Languages
Native
Polish
97%
Secondary languages
English
33%
German
19%
Language Samples
Cześć, jak się masz?
Hello, how are you?
Mam się dobrze, dziękuję.
I am very well, thank you.
Jeden, dwa, trzy, cztery, pięć, sześć, siedem, osiem, dziewięć, dziesięć.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Linguistic History
Polish is a West Slavic language that developed from the dialects spoken by the Polans tribe in the region of Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) from around the 10th century. The oldest known sentence written in Polish, found in the 'Book of Henryków' (c. 1270), reads 'Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai'. Polish used the Latin alphabet from the earliest written records, differentiating it visually from its East Slavic neighbours. Despite three partitions (1772–1795) that erased Poland from the map for 123 years, the Polish language survived and was central to national identity. Today Polish is spoken by approximately 45 million people worldwide.
Similar Languages
Slovak
80%
Czech
74%
Russian
74%
Ukrainian
70%
Media
Main Market Square (Rynek Główny) in Kraków, one of the largest medieval town squares in Europe.
Photo: Jorge Lascar · CC BY 2.0
Did You Know
01
Polish has one of the most complex consonant clusters in any European language — the word 'szczęście' (happiness) contains four consecutive consonants.
02
The Polish language uses seven grammatical cases and has separate verb forms for male and female speakers in the past tense.
03
Poland has produced three Nobel Prize winners in Literature who wrote in Polish: Henryk Sienkiewicz, Władysław Reymont, and Wisława Szymborska.