Kota? Isn't it kot? Am I missing a case here?
It's a masculine animate accusative, therefore it takes the 'a'.
I thought dz made a J-like sound in Polish, but the pronunciation here is vid-zeh?
"dż" does, it's like the beginning of "jungle".
But "dz" without a dot is another sound, like the ending of "woods".
So is it the 'i' in 'widzisz', for example, that causes the dz to take a J-like sound?
This 'i' softenes it, "dzi" makes the same sound like "dź" (with an 'accent', not a dot). Which isn't the same sound as dż/English 'j', but I'm afraid it's difficult to compare the palatalized sounds to English.