How many letters are in the Polish alphabet?

The Polish alphabet has 32 letters. It uses the Latin alphabet with nine special letters (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż) and does not natively use q, v or x.

Is Polish spelling phonetic?

Almost. Polish spelling is highly regular — once you learn the special letters and a handful of digraphs (ch, cz, sz, rz, dz), you can read almost any word correctly.

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Reference · with audio

The Polish alphabet

All 32 letters with an example word each. Tap any letter to hear it — then meet the special sounds below.

The Polish alphabet looks intimidating at first glance — all those tails, dots, and strokes over the letters — but it hides a wonderful secret: Polish is almost perfectly phonetic. Unlike English, where “ough” can be read five different ways, Polish letters are pronounced the same way nearly every time. Once you learn the sounds on this page, you can read any Polish word aloud correctly, even if you have no idea what it means. That is a genuinely powerful place to start.

The alphabet has 32 letters. It uses the familiar Latin base but adds nine special letters formed with diacritics: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż. A few are easy wins. The famous ł is simply pronounced like an English w, so ładny (nice) sounds like “WAD-ny” and Łódź, the city, begins like “wootch.” The letter ó sounds exactly the same as u, and the nasal vowels ą and ę add a soft “-n/-m” hum, so mąż (husband) sounds a little like “monsh.”

The part that makes learners nervous is the clusters of consonants and the digraphs — two letters that team up for one sound. sz is the “sh” in she, cz is the “ch” in church, and rz and ż both make the “zh” sound in measure. String them together and you get the notorious tongue-twisters, but there's a comforting truth underneath: each piece always makes its own reliable sound, so a scary-looking word like szczęście (happiness) is just sz-cz-ę-ś-ć-e read steadily, one honest sound after another.

Tap any letter in the grid to hear it with an example word, then work through the special sounds section below. The best approach is out loud and unhurried — say each sound, then the example, then repeat. Master this one page and every other lesson on the site becomes easier, because you'll be reading real Polish from day one instead of guessing.

Good news — Polish is almost perfectly phonetic. Once you know these letters and the digraphs below, you can read just about any word. Note there's no native q, v or x.

The special sounds — dwuznaki

These letter pairs each make one sound. They're the key to reading Polish.

ch	like English “h” — chleb (bread)
cz	like “ch” in church — czekolada (chocolate)
sz	like “sh” — szkoła (school)
rz	like “zh” (s in measure) — rzeka (river)
dz	like “ds” in beds — dzwon (bell)
dź	soft “j” — dźwig (crane)
dż	like “j” in jam — dżem (jam)

Three sounds to watch — w is pronounced like English “v” (woda = VO-da), ł is like English “w” (łyżka = WYZH-ka), and j is like English “y” (jajko = YAY-ko).

Keep going

Now put the sounds to work: try the pronunciation practice, start the pronunciation lesson, or learn your first words in greetings & phrases.

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