|
Polish Language
General information about Polish
The Polish language is the official language
of the Republic of Poland, and it is spoken
as a first language of the vast majority of
its 39 million people. Over 3 million people
living abroad also speak Polish, mostly in
the United States and Canada.
The Polish language (along
with Slovak and Czech) belongs to the West
Slavic group of the Slavic subfamily of
Indo-European languages. Linguists believe
that the Slavic languages have retained the
features of the original Proto-Indo-European
language to a much greater degree than have
the Germanic and Romance languages. The
spoken Slavic languages also show more
similarity among themselves than do the
Germanic or the Romance languages.
Polish is written in the
Latin alphabet, with the addition of
diacritical marks over some of the letters.
The stress pattern in Polish usually falls
on the penultimate (next to last) syllable.
The earliest documents in the Polish
language date back to the 14th century.
Prior to that time, both official and
literary documents in Poland were written in
Latin.
As you learn Polish, you
will notice that some Polish vocabulary
words resemble English. But don't assume
that a Polish vocabulary word always means
what you think it does! For example, the
Polish word dym, (pronounced "dim")
actually means "smoke." The Polish word
on means "he," and the word los,
though pronounced like the English "loss,"
actually means "destiny" in Polish.
Formal and Informal
Address in the Polish Language
When you speak Polish to
someone who is not a close friend or a young
child, it is polite to refer to the person
you are addressing in the third person,
using the words Pan (Sir) and Pani
(Madam) followed by the title of that
person. When your friendship becomes more
intimate, you can use the person's first
name, rather than their title, after the
words Pan or Pani.
Polish Grammar and Polish
Pronunciation
As you learn Polish, you'll
notice that Polish grammar can be quite
complex. For example, Polish nouns (as well
as adjectives and most pronouns) decline in
seven cases. Because the Polish language is
so highly inflected, the word order in
sentences is fluid (unlike in English)--
that is to say, the declined endings of
Polish nouns identify the subject and the
direct and indirect objects, as well as
other meanings.
Polish verbs possess a
feature called "aspect." The aspect can be
perfective or imperfective, showing
perpetual action and action that is
completed. A variety of prefixes help create
perfective verbs which convey shades of
meaning that frequently require several
words in an English translation, or defy
translation altogether.
Written Polish can awe the
student with its frequent conglomerations of
several consonants in a row. Realizing that
in most cases these letter combinations
represent a single sound will make learning
Polish pronunciation a bit less daunting. |
