I have always loved the Polish language. All the Ws, the consonants and the interesting punctuation. It has always been one of my favorite languages to work with during my 16 years in the localization industry. I am finally at a point where I can tell the difference between Czech and Polish by sight but it did take a few years. I can also tell the difference by sound between Russian and Polish but they sound very similar and this also has taken many years!
Having two children who are half-Polish and were blessed with a long surname that can be hard to spell, I decided to delve into the language and find out more about it.
Polish is spoken by 50 million people and is part of the western branch of Slavic languages, and belongs to the Indo-European family, along with Slovak and Czech. Although there was pressure from non-Polish administrations in Poland to suppress the native language, Polish is currently the largest, in terms of speakers, of the West Slavic group. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, preceded only by Russian.
Polish is the official language obviously of Poland but it is also spoken as a second language in some parts of Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. This is due to migration of the Polish people and border changes after World War II.
Interesting facts about the Polish language:
- Many words in the Polish language were borrowed from German due to its close proximity.
- The Polish call their language język polski or polszczyzna.
- Slovak is similar to Polish as German is to Swiss German, with more than 70% of vocabulary shared.
- Polish and Russian are like Spanish and Italian, with 55-60% of vocabulary similar
- While Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian use the Cyrillic script, Czech and Polish use the Latin-based script.
- The Polish have a special fondness for English and it is the most popular foreign language in Poland.
Some common Polish phrases:
Dobry wieczor : good evening
Dobranoc : good night
Czesc : hi / hello
Do widzenia : good bye
Prosze : please
Dziekuje : thank you
Dzieki : thanks (less formal)
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