06 August 2024
Last week I looked at alphabetization in Czech. Polish is comparatively simpler, as you don’t have to remember which diacritics affect the sort and which don’t. Of course, you do have to keep straight which order the three z‘s go in.
In the Polish alphabet all letters are sorted individually when alphabetizing. Letters with diacritical marks are unique and should not be interspersed in the sort with non-accented versions:
a
ą
b
c
ć
d
e
ę
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
ł
m
n
ń
o
ó
p
q
r
s
ś
t
u
v
w
x
y
z
ź
ż
The letters q, v, and x are imported into the Polish alphabet from foreign words. Polish uses a variety of diacritics to round out the letters of the Latin alphabet to suit Polish phonemes. The tails on the vowels ą and ę are called ogonki (pl.; ogonek sing.) and render the vowels nasal. The acute accent over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, and ź are known as kreski (pl.; kreska sing.). Ć is similar to a soft ch sound in English (this soft ch is also formed by ci; a hard version of ch is formed with cz). Ś operates similarly, but for sh (with similar permutations in si and sz). Ń is an alveolo-palatal sound, similar to the ny combination in canyon. And ó makes the vowel sound found in English boot. The three Polish z forms can be difficult for non-Slavic speakers to differentiate. The sound of unmarked z is like that in zoo. Ź, like ń, is alveolo-palatal and similar to a soft si in vision. Finally, ż is a harder version of that same sound from vision (this letter is often formed in handwriting, but is less commonly typeset, as a z with a cross-stroke through the middle: ƶ).The overdot on ż is a kropka (sing.; pl. kropki). The cross-stroke through the ł signifies a w sound (the stroke is called a kreska).