The reputation comes from different conventions. In English letter+h is the escape code (gh, th, sh, ch) in Polish it's letter+z (rz,sz,cz,dz,dż,dź,dzi).
Especially vowels are much easier than in English. Each vowel in Polish maps to exactly one sound and vice versa.
> y - a vowel, I don't think the sound exists in english
it's the English short i like in bIt. As is the rule- Polish has a special letter for that sound and English has 2 sounds encoded the same way and you have to remember which is which :)
Another difference is that Polish j is English y. And English j is Polish dż (dżungla = jungle).
ń is the same sound as the funny n in Spanish word for Spain: España
> w is v [..] Always, no exceptions and never anything else
There actually are exceptions, but they are regular as well - w before last syllable is often devoiced to f. Levandofski. But even most Polish speakers don't know that it's the rule, they just speak that way without thinking :) And if you ignore it you are fine, it sounds unnatural but it's still correct. Like saying "I am" instead of "I'm" in English.
BTW I think all that additional complexity in English writing system is the reason you have to teach kids to read for so long. In Polish kids are usually taught reading in preschool or first class at school and they are expected to be able to correctly read any text after 6 months to 1 year.
There are some gotchas the other way around (hear something and write it) because that way the mapping isn't unique (there are sounds that have 2 ways to write them), but reading is easy.