It’s going to be a very short text about a very intriguing letter. Y – the twenty-ninth letter of the Polish alphabet intrigues many students of Polish language courses. The most surprising thing for them turns out to be the fact that in Polish Y never occurs at the beginning of a word except for loanwords (Yeti, Yale, yuppie, Yamaha). In Polish, we read this letter as [i] with the exception of words such as Ypsilon and ylid, when it is pronounced as [y].
Y or I?
Foreigners speaking Polish frequently confuse [i] and [y]. When speaking and writing in Polish we have to keep in mind that in the Polish language there are no letter compounds such as - ly - , - ky - , - gy - (exceptions are dialects or for instance the word kynolog), but only - li -, - ki - , - gi - (linia, kino, ginekolog, gimnastyka, gigantyczny, oni byli/rozmawiali). It is particularly important when one faces a dilemma over the choice of the ending for a feminine singular genitive or a plural nominative. We say therefore dwie puszki kukurydzy, torebka Agnieszki, dwa pociągi. We also have to remember that in Polish there are compounds - łi - , but only - ły - (i.e., łyżka, łykać, łyżwy, były, rozmawiały) do not exist, either. We also never use [y] as an equivalent of the conjunction [i]. So we mustn’t write kawa y herbata, but exclusively kawa i herbata. This last mistake is quite typical of the students from Spain and Italy :)
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