Polish Jzyk polski
Spoken in	Poland
Number of speakers	56 million Poland 38,000,000 U.S. 10,438,000 Germany 3,341,000 Ukraine 1151000 France 1,000,000 Belarus 403 000 Lithuania 258 000 Canada 225 000 Israel 100 000 Russia 94 000 Kazakhstan 61 500 Latvia 57 000 Austria 50 000 Slovakia 50 000 Czech Republic 39 000 Hungary 21 000 Australia 13 783 Romania 10 000 Brazil 1670 Azerbaijan 1300 Estonia 600 Finland
Typology	SVO + free order accentual (controversial)
Classification by family
- Indo-European - Balto-Slavic languages - Slavic languages - West Slavic languages - Polish
Official status
Official language of	Poland European Union
Governed by	Jzyk Polskiego Rada (pl)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	pl
ISO 639-2	pol
ISO 639-3	pol
IETF	pl
Sample
Article I of the Declaration of Human Rights ( see text in French ) Artyku 1 Ludzie si Wszyscy Rodz Wolner Rowne i pod wzgldem swej godnoci swych i praw. His obdarzeni rozumem i oni i sumieniem powinni wobec innych w postpowa duchu braterstwa.
change

Polish is a language belonging to the Slavic group of the Western family of Indo-European languages.

Polish in Europe (red: language; pink: Polish minorities important; pink: European Union , where Polish is an official language; blue dots: Polish minorities

Most people who speak Polish living in Poland. The country is one of Europe's most linguistically homogeneous, 97% of citizens of Poland have declared Polish as their mother tongue. After the Second World War, the former Polish territories annexed by the Soviet Belarus has maintained a substantial Polish population who refused or were unable to emigrate to Poland after 1945. Even today, the ethnic Poles constitute significant minorities in Lithuania , in Belarus , and Ukraine. Polish is by far the most used language in the county of Vilnius in Lithuania (80% of the population, according to the census of 2001), in the city of Vilnius (20%) and is also present in other counties. Belarus has a large Polish minority, especially in regions of Brest and Grodno.

A significant number of Polish speakers also live in South Africa , in Germany , in Andorra , in Argentina , in Australia , in Austria , in Azerbaijan , in Belarus , in Belgium , in Brazil , in Bulgaria , in Canada , in Croatia , the Denmark , the United Arab Emirates in Spain , in Estonia , the United States , in Finland , in France , in Greece , in Hungary , the Faroe Islands in Ireland , in Israel , in Iceland , in Italy , in Kazakhstan , in Latvia , the Lebanon , in Luxembourg , in Mexico , in New Zealand , in Norway , the Netherlands , in Peru , in the Czech Republic , in Romania , the UK , in Russia , in Serbia , in Slovakia , in Sweden in Ukraine and Uruguay.

United States

United States, the number of Polish speakers is more than 11 million, but most of them are not fluent in that language. According to the 2000 census, 667,414 Americans aged five and older speak Polish at home: about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English, or 0.25% of the U.S. population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers are mainly in three states: the Illinois (185 749), the state of New York (111 740) and New Jersey (74 663).

In Canada

Canada has a large Polish population. The 2006 census recorded 242,885 Polish speakers, with a strong concentration in the city of Toronto in Ontario (91,810 people).

History

Slavic languages.

Polish is a Slavic language , as well as the Russian example, but that belongs to a subfamily specific (group of West Slavic languages, with the Kashubian, Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian). The Polish language was detached from the early Eastern Slavic languages, so she keeps the nasal vowels (A and E) and adopt a Latin script , as opposed to the majority that keeps the alphabet Cyrillic.

Polish has been influenced by foreign languages (mainly Latin , the Czech , the French , the Italian , the Belarusian and Ukrainian , the Russian and the English ). The first traces of Polish Latin texts come from the ^twelfth century with proper names. But we must go back to the ^fourteenth century before finding significant texts.

Dialects

Languages and dialects in Central Europe

The Polish language became far more homogeneous in the second half of the twentieth ^century, partly thanks to the mass migration of several million Polish citizens from the eastern part of the country, called " Kresy "(containment) in Polish, the western part after the annexation by the Soviet Union of Poland East in 1939.

The inhabitants of different regions of Poland speak Polish "standard" somewhat differently, although the differences between these broad "dialects" seem slight. Firstly, the Polish language has never trouble understanding, and non-native speakers usually can not easily distinguish regional variations. The differences are small compared to different dialects of French or English, for example.

The regional differences correspond mainly to old tribal divisions of nearly a thousand years, the most important in terms of speakers are:

• dialect of the Greater Poland (language spoken in the West)
• dialect of the Lesser Poland (language spoken in South and Southeast)
• dialect of Masovian spoken throughout central and eastern Canada.
• the Silesian spoken in the Southwest (the controversy)

The other dialects, less important, include:

• The Podhale (Gwara Podhalaska)
• The Kashubian , spoken in the region of Gdansk near the Baltic Sea, a language closely related to Polish.
• In the former Russian territories east and north of Poland and the Poles in Lithuania and Belarus, speak a dialect close to the Russian.
• Some large cities like Warsaw , have their own dialect.

Phonetics

Vowels

	Previous		Central		Posterior
Closed	i u has
Closed pre-
Half-closed
Average
Half-open
Pre-open
Open

The vowels are Polish 8 in number: six oral and two nasal.

Polish oral vowels

Writing	API	Approximate Pronunciation	Polish Example
i	Nasal Unlike other Slavic languages, nasal vowels (E and) have been preserved in Polish, although they begin to disappear (in pronunciation, but not written) - especially at the end of a word -. These vowels, marked with an ogonek , never begin a word. Before an occlusive , the nasal vowels are followed by a nasal consonant : for example, is phonetically pronounced kat kont (pronounce the t), and is phonetically pronounced geba gemba. At the end of a word, the nasal is often ignored by the Poles in favor of an e normal. Most nasal vowels are preserved before a fricative consonant , and word endings for nasal. Unlike the French, the nasal vowels of Polish are asynchronous: they are actually two sounds, an oral vowel followed immediately by a semi-vowel nasal. For example, will be pronounced Consonants Points of articulation Labial Coronal Dorsal (None) Modes of articulation Bilabial Labio- dental Dental Alveolar Post- alveolar Alveolar palatal Palatal Velar Glottal Nasal m n Occlusive p b t d ( c ) k Fricatives f v s z ( ) x ( ) Affricates Spirants j Rolled r Spirants side l ( ) There is also a fricative consonant voiced labio-velar Accent tonic In Polish, the tonic accent falls on the penultimate syllable: zero BIL (he did), zero bi li (they did). This rule has some exceptions: the past tenses with the first or second person plural: bi limy zero (we did) - emphasis on the penultimate -. conjugate verbs in the conditional: bibym zero (I'd) - emphasis on the penultimate -. verbs conjugated in the first or second person plural conditional: zero bi libymy (we would) - emphasis on the syllable before the antepenultimate -. some words from the Latin (example: my mate tyka) may be accented on the syllable before the antepenultimate, although this usage tends to get lost. These exceptions are only apparent verbal: they are easily explained by the fact that these forms are the source of the compound forms a part (normally accented on the penultimate syllable and provided in gender and number) followed by the verb "to be" not normally emphasized that combines: the two form an accentual unit that does not change the emphasis of the participle, hence the impression that the accent does not follow the norm. Writing Main article: Polish Writing. The Polish alphabet. The letters q, v and x are used for foreign names. It is written using the Latin alphabet enriched diacritics : the ogonek ( ), the acute accent (n N C C O O S S ), the slash (l) and the point suscrit (Z Z). It also makes use of seven digraphs (ch, cz, dz, dz, dz, rz, sz). The letters Q and X V are used only in borrowings and foreign words. Z helmed Z variant frequently found in the Z point. i / y The difference between i and there is not just spelling. I is pronounced similarly to the French, while the sound is located between the French and e eu (attention, as in m but had not been rre as in b), in fact closer to the e - well only slightly more serious, almost equivalent. The i palatalized the preceding consonant, while it does not change this. Some consonants followed by hushing i get: this, and if z is pronounced Grammatical features Main article: Polish Grammar. Like many Slavic and Baltic languages, Polish has seven cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , vocative , instrumental and rental ). There are five types (the male staff, male animated inanimate masculine, feminine and neuter) and two numbers (singular and plural). The bending of the verb is not only to indicate the person and number, but also to determine gender. The use of personal pronouns is therefore superfluous and serves such emphasis. The conjugation of verbs is highly irregular. The order of words in a phrase often of little importance, so that the subject and the object can be inserted both before and after the verb. They can also disappear if the context makes unnecessary, particularly in the case of personal pronouns. Examples Word Translation Standard pronunciation Etymological relation to Latin or French earth ziemia humus sky Nieboer nimbus water woda unda fire Ogie ignis man mczyzna mens Women Kobiet Dining jescs eder drink peak bibere great Duy small May malus night noc nox day Dzien dies See also Polish . Visit in Polish. The has course on " Polish ". Related articles Language language list Languages by family Indo-European Balto-Slavic languages Slavic languages West Slavic languages Swadesh list of Polish External Links Category Poles directory dmoz (En) English Language Courses Polish Knowledge of Polish in France, Belgium and other European countries Study Poles in France Official languages of the European Union German English Bulgarian Danish Spanish Estonian Finnish French Greek Hungarian Irish Italian Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Dutch Polish Portuguese Romanian Slovak Slovenian Swedish Czech Language portal Poland portal

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