Monika Kociuba says:

Polish pronunciation is quite consistent and phonetic, but not fully.

Historically ó and u, ch and h, ż and rz were different sounds, nowadays they are pronounced the same but the original writing remained. Polish kids at school also struggle with the spelling!
There are certain rules that might help you, for example:
– “ó” often changes to “o” in a different form, e.g. mój → moje, samochód → samochody
– “rz” often changes to “r” in a different form, e.g. dobrze → dobry, lekarz → lekarka
– “ż” often changes to “g” in a different form, e.g. koleżanka → kolega, możesz → mogę
– “ch” is more common in Polish words than “h”, e.g. chłopiec, słuchać, ich
– “h” is less commonly used that “ch”; it is mainly used at the beginning of the word, often of foreign origin, e.g. herbata, hiperaktywny, hałas
– “h” quite rarely is in the middle of the word, if so then it often changes to “g” or “ż” in a different form, e.g. wahać się → waga, druh → drużyna

Sz, ś and cz, ć are different sounds, so it’s a matter of practice to distinguish them. Listen a lot to train your ear.

There are also some rules regarding voiced consonants that are sometimes pronounced as voiceless, e.g. ‘też’ is prononced as [tesz], which I explain later in the course.

There are also some other rules of Polish spelling and phonetics and it’s best to discover them gradually not to get overwhelmed 🙂