A a
«a» is a vowel of the Polish script, read as “ah”. A clean "ah". It stays a full a stressed or unstressed — it is never pulled toward the schwa of "about". For example, in the word “kawa” — coffee. The Polish alphabet has 32 letters in total. It appears, for example, in the word “tak” — yes.
In short
| Character | A a |
| Sound | ah |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 1st of 32, after it comes ą, appears in roughly every other word on this site.
How it sounds
A clean "ah". It stays a full a stressed or unstressed — it is never pulled toward the schwa of "about"
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- kawacoffee
The character in the “sound matches sight” group
Seventeen letters with nothing to learn: the sound is exactly the one you expect.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «a» it is “ah”, as in the word “kawa”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 32 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Polish character a read?
As “ah” — it is a vowel of the Polish script. A clean "ah". It stays a full a stressed or unstressed — it is never pulled toward the schwa of "about". For example, in the word “kawa” — coffee.