Polish language
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| Polish language | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Spoken in: | Poland, USA, Canada, Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania by minorities in Germany, Australia and Brasil |
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| Speakers: | 47 Million | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country: | Poland | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Polish language (język polski, polszczyzna) is the official language of Poland. It is the most widely spoken western slavic language and the second largest Slavic language after Russian. It is one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn.
Polish was an important language in central and eastern Europe. Now it is still spoken by some people as a second language in western parts of the Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. Because of emigration from Poland, Polish speakers can be found in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. There are about 46 million native Polish speakers.
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[edit] Letters
There are 9 letters in Polish which English doesn't have. They look like English letters with marks above or below them.
In lower case, the 9 letters are: ą ć ę ł ń ś ó ź ż
In upper case, the 9 letters are: Ą Ć Ę Ł Ń Ś Ó Ź Ż
There are 3 English letters which are not used in Polish: q, v, x.
There are 7 combinations of 2 letters which are like a single letter sound (similar to "th" or "qu" in English). These include "ch", "cz", "dz", "dź", "dż", "rz", "sz".
[edit] Sounds
Many letters have the same sound in Polish and English, for instance "f", "m", and others. But other letters sound different, for instance Polish "w" sounds like an English "v", while Polish "ł" sounds like an English "w". There are also some Polish sounds which don't exist in English, and some English sounds which don't exist in Polish.
The vowels "ą" and "ę" are nasal, which means you pronounce them blowing air partly out of your nose as well as your mouth.
Most words are pronounced with an accent on the next-to-last syllable. For instance the Polish word "student" (which means the same as the English word) is pronounced with the accent on "stu" ("STU-dent"), while "studenci" (the plural form of "student") is pronounced with the accent on "den" (stu-DEN-ci).
[edit] Dialects
The Polish language has several dialects, but less so than most European languages. There are small differences in "standard" Polish, but all speakers can understand one another, and non-native speakers often cannot notice the differences.
[edit] Grammar
The grammar is complex, and has some features which do not appear in English.
Like many languages, Polish has grammatical gender. A table (stół) is masculine, a book (książka) is feminine, and a window (okno) is neuter.
Nouns and adjectives and verbs have many endings, depending on their role in a sentence. There are 7 cases or roles which a noun can have in a Polish sentence, each with its own ending. The endings also depend on the gender of the noun.
Word order is more free in Polish, partly because the noun endings help you understand the role of the word. In English, "The boy bites the dog" is quite different from "The dog bites the boy", but in Polish you could use either order without confusion.
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