (although theoretically I could imagine someone pronouncing Polish kiedy as ['cɛdɨ] - but I don't think it's common). --Botev (talk) 22:24, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Gussmann called /ɲ/ palatal explicitly. /c ɟ ç/ were called palato-velars. Thats why I used palatalized velars. It works with his main thought about palatalization in polish well. I suppose he used <c ɟ ç> because they are easier to distinguish, and because traditional way of spelling it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123unoduetre (talk • contribs) 22:59, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

That's the general problem of symbols for palatals. In Czech for example [c ɟ] are used for /tʲ dʲ/. What I say is that if we represent allophones of /kʲ gʲ xʲ/ as [c ɟ ç] it may be more precise to use a retraction diacritic. Palate is quite big and tongue dorsum can reach pretty much any part of it, producing distinct sounds. --Drundia (talk) 23:15, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the bilabial and labio-dental columns can be merged. As can the dental and alveolar columns. While the added rows to represent palatalized consonants are looking to be necessary, I'm not sure if we should put the alveolo-palatal consonants as palatalized postalveolar (even though that's what they are) especially if, as you say, /ʃ ʒ/ may be perceived as palatalized /ʂ ʐ/ (for phonemic transcriptions of the retroflexes, the diacritic is unnecessary). One possibility is to have three separate columns: retroflex, palato-alveolar, and alveolo-palatal (that latter of which may even be merged with palatal). Retroflex consonants would be in the "normal" row and the other two would be in the "palatalized row" (unless their distribution before /i~ɨ/ is different from what I understand.

I understand /ɲ/ to be alveolo-palatal (despite what Gussmann says; this is often glossed over). Similarly, I was under the impression that [c ɟ ç] were alternate ways of transcribing the palatized velars, not allophones.

Darker boxes in the official IPA is for pronunciations deemed impossible. We should do away with them altogether. Also, /n t d r l/ etc. should not be in multiple columns.

Less footnotes is less clutter. I've already offered ways to eliminate footnote 6 and 7. 4 can be taken out of the chart and just kept in the prose.

For footnote 2, I would say "however, Gussman (2007) considers them phonemic" or find another source that says modern scholarship leans more towards the phonemic interpretation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:42, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll show my opinions in the order you used.

1. Yes I agree bilabial and labio-dental could be merged.
2. As far as dentals are concerned there could be some misunderstanding. In Polish dental fricatives are perceived more as allophones for labiodentals. So I don't know if merging is a good idea.
3. There is no way i suppose (i may be wrong - there are some explanations following in other points) other than that in placing alveolo-palatals.
4. Yes, diacritic isn't necessary.
5. Merging palatals with alveolo-palatals is in my opinion very bad idea. They're very distinct, palatals are in Polish palatalized velars. Think about: /xʲit/ and /ɕit/.
6. As far as columns are concerned, i agree we could make the column alveolo-palatals, and remove palatals. But there are two problems wth that. First is /j/ /l/ /w/. Second is /ʃ/ /ʒ/. If we did alveolo-palatals, where would they be. /j/ isn't alveolo-palatal. It isn't postalveolar too. It is exactly palatal. It isn't velar too. /ɲ/ could be in alveolo-palatal too. They're allophones. /c/ /ɟ/ /ç/ could be used instead of palatalized velars too.
7. Darker boxes are exactly in places considered impossible. Which particular place you do not agree with?
8. /n/ /t/ /d/ /r/ /l/ are in multiple columns exactly as in IPA tables. Besides that all these places of articulation are allophonic in polish. You have to decide between two things: either you merge bilbials and labiodentals, and treat them as allophones, or leave /t/ etc. through multiple columns. Or maybe there is another explanation?
9. I agree, I could get rid of 7. 6 isn't necessary too because it's obvious from signs used, and they also link to relevant pages. 4 is unimportant and could be kept in prose as you suggested. I also agree that 2 should be changed.

I'll transfer these suggestions on which there is agreement to the table. Other ones need discussion. The particular problem could be stated like that: what do we want, do we want to merge places and manners of articulation when they're not phonemic, or give exact manner and place of articulation which excludes some boundary phones which cannot be treated as allophones. Examples are: /p̪/ /b̪/ Are they allophones of /p/ and /b/? If not, could we merge bilabial and labio-dental? Dental fricative isn't obviously allophone for alveolars, but rather for labiodentals (as you might notice when polish people speak english). So we cannot merge these two columns. If as you suggested /n/ /t/ /d/ /r/ /l/ aren't in "colspan" then where should they be? Ostaszewska&Tambor say in case of /n/ /t/ /d/ that alveolar and dental versions are allophones. So at least these two fields have to be merged. But let's discuss all of that.123unoduetre (talk) 15:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

One note. I've found in your post, that there would be also problem for deciding what we want to mean by palatalization. I strongly prefer "phonetic" meaning. It seems you prefer "phonemic" meaning. We have to choose only one of these.~ I vote for "phonetic" version because of it's obviousness and simplicity.123unoduetre (talk) 15:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palato- alveolar	(Alveolo-) Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	plain	m	n			ɲ	ŋ
	palatalized	mʲ
Plosive	plain	p b	t d				k g
	palatalized	pʲ bʲ	tʲ dʲ				kʲ gʲ
Affricate	plain		t͡s d͡z	t͡ʂ d͡ʐ
	palatalized		t͡sʲ d͡zʲ		t͡ʃ d͡ʒ	t͡ɕ d͡ʑ
Fricative	plain	f v	s z	ʂ ʐ			x	ɦ
	palatalized	fʲ vʲ	sʲ zʲ		ʃ ʒ	ɕ ʑ	xʲ
Approximant			l			j	w
Trill			r

The above table incorporates my suggestions (without links, notes, or indicators of variations), just so we're clear on what I mean. To respond to some of your responses:

2) Do you mean the dental fricatives [θ ð] are confused for [f v]? I'm not suggesting we put them in the table (and, by the way, the difference between [θ ð] and [s z] is sibilance, not place of articulation). Polish does not contrast between dental and alveolar. I'm not sure which consonants are alveolar and which are dental (or if they're all alveolar) but there's no reason to have separate columns.

5) As I said before, palatalized [k g x] are [kʲ gʲ xʲ], not [c ɟ ç] and I don't think using the latter set is accurate or necessary. As the table above presents, we could perhaps title the column "(alveolo-)palatal to indicate that this is both alveolo-palatal and palatal consonants.

7) We don't need to render the dark boxes at all, but the dark boxes in the approximant row are all actually possible articulations.

8) The official IPA table has coronal consonants in multiple rows because the actual phonetic realization varies from language to language; /r/, for example, is dental in Hungarian, alveolar in Spanish, and postalveolar in Russian. In language-specific charts, it's better to not have a single consonant in multiple rows or columns unless there's a compelling reason. You say that they are allophones but I am skeptical. Under what environment is /dʲ/ dental? When is it alveolar and when is it postalveolar? How common are such allophones?

I don't think we need to clutter the table with too many allophones like [p̪]. Our primary focus is phonemes. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:41, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, these are my responses:

2) Yes, they're confused. But sibilance is important issue here. Nevertheless I agree we could merge these, because you're right polish do not contrast dentals with alveolars in general. My confusion happened because i always thought of [θ ð] as interdentals.

5) Yes I agree, that's why I used these in first version of my table.

7) I still prefer to render them. Dark boxes in approximant row were my mistake (thought of laterals), I've corrected it.

8) Yes. I don't know if there are postalveolar allophones, or trills, or approximants. But dental /t/ is in /tak/ and alveolar in /tʂɛba/". (similar situation for /d/). I don't have sources which claim that for palatelized ones, because they're treated as allophones there.

Of course we shouldn't add any allophones to this table.

I've incorporated much of your suggestions to my table. What do you think about that?123unoduetre (talk) 20:58, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

8) Are you saying that /t/ is alveolar when it's part of the /t͡ʂ/ affricate or are you saying that it's alveolar before /ʂ/? If you mean the former, I'd say that doesn't count since /t/ and /t͡ʂ/ are two different consonants. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:35, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The only real issue I have with the table as it stands now is that, for example, ʂ ʐ are put in both the "normal" and palatalized rows when they're not both. I think "plain" would be better than "normal" since that's the real difference (and, for example, /dʲ/ is "normal" before /j/). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:35, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

8) No it's not affricate. Consider /t͡ʂɛx/ ("czech") and /tʂɛx/ ("three" (gen. pl.))

Yes, "plain" is better word. I suppose I'll move rows to columns for solving second problem.123unoduetre (talk) 00:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I've modified it slightly. Tell me if you agree with it.123unoduetre (talk) 00:45, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Why not just use common Slavic terms hard-soft? Retroflexes are defined as retroflexes for being velarized, not plain.

As for so-called stop+fricative clusters, I think there is assimilation occuring in them, same as in Russian and Ukrainian, the stop component assimilates place of articulation and is likely to get frication instead of plosion, so "trzy" might be more like [t͡ʃʃɨ] or [t^ʃʃɨ]. It may even be easier to explain some phonological processes if one considers them same manner of articulation. --Drundia (talk) 01:56, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

If "hard" and "soft" are used for Polish I would definitely favor using those terms.

The table is looking good, though /w/ isn't palatalized (that's a typo, right?).— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 02:48, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Answer for Drundia. I don't wanna use hard and soft exactly because of that. Firstly they're only slavic terms as you said. Secondly hardness suggest velarization which isn't present in polish. There are indeed plain and soft consonants. It's not russian. As far as assimilation is concerned, in my private opinion "trzy" may have both pronounciations (assimilated and not (I don't know what do you mean by [t^ʃ] in this context, and how would you differentiate it from [tʃ], this kind of "assimilation" is normal between any two phonemes if I understand you correctly)), but I do not see any tendency for assimilating it. They both exist on equal rights.

Answer for aeusoes1. Yes they're used sometimes. But as polish is concerned there is no tendency to velarize them afaik. But if you think that hard doesn't suggest velarization I could agree. /w/ is palatalized in loanwords (Ostaszewska&Tambor give example: (/wikent/)("weekend")).123unoduetre (talk) 03:32, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's tricky. The Russian phonology article uses "hard" and "soft" not because the hard consonants are velarized but because the actual phonetic distinction depends on context. Before /i/, for example, the soft/hard contrast is between plain and velarized while before /a/ it is between palatalized and plain. Thus the Russian phonology article uses the term Russians themselves use. Are there Polish-language terms that might help us decide what to do here? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:53, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

In polish hard and soft are used. If it in your opinion doesn't create any confusion, we could use these.123unoduetre (talk) 04:02, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

After some considerations I changed my mind about using hard and soft. It's impossible to use such distinction in this case. Reasoning goes like that: In traditional phonology when /sʲ/ is identified with /s/, /sʲ/ is hard consonant. But it's palatalized. So hard/soft distincton is only phonemic, and do not have any phonetic meaning. Moreover it's only valid in traditional phonology. We cannot use it to mark palatalization. That's why i suggest to leave palatalization, because it has clear phonetic content.

Some minor changes w.r.t. O&T. (<panislamizm>, <węgiel>)

Polish terms that would work would be "standard" (and similar terms like "plain", "normal" etc.) and "palatalized"/"softened".123unoduetre (talk) 22:46, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

When talking about sounds, "phones" or "allophones" should be indicated in [square brackets], and phonemes should be indicated with / slashes /. You're not confusing this, right?

It seems as though /tʲ dʲ sʲ zʲ rʲ lʲ t͡sʲ d͡zʲ/ are part of loanword phonology that Gussmann (2007) claims to ignore (as well as the palato-alveolars). If, outside of these, "hard" and "soft" works, I would say our approach to these consonants might need to be different than with the "native" consonants. We may, for example, remove them from the table and simply list them. I'm not familiar enough with the subject yet so I don't know how common listing these sounds as phonemes is. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:06, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

As far as first question is concerned, you asked me about that many times. Where did I (as you seems to think) confused phones with phonemes (or maybe letters too)?

As far as Gussmann is concerned I suggest to leave it as it is. Of course we could remove them and say something in prose, but this approach is more complete, and shows all points of view. It's like that: In older approach /p/=/pʲ/, /b/=/bʲ/, /m/=/mʲ/, /f/=/fʲ/, /v/=/vʲ/, /z/=/zʲ/, /s/=/sʲ/, /t͡s/=/t͡sʲ/, /d͡z/=/d͡zʲ/, /ʂ/=/ʃ/, /ʐ/=/ʒ/, /x/=/xʲ/ but still /k/≠/kʲ/, /g/≠/gʲ/ (this version is from O&T). <ofiara> is transcribed in Gussmann as /ɔfʲara/ and in O&T as /ɔfjara/ ([ɔfʲjara]) etc. So in this approach they could be treated allophonically because of glides following them (in second approach there is assumption of glides). Please read chapter 3.2 (and maybe 3.3) for nice explanation of these two approaches. To sum up: one approach is like previous one, which identifies palatalized labials and dentals with plains. Second identifies /i/ and /ɨ/. As Gussmann shows it's much more complicated, but as far as I understand he prefers not to identify any of these and use constraints for explaning its distribution. I think chapter 3.2 and 3.3 of Gussmann are best source for such information, so we could use it.

As far as hard and soft is concerned this distinction only works in older approach, where these palatalized phonemes are identified with plain ones. But Gussmann shows there are serious flaws in both method of identification (treating as indentical). So we couldn't assume they're identic. That's why we couldn't make distinction such as hard and soft. We could only say about plain and softened (or palatelized). This approach provides nice summary of both approaches because of notes under the table. This way we deal with 3 approaches at once:

1. Where palatalized phonems are identical with plain
2. Where /i/ equals /ɨ/
3. Where we do not identify any of these and use constraints as Gussmann does

This way we show all possible ways of doing polish phonetics without any bias.

P.S. Please read at least 3.2 for it to make sense.123unoduetre (talk) 10:47, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, obviously words such as "czy" and "trzy" sound different, but the most notable difference is cluster length. "Trzy" has a somewhat smooth transition between two consonants of onset, without a notable plosion.

As it comes to palatalized allophones in loanwords such as [sʲ] etc, that's minimum palatalization that can be credited to following /i/ or /j/, it's nowhere near as soft as phonemically soft /sʲ/ from for example Russian or Ukrainian. Those sounds do sound as hard. --Drundia (talk) 18:48, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm not asking if you're confusing phonemes and phones, only whether you're making the mistake of transcribing both with / slashes /. In some of your wording, it seems that you mean to be talking about phones or allophones but then you use slashes (such as when you asked about [p̪ b̪]). It's important to be clear about that and some of what you've said above has different meaning if you mean phones or phonemes.

Most of chapter 3 is not part of my Google book preview and my local library doesn't have a copy of this book. As it stands now, the table arrangement is good and as long as Drundia doesn't mind "plain/palatalized", we can move the table to the article and tweak the notes a little bit. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:14, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes /p̪/ /b/̪] were mistake of course. Sorry about that.91.193.87.5 (talk) 23:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that palatalized variants that occur before /i/ and /j/ have absolutely no phonemic meaning, and the amount of palatalization is extremely low, that's why they are considered "hard" in traditional Polish phonology. It might be best idea to use so to say mainstream point of view of Polish phonologists as different phonological schools may have very different point of views.

As far as I understood Gussman starts with listing less or more distinct phones present in language, without implying that they can be considered phonemes in their own right. Later he discusses the problem of identifying them. Preview nicely ends there.

Most phonologies list phonemes rather than phones (even the name "phonology" rather than "phonetics" suggests this). And phonemes are hard and soft, because some palatalized phones are hard phonemes. I don't know if native speakers even recognize those phones as any different. --Drundia (talk) 01:04, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I started reading Gussmann more carefully. Actually he says about palatelization, but only of labials and velars. Still there are no obvious examples of phonemic status of palatalized dentals etc. They are present in loanwords but before /i/ and /j/ only. I suppose we should remove them. I'll try to find more sources concerning this issue. The problem with Gussmann is that, as he says, he uses GP and claim not using phonemes etc. There are some claims about single representation etc. It's problematic because I don't know how to understand his list. It's obvious that this is not list of all phones present in polish. It's not list of main variants of phonems (I don't know if its named like that in english, main variant is most common phone). I don't know exactly what this list represents. I'm absolutely sure about phonemic status of following phonems in traditional approach: /b/ /p/ /m/ /v/ /f/ /d/ /t/ /n/ /z/ /s/ /d͡z/ /t͡s/ /ʂ/ /ʐ/ /t͡ʂ/ /d͡ʐ/ /l/ /r/ /ɕ/ /ʑ/ /t͡ɕ/ /d͡ʑ/ /ɲ/ /j/ /gʲ/ /kʲ/ /g/ /k/ /x/ /w/ /ŋ/. If I also understand Gussmann correctly he claims phonemic status for these: /mʲ/ /pʲ/ /bʲ/ /fʲ/ /vʲ/ because of identification of /i/ with /ɨ/. It's hard to tell what is the output of Gussmann's analysis for other potential phonemes. Relevant pages are 91-101. He says for example: "The phonetic [tʲ] here, and other palatalized coronals, are due to surface adjacency rather than an instantiation of the phonological I-alignment which truly reflects palataliation as a phonological regularity." But below he writes: "These words differ from the cases discussed above in that the I-head in the nucleus is directly adjacent to the onset." So it's hard to tell. I suppose we should remove these, but what do you think?

Ok I've found some reference: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V6H-45NGKYY-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=3d6daebf18d128aef7e5f00ea5cb1d8d 123unoduetre (talk) 05:24, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

This article says they're not phonemic. I'll remove them. 123unoduetre (talk) 05:47, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

The table mirrors Ostaszewska&Tambor now with additions of palatalized labials from Gussmann and Rubach. I consider it final. Do you have any comments?123unoduetre (talk) 00:42, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Some modification w.r.t. Dukiewicz, L., Sawicka, I. 1995. Fonetyka i fonologia. Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego. (I do not have this book, this information comes from this review: http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/polszczyzna/PTJ/b-WUW/56/13-szpyra2.pdf)123unoduetre (talk) 01:50, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Is anybody there? 123unoduetre (talk) 16:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

kogoście

"This can be demonstrated with phrases such as Kogo=ście zobaczyli? (in spoken Polish Kogo zobaczyli=ście?)" The position of this affix has nothing to do with "spoken" or "written" language. Also in unformal speech are forms like "Kogo=ście zobaczyli" used, but there is a slight difference in meaning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.18.177.61 (talk) 20:03, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Confusing section about ę

Totally confusing, if you permit! What do we learn? gęba is pronounced [ˈɡɛmba]. Nothing "nasal" in there. But hold on...węże is pronounced with a textbook /ɛ̃/ like in French chagrin. Why don't the Polish do a ['wɛnʐe] here too? See, that's where the confusion begins! Lastly: there is absolutely no word of the colloquial language which pronounces się as simply ['ɕʲɛ] - nothing "nasal" either!! As currently, it confuses the learner a lot more than it would benefit him. -andy 217.50.43.11 (talk) 00:36, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Native speaker here: everything you said is wrong. Gęba is pronounced [ˈgɛ̃mba], with an allophonically nasalized /ɛ/. /ɛ̃, ɔ̃/ before /p, b/ are always pronounced /ɛm, ɔm/. Węże is pronounced [ˈwɛõ̯ʐɛ], with a diphthong with a nasal offglide. This is unlike French, where it is a pure monophthong [ɛ̃] ~ [æ̃] (but in Quebec it can be a nasal diphthong [ẽɪ̃]). This is because before fricatives, /ɛ̃, ɔ̃/ are diphthongs with a nasal second element: [ɛõ̯, ɔõ̯]. Lastly, the last sentence is also not true. [ɕɛ] is the normal pronunciation of się; [ɕɛõ̯] is not wrong, but for me sounds too formal, almost hypercorrect (although it is not according to the standard language). My advice? Never mistake orthography with phonetics. Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 13:30, 8 November 2014 (UTC)

Gęba is pronounced [ˈgɛ̃mba], with an allophonically nasalized /ɛ/.< The allophonic nasalization of vowels before [N] in Polish is a Wikipedia-legend. I've transcribed/analyzed and I'm transcribing/analyzing both colloquial and very controlled Polish recordings. An audible nasalization before [N] is possible but quite rare. And if it happens to a vowel to be nasalized in this position, only a part (max. the half, normally a smaller part) of the vowel is nasalized. And if this partial nasalization is to strong and/or a longer part of the vowel is nasalized, it sounds weird to my ear (I'm a native speaker). -- 2A02:238:F014:6DE:E5E4:58B9:428B:C206 (talk) 17:13, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I've never said anything about the audibility and duration of the pre-/N/ nasalization of vowels. Let's look at the sources, which vary in their conclusions:

- Gussmann (2007:271) agrees with you; he says that "While nasal diphthongs appear before continuants and word-finally, before a stop we find a sequence of an oral vowel and a nasal homorganic with the stop. Again the vowel shows no traces of nasalization. Consider examples of the basic places of articulation."

- Both Ostaszewska-Trambor (2000) and Rocławski (1976) mention the pre-/N/ nasalization, and Wiśniewski (2001:84) says that it is "possible". The first two were published before the existence of Wikipedia, so your argument of the pre-/N/ nasalization of vowels being a "Wikipedia legend" is completely invalid.

And while your analyses may be interesting, unfortunately they can't serve as sources on Wikipedia - please read WP:OR. Remember to sign your messages. Thanks. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 18:40, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

:: Concerning Polish nasal vowels: there's a Polish scholarly publication whose title escapes me at the mo' [shall try to provide] and which says that the tendency to pronounce nasal vowels as a diphthong whose first element is a non-nasal vowel and the second -- an [õ̯], thus 'się' would be [ɕɛõ̯], unless it's [ɕɛ] (which it is more often than not), is a recent, in terms of decades, development. As a senior Polish person I would agree, [ɕɛõ̯] and its ilk strike me as recent, sort of affected, 'genteel', a bit effeminate even. My own pronunciation would be: [ɕɛɛ̯̃] or [wɔɔ̯̃s] (moustache) 2003:E6:3DA:D991:DD74:D094:403D:F3FD (talk) 15:03, 5 November 2018 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

Strong need to change the palatalization explanation

I must say that I read the explanation of palatization in Polish and I was partly shocked. I am a Pole myself and although I speak very little Polish I have been studying the phonology very thoroughly, especially, because lately I have worked on a scientifical system to write Polish in cyrillic.

The Polish palatalization shows many anomalies that one cannot push aside that easily. I will now explain them and hope that the part about palatalization will be changed, as this is really really important to understand the basics of Polish phonology especially in comparison with other slavic languages. By that I mean the consonantel shifts in Polish.

There is no di /dʲ/ in Polish. The equivalent is dź/dzi /dʑ/. For the comparison have a look at the Russian word for "day" which is "день" /dʲɛɲ/ and now at the Polish equivalent "dzień" /dʑɛɲ/. As you can see /dʲ/ shifts to /dʑ/. Like /dʲ/ /tʲ/ shifts to /tɕ/. It is a common error that it is mistaken for /tsʲ/ and even Bielorussian orthographie "falsely" writes this phoneme "ць". An example for the shift is the infinitive suffix "-ć". In Russian "to be" is "быть" /bɨtʲ/ which shifts to "być" /bɨtɕ/.

As /tɕ/ is the palatal of "t", the palatal version of "c" is a normal /tsʲ/, not /tɕ/. It is the same with /dʑ/, which is not the palatal of "dz", but of "d".

The palatalization of "l" is strongly anomalous. The unpalatalized "l" actually is Łł which has shifted from /ɫ/ to /w/ (and has nothing to do with the Bielorussian Ŭŭ). The palatalized L in Polish is pronounced like a "normal" L whereas the unpalatalized is pronounced /w/. See this example: In Russian "Polish" is "польски" /pɔlʲski/ whereas in Polish it is simply "polski" - which in fact IS the palatal version, but the palatal is not heard, but affects the pronounciation.

There still is another anomalie to the L. In fact in no (western) slavic language at all you will find the syllable /lʲi/, eg. you will never find "лï" in Ukrainian. But still the anomaly in Polish is that Ł becomes L before an I. In exchange you will never find an L before a Y. This leads to the further discussion whether I is a palatal of Y, which I will discuss in the next part.

The palatalized R in Polish is in fact "rz" /ʐ/. This consonantel shift is also shown in the Czech Language where Řř is pronounced /rʒ/. And now I come to the discussion of the palatalized Y.Have a look at the example: "at" in Russian is "при" /prʲi/ which is "przy" /pʂɨ/ in Polish (the ʐ in this case softens to ʂ, because of the P before it). As you can see there is no palatalized Y in Polish, because only in the case of the palatalized R the I becomes a Y.

Now there are some rules to the palatalized S/Z - which is Ś/Ź - left. When a normal S comes before certian palatalized vowels it is also palatalized or takes the palatalization instead (ć (ti), l, mi, ń, pi, rz, wi). Here are the following with Russian comparisons:

ść /ɕtɕ/ - in Russian сть /stʲ/ śl /ɕl/ - in Russian сль /slʲ/ (remember here that the Ś does not take the L's palatalization, because L allready is the palatal of Ł) śmi /ɕmʲ/ - in Russian смь /smʲ/ śń /ɕnʲ/ - in Russian снь /snʲ/ śpi /ɕpʲ/ - in Russian спь /spʲ/ śr /ɕr/ - in Russian срь /srʲ/ - In this case the Ś takes the palatalization of R. świ /ɕvʲ/ - in Russian свь /svʲ/

Another rule that I a have to underline is that the I does not always mean palatalization, eg. in many loanwords you will find "ti", although it changes to "ci" in palatalization. The Polish Orthography leaves some extra rules for the writing of a palatalized "c" (in the scientifical sense, because the palatalized c is not ć, which is the palatalized t, but written ć in the orthographie!). So to distinct between a palatalized c and t, you write e.g. "informacji" /infɔrmatsi/ and not "informaci" /infɔrmatɕi/. You will find such rules in many readings.

In the end I want to say that my researches about the palatalization in Polish is scientifically correct and I vow for that. I had doubts myself, but there is a simple test to see if I am correct: Use the rules explained above and write Polish down in cyrillic. You will find that words that appear in Russian and Polish (e.g. dzień - ďeň) are written down in correct cyrillic orthography even if you do not now Russian orthography (please do not compare it with Bielorussian orthography as this orthography is not representable, because of major differences to other orthographies). I am a newcomer to Wikipedia, so please do not be too hard with me if I made any mistakes.

The writing of Polish in a cyrillic alphabet invented by me is scientifically very revealing as you will see:

"Wszyscy ludzie rodzą się wolni i równi pod względem swej godności i swych praw. Są oni obdarzeni rozumem i sumieniem i powinni postępować wobec innych w duchu braterstwa."

"Вшысцы люде родзѫ сѩ вольні і ро´вні под взглѩдэм свэй годности і свых прав. Сѫ оні обдарені розумэм і суменем і повінні постѧповать вобэц інных в духу братэрства." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Einstein92 (talk • contribs) }

Hmm, some of what you say is backed up by my own recollection of the very little reading I've done on Polish. Could you share the sources you've used to study/present this phonological information? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:36, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Consonant table

I'm not a fan of changing the consonant table to include letters. Not only does it look worse, but it muddles the scope of the article. This is about phonology. Polish orthography is the article that covers spelling, and it does a better job of matching letter with sound anyway. There are other problems with the current table compared to the one that I restored the article to yesterday, but those are minor in comparison. I'd rather not edit war over the issue, though. What's the justification for putting letters in the consonant table here while we've taken them out in other phonology articles? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:42, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd have thought most people with some familiarity with Polish would know the letters rather than the IPA symbols - by including the letters in the table, we give people something to connect with. Also in many expositions of Polish phonology it's the letters that are used to represent the phonemes, so they can be thought of as a kind of alternative (and more familiar) notation for the phonemes. I know if I were learning this material I'd prefer to have the corresponding letters in one table, rather than having to cross-reference another table (or even worse, another article completely) to find out which of the (perhaps familiar) sounds these strange symbols are supposed to refer to. (Perhaps in other languages there isn't such a clear correspondence between phonemes and graphemes as there is in Polish, so putting the two in one table might not work so well, but here it seems we can do so fairly neatly and present the information more accessibly by doing so.)--Kotniski (talk) 20:57, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm still not a fan. It seems that you are saying that the target audience is people with some familiarity with Polish. Moreover, the clean letter-for-phoneme breaks down with the palatalized velars and looks really sloppy. I'll wait and see what other people say. In the meanwhile, I'll adjust the current table to address the other concerns I have. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 21:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd expect quite a substantial portion of the target audience either to have some familiarity with Polish spelling or to be interested in identifying the phonemes with the letters that usually represent them, yes. Admittedly it looks a little less neat, but the potential utility is much greater. Anyway, about your "other concerns", I don't understand why you keep replacing the tied consonants with forms that I've already said don't display properly on my browser (IE). Are the forms in my version of the table not displaying properly for you? What do you see for /dʐ/, for example? For /d͡ʐ/ (the form you've inserted), I see the tie as coming before the d, i.e. over the initial slash. (It's not quite right in /dʐ/, either, but past experimentation has shown that it's the best we can do.) In any case, whatever form turns out to be the all-round best compromise for these, we should implement it at Template:IPAl-pl and Template:IPAc-pl, so that it's displayed consistently everywhere, and so that the underlying links still work.--Kotniski (talk) 09:20, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

If I am to take WP:IPA and IPA as a guide, the format of the tie bars that I've edited towards is the format that the community accepts, even if it doesn't display right in older browsers or operating systems. Technically speaking, the way affricates and several other consonants look inside the {{IPA-pl}} look like they're missing IPA formatting, so those particular affricates look like a plosive and two squares to me. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 17:58, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

What browser are you using? In both IE and Firefox (latest versions) I'm seeing my version as almost correct, and your version as definitely wrong (ties come over the preceding slash).--Kotniski (talk) 15:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm using Chrome. If I check my version of IE, the table (before I edited it) looks right. I think the squares issue has something to do with the template not forcing the Unicode font with anything that takes more than two characters to represent.

Check out the links I provided above. Do the tie-bars in them look off-kilter to you? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 18:09, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, they do. The problem seems to be as described there - it's a question of a bug in the default font. I'm guessing that since I haven't (consciously) changed any fonts in my browser(s), then what I'm seeing is what the vast majority of readers will be seeing. But if you think that what looks right to me is going to look significantly wrong to a significant number, then perhaps we can dispense with the ties altogether, and just put an explanatory note about them under the table.--Kotniski (talk) 09:29, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

You're touching on an issue that I've not bothered to fight about. It also seems to me that the more common browser seems to be ignored in these sorts of things. I can't even see ⟨⟩, which I'm assuming are chevrons, and language articles are riddled with these. For most language articles I would be fine with dispensing of the tie bars, but Polish is one of those few languages that contrasts affricates with stop+fricative clusters. If you think we can do away with the tie bars without being confusing in our presentation then I'm fine with it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 18:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

All right, since there seems to be no one format for ties that will display acceptably in all browsers, I've removed the ties from the template, and added a note under the table (similarly at Polish language).--Kotniski (talk) 11:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Suspicious word

There is no such word in Polish as "tnąć" - I guess this supposed to be an incorrect variant of "ciąć" - "to cut"... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.26.187.193 (talk) 22:11, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Strange, google translates it as "cutting". The wiktionary page on ciąć cites tnąc as being the present adverbial participle, so maybe that's what was meant. Or is there still a problem with that? Since the word is trying to highlight the initial tn, is there another word that would be better in your opinion? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 05:20, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Google translate is a piece of garbage mate, especially if it comes to Polish. I've changed it to "tnąc", the present adverbial participle of the verb "ciąć". "Tnąć" doesn't exist. --89.76.168.131 (talk) 23:24, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

That must mean Wiktionary is also problematic. The specific word we use isn't important, so it's not worth quibbling about. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 23:47, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Quality of y

There has been some contention between an anonymous user and JøMa about the vowel commonly transcribed as ⟨ɨ⟩. Based on the vowel chart from Jassem (2003), the anonymous user has edited several articles to reflect the notion that the Polish vowel transcribed as ⟨ɨ⟩ is not phonetically [ɨ] but is instead a more open [ɘ]. The edits in question include moving the Polish example of the vowel from Close central unrounded vowel to Close-mid central unrounded vowel and altering the IPA link (though not the IPA transcription) at Polish phonology and WP:IPA for Polish.

I bring this up here to provide an outlet for discussion between the parties involved. While Jassem (2003) seems adequate to me, JøMa has argued (e.g. in this edit summary) that there is a body of literature that contradicts Jassem. However, the one source provided so far, this poster, only shows that the vowel is transcribed as ⟨ɨ⟩, something consistent with the anonymous user's edits (they have been careful about clarifying that the vowel is often transcribed with ⟨ɨ⟩, even if it's phonetically different). Perhaps, JøMa, you can provide more sources (and even relevant quotes for difficult-to-access sources) to strengthen your position that the vowel in question is indeed close and not close-mid. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 05:32, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Good to see this topic being brought up mate. I myself couldn't care less if someone uses /ɨ/ or /ɘ/ in their transcription. However, if RP /ʌ/ is [ɐ̝], and we have it on the page dedicated for it, instead of leaving it here and equipping it with diactricts of lowering and centralization [ʌ̞̈], (which would be a nonsense basically), then why not by analogy do the same here. Or at least if you revert my edits, it's a lot more reasonable to move it here, instead of moving it back there, since it's quite far from cardinal [ɨ] anyway, given that we've got the near-close central unrounded vowel halfway through between /ɘ/ and /ɨ/. --89.76.168.131 (talk) 23:20, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Y - allophones?

[4] - type "myszy" and hit speaker button. The two vowel sounds are clearly different, I couldn't find any explanation here. Does /ɨ/ become [ɯ] in final position or something? - filelakeshoe 20:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

They sound the same to me. Pokajanje|Talk 04:39, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Polish ⟨y⟩ is normally realized as close-mid near-front unrounded vowel [ɘ̟], but it's quite possible that it's central [ɘ] in some positions. Either way, we need a source for that. Peter238 (talk) 10:55, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

Mouseover tooltips for IPA template

At Help talk:IPA for Polish#Mouseover tooltips for IPA template I started a discussion on whether a pronunciation key tooltips should be included in the {{IPAc-pl}} template (similar to the ones used by the {{IPAc-en}}). Please join and say what you think about the idea. //Halibutt 07:40, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

kmin is not caraway

kmin = cumin kminek = caraway

123unoduetre (talk) 20:46, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Edit warring

@146.96.147.111: Stop using the 'revert' function to reply to me.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying "standard phonological feature of the phoneme". As far as I know, phonology doesn't bother itself with phonetic realization of phonemes, only phonemes themselves. Transcriptions inside brackets are phonetic, not phonemic representations of words (though, of course, they can at times look identical, especially when the phonetic transcription isn't very narrow - but they'd still be differentiated by whether they are enclosed within brackets [...] (which is a 'phonetic transcription') or slashes /.../ (which is a 'phonemic transcription'). And it's not the issue we're discussing anyway).

One more thing: you do not understand what the [˭,̚] diacritics mean in IPA. The first means 'unaspirated' (as in English sport [sp˭ɔɹt] (which is an entirely different thing than the /t/ in 'trzysta'), the second one means 'no audible release' (as in English good game [ɡʊd̚ ɡeɪm]), and you can't use it to transcribe affricates, as an affricate is a stop released into a fricative.

It is totally wrong to say that Polish doesn't contrast stop-fricative sequences from affricates. Of course it does. The source is The Phonology of Polish by Gussmann, page 7.

I'm reverting. I'm sure you've made up those transcriptions.

Here's the Handbook of the IPA. Please read from page 28 onwards.

Wikipedia is not your personal blog. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:58, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Clearly you don't understand the usage of [◌˭] very well. [◌˭] means unaspirated release and [◌^h] means aspirated release. If you want, I can pronounce [sp̚ɔɹt] to you (it's going to be very weird to you) and I literally mean [sp̚ɔɹt] rather than [sp̚ʔɔɹt]. Below is the issue, or the reason I insist using strict IPA here:

[ʈ͡ʂ] vs [ʈ̚ʂ] and [ʈ̚ʂ] vs [t˭ʂ], which difference is phonemical?

Apparently, Polish makes some distinction between [ʈ͡ʂ] and [t˭ʂ]. Do we have any source proofing that this is indeed a affricate - stop-fricative distinction rather than a [ʈ] - [t] difference?

In Polish there's no independent [ʈ], so we have at least two explanations:

1. [ʈ] is a phoneme in Polish which only occurs before [ʂ]. Whether or not to be an affricate is not a phonemical distinction.
2. [ʈ] is an allophone of the phoneme [t] before [ʂ]. Whether or not to be an affricate is a phonemical distinction.
3. Some other cases, such as [ʈ] is an allophone of [ʈ͡ʂ], or audible release matters here, etc.

If you can present a source stating [ʈ͡ʂ]=[ʈ̚ʂ]≠[t˭ʂ], then the first explanations is the case; if you can present a source stating [ʈ͡ʂ]≠[ʈ̚ʂ]=[t˭ʂ], then the second explanations the case. Otherwise, if this is still an open problem, which I believe is the case, we have to stay with the strict IPA until linguists do some work (e.g. by asking native Polish speakers listen to [ˈʈ̚ʂɨsta] and tell what they have heard). --146.96.147.111 (talk) 00:21, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

It wasn't [˭] that I called 'no audible release' but the second symbol.

Sorry, but you're again proving that you don't know much about phonetics. Your *[ˈʈ̚ʂɨsta] (which is actually impossible to pronounce) can only be pronounced [ʈ̚ | ˈʂɨsta], with a slight pause after the stop. Any native speaker would hear '(pause) szysta'. If you were to stutter out the word without a pause after the plosive, the result would have to be a stop released into a fricative, not matter how delayed (that's why a stuttered out 'czysta' would still be understood as such). That's how our body works.

Please don't talk about 'strict IPA' if you can't actually apply it. Mr KEBAB (talk) 00:35, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

• You didn't call [˭] 'no audible release' and I didn't say you called it that way. The point is, you missed the essential meaning of [˭]: it explicitly requires releaseness.
• You are right that in 80% of the case [ˈʈ̚ʂɨsta] will be [(pause) ˈʂɨsta] unless to a worm staying in the speaker's mouth. However this is not always the case. In Slavic languages, certain consonants are "prereleased". I'm joking I mean, there is usually phonation, but not a vowel, before the blocking procedure. Try to list some Russian word start with r, when some speaker pronounced it as if there's a [ə] before, and some linguists recorded it as a superscript [^ə]. So it's perfectly ok to pronounce a distinguishable [ˈʈ̚ʂɨsta].
• And by the way, I was always talking about the distinction between [t] and [ʈ] and never discuss into any audible release (the only reason I listed 3. Some other cases, such as blah, blah, etc. there was that I didn't want to be assertive). Why don't you keep evading the issue and talking about insignificant details? Do you want to solve the dispute or you just enjoy labeling others some meaningless phrases like nonsense, understand nothing, etc. Come directly to the distinction among [ʈ͡ʂ], [ʈ̚ʂ], and [t˭ʂ], or if you would like, [ɖ͡ʐ], [ɖ̚ʐ], and [d˭ʐ] (don't tell me you will hear only a pause when [ɖ̚] is at the beginning @Mr KEBAB:). --146.96.147.111 (talk) 01:08, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

P.S. I reverted your edit because I thought you were just ignoring the discussion. Sorry for my rush. --146.96.147.111 (talk) 01:27, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Releasedness (if I may call it that way) is not the essential meaning of [˭], it's just one of its meanings. Please read tenuis consonant. Transcriptions such as *[ʈ˭ʂ, ɖ˭ʐ] do not explicitly denote stop-fricative sequences as opposed to the affricates (which are stops released into fricatives).

Let me quote something: Affricates are stops in which the release of the constriction is modified in such a way as to produce a more prolonged period of frication after the release. (from The Sounds of the World's Languages, page 90). You cannot transcribe Polish affricates [ʈ̚ʂ, ɖ̚ʐ] etc. It's totally wrong.

As far as phonemicity goes, Polish has phonemic stops /t, d/ (note the slashes, which are needed when you're talking about phonemes), phonemic affricates /t͡s, d͡z, t͡ʂ, d͡ʐ, t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/ (or however you want to transcribe them, as long as it's correct IPA) and phonemic fricatives /s, z, ʂ, ʐ, ɕ, ʑ/. For sources, see Polish phonology#Bibliography, e.g. Rocławski (1976) or Gussmann (2007). The stop components of the affricates are different in each of the 3 cases; in both /t͡s, d͡z/ and /t͡ʂ, d͡ʐ/, they're unpalatalized laminal alveolar, pronounced with the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, with the tip lowered in comparison with the stops /t, d/, though more so in the case of /t͡s, d͡z/. The stop components in /t͡ɕ, d͡ʑ/ are practically the same as in /t͡ʂ, d͡ʐ/, except that they're slightly further front and palatalized (so we can call them laminal alveolo-palatal). I think Rocławski (1976) discusses this in detail. For the case of simplicity, I'm writing the stop components ⟨t, d⟩ in all cases - the IPA allows that (see the Handbook). Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:51, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you a lot!

• I think you have made an extraordinary claim: you described an (unpalatalized laminal) alveolar stop released into a(n) (unpalatalized laminal) retroflex, which is an "affricate" with two different places of articulation (presumably a continuous moving of one's tongue without detaching from one's mouth throughout the entire phonation). If that is possible then [k̺͡θ̺], where [k̺] is produced by touching one's soft palate with the tip of one's tongue (subapical) and [θ̺] is half apical half laminal, is a legal phone (if you find it too hard to make [k] into a coronal consonant, think about [ʈ̺͡θ̺]). I'd say I was really not very into phonetics: I didn't know that one affricate can have two places of articulation (Did you mean that?). --146.96.147.111 (talk) 02:59, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

No problem. No, I didn't mean to say that. All sources I'm aware of say that Polish affricates are homorganic. For heterorganic affricates, see Affricate consonant#Heterogranic affricates.

Can you even produce [k̺] without your tongue hurting like hell? I can't. An 'affricate' like *[k̺͡θ̺] doesn't seem to be possible at all. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:30, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: I don't get what you mean by claiming a alveolar-retroflex "homorganic" affricate. It is not about whether we write /t͡ʂ/ instead of /ʈ͡ʂ/ for the case of simplicity, but whether the stop consonant of Polish /t͡ʂ/ is unpalatalized laminal alveolar. I do not read Polish so I don't know what was written exactly in Rocławski (1976).

1. If Rocławski (1976) explicitly described that the stop consonant of Polish /t͡ʂ/ was alveolar (which means it's an alveolar-retroflex heterogranic affricate), then it is a valid source of [ʈ͡ʂ]≠[ʈʂ]=[tʂ], and czysta vs trzysta can be used as a minimal pair for "affricate - stop-fricative distinction" in Polish.
2. If Rocławski (1976) didn't describe the stop consonant of Polish /t͡ʂ/ as alveolar, it is a homorganic affricate [ʈ͡ʂ], then we'd have to stay with the strict IPA (phonetic rather than phonemic) description until one of the two explanations (as I said at 00:21, 23 March 2017 (UTC)) are shown to be true by some valid source. Note that phonetic description is mandatory when detailed phonemic description ([ʈ͡ʂ] vs. [ʈ̚.ʂ] vs. [t˭ʂ], which two should be grouped into one phoneme) is not available.

From what I heard in Wikipedia recording, czysta clearly has a [ʈ] (homorganic), and the difference between czysta and trzysta is [ʈ̚] vs [t˭]. --146.96.147.111 (talk) 23:49, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm ending this discussion. You have problems with reading comprehension and keep using the totally wrong symbol [ʈ̚] after I explained that it's impossible for it to occur in czysta. (Redacted) Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:53, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:Did you read my second point on 01:08, 23 March 2017 (UTC) about why [ʈ̚] is possible and correct at the beginning of a word like [ʈ̚.ʂ]ysta? I assumed that you fully understood that and it turns out that you didn't. I wish you didn't ignore it and arbitrarily labeling others.

• And by the way I have never claimed that [ʈ̚.ʂ]ysta is an allophonic realization of czysta.--146.96.147.111 (talk) 00:00, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Allophones of [t̪] and [d̪]

[Rocławski (1976), pp. 136 and 179] is very interesting, as it describes the allophone of [t̪] and [d̪] before [ʈ͡ʂ] and [ɖ͡ʐ] but not before [ʂ] and [ʐ]. This is a strong indication that the stop-fricative clusters and affricates might be phonemically different, if the allophones are retroflex.

Can anyone see what exactly did Rocławski described that allophone? If they are laminal retroflex consonants we should write [ʈ] and [ɖ]. since we have already write ʂ when every source mistakenly wrote ʃ, there's no point not to apply t->ʈ altogether. --146.96.147.111 (talk) 01:00, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Velar nasal as a separate phoneme

The article says that the velar nasal is an allophone of /n/ in front of velars. Edmund Gussman in the Phonology of Polish (p.12) argues for the velar nasal as a separate phoneme, mentioning that minimal pairs such as łąka [wɔŋka] 'meadow' and łonka [wɔnka] 'bosom, dim. nom. pl.' can be found. He does mention that the velar nasal has a highly restrictive distribution, appearing only before velar plosives and that the second word is morphologically complex, which shouldn't matter as morphology is usually seen as independent of phonology. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.241.31.169 (talk) 22:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

There are probably ways of analyzing that phoneme away, but it doesn't seem like we can call it an allophone of /n/ if [n] can appear in that context. I vaguely recall a source saying that velar assimilation of nasals is not really a thing in Polish (it isn't in Russian except for a few loanwords). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:35, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: Eee, what source would claim such stupidity? Nasal //N// before velar k, g, and h gets velarised to [ŋ] ALWAYS. The article the guy above mentions is only about the dying North-Eastern dialects near the border with Lithuania and Belarus where they don't velarise their "n". However, nowadays, one can only hear [ŋ] in such positions in standard Polish. Shumkichi (talk) 03:49, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

That's not true. Piosenka varies between /pjɔˈsɛnka/ and /pjɔˈsɛŋka/ in Polish. I'm using phonemic slashes here since the difference between /n/ and /ŋ/ is phonemic in Polish, see Jassem 2003 and Gussmann 2007. Sol505000 (talk) 16:28, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Palatalized velars

I'm at a complete loss for why palatalized velars are listed as separate phonemes, but not other consonants. You can either analyze Polish as having palatalized consonants and then you list them all (so /pʲ/ as in pies /pʲɛs/, /kʲ/ as in kiedy /kʲɛdɨ/, /vʲ/ as in wiać, etc.), or you analyze them as sequences of consonant + /j/ (so you don't list palatalized consonants and pies is transcribed /pjɛs/, kiedy - /kjɛdɨ/, wiać - /vjatɕ/) - as actually mentioned in the article. Then why on Earth does the article list kʲ and gʲ but not pʲ and bʲ? Are you telling me there's a difference in pronunciation of consonant + «i» in pies, wiać and kiedy? Please someone tell me what is going on... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.146.224.55 (talk) 00:00, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Absolutely agree! [kj gj] occur only before [a o u y], and [k g] occur only before [e] [i], so they're in complementary distribution, which means they're allophones, not phonemes. How have they survived in the table for so long? I think the error is so crass and serious that I'm removing them forthwith. Farnwell (talk) 16:25, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Shouldn't that be the opposite? Do you have a source? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:01, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I wrote without proper thought (and yes, they're the wrong way round), and you were right to revert the edit. However, I still think that they're pretty inescapably allophones, not phonemes, for three reasons: (1) there's no single-letter spelling that shows the contrast (you have to use two letters); (2) native speakers can't hear the difference; (3) the only breach to complementary distribution is half-a-dozen loanwords beginning with <ke>. I'll post more fully in the next few days. My analysis might be Original Research, and therefore inadmissible on Wikipedia, but I've posted a "low functional load" caveat for this contrast in the article - that at least shouldn't be controversial. - Farnwell (talk) 11:17, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

It still needs a source. I've put a citation tag on the claim in question and removed your signature from the article (which I'm assuming was an accident). I'll give you a few days to provide a source before I remove it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:05, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

But it doesn't even matter if they have a low functional load or not. /pʲ bʲ/ are not listed as phonemes, so neither should /kʲ gʲ/. Or they should both be listed. It's not a matter of sources, but of logic. Especially given the fact that, as Farnwell mentioned, k-kʲ and g-gʲ are almost in complementary distribution, while p-pʲ and b-bʲ are not (lots of minimal pairs in the case of the latter: bada - biada, buro - biuro, bierze - beże, etc.; no minimal pairs for the former). As for the sources, Polish ones usually list all palatalized consonants as phonemes. For example, Słownik Ortograficzny PWN says: "There are 43 consonants in the modern Polish language: p pʲ b bʲ f fʲ v vʲ m mʲ t tʲ d dʲ n ɲ w l lʲ r rʲ j s ɕ sʲ z ʑ zʲ t͡s t͡ɕ t͡sʲ d͡z d͡ʑ d͡ʒ t͡ʃ ʃ ʒ k kʲ g gʲ x xʲ" (transcription to IPA mine, they use the Slavic notation). For me personally such analysis is unnecessary, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you transcribe it /pʲes/, /pjes/, /pʲjes/, /pi̯es/ or whatever. The point is, if you transcribe "pies" as /pʲes/, you should transcribe "kiedy" as /kʲedɨ/; and if you transcribe "pies" as /pjes/, you should transcribe "kiedy" as /kjedɨ/. The article as for now mixes analyses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.146.96.83 (talk) 10:44, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it must be a matter of sources. You can't apply logic to phonemic inventories like that. The article briefly discusses the rationale for omitting palatalized labials, but there is merit to providing sourcing for this justification, as well as bringing in sources that analyze the language as Słownik Ortograficzny does (kind of like we do for the vowel analyses of Russian at Russian phonology. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:17, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Nobody transcribes "pies" as /pʲjes/. Whether the sequence [pʲj] (because that's what it is phonetically, the soft character of the first consonant is undisputable) is analyzed as /pʲ/ or /pj/ is an either-or issue. The transcription /pi̯es/ is also pretty much impossible to find in the literature (in sources that use IPA). The transcription of the mid front vowel does vary between ⟨e⟩ and ⟨ɛ⟩ by the way. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:12, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Vowel heights

Are we sure it is 4x(2:1:2:1)? 2x3(close&close-mid merged; open-mid&open merged) is a simpler explanation of Polish vowel system. Erkinalp9035 (talk) 16:26, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, I agree. Does my recent edit to the vowel chart reflect your thinking? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:30, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

If /ɨ/ belongs with the close series /i, u/, then /a/ belongs with the open series /ɛ, ɔ/. The differences in height are basically the same, the peripheral vowels are about two heights closer than the central ones. Sol505000 (talk) 16:30, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

ɜ

"The central vowel [ɜ] is an unstressed allophone of /ɛ, ɔ, a/ in certain contexts."

In what contexts? The article doesn't mention it at all... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.146.102.64 (talk) 06:28, 25 September 2018 (UTC)

[w] in impossible (?) positions

What happens to [w] in words like przemysł and łza? Is it even possible to have [w] in this position? Well, for me it isn't, but per se I wonder. The recordings at wiktionary sound to me like [ˈpʃɛmɨsu] and [wuˈza] or perhaps [wɨˈza]. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.70.71.22 (talk) 18:14, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

This sounds more like an issue of orthography, rather than phonology. The recording for przemysł definitely sounds like [ˈpʂɛmɨsu], but łza sounds like [wza], which might go against sonority hierarchy/Sonority Sequencing Principle, but that's nothing new with Slavic languages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

It's probable that the two words don't have exactly the same [w] sound. In przemysł, it's probably slightly longer and vowel-like (EDIT: the way I see it, it's too constricted to be vowel-like, so it's not like Polish [u]), but it's still not an unstressed [u] as in domu. I'd say it's a sound somewhere in-between the typical Polish [w] and [u].

I agree with Aeusoes1 that łza has a canonical [w] sound. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 20:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

I think [ˈpʂɛmɨsw̩] and [ˈpʂɛ.mɨs.w̩] are acceptable narrow transcriptions of przemysł. I think the last consonant should be considered to be syllabic, at least in this pronunciation variant. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 23:07, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! But what is [w̩] anyway? I'd have thought [w̩] to be just another way of writing [u]. What's the difference? And with the other word I didn't mean that it sounded like [uˈza], which it clearly doesn't. But it does sound dissyllabic to me, is it not? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.76.16.83 (talk) 00:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

By writing it [w̩] I'm trying to convey the fact that it's more close, rounded and tense than Polish [u] which clearly isn't the same as the cardinal [u] (see cardinal vowels). Polish [u] is something in-between the canonical values of the IPA signs ⟨u⟩ and ⟨ʊ⟩ (the latter isn't a cardinal vowel though, it's something in-between cardinal [u], [ʉ] and [o]), though it is closer to cardinal [u]. This is one of the reasons we have so much trouble differentiating /uː/ and /ʊ/ in Standard German - we produce the former as too short, insufficiently rounded, somewhat too open and too lax, whereas our attempts at SG /ʊ/ end up to be too close and perhaps too strongly rounded (German /ʊ/ has consistent weak rounding, whereas Polish /u/ has a rather variable one).

I would argue that what I write [w̩] is even closer than Standard German /uː/, which is pretty much a perfect cardinal [u]. I'd say it has the phonetic quality of an approximant and the length of an unstressed vowel. So even in fully narrow IPA [w̩] and [u] would probably not denote exactly the same sounds.

I know. I think neither of us (at least I didn't) implied that you consider that recording of łza to sound like [uˈza]. I speak Polish natively (not that it's very important here, just saying), and to me the word doesn't sound disyllabic. As I've already said, to me [w] in that word sounds exactly the same as the canonical labiovelar approximant in words such as ładny. I hear no difference between them. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 01:12, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

It acts like one syllable, even if it sounds like there may be a hint of a second. (Not a native speaker, but know some of the language.) In singing, after a vowel it might sometimes sound like an elision with the previous vowel and /u/, but it will still be one syllable. You can hear this in Aleksandra Kurzak's recording of Chopin's Polish songs (she takes some of them, Mariusz Kwiecień the others): in Op. 74 No. 2 (Wiosna) we have two consecutive lines "W oku łza się kręci. / Łza wybiegła z oka!", and you can hear this happen between the lines. A similar thing happens with things like the n in piosnka (possible poetic form of piosenka "song", appears in the same poem); it is not treated as a separate syllable, though it may sound like a short one is briefly present. I think this is similar to the phenomenon John Wells described on his blog about names like Gdynia and Gdańsk:

“ It wasn’t until I first visited Poland, when I was twenty, that I discovered that in Polish the initial plosives in Gdańsk ɡdaj̃sk and Gdynia ˈɡdɨɲa are not like the English gd in hugged. Rather, when my Polish friends demonstrated the pronunciation to me, they released the velar plosive BEFORE completing the approach for the dental. This inevitably gave rise to a tiny transitional vocoid between the two hold phases, but it was not long enough to count as a separate schwa segment (compare the definite schwa in English Godiva). ”

Double sharp (talk) 14:29, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I've totally forgotten about this thread, but anyway: When I visited Poland in 2019, I actually asked four native speakers to pronounce this word for me. It doesn't really take a trained phonetician to hear [ˈpʂɛmɨsw̩] for przemysł, with three syllables. The colloquial form [ˈpʂɛmɨs] has two syllables, and apparently so does the underlying phonemic structure: /ˈpʂɛmɨsw/. I guess Polish phonology doesn't account for syllabic consonants on a phonetic level (I was also told that tylko is sometimes pronounced [ˈtl̩kɔ], which is very Czech/Slovak to that person's ear).

I agree that this [w̩] is not the same as Polish /u/. Sol505000 (talk) 09:59, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

ŋ

I think the only acceptable situation where [ŋ] appears is as a substitution for the disappearing nasals in Polish like in "dziękuję". However, like in Russian and unlike many other languages, normal N in front of velars like in "bank" shouldn't turn into a velar [ŋ]. --81.18.214.118 (talk) 22:47, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

• Eee, I and everyone I know pronounce "bank" and every single word ending in "-nk/ng" with a velar [ŋ]. Stop spreading misinformation. Shumkichi (talk) 03:42, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Soft consonants not included in article

On consonant table are soft versions of "ch", "g" and "k", but there are missing soft "m", "b", "p", "d", "t", "w", "f" and "l". Maybe I'm wrong, but I think this is mistake. Szmomsz (talk) 08:26, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

The table lists just phonemes. The soft variants of those consonants are conditional allophones, not separate phonemes. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:23, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

So why in article about russian phonology they are included? In IPA they are the same. Szmomsz (talk) 12:38, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@Szmomsz: Because in Russian they are phonemes. In Polish they aren't, at least not according to most of the recent analyses. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:04, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much Szmomsz (talk) 14:19, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I mean why soft "h", "g", and "k" are recognized as phonemes Szmomsz (talk) 14:35, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Usually, the analysis rests on the presence of minimal pairs, or sets of words that are distinguished by only one sound. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:56, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

What minimal pairs would distinguish soft "h", "g", and "k" from their plain counterparts? I am still unconvinced as to why there is a palatalized velar series without an accompanying palatalized labial series. For instance, the Wikipedia article has a table which shows that plain "k" is found in kmin /kmin/ and that palatalized "k" is found in kiedy /kʲɛdɨ/; I can make the same argument that plain "p" is found in pas /pas/ and that palatalized "p" is found in pięć /pʲɛ̃t͡ɕ/. In truth, I would go the other way and suggest that instead of having both a palatalized velar series and a palatalized labial series, that both series (including the palatalized velar series) should not be included as Polish phonemes for a reason in the next sentence. Unlike the consonants in the palatal series (which themselves are the palatalized versions of the alveolar series /t/→/t͡ɕ/, /d/→/d͡ʑ/, /s/→/ɕ/, /z/→/ʑ/) and /l/ (which is pointed out in this talk page to historically be the palatalized version of the current /w/), a palatalized velar or palatalized labial consonant can't precede another consonant nor end a word. Hence you can have words like pas /pas/, paś /paɕ/, ukośnik /ukɔɕɲik/, chciwość /xt͡ɕivɔɕt͡ɕ/, and mam /mam/ but something like */ukɔɕɲikʲ/, */xʲt͡ɕivɔɕt͡ɕ/ or */mamʲ/ are impossible. Because of that, there is no (need to make a) separate letter/digraph for palatalized velars and labials, as they don't contrast with their plain counterparts, nor with their plain counterparts + /j/. If pięć is transcribed as /pjɛ̃t͡ɕ/, it would only be valid to transcribe kiedy as /kjɛdɨ/ for consistency's sake.

TLDR: As far as I know, palatalized velars and palatalized labials share the exact same phonological properties that doesn't make them contrastable to a plain velar/labial + /j/ sequence, despite the fact that only the palatalized velars are phonemic according to Wikipedia. I believe that there is an error that should be corrected on the main page, or that an explanation on the main page should be inserted to explain the phonemicity of the palatalized velars. Thank you. Excusememoi (talk) 04:49, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Our policy on not doing your own research/analysis says to rely instead on reliable sources. In this case, at least one of the sources cited in the article provides word lists to show contrasts. Jassem (2003), who doesn't consider soft [xʲ] to be a separate phoneme, provides the near-minimal pairs kielnia ('a trowel') vs. kelner ('waiter'), drogie ('dear [nom. pl.]' vs drogę 'way [acc. sing.]'). I don't have access to Rocławski (1976), so I don't know if that source provides relevant minimal pairs for the soft/hard velar fricative.

Looking through the article history, I can see that Jassem (2003) was cited as the source for the table (with /xʲ/ listed as a phoneme, even though this source does not say as much). Then the citation to Jassem was removed and Ahls23 added the citation to Rocławski (1976) but turned the table into one that included allophones. Kbb2 converted the table to its current form without removing xʲ. So perhaps either of these two editors can provide clarification on the matter. If not, we can restore the citation to Jassem (2003) and conform the table to what's in that source. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:57, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: This is how the table should look like. AFAICS the close central vowel is clearly non-phonemic, and its allophonic status is (to me at least) even clearer than it is in Russian (where it can occur word-initially - in Polish, it can't). Thoughts? I based most of it on Gussmann and The Slavonic Languages. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:09, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

If there is scholarly dispute about the phonemicity of ⟨y⟩, then it would make sense to include all of those sounds, though perhaps marking the ones that would be considered allophones if ⟨y⟩ represents an independent phoneme. Putting them in parentheses is an easy option, though we could also have fun and mess with colors. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:45, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

I would love a table plus explanation like what you gave to appear in the main article. I was initially surprised by the amount of soft consonants that you suggested, but you did explain that you're also accounting consonants only found in loanwords. In this case, it would good to have the loanword-only phonemes be complemented with an asterisk/footnote or in parentheses to show that. I was also surprised to see that /l/ is also a hard consonant as well as a soft one, but you have explained how it was historically considered soft but now reinterpreted as hard by modern speakers, which explains why /w/ is a liquid as well as a glide. You even included an explanation saying that palatal consonants are the only soft consonants to exist word-final and that all other soft consonants occur in other positions and can instead be analyzed as allophones of hard consonants following /j/ (preceding a vowel that's not [i] or [ɨ]) or /i/. Excusememoi (talk) 23:52, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

@Kbb2: "Clearly non-phonemic" - honey, pls, do you understand what the word "phoneme" means? [ɨ] is a separate phoneme as it contrasts with [i] but ONLY in open syllables after nasal consonants. In all the other environments, the two are allophones, albeit in free variation so that they may appear phonemic in such cases, hence the confusion. Also, the most recent borrowings from English have enabled the consonants that were always followed only by [i] or only by [ɨ] to be also followed by the other vowel (e.g. czipsy, tir). This is one of the arguments made by authors who claim that [ɨ] is a phoneme in ALL environments (I disagree with them, though). Shumkichi (talk) 22:31, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

First of all, I'd refraing from using such patronizing language. I don't know what is meant by "In all the other environments, the two are allophones, albeit in free variation so that they may appear phonemic in such cases, hence the confusion." What you're saying is at odds with every source that I've read. I don't recall any source that considers [ɨ] to be non-phonemic (maybe The Slavonic Languages does that, I'm not sure). Why on earth would my be /mɨ/ but ty /ti/? You said it yourself that tir is pronounced [tir], so this makes zero sense! I think it is you who needs to learn the definition of a phoneme. Sol505000 (talk) 16:37, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of the alveolo-palatals and y

While the article argues that ć, ś, ź, and dź are pronounced /t͡ɕ/, /ɕ/, /ʑ/, and /d͡ʑ/, respectively. However, any native Polish speaker will tell you that this is not how these letters are realised, and it is pretty evident that their pronunciation is distinct from that of Russian ч, щ, жь (as in позже), and джь, respectively. Instead, the Polish set is softer than the Russian set is pronounced more like /t͡ɕsʲ/, /ɕsʲ/, /ʑzʲ/, and /d͡ʑzʲ/ than what the article argues they are pronounced.

I have an additional issue with the transcription of y as /ɨ/, which is only the correct transcription when y is in between two consonants, while in any other case it's pronounced closer to /ɪ/ or even /ʏ/, but this issue was already raised before, so I won't bother to raise it again. YourAverageMax (talk) 23:28, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Do you have sources to back up your claims? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:40, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

If I had any sources, I'd go ahead and implement the changes myself. However, if we look at Wikimedia recordings of Polish words by native Poles, we can already see that the current transcription is inaccurate: for example, compare and ), where the last consonant is different between the two words, although even that's not the best example. I'm sure there should be sources which describe this phenomenon, but I just can't find them. YourAverageMax (talk) 11:37, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Then also take a listen to any of the audio files provided in this link, and tell me whether Polish ć is closer to Slovak /c/ or Russian /t͡ɕ/. To me, it seems like many Polish speakers pronounce ć identically to how Slovaks pronounce their soft "t"s, while the rest still pronounce it as a /c/ but with a slightly more palatalised realisation. The same is true for /ɟ/. I don't know what the equivalents of these two would be for ś and ź. YourAverageMax (talk) 11:56, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

No, the Polish alveolo-palatal set is represented correctly in the article as the tongue is in the position between the soft palate and the alveolar ridge, unlike the Czech and Slovak consonants wich are completely palatal. Can people stop doing this folk "lingustics" and look up X-ray tests, for example? Shumkichi (talk) 22:37, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I have an additional issue with the transcription of y as /ɨ/, which is only the correct transcription when y is in between two consonants, while in any other case it's pronounced closer to /ɪ/ or even /ʏ/, but this issue was already raised before, so I won't bother to raise it again. You have an excellent ear. Polish /ɨ/ is sometimes weakly rounded to [ɵ]. /ɨ/ is a phonemic transcription, so we can use only one symbol for it. ⟨ɨ⟩ was chosen because [ɨ] is the closest cardinal vowel to it. The closest IPA symbol in terms of the actual pronunciation is [ɘ] - or, sometimes, [ɵ], when you're doing a very narrow transcription. As the sounds are often depicted as higher than close-mid on the various vowel charts, ⟨ᵻ ᵿ⟩ may be even better if you're prepared to use non-IPA symbols. Polish ⟨y⟩ is definitely more central than front. It is in-between your typical English KIT vowel [ɪ] and the properly central American schwi sound [ɪ̈] used in the unstressed syllables of words such as wanted, roses, Lenin and Lennon (I forced myself to learn both, so I think that I know what I'm talking about). To my ears, Polish /ɨ/ varies between the latter (especially in running speech) and a slightly fronter sound, but it lacks the definitive spread lips found in the aforementioned English sounds. In that regard it is, AFAIK, much like the Northern German /ɪ/. I'm not aware of any in-depth research that touches on this, but my shallow impression is that /ɨ/ is spread mostly in emphatic speech (probably more so in stressed syllables than those that are unstressed), whereas in running speech the lips are either neutral or slightly rounded. The closest English vowel to it seems to be the Southern English /ʊ/, but even that is not a perfect match (the back rounded [ʊ] used by older speakers and in Multicultural London English is nowhere near the allophonic range of the Polish /ɨ/, it's only the fronter variants that are close to it).

Regarding the alveolo-palatals, I'm not really sure what you're talking about. There's no glide from [ɕ ʑ] to [sʲ zʲ]. We don't even have the latter sounds, except in loanwords (such as sinus [ˈsʲinus] 'sine') before /i/ - and even then, the palatalization is so weak that it is no match for Russian [sʲ zʲ], which historically largely correspond to Polish [ɕ ʑ]. Sol505000 (talk) 16:41, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

j̃

O dear, so many years and Wikipedia keeps claiming that Gdańsk is [ɡdaɲsk] instead of [ɡdaj̃sk] (even though this very page contains an account by John Wells, a mainstream phonetician, to be sure, with the latter pronunciation given), and that gęś is [gɛ̃ɕ], not [gɛj̃ɕ]. Yes, you can speak like this, but it sounds hypercorrect, conceited or dialectal. It might even soon become an old-fashioned pronunciation, the way most people nowadays inadvertently pick up hypercorrect pronunciations from the TV (e.g. jabłko as ['jabwkɔ] instead of ['japkɔ], myśl as [mɨɕl] instead of [mɨɕ], mógł as [mugw] instead of [muk], kłuć as [kwut͡ɕ] instead of [kut͡ɕ], tułów, tułowia as ['tuwuf tu'wovʲa] instead of ['twuf 'twovʲa], niesamowity as [ˌɲɛsamɔ'vʲitɨ] instead of [ˌɲɛsːamɔ'vʲitɨ] etc.), but so far it's still the most natural pronunciation (maybe except after [i], e.g. Mińsk, where the diphthong sounds perhaps too close too [ij], as there used to be Polish dialects with [j] instead of [j̃] or [ɲ] in the syllable coda in at least similar contexts). I'd need too dig up some sources (I've seen at least two while in the varsity), for the time being I'm just leaving a heads-up. 89.64.13.33 (talk) 21:13, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, Gdańsk transcribes it with j̃ and this article notes both pronunciations. Is there another place that transcribes in the way that you talk about? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 02:26, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

One source for the gęś as [gɛj̃ɕ] series seems to be https://books.google.pl/books?id=ey8ZAQAAIAAJ&q=szczelinowymi (first hit, strona 55) but I don't have access to it, I can't verify it. 89.64.69.33 (talk) 01:26, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Eee? Where the hell did you get some of these pronunciations? Yes, "jabłko" is always [japkɔ], but "mógł" is [muk] ONLY in very casual and fast speech; in isolation, I'd always pronounce it [mugw]. "Kłuć" is usually pronounced [kwut͡ɕ], even in fast speech, at least in my region. "Myśl" is also usually [mɨɕl̥]. I've never heard anyone say [twuf] or [ˌɲɛsːamɔ'vʲitɨ] (now, you must've come up with the latter; I'd only say it like that if I wanted to put stress on the word but it would still sound super weird). Stop making things up. Shumkichi (talk) 22:42, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

You were only born in this century, weren't you? Except for "myś" (though I'm not sure at this point), all examples were still standard (spelt standardowy, but still pronounced "standartowy" then) in Warsaw in the nineties (at least among ordinary people, not some high-falluting intelligentsia). I could add "przeczkole" for przedszkole (as sung by children in the intro to Domowe przedszkole).

• Jabłko is no longer "japko" unless you really make an effort to avoid picking up the brave new pronunciation. Same for "gark-" (garnk-)
• "(-)myśl" had to be pronounced without l, or else it's impossible to understand how "(-)krésić" became "(-)kréslić". The contamination must've started while é was still the order of the day & thus both verb groups had identical rimes in the imperative. As to the immediate cause, my bet would be on catechisms and schoolbooks, where imperative sentences abound.
• "Mógł" and other verb forms ending in [-Cw] are mentioned by Perlin (PDF page 14--18).
• According to Jan Tokarski's Traktat o ortografii polskiej (1979), all [(-)wu-] pronunciations are hypercorrect, not just [kwut͡ɕ]. He actually refers to the jocular spelling "Uć" for Łódź as fully phonetic! I'm not sure how accurate his observations were (he was from Podlachia, [w] for ł wasn't his original pronunciation), but if he was right, it's amazing how just a few decades of Prussian-style schooling, mass media exposure and shaming by state-sponsored prescriptivists wreaked havoc on the language (and this is before counting all the dialects that disappeared instead of keeping up getting slowly influenced by the "standard" language).
• As for "tłów", try googling it (along with the quotes). You'll see prescriptivist sites popping up, for a reason.
• "Nessamowytyj" with long s (the word is originally Ukrainian, not Polish) was already noted by Oskar Kolberg in Podolia in the 19th century, no need to make it up (and yes, it was probably caused by frequent emphasis on this word).

Two atrocities more:

• Pojedyńczy is getting ousted by the spelling pronunciation, even though the current spelling ("pojedynczy") resulted from a typo (information from a series of lectures by Zygmunt Saloni).
• Sześćset has been pronounced as if spelt "szejset" for centuries, but the etymological spelling was kept under the influence of sześciuset, sześć etc. Some time ago the prescriptivists thought up a brave new pronunciation: as if spelt "sześset". And has it spread through the media like wildfire! Of course, it's like insisting on mieśski instead of miejski, but miejski isn't spelt mieśćski any longer, allowing for less creativity on the prescriptivists' part. 89.64.69.33 (talk) 00:27, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Affricates and stop–fricative clusters

Moved from User talk:Nardog

I can see that you reverted the edit made by Mazab IZW. I agree that these transcriptions [ˈt͡ʂtʂɨsta], [ˈd͡ʐdʐɛm] are wrong. However, Zagórska points out earlier in her paper that the cluster [tʂ] has two or three elements: [t]₂, an optional release of [t]₂ noted by [ʰ] and [ʂ]₂. This facet and her conclusion that [ʂ] is longer in clusters give either [tʰʂː] or [tʂː]. Other descriptions (e.g. Sawicka (1995:150), Ostaszewska & Tabor (2000:87)) dub [tʰʂː] as [t̺ʂ] and interpret no release as assimilation of [t] to [t͡ʂ], so [tʂː] is transcribed as [t͡ʂʂ]. My proposal:

Polish contrasts affricates and stop–fricative clusters by the fricatives being consistently longer in clusters than in affricates:

• [ˈt͡ʂɨsta] ("clean" fem.) vs. [ˈtʰʂːɨsta] or [ˈtʂːɨsta] ("three hundred").
• [ˈd͡ʐɛm] ("jam") with vs. [ˈdʱʐːɛm] or [ˈdʐːɛm] or ("take a nap" imper. sing.).

A similar convention to differentiate between affricates from clusters by using [t͡s, d͡z] vs [tʰs, dʱz] is used by is used by Rybka (2015:89). Please let me know your thoughts.

--Qerez (talk) 16:53, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

While Zagórska Brooks does report aspiration in some utterances, her conclusion is that "the relative length of [š] was found to be the only consistent element of distinction between [tš] and [t͜š]", so it makes little sense to me to show the transcription with aspiration first. Also the full length mark ⟨ː⟩ usually connotes the segment is twice as long, while Zagórska Brooks reports fricatives in clusters are almost exactly 1.5 times longer than those in affricates, so the half-length mark ⟨ˑ⟩ makes a lot more sense. Finally, the transcriptions in the bullet points aren't meant to convey "conventions" but rather to illustrate the actual phonetic differences in IPA form. It indeed doesn't hurt to mention that such a convention exists (as much as I find it misleading because it suggests aspiration is consistently present in clusters, which it isn't according to Zagórska Brooks), but I'd scratch the word "similar". Nardog (talk) 06:15, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd prefer the version with release to be listed first. This is considered by Sawicka and others as the unassimilated version, a realization of /tʂ/). The version with no audible release is considered a realization of an assimilation, affrication of the segment /t/: /tʂ/ → /t͡ʂʂ/. I'll change the length mark. I think I will write a bit longer paragraph. Thanks for constructive feedback.

--Qerez (talk) 07:41, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

A stop with "no audible release" before a continuant would mean there's a pause between the stop and fricative. I don't think that's what you meant there, so I fixed that. A problem I see with listing the transcriptions with aspiration first is that in Zagórska Brooks's study, only three out of eight tokens had aspiration. Are you sure this is not something only found in careful speech? Do the other sources you cited back up the claim by empirical studies? Nardog (talk) 11:46, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Both audio examples given in the article feature aspiration so listing them first make more sense from that perspective. "Trzysta" sounds spontaneous, while "drzem" sounds a bit exaggerated. Prescriptively, both are correct both in careful and colloquial speech. Dunaj (2006:170) in Zasady poprawnej wymowy polskiej writes:

"Połączenia TRZ, DRZ występują w nagłosie, śródgłosie i wygłosie (-TRZ) wyrazów. W wymowie odpowiadają im trzy realizacje a) tsz, d-ż, b) czsz, dżż, b) cz, dż. W wymowie staranej, a także potocznej dopuszczone są w nagłosie i śródgłosie dwa typy wymowy: tszoda // czszoda, d-żewo, dżżewo, pojutsze // pojuczsze. Drugi typ dominuje w odmianie potocznej. Realizacje uproszczone (z zanikiem spółgoski szczelinowej), a więc czoda, dżewo, wystepujące często, szczególnie w niektórych regionach Polski, są niepoprawne zarowno w polszczyźnie starannej, jak i potocznej. W wygłosie w formach takich jak patrz, popatrz w wymowie staranej poprawną realizacją jest grupa tsz, por. patsz, popatsz (podawane w niektorych opracowaniach formy paczsz, popaczsz w rzeczywistości nie wystepują). W wymowie potocznej obok realizacji patsz, popatsz dopuszcza się wymowę z grupą uproszczoną, a więc pacz, popacz.

["The combinations of TRZ, DRZ occur word initial, medial and final positions (-TRZ). In the pronunciation, they correspond to three realizations: a) tsz, d-ż, b) czsz, dżż, b) cz, dż. Two types of pronunciation are allowed word initially and medially in careful pronunciation, but equally in colloquial one: tszoda // czszoda, d-żewo, dżżewo, pojutsze // pojuczsze. The second type dominates in colloquial speech. Simplified realizations (without a fricative) czoda, dżewo, often occurring, especially in some regions of Poland, are incorrect both in careful and colloquial Polish. In careful speech, forms such as patrz, popatrz are correctly realized by the group tsz, cf. patsz, popatsz (forms paczsz, popaczsz given in some descriptions do not actually appear). In colloquial pronunciation, in addition to patsz, popatsz, pronunciation with a simplified group is allowed, i.e.pacz, popacz."]

In spontaneous speech production I hear both in free variation. In this recording by Wojtula you can hear both in one phrase. I've added a version produced by me (yazoo).

The assimilation is not limited to /tʂ, dʐ/, it occurs for other TS clusters e.g. o ciebie /ɔt͡ɕɛbjɛ/ "about you" vs od siebie /ɔtɕɛbjɛ/ "from each other", octu /ɔt͡stu/ "vinegar" (gen. sg.) vs od stu /ɔtstu/ "from hundred".

Dukiewicz indicates her own paper "Polskie diady spółgłoskowe typu TS i ST" ("Polish consonantal dyads of type TS and ST") but I cannot get hold of it.

The phenomenon seems to be very similar to affrication of /t, d/ in /tr, dr/ by some speakers of English who may produce [tɹ̝̊ɹ̥ , dɹ̝ɹ] or [tʂɻ̊, dʐɻ].

What about using the "unaspirated" diacritic of the Extended IPA to instead "aspiration" as suggested in No audible release?

--Qerez (talk) 19:28, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

The symbol you're looking for is the superscript ⟨ᵊ⟩ (so that trzysta is pronounced [tᵊˈʂɨsta], or perhaps with a voiceless schwa instead. In drzewo, the schwa is voiced). The "unaspirated" diacritic is inappropriate as all stops in Polish are unaspirated. Sol505000 (talk) 07:38, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, ⟨ᵊ⟩ would imply it's voiced so it's not a good fit. I don't see anything wrong with ⟨ʰ, ʱ⟩. Aspiration is a matter of degree so it's okay to use them as long as the context calls for them, even if it's shorter than phonemic aspiration in other languages, just like we're using ⟨ˑ⟩ only in this particular context to illustrate the difference. The tie bar already indicates assibilated release, so I don't see a need to modify the affricates. Nardog (talk) 08:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

But ⟨ʱ⟩ implies a murmured voice, rather than a simple voicing like ⟨ᵊ⟩ does. I'd rather use ⟨ʰ, ᵊ⟩. Sol505000 (talk) 14:57, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

References

Palatal consonants lacking

Why aren't palatal B and P listed as Polish phonemes? They form relevant minimal pairs, for example pasek - piasek, bały - biały. They are not a sequence of non palatalized p and b plus a /j/. 51.175.195.49 (talk) 11:35, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

That depends on analysis. See Polish phonology#Phonological status of palatalized consonants. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:32, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: No, it does not depend on analysis, stop annoying me with your ignorance. Of course they are sequences of a consonant followed by a /j/, lol. Look up X-ray tests, a semivowel can clearly be heard in such cases. Palatalisation is NOT phonemic in Polish, it's only allophonic just as in English. "biały" is not pronounced /ˈbʲa.wɨ/ (try to pronounce the word if you're a native speaker, its duration is longer than in the case of /ˈba.wɨ/ which shouldn't happen if /b/ was JUST palatalised) but [ˈbʲja.wɨ], with the palatalisation of /b/ coming from the following /j/, hence it's just allophonic. Besides, it's a very slight kind of palatalisation, much much much weaker than in Russian but similar to English (as in the word "beak" which in a narrow transcription would be represented as [ˈbʲiːk]). Shumkichi (talk) 21:29, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

If the notion that there might be palatalized labial phonemes in Polish is such an annoyance to you, then you might consider looking into editing the section that I pointed to, since I'm merely sharing what the article says. It would probably be worthwhile exercise to share your knowledge and the relevant sources that back up your claims rather than be rude in the talk page. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 22:24, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

It does. What he means is phonemic analysis, not narrow phonetic transcription. The pronunciation [ˈbʲjawɨ] can be represented in phonemic transcription as /ˈbjawɨ/ (if you think that the palatalization of /b/ is allophonic) or /ˈbʲawɨ/ (if you think that the palatal glide after /b/ is allophonic) but not /ˈbʲjawɨ/, which is not a valid phonemic transcription (at least not in the analyses I'm aware of). EDIT: Then there's also the analysis /ˈbʲawi/, in which [ɨ] is treated as an allophone of /i/ - but nobody endorses it anymore, AFAIK.

Even Russian белый /ˈbʲelɨj/ features a palatal glide before /e/, it's just that it's shorter/weaker than the /j/ phoneme. This doesn't mean that the analysis /ˈbʲawɨ/ is wrong in Polish - as John Wells puts it, There is not some great phoneme system in the sky from which particular languages select their phonemes, with one IPA symbol always standing for the same thing (source: [5]). Polish /bʲ/ stands for something closer to [bʲj] in comparison with its Russian counterpart (though the latter also features a palatal glide, but not as long/strong as the /j/ phoneme. You could transcribe Russian /bʲ/ as [bʲi̯] or something else and then clarify its phonetic features (that just means length - anything else is pretty much self-evident) in prose, as long as the /j/ phoneme is assigned a separate symbol. This is because Russian contrasts /Cʲ/ with /Cʲj/, believe it or not). The Russian mid back vowel is also closer and considerably more diphthongal/triphthongal in comparison with the Polish /ɔ/, making it sound almost like Polish ło or even łoa, and yet its not uncommon to see both written with ⟨o⟩. I think it's pretty obvious that the word co isn't pronounced [tsʊ̯ɔʌ̯] in Polish, in contrast with Russian что, which is most commonly [ʂtʊ̯ɔʌ̯], though that probably depends to a certain degree on the sentence stress. To add to the confusion, in some transcriptions of Dutch and American English, ⟨o⟩ stands for [oʊ ~ ɵʊ ~ ɔʊ].

English beak is not pronounced [ˈbʲiːk] unless you have a (slight) Slavic accent. English doesn't have allophonic palatalization of stops, except in contact with /j/ and then only in the case of the alveolars (and /m/ [a bilabial nasal stop], according to The Phonetics of English and Dutch). Sol505000 (talk) 09:57, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Update: on the other hand, writing /Cʲ/ (where the capital letter ⟨c⟩ stands for any consonant apart from the (alveolo-)palatals etc.) does cause some odd differences in phonemic analysis that are counter-intuitive to the natives. Take rozjebać and rozpierdolić (both meaning 'to fuck sth up'), for instance. The former is presumably /rɔˈzjɛbatɕ/ (because jebać 'to fuck' alone is /ˈjɛbatɕ/ and because the only trace of /zʲ/ before /ɛ/ is the consonant /ʑ/, as in ziemia /ˈʑɛmja/ 'soil', historically /ˈzʲɛmʲa/ or something like that), whereas rozpierdolić is /rɔspʲɛrˈdɔlitɕ/ (because pierdolić 'to fuck' alone is /pʲɛrˈdɔlitɕ/). I assume maximal syllable onset (so /rɔˈzjɛbatɕ/, rather than the morphologically transparent /rɔzˈjɛbatɕ/) and that /l/ is by definition 'soft' in this analysis, and any palatalization of it is phonetic (the historical hard l is the contemporary /w/). But phonetically, there is no difference between the alleged palatal approximant in /zj/ in rozjebać and the alleged palatalization of the preceding consonant in /pʲ/ in rozpierdolić - both are actually [Cj], or [Cʲj] if you prefer a narrower transcription: [rɔˈzjɛbatɕ, rɔspjɛrˈdɔlitɕ]. I know that it's not the nicest example but it's perfect for the job - you can easily remember it. I think that, if possible, phonemic transcription should be as accessible to the natives (and advanced L2 speakers) as possible. You shouldn't have to stop and think "hmm... is this /Cj/ or /Cʲ/?" when it literally doesn't matter in Polish. It's not an actual phonemic contrast.

I think that the analysis /Cʲ/ is by analogy with either Russian (the predominant foreign language in Poland in the latter half of the 20th century) or maybe even Lithuanian. In the latter, the orthographic ⟨CiV⟩ actually does stand for a palatalized consonant. Or maybe because Polish used to feature actual palatalized consonants, such as the aforementioned /tʲ, dʲ, sʲ, zʲ/ which correspond to the modern /tɕ, dʑ, ɕ, ʑ/. This is why we have alternations such as mata /ˈmata/ 'a mat' vs. na macie /na ˈmatɕɛ/ 'on a mat'. I think that misspellings such as mjasto for miasto 'city' also contributed to the analysis /Cʲ/ (so /ˈmʲastɔ/), rather than /Cj/ (so /ˈmjastɔ/), as the latter transcription would be basically the same as the misspelling mjasto (which, personally, I have nothing against, it's how the word should be spelled given how it's pronounced - but that's just me), save for the final vowel (often written with a bare ⟨o⟩ anyway - see above). In that case, /ˈmʲastɔ/ would be an attempt to make the IPA transcriptions of Polish look "educated", or even to justify the orthographic distinction between ⟨CjV⟩ and ⟨CiV⟩.

I think that the Masurian variant /ˈmɲastɔ/ mniasto (cf. Czech město /ˈmɲɛstɔ/) also points to the fact that what precedes /a/ is a consonant - especially due to the fact that it can be reduced all the way to /ˈɲastɔ/ niasto!

Ah yes, then there's also the issue of the sixth vowel, or /ɨ/. Those who think that it is an allophone of /i/ will automatically give [tʲ] etc. a phonemic status due to loanwords such as Tico [ˈtʲikɔ] 'Tico' (a car model) and sinus [ˈsʲinus] 'sine', which are pronounced with palatalized dentals, rather than the native alveolo-palatals (in that aspect, Polish is unlike Brazilian Portuguese). But most analyses treat Polish as possessing a six vowel system, in which /ɨ/ occupies the close central position, right in-between the front /i/ and the back /u/ (even though that is at odds with the phonetics of Polish, as natives tend to perceive /ɨ/ as something between /i/ and /ɛ/ (which can be as high and/or as central as /ɨ/, not necessarily resulting in a complete merger), which suggests that Polish has at least three if not four contrastive degrees of openness among the front/central vowels, which probably should be grouped together).

Personally, I see no reason to differentiate between the palatal elements in the syllable onsets of zjeść /zjɛɕtɕ/ 'to eat' (transitive) (or zjeb /zjɛp/ 'fucking retard', if you want something related to the former examples :P) and biały /ˈbjawɨ/ 'white' (rather than /ˈbʲawɨ/). It's an orthography-influenced distinction that shouldn't be transcribed in IPA. Sol505000 (talk) 13:25, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Consider the following pairs in their prescriptive pronunciation (not all speakers maintain the distinction, perhaps only a small minority, in part because the spelling reform of 1936 means there is no way to show it in spelling before any vowel other than i):

• (Widzę) lamie. / (Siedzę na) lamie.
• (Rozpoznaję) ksenofobię. / (Używam sobie na) ksenofobie.
• (Czytam) Utopię. / (Ja go chyba zaraz) utopię.
• (Opisuję) Batawię. / (Opowiadam o pewnym) Batawie.
• (Studiuję) filozofię. / (Rozmyślam o pewnym) filozofie.

In all these examples the first word ends (or used to end) in what a Russian would spell -ье, the second one -- -е (the vowel part of the example is of course problematic because of vowel reduction, the ь part is important).

(It's even more pronounced with -ii and -i (e.g. utopii -- -ьи́/ utopi -- -и́), but in this case the hypercorrection works the other way round (you can end up with Chylonii for Chyloni, konopii for konopi etc.).

How would you transcribe it? If "filozofie" is supposed to be /filɔˈzɔfjɛ/, then "filozofię" has to be something like /filɔˈzɔfi̯jɛ/, with non-syllabic i. It can't be /filɔˈzɔfijɛ/, that would be spelt "filozofije" (an archaism nowadays). Now, IPA is supposed to be a phonemic rather than phonetic alphabet -- good luck trying to convince anyone (even the few people who cling to the above distinction) that 1) there's an /i̯/ phoneme in Polish, 2) no, it's not the same thing as /j/. It's easier to transcribe the former as /fʲilɔˈzɔfʲɛ/, and the latter as /fʲilɔˈzɔfʲjɛ/. 89.64.69.33 (talk) 01:21, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

Sawicka in Fonologia w: Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego, Fonetyka i Fonologia. p.145 tackles this phenomenon as follows:

"Z. Stieber zachowując miękkie fonemy wargowe, powoływał sie na istnienie funkcjonalnej różnicy między sekwencjami typu */PʲV/ i /PjV/ (Stieber 1966, s. 108). Taką różnicę widział on na przykład między */mʲV/ i */mjV/ w np. ziemia i armia (*/#ʑɛmʲɑ#/ ale */#ɑrmjɑ#). Jednakże realizacja ostatniej sylaby w obu przypadkach jest w kulturalnej polszczyźnie identyczna. Jest to przykład czysto psychologicznego rozróżnienia, które w danym wypadku wzmacniane jest różnicą ortograficzna w przypadkach zależnych, por. armii [ɑrmʲi] vs ziemi [ʑemʲi]. U pewnej grupy osób występuje świadomość odrębności między ciągiem /PjV/, a hipotetycznym */PʲV/. Zróżnicowanie idzie tu po linii wyraz obcy vs wyraz rodzimy. Otóż w wyrazach rodzimych graficzna grupa PiV jest realizowana wyłącznie jako [PʲjV], np. biorę [bʲjɵrɛɯ̯̃], robię [rɔbʲjeɯ̯̃], podczas gdy w wyrazach obcych, obok wymienionej, zdarza się realizacja [PʲijV], np. biologia [bʲjɵlɔɟja] i [bʲijɵlɔɟja]. Osoby, które wymawiają w ten sposób, mają w tych wyrazach inną reprezentację fonologiczną: 1. w wyrazach rodzimych /PjV/ o obligatoryjnej realizacji [PʲjV] (według interpretacji starszej w miękkimi labialnymi fonemami: /PʲV/), 2. w wyrazach obcych /PiV/ o realizacji [PʲijV] zob. w rozdz. 3.1 (według starszej interpretacji /PʲjV/)."

"In retaining soft labial phonemes, Z. Stieber pointed out the existence of a functional difference between sequences of the type */ PʲV / and / PjV / (Stieber 1966, p. 108). He saw such a difference between */ mʲV / and */ mjV / e.g. in ziemia and armia (*/#ʑɛmʲɑ#/ but */#ɑrmjɑ#). However, the realization of the last syllable in both cases is identical in the cultural Polish language. This is an example of a purely psychological distinction, which in a given case is reinforced by a spelling difference in dependent cases, cf. armii [ɑrmʲi] vs ziemi [ʑemʲi]. A certain group of people is aware of the difference between the sequence /PjV/ and the hypothetical */PʲV/. Differentiation goes along the lines of the foreign word versus the native word. In native words, the grapheme PiV is realized only as [PʲjV], e.g. biorę [bʲjɵrɛɯ̯̃], robię [rɔbʲjeɯ̯̃], while in foreign words in can be realzied as [PʲijV] as well, e.g. biology [bʲjɵlɔɟja] and [bʲijɵlɔɟja]. People who pronounce them this way have a different phonological representation in these words: 1. in native words /PjV/ with obligatory realization [PʲjV] (according to the older interpretation with soft labial phonemes: /PʲV/), 2. in foreign words /PiV/ realized as [PʲijV] see. in chapter 3.1 (according to the older interpretation /PʲjV/)."

While the pronunciation of [PʲijV] is definitely dated now and is something like [Pʲj̆V] vs[PʲjV] (could be transcribed as well [PʲjV] vs [PʲjˑV], or even [PʲV] vs [PʲjV]), the system of those who still feel the difference can be accommodated within Sawicka's phonemicization without a need of extra phonemes. She includes in her list of phonemes a 'weak juncture' phoneme (noted below with a plus juncture /+/ rather than with her original /#̯/) to explain difference between e.g. objętość /#ɔb+jɛntɔɕt͡ɕ#/ [ɔbjentɔɕt͡ɕ] or [ɔbʲjentɔɕt͡ɕ] vs obiecać /#ɔbjɛt͡sɑt͡ɕ#/ [ɔbʲjet͡sɑt͡ɕ]. The same juncture can be used to explain '(Czytam) Utopię.' vs '(Ja go chyba zaraz) utopię.' as /#utɔp+jɛ(w̃)#/ vs /#utɔpjɛ(w̃)#/. This juncture is reinforced by a syllable break so alternatively /ɔb.jɛntɔɕt͡ɕ/ vs /ɔ.bjɛt͡sɑt͡ɕ/, /utɔp.jɛ(w̃)/ vs /utɔ.pjɛ(w̃)/. A similar solution is applied in English to differentiate between a name /ə.neɪm/ vs. an aim /ən.eɪm/, night rate /naɪt.reɪt/ vs. nitrate /naɪ.treɪt/ without resorting to claims of additional phonemes. Qerez (talk) 11:38, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Actual Polish pronunciation

• y is close mid
• cz, dż, sz, ż are post-alevolar, not retroflex; retroflex pronunciation is considered as speech defect
• c, dz, cz, dż, ć, dź are stop consonants
• and c, cz, ć pronunciation Has nothing to do with t

bananowiec 10:30, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Changing analysis of nasals

"Recent sources present for modern Polish a vowel system without nasal vowel phonemes, including only the aforementioned six oral vowels." Is that because the pronunciation of these sounds changed in the 20th century? Or did this change occur much earlier, and wasn't it until recently that linguists started to acknowledge it? Steinbach (talk) 19:05, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Antepenultimate stress

> Some loanwords, particularly from classical languages, have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-last) syllable. For example, fizyka (/ˈfizɨka/) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. That may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement: muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When further syllables are added at the end of such words through suffixation, the stress normally becomes regular: uniwersytet (/uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/, 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu (/uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/) and derived adjective uniwersytecki (/uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡ski/) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Over time, loanwords tend to become nativized to have a penultimate stress.

This is just plain incorrect in contemporary speech. It's very outdated. Pronounciations like /ˈfizɨka/ and /ˈmuzɨka/ are pretty much unheard of, and for many generations now.

"Over time, loanwords tend to become nativized to have a penultimate stress" is how you could describe this process a century ago, the process is complete now. 90.254.230.66 (talk) 16:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)