Language /
Polish Phonology. [14]
When you pronounce the vowel
i, the middle part of your tongue goes up, to your palate. In Polish, there are consonants pronounced with similar upward movement of the tongue if they're followed by the vowel
i. They are called palatalised consonants or soft consonants. The important rule of the Polish phonetics is that a consonant is always soft before the vowel
i.
Most books don't use any special symbol to mark hard consonants but use the ['] symbol to mark softness only when needed. This means, they often don't indicate the softness of the consonant followed by the vowel
ibecause then this is obvious, this must be softened.
The labials (and labio-velars)
p, b, f, w, m are always soft before
i, e.g.
biskup - 'bishop'.
The groups
pi, bi, fi, wi, mi may mark
[pj, bj, fj, wj, mj] as well - but only in many words of foreign origin and usually in geographical names. We do not use
j after labials in spelling and this causes the difficulty.
The difference between
[p'] and [pj] is that in
[pj] there is no palatalisation of
p and you can hear normal
j, not only a transient sound as it is with
[p'].
I hope this helps :)
What nasal vowel do you pronounce in the word awans?
From what I know, there is no nasal vowel in this word but only a nasal consonant
n.
