The Vowel System
The Polish vowel system consists of six oral and two nasal vowels. Vowel nasality in Polish is preserved from Proto-Slavic, having been lost in most other modern Slavic languages.
All the oral vowels are monophthongs. The nasal vowels are /ɛ̃/, a nasal open-mid front unrounded vowel (similar to e in English Ben, nasalized), and /ɔ̃/, a nasal open-mid back rounded vowel (similar to o in English long, nasalized).
| IPA | Polish script | Example |
|---|---|---|
| /i/ | i | miś ('teddy bear') |
| /ɛ/ | e | ten ('this one') |
| /ɨ/ | y | mysz ('mouse') |
| /a/ | a | ptak ('bird') |
| /u/ | u / ó | bum ('boom') |
| /ɔ/ | o | kot ('cat') |
| /ɛ̃/ | ę | węże ('snakes') |
| /ɔ̃/ | ą | wąż ('snake') |
The nasal vowels do not feature uniform nasality over their duration. Phonetically, they may consist of an oral vowel followed by a nasal semivowel (so that są is pronounced, which sounds closer to Portuguese são than French sont – all these words mean "(they) are"); it can therefore be argued that they are more accurately called diphthongs. (For nasality following other vowel nuclei, see under Consonant allophony below.) /ɛ ɨ ɔ ɛ̃ ɔ̃/ are also less commonly transcribed /e ɪ o ẽ õ/ respectively, for example by PWN-Oxford Polish-English Dictionary.
The oral vowel /ɨ/ is in fact is a slightly raised close-mid central unrounded vowel, that could be narrowly transcribed as . This article uses /ɨ/ for simplicity.
Read more about this topic: Polish Phonology, Vowels
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