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Polish (język polski [jɛ̃zɨk ˈpɔlskʲi] (About this soundlisten), polszczyzna, or simply polski) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group.[9] It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to being an official language of Poland, it is also used by Polish minorities in other countries. There are over 50 million[2][1] Polish-language speakers around the world and it is one of the official languages of the European Union.

Pronunciation[ˈpɔlskʲi] (About this soundlisten)
Native toPoland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, central-western Lithuania, Latvia, bordering regions of western Ukraine and western Belarus (Kresy)
Native speakers
45 million[1]
L2 speakers: 5 million+[2]
Early forms
Latin (Polish alphabet)
Polish Braille
System Językowo-Migowy (SJM)
Official status
Official language in
 European Union
Recognised minority
language in
Regulated byPolish Language Council
(of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
Language codes
ISO 639-1pl
ISO 639-2pol
ISO 639-3polinclusive code
Individual code:
szl – Silesian
Linguasphere53-AAA-cc 53-AAA-b..-d
Map of Polish language.svg
  Majority of Polish speakers
  Minority of Polish speakers

Polish is written with the standard Polish alphabet, which has nine additions to the letters of the basic Latin script (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż). It is closely related to Czech and Slovak, but differs from other Slavic languages with pronunciation and general grammar. Polish was also profoundly influenced by Germanic languages, most notably German, and Italic languages like Latin and French, which contributed to a large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures.[10][11][12] The Polish language currently has the largest number of speakers of the West Slavic group and is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language.[13][14]

Historically, Polish was a lingua franca,[15][16] important both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a second language in northern Czech Republic and Slovakia, western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in central-western Lithuania and Latvia. Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II, millions of Polish speakers can be found in countries such as Israel, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States.




The Book of Henryków is the earliest document to include a sentence written entirely in what can be interpreted as Old Polish - Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai highlighted in red


The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska, Latin: Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj, the corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij, English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest), written around 1270.

The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of the Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish").[19][20][21]

Geographic distributionEdit





Geographic language distribution maps of Poland from pre-WWII to present
The "Recovered Territories" (in pink) were parts of Germany, including the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk), that became part of Poland after World War II. Gray color, territories lost to the Soviet Union followed by mass Polish population transfers (1944–46).
Geographical distribution of the Polish language (green) and other Central and Eastern European languages and dialects. A large Polish-speaking diaspora remains in the countries located east of Poland that were once the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939).
Knowledge of the Polish language within Europe. The Polish diaspora heavily contributed to the spread of the Polish language in Western European countries (United Kingdom) and Scandinavia. However, it was the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that made Polish lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the Baltic States.



The Polish language became far more homogeneous in the second half of the 20th century, in part due to the mass migration of several million Polish citizens from the eastern to the western part of the country after the Soviet annexation of the Kresy (Eastern Borderlands) in 1939, and the annexation of former German territory after World War II. This tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the Polish People's Republic.[25]

The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish (język ogólnopolski) appear relatively slight. First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional differences.


  • Greater Polish, spoken in the west
  • Lesser Polish, spoken in the south and southeast


Many linguistic sources about the Slavic languages describe Silesian as a dialect of Polish.[27][28] However, many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of a Silesian language. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguistic sources (e.g. by Tomasz Kamusella,[29] Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz,[30] Tomasz Wicherkiewicz)[31] assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether a lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International[32] and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue,[33] Linguist List[34] and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization[35] recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007, the Silesian language was recognized by ISO, and was attributed an ISO code of szl.

Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include:



Spoken Polish in a neutral informative tone

Vowels and consonantsEdit



Polish oral vowels depicted on a vowel chart. Main allophones (in black) are in broad transcription, whereas positional allophones (in red and green) are in narrow transcription. Allophones with red dots appear in palatal contexts. The central vowel [ɜ] is an unstressed allophone of /ɛ, ɔ, a/ in certain contexts



Consonant distributionEdit

Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from the disappearance of yers. Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants.[37] Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'),  wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from a verse by Jan Brzechwa) is  W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed').

Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel.[38]

The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede i or y.


The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first.[39]

Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent a vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/, palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew').

A formal-tone informative sign in Polish, with a composition of vowels and consonants and a mixture of long, medium and short syllables

Some loanwords, particularly from the classical languages, have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka (/ˈfizɨka/) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ - genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation, the stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet (/uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/, 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu (/uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/) and derived adjective uniwersytecki (/uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Over time, loanwords become nativized to have penultimate stress.[40][full citation needed]

Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy, etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zrobiłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zrobilibyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities, the same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście, although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zrobiliśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobiliśmy).[41] These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of kogo zobaczyliście? ('whom did you see?') it is possible to say kogoście zobaczyli? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are however nowadays sanctioned as part of the colloquial norm of standard Polish.[42]

Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were a single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), przeze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable.





The Jakub Wujek Bible in Polish, 1599 print. The letters á and é were subsequently abolished, but survive in Czech.
A a /a/ M m /m/
C c /ts/ O o /ɔ/
Ć ć // Ó ó /u/
D d // (/t/) P p /p/
E e /ɛ/ R r /r/
F f /f/ Ś ś /ɕ/
J j /j/ Y y /ɘ/

The following digraphs and trigraphs are used:

Digraph Phonemic value(s) Digraph/trigraph
(before a vowel)
Phonemic value(s)
ch /x/ ci //
cz // dzi //
dz /dz̪/ (/ts/) gi /ɡʲ/
// (//) (c)hi //
// (//) ki //
sz /ʂ/ si /ɕ/
    zi /ʑ/


The spelling rule for the palatal sounds /ɕ/, /ʑ/, //, // and /ɲ/ is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulphur") and the ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound /ɕ/. The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s, e.g. sinus, sinologia, do re mi fa sol la si do, Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści, Sierioża, Siergiej, Singapur, singiel. In other loanwords the vowel i is changed to y, e.g. Syria, Sybir, synchronizacja, Syrakuzy.

The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling:

Digraphs and trigraphs are used:

Phonemic value Single letter/Digraph
(in pausa or
before a consonant)
(before a vowel)
Single letter/Digraph
(before the vowel i)
// ć ci c
// dzi dz
/ɕ/ ś si s
/ʑ/ ź zi z
/ɲ/ ń ni n











Adjectives agree with nouns in terms of gender, case and number. Attributive adjectives most commonly precede the noun, although in certain cases, especially in fixed phrases (like język polski, "Polish (language)"), the noun may come first; the rule of thumb is that generic descriptive adjective normally precedes (e.g. piękny kwiat, “beautiful flower”) while categorising adjective often follows the noun (e.g. węgiel kamienny, “black coal”). Most short adjectives and their derived adverbs form comparatives and superlatives by inflection (the superlative is formed by prefixing naj- to the comparative).




Cardinal numbers have a complex system of inflection and agreement. Zero and cardinal numbers higher than five (except for those ending with the digit 2, 3 or 4 but not ending with 12, 13 or 14) govern the genitive case rather than the nominative or accusative. Special forms of numbers (collective numerals) are used with certain classes of noun, which include dziecko ("child") and exclusively plural nouns such as drzwi ("door").

Borrowed wordsEdit

Poland was once a multi-ethnic nation with many minorities that contributed to the Polish language.
1. Top left: cauliflower (Polish kalafior from Italian cavolfiore).
2. Top right: rope (sznur from German schnur).
3. Bottom left: shark (rekin from French requin).
4. Bottom right: teacher (belfer (colloquial) from Yiddish (Jewish) בעלפֿער)



The Latin language, for a very long time the only official language of the Polish state, has had a great influence on Polish. Many Polish words were direct borrowings or calques (e.g. rzeczpospolita from res publica) from Latin. Latin was known to a larger or smaller degree by most of the numerous szlachta in the 16th to 18th centuries (and it continued to be extensively taught at secondary schools until World War II). Apart from dozens of loanwords, its influence can also be seen in a number of verbatim Latin phrases in Polish literature (especially from the 19th century and earlier).


Words from Czech, an important influence during the 10th and 14th–15th centuries include sejm, hańba and brama.[43]

In 1518, the Polish king Sigismund I the Old married Bona Sforza, the niece of the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian, who introduced Italian cuisine to Poland, especially vegetables.[44] Hence, words from Italian include pomidor from "pomodoro" (tomato), kalafior from "cavolfiore" (cauliflower), and pomarańcza, a portmanteau from Italian "pomo" (pome) plus "arancio" (orange). A later word of Italian origin is autostrada (from Italian "autostrada", highway).[44]


Common handbag in Polish is called a torba, a word directly derived from the Turkish language. Turkish loanwords are common as Poland bordered the Ottoman Empire for centuries







Loanwords from PolishEdit

There are numerous words in both Polish and Yiddish (Jewish) languages which are near-identical due to the large Jewish minority that once inhabited Poland. An example includes a fishing rod, ווענטקע (ventke), borrowed directly from Polish wędka

The Polish language has influenced others. Particular influences appear in other Slavic languages and in German — due to their proximity and shared borders.[52] Examples of loanwords include German Grenze (border),[53] Dutch and Afrikaans grens from Polish granica; German Peitzker from Polish piskorz (weatherfish); German Zobel, French zibeline, Swedish sobel, and English sable from Polish soból; and ogonek ("little tail") — the word describing a diacritic hook-sign added below some letters in various alphabets. "Szmata," a Polish, Slovak and Ruthenian word for "mop" or "rag" became part of Yiddish.

There is a substantial number of Polish words which officially became part of Yiddish, once the main language of European Jews. These include basic items, objects or terms such as a bread bun (Polish bułka, Yiddish בולקע bulke), a fishing rod (wędka, ווענטקע ventke), an oak (dąb, דעמב demb), a meadow (łąka, לאָנקע lonke), a moustache (wąsy, וואָנצעס vontses) and a bladder (pęcherz, פּענכער penkher).[54]

Quite a few culinary loanwords exist in German and in other languages, some of which describe distinctive features of Polish cuisine. These include German and English Quark from twaróg (a kind of fresh cheese) and German Gurke, English gherkin from ogórek (cucumber). The word pierogi (Polish dumplings) has spread internationally, as well as pączki (Polish donuts)[55] and kiełbasa (sausage, e.g. kolbaso in Esperanto). As far as pierogi concerned, the original Polish word is already in plural (sing. pieróg, plural pierogi; stem pierog-, plural ending -i; NB. o becomes ó in a closed syllable, like here in singular), yet it is commonly used with the English plural ending -s in Canada and United States of America, pierogis, thus making it a "double plural". A similar situation happened with the Polish loanword from English czipsy ("potato chips")—from English chips being already plural in the original (chip + -s), yet it has obtained the Polish plural ending -y.

The word spruce entered the English language from the Polish name of Prusy (a historical region, today part of Poland). It became spruce because in Polish, z Prus, sounded like "spruce" in English (transl. "from Prussia") and was a generic term for commodities brought to England by Hanseatic merchants and because the tree was believed to have come from Polish Ducal Prussia.[56] However, it can be argued that the word is actually derived from the Old French term Pruce, meaning literally Prussia.[57]

See alsoEdit


  1. ^ a b World Almanac and Book of Facts, World Almanac Books, Mahwah, 1999. ISBN 0-88687-832-2.
  2. ^ a b Encyklopedia języka polskiego, pod red. S Urbańczyka i M. Kucały, Ossolineum, wyd. 3, Warszawa 1999, ISBN 83-04-02994-4, s. 156.
  3. ^ a b c European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages
  4. ^ "Nyelvi sokszínűség az EU-ban – hivatalos regionális és kisebbségi nyelvek a tagállamokban" (in Hungarian). 16 March 2016. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  5. ^ "Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities". Treaty No. 157 of 1 February 1995. Council of Europe. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  6. ^ "MINELRES - Minority related national legislation - Lithuania". Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  9. ^ "Lekhitic languages". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2015-01-08. Retrieved 2015-03-31.
  10. ^ "Język polski". Towarzystwo Miłośników Języka Polskiego. July 27, 2000 – via Google Books.
  11. ^ Mańczak-Wohlfeld, Elżbieta (July 27, 1995). "Tendencje rozwojowe współczesnych zapożyczeń angielskich w języku polskim". Universitas – via Google Books.
  12. ^ "Rok ... pod wzlędem oświaty, przemysłu i wypadków czasowych". Nakł. N. Kamieńskiego i Spólki. July 27, 1844 – via Google Books.
  13. ^ Ager, Simon (2007-07-10). "The importance of Polish as a language today". Cactus Language Training. Archived from the original on September 7, 2011. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
  14. ^ "Statistical Summaries". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2011-09-16.
  15. ^ Marácz, László; Rosello, Mireille, eds. (1 January 2012). "Multilingual Europe, Multilingual Europeans". BRILL. p. 25. ISBN 978-94-012-0803-1. Retrieved 28 November 2018 – via Google Books.
  16. ^ Koyama, Satoshi (2007). "Chapter 8: The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a Political Space: Its Unity and Complexity" (PDF). In Hayashi, Tadayuki; Fukuda, Hiroshi (eds.). Regions in Central and Eastern Europe: Past and Present. Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University. pp. 137–153. ISBN 978-4-938637-43-9.
  17. ^ "Polish Language History and Facts". Today Translations. 2014-06-20. Retrieved 2015-03-31.
  19. ^ "FIDES Digital Library - Liber fundationis claustri Sancte Marie Virginis in Henrichow = Księga henrykowska" – via
  24. ^ "Various Languages Spoken (147), Age Groups (17A) and Sex (3) for the Population of Canada, Provinces, Territories, Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations, 2006 Census - 20% Sample Data". Statistics Canada. Archived from the original on May 27, 2008. Retrieved September 21, 2008.
  25. ^ Krasnodębski, Zdzisław (20 November 2005). "Naród niedokończony". Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  26. ^ The Slavic Languages. Cambridge University Press.
  34. ^ "Silesian". MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships. Archived from the original on June 2, 2013.
  35. ^ "Dz.U. 2012 poz. 309: Rozporządzenie Ministra Administracji i Cyfryzacji z dnia 14 lutego 2012 r. w sprawie państwowego rejestru nazw geograficznych". Internetowy System Aktów Prawnych (in Polish). 14 February 2012. Retrieved 2015-03-31.
  37. ^ "Polish". UCLA Phonetics Lab data. UCLA Phonetics Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles. Archived from the original on 20 September 2017. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  38. ^ Rubach, Jerzy (28 November 1996). "Nonsyllabic Analysis of Voice Assimilation in Polish". Linguistic Inquiry. 27 (1): 69–110. JSTOR 4178926.
  39. ^ Gussmann (2007:8)[full citation needed], deferring to Rubach & Booij (1985) for further discussion.
  40. ^ Gussmann (2007), p. 9.
  41. ^ Phonetics and Phonology of lexical stress in Polish verbs, Dominika Oliver, Martine Grice, Institute of Phonetics, Saarland University, Germany
  42. ^ Andrzej Markowski. "Norma wzorcowa". Konferencje i dyskusje naukowe. Rada Języka Polskiego. Retrieved 2019-01-30.
  43. ^ a b c Knara, Izabela (6 October 2017). "Zapożyczenia w języku polskim". (in Polish). Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  44. ^ a b Janicki, Kamil (7 October 2014). "Czy Bona Sforza naprawdę sprowadziła do Polski kapustę i kalafior?". (in Polish). Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  45. ^ "Historia Żyrardowa". Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  46. ^ "kielbasa". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (fourth ed.). Houghton Mifflin Company. 2000. Archived from the original on 2008-06-30. Retrieved 2009-05-06.
  47. ^ Haumann, Heiko (2002-01-01). A History of East European Jews. Central European University Press. ISBN 9789639241268.
  48. ^ "A Virtual Visit to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews". Retrieved 2018-09-26.
  49. ^ Martinovic, Katarzyna. "Wpływ języków żydowskich na język polski". Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  50. ^ "Historia zapożyczeń". Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  51. ^ Rak, Maciej. "Kilka uwag o socjolekcie przestępczym polszczyzny przedwojennego Lwowa, "Socjolingwistyka" XXX, 2016". Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  52. ^ Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna; Walczak, Bogdan (28 November 2018). "Polish". Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire. 88 (3): 817–840. doi:10.3406/rbph.2010.7805. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  53. ^ "Polish Language". RealPoland.
  54. ^ Gliński, Mikołaj (7 December 2015). "How Much Polish Is There in Yiddish (and How Much Yiddish Is There in Polish)?". Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  55. ^ Peterson, Lucas (27 February 2017). "What Are Paczki and Why Is Everyone Freaking Out About Them?". Eater. Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  56. ^ "Online Etymology Dictionary". Retrieved 2015-03-31.
  57. ^ "spruce - Origin and meaning of spruce by Online Etymology Dictionary". Retrieved 28 November 2018.

Further readingEdit

External linksEdit