Silesian/Pronunciation

Lesson 1 - Silesian alphabet and pronunciation
It's really important to learn the material from this lesson very carefully. If you learn to pronounce the words incorrectly, you'll do it forever! So, let's start with the alphabet of the Silesian language. Each time I will add the IPA signs so as to give you the exact pronunciation without recording it.

Silesian alphabet
There are also some digraphs in the Silesian language, which don't have a place in the standard alphabet.

All right, I'm sure that you don't even have any idea how to read these strange lines and carons above the letters. Carefully read the next chapters — vowels and consonants — and learn how to do that!

Stress
Usually, stress falls onto the prelast syllable, eg. Ame ri ka (America). There are of course some exceptions. The nouns which end with -cyjo, -syjo, -zyjo, -ńijo have two variants of accentuation, eg. the word informacyjo (information) can be said infor ma cyjo or informa cy jo. What's interesting, some words of Greek and Latin origin, of which the accentuation is irregular in Polish, is normal in Silesian, eg. matematyka (mathematics) in Polish would be mate ma tyka, the Silesian people say it usually as matyma ty ka.