Polish language
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Polish (polski, język polski, polszczyzna) is the official language of Poland. Polish is the main representative of the Lekhitic branch of the Western Slavic languages. It originated in the areas of present-day Poland from several local Western Slavic dialects, most notably those spoken in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland.
Throughout the ages, Polish has gained lingua franca status in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe, mostly due to the political, cultural, scientific and military influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although not that popular any more, it is still widely spoken in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as a second language.
| Polish (Polski) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Poland (38 million), also about 6 million speakers in the USA, Lithuania, Belarus, France, Germany, Ukraine and other countries. |
| Region: | - |
| Total speakers: | 44 million |
| Ranking: | 27 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Poland |
| Regulated by: | Polish Language Council |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | pl |
| ISO 639-2 | pol |
| SIL | pol |
| See also: Language – List of languages | |
| Contents |
History
Polish has been influenced by contact with foreign languages (foremost Latin, Czech, French, German, Italian, Old Belarusian, Russian and recently it has been virtually bombarded by English, especially American English language elements).
Many words have been borrowed from German as a result of heavy contact with Germans and the German language, this process has been going on since medieval times. Examples include szlachta (from German Geschlecht=nobility), rachunek (Rechnung=account), ratusz (Rathaus=town hall), burmistrz (Bürgermeister=mayor; word used only for mayors of smaller cities), handel (Handel=commerce), kac (Kater=hangover), kartofel (Kartoffel=potato; this word is dialectal: most Poles use the word 'ziemniak' for potato, but both words are understood anywhere), cukier (Zucker=sugar), kelner (Kellner=waiter) and malarz (Maler=painter; also the word 'malować' has entered Polish as the verb "to paint"). This is especially true of the regional dialects of Upper Silesia. There are also several words of French origin in the language, most likely dating from the Napoleon era, such as ekran (écran=screen), rekin (rekin=shark), meble (meuble=furniture), fotel (fauteuil=armchair), plaża (plage=beach) and koszmar (cauchemar=nightmare). Some place names have also been adapted from French, such as the two Warsaw boroughs of Żoliborz (joli bord=beautiful riverside) and Mokotów (mon coteau=my cottage), as well as the suburb of Żyrardów (from the name Girard, with the Polish suffix -ów attached to form the town's name). Other words are borrowed from other Slavic languages, for example "hańba" and "brama" from Czech.
When borrowing international words, Polish often changes their spelling. For example, the Latin suffix spelled '-tion' in English corresponds to '-cja'. To make the word plural, -cja becomes -cje. Examples of this include "inauguracja" (inauguration), dewastacja (devastation), konurbacja (conurbation) and konotacje (connotations). Also, the digraph 'qu' becomes 'kw' (kwadrant=quadrant; frekwencja=frequency).
Since 1945, as the result of mass education and mass migrations (which affected several countries after the Second World War, with Poland being an extreme case) standard Polish has become far more homogeneous, although regional dialects persist, particularly in the south and south-west in the hilly areas bordering the Czech and Slovak Republics. In the western and northern territories, resettled in large measure by Poles from the territories annexed by the Soviet Union, the older generation speaks a dialect of Polish characteristic of the former eastern provinces.
Classification
The Polish language is the most widely-spoken of the Slavic language subgroup of Lekhitic languages which include Kashubian (and its extinct dialect/language Slovincian) and the also-extinct Polabian language. The three languages and one language/dialect, along with Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovakian, belong to the West branch of Slavic languages.
Geographic distribution
Polish is mainly spoken in Poland. In fact, Poland is one of the most homogenous European countries in terms of its mother tongue, as close to 97 percent of Polish citizens declare Polish as their mother tongue. After the Second World War the previously Polish territories annexed by the USSR retained a large amount of the Polish population that was unwilling or unable to migrate towards the post-1945 Poland and even today ethnic Poles in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine constitute large minorities. In Lithuania 9 percent of the population declared Polish to be their mother tongue. It is by far the most widely used minority language in the Vilniaus Apskritis (Vilnius region) (26 percent of the population, according to the 2001 census results), but it is also present in other apskritis. In Ukraine, Polish is most often used in the Lviv and Lutsk regions. Western Belarus has an important Polish minority, especially in the Brest and Hrodna regions.
There are also significant numbers of Polish speakers in Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, New Zealand, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, UAE, the UK and the USA.
In the USA the number of people of Polish descent is over 9 million, see: Polish language in the United States, but most of them do not use Polish in their everyday communications.
According to the United States 2000 Census, 667,414 Americans of age 5 years and over reported Polish as language spoken at home, which is about 1.4 percent of people who speak languages other than English or 0.25 percent of the U.S. population.
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 west), Little Polish (spoken in the south and southeast), Mazovian (Mazur) spoken throughout the centre and east of the country, and Silesian spoken in the southwest. Mazovian shares some features with the Kashubian language, whose remaining speakers (estimates vary from 100,000 to over 200,000) live in and around the city of Gdansk near the Baltic Sea, predominantly to the west of the city. There are also several, now mostly extinct, regional dialects of Polish, including the Warsaw dialect.
Small numbers of people in Poland also speak Belarusian, Ukrainian, and German as well as several varieties of Romany.
Phonetics
Vowels
Template:IPA notice The Polish vowel system is relatively simple with only six oral and two nasal vowels. All Polish vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:
| Polish script | IPA | Description | English approximation | Polish example1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | front closed unrounded | seek | miś ('teddy bear') | |
| e | front half open unrounded | ten | ten ('this') | |
| y | central closed unrounded | sick | mysz ('mouse') | |
| a | [a] | central open unrounded | cut | kat ('executioner') |
| u / ó | [u] | back closed rounded | boom | bum ('boom') |
| o | back half open rounded | caught | kot ('cat') |
Unlike in other Slavic languages, the Proto-Slavic nasal vowels are preserved in Polish. However, nasality tends to be lost, especially at the end of a word. These vowels are never initial. In script they are marked by a diacritic known as ogonek.
Before all stops nasal vowels are now pronounced as vowel + nasal consonant (kąt pronounced as kont, gęba pronounced as gemba). At the end of the word nasal 'e' is pronounced as non-nasal 'e' by almost all native speakers. Practically nasal vowels survived in pronunciation only before fricatives and (nasal ą) at the end of the word.
Unlike in French, the nasal vowels in Polish are asynchronous which means that in fact each nasal vowel is pronounced as an oral vowel followed by a nasal semivowel, e.g. ą [ɔɰ̃] rather than [ɔ̃]. For the sake of simplicity these asynchronous nasal vowels will be henceforth represented as ordinary (synchronous) nasal vowels.
| Polish script | IPA | Description | English approximation | Polish example1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ę | [ε̃] | nasal front half open unrounded | length | węże ('snakes') |
| ą | nasal back half open rounded | nasal o (not a), as in long | wąż ('snake') |
The length of a vowel is not phonemic in Polish which means that how long a vowel is pronounced does not change the meaning of a word. However, this was not the case in Proto-Slavic, which distinguished three vowel lengths - short, normal and long. There were two short vowels - hard (ъ) and soft (ь). Eventually, the short vowels either disappeared or turned into a normal e. In the former case two CV syllables became one CVC syllable. Disappearance of a short soft vowel caused the preceding consonant to become "softened" or palatalized. Example:
'Day' in nominative: dьnь → dzień
'Day' in genitive: dьna → dnia
Meanwhile, long vowels were shortened to normal and simultaneously became higher - apart from the vowels which were already high - i and u. This vowel shift may be presented like this:
long a → normal o
long e → normal y or normal i
long i → normal i
long o → normal ó, pronounced [u]
long u → normal u
Note that the normal u which was once a long o is still distinguished in script as ó.
Consonants
Polish consonant system is more complicated and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. Affricates are often marked by digraphs. Palatal consonants (known to Poles as "soft" consonants) are marked either by an acute accent or followed by an i. Like in English, voicedness is phonemic but aspiration is not.
Within this consonant system one can distinguish three series of fricatives and affricates:
- alveolar, a.k.a. "hissing" (ciąg syczący): z s dz c
- postalveolar, a.k.a. "rustling" (ciąg szumiący): ż sz dż cz
- alveolo-palatal, a.k.a. "hushing" (ciąg ciszący): ź ś dź ć
In some Polish dialects, e.g. Masurian, the consonants of the rustling series are replaced by those of the hissing series.
All palatal and alveolo-palatal consonants (i.e. ź ś dź ć ń j) as well as those preceding the vowel i are referred to as "soft" consonants. All the other consonants are "hard".
Note that Polish distinguishes between affricates and plosive + fricative consonant clusters, e.g.:
- czysta ('clean' fem.) vs. trzysta ('three hundred')
- dżem ('jam') vs. drzemka ('nap')
In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. To put it another way, a consonant cluster may not contain both voiced and voiceless consonants. All the consonants are voiced (if the last consonant is normally voiced) or voiceless (if the last consonant is normally voiceless). This rule does not apply to approximants - a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants. Examples:
- łódka ['wutka] ('boat'), [d] → [t] (k is normally voiceless)
- kawka ['kafka] ('jackdaw'), [v] → [f] (k is normally voiceless)
- także ('also'), [k] → [g] (ż is normally voiced)
- jakby ['jagb
i] ('as if'), [k] → [g] (b is normally voiced) - król [krul] ('king'), [k] does not change (r is an approximant)
- wart [vart] ('worth'), [r] does not change (r is an approximant)
The consonants w and rz are normally voiced, but if a consonant cluster ends with w or rz and the last but one consonant is normally voiceless, then the whole consonant cluster is voiceless.
- krzak ('bush'), [ʒ / Z] → [ʃ / S] (k is normally voiceless)
- odtworzyć ('to reproduce'), [d] → [t] & [v] → [f] (t is normally voiceless)
The most popular Polish tongue-twister, a fragment of Chrząszcz poem by Jan Brzechwa, may serve as yet another example:
- W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie.
- In [the town of] Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed.
Stress
In Polish the stress falls generally on the penultimate (last but one) syllable, e.g. zrobił ('he did'), zrobili ('they did').
Exceptions include:
- verbs in first and second person plural past tense, e.g. zrobiliśmy ('we did') - stress on the last but two syllable
- verbs in conditional tense, e.g. zrobiłbym ('I would do') - stress on the last but two syllable
- verbs in first and second person plural conditional tense, e.g. zrobilibyśmy ('we would do') - stress on the last but three syllable
- some words borrowed from Latin (e.g. matematyka) can optionally be stressed on the last but two syllable, but this has mostly fallen out of use in last 50 years.
Orthography
The Polish alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet but uses diacritics such as kreska (graphically similar to acute accent), superior dot and ogonek.
| Upper case | HTML code | Lower case | HTML code | Usual phonetic value | Other phonetic values |
| A | a | [a] | |||
| Ą | Ą | ą | ą | [ɔ̃] | [ɔ], [ɔm], [ɔn], [ɔŋ], [ɔɲ] |
| B | b | [b] | [p] | ||
| C | c | [ʦ] | [ʣ], [tɕ] | ||
| Ć | Ć | ć | ć | [tɕ] | [dʑ] |
| D | d | [d] | [t] | ||
| E | e | [ε] | |||
| Ę | Ę | ę | ę | [ε̃] | [ε], [εm], [εn], [εŋ], [εɲ] |
| F | f | [f] | [v] | ||
| G | g | [g] | [k] | ||
| H | h | [x] | [γ] | ||
| I | i | [i] | [ȋ], mute (softens preceding consonant) | ||
| J | j | [ȋ] or [j] | |||
| K | k | [k] | [g] | ||
| L | l | [l] | |||
| Ł | Ł | ł | ł | [ȗ] or [w] | dental [l] in eastern dialects |
| M | m | [m] | |||
| N | n | [n] | [ŋ], [ɲ] | ||
| Ń | Ń | ń | ń | [ɲ] | |
| O | o | [ɔ] | |||
| Ó | Ó | ó | ó | [u] | |
| P | p | [p] | [b] | ||
| R | r | [r] | |||
| S | s | [s] | [z], [ɕ] | ||
| Ś | Ś | ś | ś | [ɕ] | [ʑ] |
| T | t | [t] | [d] | ||
| U | u | [u] | [ȗ] | ||
| W | w | [v] | [f] | ||
| Y | y | [ | |||
| Z | z | [z] | [s], [ʑ] | ||
| Ź | Ź | ź | ź | [ʑ] | [ɕ] |
| Ż | Ż | ż | ż | [ʒ] | [ʃ] |
Polish orthography also includes seven digraphs:
| Capitalized | HTML code | Lower case | HTML code | Usual phonetic value | Other phonetic values |
| Ch | ch | [x] | [γ] | ||
| Cz | cz | ||||
| Dz | dz | , , [d-z] | |||
| Dź | DŹ | dź | dź | ||
| Dż | DŻ | dż | dż | , | |
| Rz | rz | , [r-z] | |||
| Sz | sz |
Note that although the Polish orthography is mostly phonetic, some sounds may be written in more than one way:
- [x] as either h or ch
- as either ż or rz (though rż denotes a [rʒ] cluster)
- [u] as either u or ó
- some soft consonants as either ć, dź, ń, ś, ź, or ci, dzi, ni, si, zi
Unlike in English, if consonants are doubled in script, it means that they are also doubled in pronunciation, e.g.: wanna ['vanna], not ['vana] ('bathtub'); motto ['mɔttɔ], not ['mɔtɔ].
Grammar
Polish is often said to be one of the most difficult languages for non-native speakers to learn; of course, this depends on one's native language. While difficult for English speakers, it is relatively easy for speakers of Russian and other Slavic languages. 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 word of sentence, like question preposition.
Sometimes the sentence may be emphasised with a particle -że- (-ż).
So what have you done ? can be:
- Co zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili?
- Cóżeście zrobili? (It could be derived from Cóż zrobiliście? which actually sounds odd and is not used)
All the above examples show inflected forms of the verb "zrobić" for the subject "you" informal plural ("wy"). However, it is of note that none of the above examples include the subject itself. The inclusion of the subject is not necessary here because Polish is a pro-drop language. This means that a subject does not need to be used with an inflected verb. Instead, the reader or listener can tell which subject is implied through the type ending on the verb. This is different for each pronoun in Polish with the exceptions of on/ona/ono (he/she/it) which all have the same verb ending as each other and and oni/one (they - of a group including male humans/they - of a group of people or things not including male humans) which also have the same verb ending as each other. Because the subject can be dropped, if the subject is used with an inflected verb it places the emphasis of the sentence on the subject. Of the above three examples, a native speaker would not include the subject in the middle sentence and would be unlikely to include a subject in the last one. The below examples show how the subject could be included in such sentences, where possible:
- Co wy zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili? (a native speaker would not use a subject here)
- Co wyście zrobili? (this example places the stress strongly on "you" -- "wy"+ście)
- Co żeście zrobili? (this example includes the use of the że- particle - considered very colloquial)
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)
Word order
From Wikibooks' Polish Language Course. Basic word order in Polish is SVO, however it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop subject, object or even sometimes verb, if they are obvious from context.
These sentences mean the same ("Ala has a cat"):
- Ala ma kota
- Ala kota ma
- Kota ma Ala
- Ma Ala kota
- Kota Ala ma
- Ma kota Ala
Yet only the first of these sounds natural in Polish, and others should be used for emphasis only, if at all.
If apparent from context, you can drop the subject, object or even the verb:
- Ma kota - can be used if it's obvious who is being talked about
- Ma - answer for "Czy Ala ma kota?" ("Does Ala have a cat?")
- Ala - answer for "Kto ma kota?" ("Who has a cat?")
- Kota - answer for "Co ma Ala?" ("What does Ala have?")
- Ala ma - answer for "Kto z naszych znajomych ma kota?" ("Which of our friends has a cat?")
Note the marker "czy" which is used to start a yes/no question, much as the French use "est-ce que".
There is a tendency in Polish to drop the subject rather than the object and you rarely know the object but not the subject. If the question was "Kto ma kota ?" (who has a cat ?), the answer should be "Ala" alone, without a verb.
In particular, "ja" (I) and "ty" (you, singular), and also their plural equivalents "my" (we) and "wy" (you, plural), are almost always dropped.
Vocabulary
ja - I
ty - you
on - he
ona - she
ono - it
my - we
wy - you
oni - they (mixed group, both men and women)
one - they (group of only women and children or things)
kot - cat
pies - dog
krowa - cow
świnia - pig
mucha - fly
osa - wasp
pszczoła - bee
drzewo - tree
kwiat - flower
Anglia - England
Szkocja - Scotland
Walia - Wales
Irlandia - Ireland
Wielka Brytania - Great Britain
Zjednoczone Królestwo - United Kingdom
Niemcy - Germany
Japonia - Japan
Stany Zjednoczone Ameryki - The United States of America
Francja - France
Hiszpania - Spain
Wenezuela - Venezuela
Polska - Poland
Polak - Pole
polski - Polish
Notes
1 You can hear the voice samples by clicking on the Polish example (ogg format).
See also
- Slavic languages
- Slavic peoples
- Poland
- Common phrases in Polish
- Wiktionary:Polish language
- Wikibooks:Basic Polish language course
- Swietokrzyskie Sermons
External links
Template:InterWiki Template:Wikibookspar Template:Wikiquote
- słownik polski - polish dictionary (http://slownik.web-monkeys.com/)
- Polish language on Ethnologue (http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=pol)
- All free Polish dictionaries (http://www.fdicts.com/dictlist1.php?k1=75)
- PWN Polish-English Dictionary (http://sjp.pwn.pl/)
- Webster's Online Polish-English Dictionary (http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Polish-english/)
- Polish-English dictionary (http://www.dict.pl)
- Free Polish Translation (http://www.anglik.net/polish.htm)
- Online translation Polish<->English (http://www.poltran.com/)
- Polish language course (http://golem.umcs.lublin.pl/users/ppikuta/lessons/less0.htm)
- Polish On-line (http://www.langsites.com/Polish.htm)
- A Concise Polish Grammar, by Ronald F. Feldstein (110-page 600-KB pdf) (http://seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/compgrammar_polish.pdf)ang:Polisc sprǽc
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