Spending my morning learning how to pronounce the names of my Polish friends. It's a challenge, but at least their orthography is pretty regular - no weird shit like silent letters (I'm looking at you, FR and EN), letters that change value based on placement (RU, we need to talk about Г), weird diphthongs (NE, what's with "ij"?), or other tricks of other orthographies.
It's challenging because the sounds are not immediately obvious to a non-native speaker, but once you learn the orthography (aka spelling), it's pretty easy.
A short guide to a couple of bits for those who want to play our home game.
sz: sh
cz: ts
ł: w
ę: nasalized e
Anyway, that's enough to get you going. Start figuring out how to pronounce the names of your Polish friends! It's fun and rewarding.
