Ś ś — śe
«śe» is a consonant of the Polish script, read as “soft sh”. A soft sh — say "sh" with the tongue wide and pushed forward, lighter than the sh of "ship". się lands close to "shyeh". For example, in the word “środa” — Wednesday. The Polish alphabet has 32 letters in total. The soft brother of plain s. Before a vowel the same sound is spelled si: cześć ends in ś, and się and siedem start with it. It appears, for example, in the word “Cześć” — hi.
In short
| Character | Ś ś |
| Name | śe |
| Sound | soft sh |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 25th of 32, its neighbours in the course are s and t, appears in 295 words of this site.
How to type Ś ś
- On a phone: press and hold s on the keyboard, and ś appears among the variants. If it does not, add the Polish keyboard in the keyboard settings.
- In Word on Windows: type U+015B and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 015B.
- Unicode code points: ś — U+015B, Ś — U+015A. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A soft sh — say "sh" with the tongue wide and pushed forward, lighter than the sh of "ship". się lands close to "shyeh"
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.
- środaWednesday
The character in the “polish tails and strokes” group
Nine signs: two nasals (ą, ę), three soft ones (ć, ś, ź — with ń), ó, ł, and their dots and tails. A tail marks a nasal sound, a stroke marks softness, a dot is history.
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 «śe» it is “soft sh”, as in the word “środa”), 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 ś read?
As “soft sh” — it is a consonant of the Polish script. A soft sh — say "sh" with the tongue wide and pushed forward, lighter than the sh of "ship". się lands close to "shyeh". For example, in the word “środa” — Wednesday.
What is the letter ś called?
Śe. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Polish script: it is called “śe” and reads as “soft sh”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.