Polish language

Polish is the official language of Poland.

Polish
Spoken in: Poland
Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia (Europe), Slovakia, Ukraine, UAE, USA.

Total speakers: 46 Million

Ranking: 22

Genetic
classification: Indo-European
Slavic
  West
   Lekhitic
    Polish

Official status

Official language of: Poland, also Vilnius county, Lithuania

ISO 639-1: pl

ISO 639-2: pol

SIL: PQL

Table of contents

1 History
2 Classification
3 Geographic distribution
4 Dialects
5 Sounds
6 Grammar
7 Vocabulary
8 Writing systems

History

Polish has been influenced by contact with foreign languages (foremost Latin, German, French, Italian, Russian and English). In Greater Poland and especially Silesia the inimitable regional dialects are influenced by German elements. Since 1945, as the result of mass education and mass migrations, standard Polish has become far more homogeneous, although regional dialects persist. In the western and northern territories, resettled in large measure by Poles from the Soviet Union, the older generation came to speak a language characteristic of the former eastern provinces.

Classification

The Polish language, together with other Lekhitic languages (Kashubian, Polabian), Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak, belongs to the West branch of Slavic languages.

Geographic distribution

Polish is mainly spoken in Poland, but Polish emigrants have brought the language with them, and there are significant numbers of Polish speakers in Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Russia (Europe), Slovakia, Ukraine, UAE, and the USA.

Dialects

It has several dialects that correspond in the main to the old tribal divisions; the most significant of these (in terms of numbers of speakers) are Great Polish (spoken in the northwest), Little Polish (spoken in the southeast), Mazovian (Mazur), and Silesian. Mazovian shares some features with Kashubian language, whose remaining speakers (estimates vary from 100,000 to over 200,000) live west of Gdansk near the Baltic Sea.

Small numbers of people also speak Belarusian, Ukrainian, and German as well as several varieties of Romany.

Sounds

to do: sounds and phonology of Polish

Grammar

Polish is often said to be one of the most difficult languages for non-native speakers to learn. It has a complex gender system with five genders: neuter, feminine and three masculine genders (personal, animate and inanimate). There are 7 cases and 2 numbers.

Nouns, adjectives and verbs are inflected, and both noun declension and verb conjugation are highly irregular. Every verb is either perfective or imperfective.

Verbs often come in pairs, one of them imperfective and the other perfective (usually imperfective verb with a prefix), but often there are many perfective verbs with different prefixes for single imperfective words.

Tenses are:

construction (for perfective verbs) (for imperfective verbs) example imperfective example perfective

verb+ić infinitive infinitive robić zrobić

verb+suffix future simple tense present tense robicie zrobicie

past participle+suffix past perfect tense past imperfect tense robiliście zrobiliście

(this suffix can be moved) coście robili coście zrobili

Movable suffix is usually attached to verb or to the most accented of sentence, like question preposition.

Sometimes alone suffix with prefix że- appears.

So what have you done ? can be:

co zrobiliście
coście zrobili
co żeście zrobili

All these forms are used without a subject -- "wy" ("you" in plural). Of course, it is possible to use the subject along, but it sounds well only in the first sentence (the other two are stronger, with the stress on the verb, so the subject is not so important):

co wy zrobiliście
coście zrobili (in fact, a Polish won't use subject here)
co żeście zrobili (as above)
co wyście zrobili (here the stress goes to "you" -- "wy"+ście)

Past participle depends on number and gender, so 3rd person, singular past perfect tense can be:

zrobił (he made/did)
zrobiła (she made/did)
zrobiło (it made/did)

Vocabulary

to do: Polish vocabulary

Writing systems

The Polish alphabet ... letters are variously decorated with diacritics and it can be represented with the ISO 8859-2 character set:

a, ą, b, c, ć, d, e, ę, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, ł, m, n, ń, o, �, p, q, r, s, ś, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, ź, ż,
A, Ą, B, C, Ć, D, E, Ę, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, Ł, M, N, Ń, O, �, P, Q, R, S, Ś, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, Ź, Ż

The letters q, v and x are used only in foreign words. It uses 9 special characters, and some character pairs to represent sounds not available in the Latin alphabet. Vowels are pronounced like in all European languages (and for that matter Japanese) other than English.

"a b d e f h k l m n o p s t u z" are pronounced as you'd expect them to be.

"c" is pronounced "ts" (a single sound).
"g" is always hard, like in "game" not like "gene".
"i" is pronounced like "i" and before other vowel like "y". It softens the consonant before it.
"j" is pronounced like "y".
"r" is vibrating (like in Italian or Spanish)
"w" is pronounced like "v".
"y" is pronounced like "i", but it doesn't soften the consonant before it.

Special letters are:

"ą" - prononuced like "o", "on", "ong" or "om".
"ć" - pronounced like soft "ch".
"ę" - pronounced like "e", "en", "eng" or "em"
"ł" - pronounced like "w".
"ń" - pronounced like soft "n".
"�" - pronounced like "u".
"ś" - pronounced like soft "sh".
"ź" - pronounced like soft "zh".
"ż" - pronounced like hard "zh".

Special letter pairs are:

"ch" - pronounced like "h".
"cz" - pronounced like hard "ch".
"dz" - pronounces like "dz" (a single sound).
"dź" - pronounced like soft "j".
"dż" - pronounced like hard "j".
"rz" - pronounced like hard "zh".
"sz" - pronounced like hard "sh".