The Polish alphabet is your starting point for learning the language. It's based on the familiar Latin script, so you'll recognize most of the letters. However, it has 32 letters in total, including nine unique ones you won't find in English.

At first glance, it looks pretty familiar. The key differences come from a few extra marks, called diacritics, which completely change a letter's sound.

Let's break down the nine special letters. They are what give Polish its distinct sound.

Most of these unique letters are consonants that are “softened” by adding an acute accent mark, called a kreska. This mark looks like a slanted line above the letter.

Here are the letters with a kreska:

• Ć/ć sounds like the "ch" in "cheese."
• Ń/ń sounds like the "ny" in "canyon."
• Ś/ś is a very soft "sh" sound, softer than the English version.
• Ź/ź is the voiced version of ś, similar to the "s" in "pleasure" or the "g" in "beige."

There's also Ó/ó, which is simple. It sounds exactly like the letter U/u in Polish, similar to the "oo" in "moon."

Two Polish letters have a little tail, or ogonek, which makes them nasal vowels. This means you pronounce them while letting air escape through your nose.

• Ą/ą sounds like "on" in French, or roughly like "own" in "sown."
• Ę/ę sounds like "en" in French, or roughly like "ewn" in "sewn."

Finally, we have two more unique letters.

The letter Ł/ł with a stroke through it is one of the easiest for English speakers. It sounds just like the English letter 'w'.

And the letter Ż/ż with a dot over it sounds just like ź—similar to the "s" sound in the word "treasure."

One last thing to note is that the letters Q, V, and X are not part of the native Polish alphabet. You will only see them in foreign words or names that have been borrowed into the language.