Editing Polish language (section)

===Consonants===
The Polish [[consonant]] system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include the series of [[affricate consonant|affricate]] and [[palatal consonant]]s that resulted from four [[Proto-Slavic]] palatalizations and two further [[Palatalization (sound change)|palatalizations]] that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist):

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"
! colspan="2" |
! [[Labial consonant|Labial]]
! [[Dental consonant|Dental]]/<br/>[[Alveolar consonant|alveolar]]
! [[Retroflex consonant|Retroflex]]
! ([[Alveolo-palatal consonant|Alveolo-]])<br/>[[Palatal consonant|palatal]]
! [[Velar consonant|Velar]]
|-
! colspan="2" | [[Nasal consonant|Nasal]]
| {{IPA link|m}}
| {{IPA link|n̪|n}}
|
| {{IPA link|ɲ}}
|([[Voiced velar nasal|ŋ]])
|-
! rowspan="2" | [[Plosive]]
! {{small|[[voicelessness|voiceless]]}}
| {{IPA link|p}}
| {{IPA link|t̪|t}}
|
|
| {{IPA link|k}}
|-
! {{small|[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]}}
| {{IPA link|b}}
| {{IPA link|d̪|d}}
|
|
| {{IPA link|ɡ}}
|-
! rowspan="2" | [[Affricate consonant|Affricate]]
! {{small|[[voicelessness|voiceless]]}}
|
| {{IPA link|t̪͡s̪|t͡s}}
| {{IPA link|t͡ʂ}}
| {{IPA link|t͡ɕ}}
|
|-
! {{small|[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]}}
|
| {{IPA link|d̪͡z̪|d͡z}}
| {{IPA link|d͡ʐ}}
| {{IPA link|d͡ʑ}}
|
|-
! rowspan="2" | [[Fricative consonant|Fricative]]
! {{small|[[voicelessness|voiceless]]}}
| {{IPA link|f}}
| {{IPA link|s̪|s}}
| {{IPA link|ʂ}}
| {{IPA link|ɕ}}
| {{IPA link|x}}
|-
! {{small|[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]}}
| {{IPA link|v}}
| {{IPA link|z̪|z}}
| {{IPA link|ʐ}}
| {{IPA link|ʑ}}
|([[Voiced velar fricative|ɣ]])
|-
! colspan="2" |[[Tap and flap consonants|Flap]]
|
| [[Voiced dental and alveolar taps and flaps|ɾ]]
|
|
|
|-
! colspan="2" | [[Approximant consonant|Approximant]]
| {{IPA link|w}}
| {{IPA link|l}}
|
| {{IPA link|j}}
| {{IPA link|w}}
|}


[[Neutralization (linguistics)|Neutralization]] occurs between [[Voice (phonetics)|voiced]]–[[voicelessness|voiceless]] consonant pairs in certain environments, at the end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where [[Assimilation (phonology)|assimilation]] occurs). For details, see ''[[Polish phonology#Voicing and devoicing|Voicing and devoicing]]'' in the article on Polish phonology.

Most Polish words are [[paroxytone]]s (that is, the [[Stress (linguistics)|stress]] falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions.