The Polish alphabet, along with a guide to the sounds represented by each letter, is listed on the following page. These include the change of sounds at an end of a word (for example, g becomes k, d t, b p, etc.) the role of the letter “i,” which changes the pronunciation of preceding consonants and some “assimilation” of sounds in clusters of consonants.
Exceptions from the rule, when they occur, are shown in the alphabet table and are mentioned during the audio portion of the Readings. The difference between Polish and English is that a given letter (or a combination of letters) is almost always pronounced the same way. This is so because there are firm rules governing the relation between sounds and letters. The original adaptation of the Latin alphabet was a long process, but contemporary Polish spelling is not very difficult to master. Since some sounds in “Old Polish” did not have an equivalent in the Latin alphabet, some additional letters were created by adding “slashes,” “accents,” and “tails.” These additional signs are called “diacritical marks.” From the Renaissance on (in Poland this was in the 1500s), the Polish language dominates in writings. At the end of the Middle Ages, Polish literature was starting to be created in the Polish language. Even though Latin was the only written language, gradually Polish words were introduced into Latin texts with increasing frequency (such as names of people or towns). The Polish language existed only as the spoken language of everyday life. For a couple of centuries Latin was the official “written” language of documents and academic writings. The Polish alphabet was introduced gradually to Poland through Latin in the Middle Ages at the time when Poland converted to Christianity. Reading lessons as often as needed for practice with the Polish alphabet and its sounds. You may choose to do the readings along with the lesson units, after every other unit or so, or you may wait and do them all together, after completing the 30 units. You should use this for reference only, however, as all the information you need to complete the readings is contained at the end of the program. Wherever possible, English equivalents are given.
A complete listing of the Polish alpha-bet follows, starting on page 4. However, the Polish alphabet contains a number of additional letters that represent unique Polish sounds. Polish is written in basically the same alphabet as English. As the written form of any language does no more than represent these sounds visually, speaking a language is the necessary first step to reading and understanding anything written in the language. In short, meaning is contained in the sounds of the spoken language. Or, to put it another way, reading consists of coming back to speech through the graphic symbols. Reading has been defined as the decoding of graphic material which represents the phonemic patterns of the spoken language.
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