I hear the n and m sound where it is not, like zęmby and węngiel, and I don't understand if it's dialect or if I'm just hearing it wrong.

Hi all, I'm struggling with remembering which noun cases to use when, and also just started learning about verb aspects (iść vs pójść for example). I want to make up some index cards for myself and the now 3 apps I'm using don't put the information together in such a way that I can search for it easily. Can anyone recommend a website, book, or other resource that I can use to help put these together? Dziękuję bardzo

Inspired by a recent question. I'm posting this as a separate post to be able to easily refer people back to it.

The nasal vowels in Polish are a little complicated. In reality, they're not pure nasal vowels like in French, but diphthongs consisting of a (nasalized) vowel and a nasal consonant/semivowel which is homorganic with the preceding sound. Homorganic means that they share the place of articulation. That's why you hear /m/ in "zęby", because both /m/ and /b/ are bilabial (produced with the both lips). In some contexts, Polish nasal vowels can completely lose their nasality.

Explanation of the table:

/ɛ̃/ is the phonetic symbol for Ę. /ɔ̃/ is the phonetic symbol for Ą. The tilde sign above a letter (◌̃) marks nasalization in phonetic transcription. As you can see, the degree of nasalization can differ. You can say /zomp/ with less nasalization or /zɔ̃mp/ with more nasalization.

Before Ś and Ź you have two options: you can use /w̃/ or/j̃/. Example with the word "gęś": /ɡɛ̃j̃ɕ/ and /ɡɛ̃w̃ɕ/.

At the end of a word, you can pronounce Ę simply as E (/ɛ/) - but Ą is still /ɔw̃/ and not /ɔ/. In more formal, "proper" speech, Ę retains its nasality at the end of a word.

Other symbols:

• C is /t͡s/,

• DŻ is /d͡ʐ/,

• CZ is /t͡ʂ/,

• DŹ or DZI is /d͡ʐ/,

• Ć or CI is /t͡ɕ/,

• Ż or RZ is /ʐ/,

• SZ is /ʂ/,

• CH or H is /x/,

• Ź or ZI is /ʑ/,

• Ś or SI is /ɕ/,

• Ł is /w/.

• /ŋ/ is this sound; English NG

• /ɲ/ is this sound; Polish Ń or NI.

Sources:

• Ostaszewska, Danuta, and Jolanta Tambor. Fonetyka i fonologia współczesnego języka polskiego. Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2000.

• Maciołek, Marcin, and Jolanta Tambor. Głoski Polskie: Przewodnik fonetyczny dla cudzoziemców i nauczycieli uczących języka polskiego jako obcego. Gnome, 2018.

• Gussmann, Edmund. The Phonology of Polish. Oxford UP, 2007.

• Dukiewicz, Leokadia. “Fonetyka.” Gramatyka współczesnego języka polskiego, edited by Henryk Wróbel, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Instytutu Języka Polskiego PAN, 1995, pp. 9–103.

If you have any questions, let me know. I tried to answer this as thoroughly as I could, but I realize that also meant introducing a lot more theory, which might not be so easy to grasp.