Polish language

Polish (''polski'', ''język polski'', ''polszczyzna'') is the official language of Poland. Polish is the main representative of the Lekhitic languages 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 Europe 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. ==History== Polish has been influenced by contact with foreign languages (foremost Latin, Czech language, French language, German language, Italian language, Old Belarusian, Russian language and recently it has been virtually bombarded by English language, especially American English language elements). Many words have been borrowed from German language 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 (B�rgermeister=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 (�cran=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 Zoliborz (joli bord=beautiful riverside) and Mokot�w (mon coteau=my cottage), as well as the suburb of Zyrard�w (from the name Philippe de Girard, with the Polish suffix -�w attached to form the town's name). Other words are borrowed from other Slavic languages languages, for example "hańba" and "brama" from Czech language. 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 language (and its extinct dialect/language Slovincian language) and the also-extinct Polabian language. The three languages and one language/dialect, along with Upper and Lower Sorbian language, Czech language and Slovak language, 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 (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%2C_Belarus 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, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. In the USA the number of people of Polish descent is over 9 million, ''see:'' Polish American, 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 Poland (spoken in the west), Little Poland (spoken in the south and southeast), Mazovian language (Mazur) spoken throughout the centre and east of the country, and Silesian language 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 language, Ukrainian language, and German language as well as several varieties of Romany language. ==Phonetics== ===Vowels=== 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: {| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center" |+Polish oral vowels |- ! Polish script ! International Phonetic Alphabet ! Description ! English approximation ! Polish examplePolish_language#Notes |- | align="center" | i | align="center" | | Close front unrounded vowel | ''seek'' | ''Media:Mis.ogg'' ('teddy bear') |- | align="center" | e | align="center" | | Open-mid front unrounded vowel | ''ten'' | ''Media:Ten.ogg'' ('this') |- | align="center" | y | align="center" | | Close central unrounded vowel | ''sick'' | ''Media:Mysz.ogg'' ('mouse') |- | align="center" | a | align="center" | [a] | Near-open central vowel | ''cut'' | ''Media:Kat.ogg'' ('executioner') |- | align="center" | u / � | align="center" | [u] | Close back rounded vowel | ''boom'' | ''Media:Bum.ogg'' ('boom') |- | align="center" | o | align="center" | | Open-mid back rounded vowel | ''caught'' | ''Media:kot.ogg'' ('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 language, 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. {| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center" |+Polish nasal vowels |- ! Polish script ! International Phonetic Alphabet ! Description ! English approximation ! Polish examplePolish_language#Notes |- | align="center" | ę | align="center" | [ε̃] | nasal front half open unrounded | ''length'' | ''Media:Weze.ogg'' ('snakes') |- | align="center" | ą | align="center" | | nasal back half open rounded | nasal o (not a), as in ''long'' | ''Media:Waz.ogg'' ('snake') |} The Vowel length of a vowel is not phoneme 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 �, pronounced [u]
long u → normal u
Note that the normal ''u'' which was once a long ''o'' is still distinguished in script as ''�''. ===Consonants=== Polish consonant system is more complicated and its characteristic features are series of affricate and Palatal consonant consonants. Affricates are often marked by Digraph (orthography). 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 phoneme but aspiration (phonetics) is not. {| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center" |+Polish consonants |- ! Polish script ! International Phonetic Alphabet ! Description ! English approximation ! Polish examplePolish_language#Notes |- | align="center" | b | align="center" | [b] | voiced bilabial plosive | ''bus'' | ''Media:Bas.ogg'' ('bass') |- | align="center" | p | align="center" | [p] | voiceless bilabial plosive | ''top'' | ''Media:Pas.ogg'' ('belt') |- | align="center" | m | align="center" | [m] | bilabial nasal | ''man'' | ''Media:Masa.ogg'' ('mass') |- | align="center" | w | align="center" | [v] | voiced labiodental fricative | ''vase'' | ''Media:Wor.ogg'' ('bag') |- | align="center" | f | align="center" | [f] | voiceless labiodental fricative | ''phase'' | ''Media:Futro.ogg'' ('fur') |- | align="center" | d | align="center" | [d] | voiced alveolar plosive | ''dog'' | ''Media:Dom.ogg'' ('home') |- | align="center" | t | align="center" | [t] | voiceless alveolar plosive | ''set'' | ''Media:Tom.ogg'' ('volume') |- | align="center" | n | align="center" | [n] | alveolar nasal | ''not'' | ''Media:Noga.ogg'' ('leg') |- | align="center" | r | align="center" | [r] | alveolar trill | rolled (vibrating) r as in ''arriba'' | ''Media:Krok.ogg'' ('step') |- | align="center" | z | align="center" | [z] | voiced alveolar fricative | ''zero'' | ''Media:Zero.ogg'' ('zero') |- | align="center" | s | align="center" | [s] | voiceless alveolar fricative | ''some'' | ''Media:Sum.ogg'' ('catfish') |- | align="center" | dz | align="center" | | voiced alveolar affricate | ''woods'' | ''Media:Dzwon.ogg'' ('bell') |- | align="center" | c | align="center" | | voiceless alveolar affricate | ''pots'' | ''Media:Co_pl.ogg'' ('what') |- | align="center" | l | align="center" | [l] | lateral alveolar approximant | ''lock'' | ''Media:Pole.ogg'' ('field') |- | align="center" | ź | align="center" | | voiced alveolo-palatal fricative | ''where's your'' | ''Media:Zrebie.ogg'' ('foal') |- | align="center" | ś | align="center" | | voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative | ''sheer'' | ''Media:Sruba.ogg'' ('screw') |- | align="center" | dź | align="center" | | voiced alveolo-palatal affricate | ''would you'' | ''Media:Dzwiek.ogg'' ('sound') |- | align="center" | ć | align="center" | | voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate | ''wha'''t's y'''our'' | ''Media:Cma.ogg'' ('moth') |- | align="center" | ż / rz | align="center" | | voiced postalveolar fricative | ''treasure'' | ''Media:Zona.ogg'' ('wife')
''Media:Rzeka.ogg'' ('river') |- | align="center" | sz | align="center" | | voiceless postalveolar fricative | ''shoe'' | ''Media:Szum.ogg'' ('rustle') |- | align="center" | dż | align="center" | | voiced postalveolar affricate | ''jam'' | ''Media:Dzem.ogg'' ('jam') |- | align="center" | cz | align="center" | | voiceless postalveolar affricate | ''kitchen'' | ''Media:Czas.ogg'' ('time') |- | align="center" | ń | align="center" | | palatal nasal | ''el Ni�o'' | ''Media:Kon.ogg'' ('horse') |- | align="center" | j | align="center" |
or [j] | Palatal_consonant semivowel
or palatal approximant | ''way''
or ''yes'' | ''Media:Jutro.ogg'' ('tomorrow') |- | align="center" | ł | align="center" |
or [w] | labial-velar semivowel
or labial-velar approximant | ''now''
or ''way'' | ''Media:Maly_w.ogg'' ('small'), ''Media:Laska.ogg'' ('grace') |- | align="center" | g | align="center" | [g] | voiced velar plosive | ''god'' | ''Media:Gmin.ogg'' ('plebs') |- | align="center" | k | align="center" | [k] | voiceless velar plosive | ''rocket'' | ''Media:Kmin.ogg'' ('caraway'), ''Media:Buk.ogg'' ('beech tree') |- | align="center" | h / ch | align="center" | [x] | voiceless velar fricative | ''loch'' | ''Media:Hak.ogg'' ('hook')
''Media:Chor.ogg'' ('choir') |} 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: * Media:Lodka.ogg ['wutka] ('boat'), [d] → [t] (k is normally voiceless) * Media:Kawka.ogg ['kafka] ('jackdaw'), [v] → [f] (k is normally voiceless) * Media:Takze.ogg ('also'), [k] → [g] (ż is normally voiced) * Media:Jakby.ogg ['jagbi] ('as if'), [k] → [g] (b is normally voiced) * Media:Krol.ogg [krul] ('king'), [k] does not change (r is an approximant) * Media:Wart.ogg [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. * Media:Krzak ('bush'), [ʒ / Z] → [ʃ / S] (k is normally voiceless) * Media:Odtworzyc.ogg ('to reproduce'), [d] → [t] & [v] → [f] (t is normally voiceless) The most popular Polish tongue-twister, a fragment of ''Chrzaszcz'' poem by Jan Brzechwa, may serve as yet another example: :Media:Szczebrzeszyn.ogg : :''In [the town of] Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed.'' ===Stress=== In Polish the lexical 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. {| table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" |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 |[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 | |[i] | |- |Z | |z | |[z] |[s], [ʑ] |- |Ź |Ź |ź |ź |[ʑ] |[ɕ] |- |Ż |Ż |ż |ż |[ʒ] |[ʃ] |- |} Polish orthography also includes seven Digraph (orthography): {| table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" |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 � * 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 grammatical 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) | colspan="2" | | 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? * C�żeście zrobili? (It could be derived from ''C�ż 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' wikibooks:Basic Polish language course. Basic word order in Polish is Subject_Verb_Object, 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 Kr�lestwo - 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_various_languages#Polish_.28Slavic.29 * Wiktionary:Polish language * Wikibooks:Basic Polish language course * Swietokrzyskie Sermons == External links == * [http://slownik.web-monkeys.com/ słownik polski - polish dictionary] * [http://www.ethnologue.org/show_language.asp?code=pol Polish language on Ethnologue] * [http://www.fdicts.com/dictlist1.php?k1=75 All free Polish dictionaries] * [http://sjp.pwn.pl/ PWN Polish-English Dictionary] * [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Polish-english/ Webster's Online Polish-English Dictionary] * [http://www.dict.pl Polish-English dictionary] * [http://www.anglik.net/polish.htm Free Polish Translation] * [http://www.poltran.com/ Online translation Polish<->English] * [http://golem.umcs.lublin.pl/users/ppikuta/lessons/less0.htm Polish language course] * [http://www.langsites.com/Polish.htm Polish On-line] * [http://seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/compgrammar_polish.pdf A Concise Polish Grammar, by Ronald F. Feldstein (110-page 600-KB pdf)] Languages of Poland Slavic languages ang:Polisc sprǽc la:Lingua Polonica lv:Poļu valoda li:Pools se:Polskkagiella

Polish language

We can put Polish transcription of words here.
As it is on :Polish poets, we must insert unicode representations of Polish national characters. Contrary to what you state, Polish has *five* genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter in the singular number and male-personal and other in the plural number. This is seen in the five forms of the third-person pronoun: _on_, _ona_, _ono_, _oni_, and _one_. The verbal aspects are perfective (not perfect) and imperfective (not imperfect). Frank Y. Gladney Universion of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ---- There are some other mistaken terms: - verbs are conjugated rather than declined - "diacritics" is a more proper term than "accents" As for Polish genders, according to the traditional Polish approach there are three genders in the singular number and two genders in the plural number (as Mr Gladney put it). Other reasonable approaches would be to claim that there are three genders (m, f, n) or there are five genders - feminine, neuter, masculine-personal, masculine-animate-impersonal and masculine-inanimate. The division into four genders (feminine, neuter, masculine-animate and masculine-inanimate) is valid in singular, but not in plural, so I don't find it correct. I'll change the article in a while. User:Boraczek 14:33, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The article states: "Since 1945, as the result of mass education and mass migrations (forced by the socialist government on the society to suppress the development of the local communities), standard Polish has become far more homogeneous, although regional dialects persist." I thought these articles are supposed to be from a neutral point of view. Did the socialist goverrnment really force mass education on the society to suppress the development of local communities? Was that their stated objective? I am not a fan of the socialist government but I think this sentence should be changed.

I'll present the approach formulated by the president of the Polish Language Council, hold also by ''Encyklopedia Języka Polskiego'' (Encyclopedia of the Polish Language). According to these sources, there are five genders: masculine-personal, masculine-animate, masculine-inanimate, feminine, neuter.

User:Boraczek 14:33, 14 Nov 2003 (UTC) ==Total speakers== [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=158.169.9.14 158.169.9.14] wrote: > Total speakers: 60 Million This number seems to be very overestimated. Could you please tell us what the source of these data is? Or where those Polish speakers live? User:Boraczek 10:59, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC) :Yesterday the same user changed such data in the German language version of Wikipedia and added wrong figures in the demographic sections of Germany and Poland. Maybe a nationalist? User:82.82.120.181 11:02, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC) :OTOH, the number of 43 million seems a little low. There are approx. 39 millions speakers in Poland itself and the diaspora is estimated at 15-20 millions. The higher number might be the estimated quota of people speaking the language as opposed to 43 millions of mother-tongue speakers.User:Halibutt 09:33, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC) ::Those 15-20 million aborad are just Polish descendants. Many of them can't speak Polish. The current information (46 million) seems to be a quite exact estimation. Do you agree? User:Boraczek 14:05, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC) :::Fair with me.User:Halibutt 14:56, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC) ==''Żeście''== Is ''co żeście zrobili'' correct? I've always thought it's not though it seems to be a very common mistake (even more than ''poszłem''). What does ''ż-'' mean here anyway? It's neither ''że'' ("that") as in: ::''Myślałem, żeście to zrobili.'' - "I thought that you had done it." nor an exclamatory suffix ''-ż(e)'' as in: ::''C�żeście'' (co + -ż --> c�ż + ście --> c�żeście) ''zrobili?'' User:Kpalion 18:58, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC) Movable endings are remnants of the complex past tense. In the form closest to archaic Polish it was something like: :''co je?cie zrobili'' Where ''je?cie'' was an appropriate form of the word ''to be''. The complex past evolved into simple past by merging of the auxiliary verb and the participle into one word (''zrobili?cie''). Historically, words like ''zrobili'' are not verbs but adjectival participles. The auxiliary verb can attach to some other word (it doesn't attach to verbs, as ''zrobili'' isn't really a verb), like in ''wy?cie'', ''co?cie'' etc. It can also function alone, but the ''je-'' changed into ''?e-'' in modern Polish. So the ''?e-'' doesn't mean anything – ''?em'' ''?e?'', ''?e?my'' and ''?e?cie'' are forms of the verb ''by?'' (''to be''). It gets confusing, because in the third person there was no ending to move, so ''zrobi?/zrobili'' can function as third person words. If one wants to be peculiarly historically correct, one can see ''zrobi?'' as a particle and a ''null verb''. In no case is ''?e?my'' incorrect. User:Taw 05:38, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC) ==New phonetic table== The English equivalents of Polish sounds given in this article are not always accurate. They're close, but not quite the same. Could anyone add X-SAMPA transcription too? User:Ausir 12:05, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC) Let's insert a table.

Letter/digraph	The closest English sound	X-SAMPA

User:Boraczek 15:54, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC) Good idea. User:Ausir 15:56, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC) Could someone add also X-SAMPA column to the table? Not everyone can see the IPA symbols... User:Ausir 01:00, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) Done. Now it doesn't look so good anymore but, well, let's just hope someday all browsers will be able to read IPA characters. User:Kpalion 01:49, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) Excellent job, Kpalion! :-D I'm really impressed! :-D I'll make a couple of minor changes, if you don't mind. Of course, the changes are subject to discuss. 1. I'll change examples of Polish words with nasal vowels, because there are actually no nasal vowels in ''kąt'' and ''lęk'' (it's incorrect to pronounce nasal vowels in these words). 2. ''length'', ''long'' => ''length'', ''long'' (because it doesn't make too much sense to separate "n" and "g" in a digraph "ng", it's like writing ''mysz''. 3. Polish ł and j are usually pronounced as non-syllabic u and i respectively rather than approximants. 4. In the tongue-twister ''chrząszcz'' is pronunced as [xSO~ZdZ] rather than [xSO~StS] 5. I'll add some more sounds in the "Other Phonetics Values" column. I need help with IPA symbols! I can't type them. I'll put "?" instead. Could you please replace my ?'s with the symbols, Kpalion? User:Boraczek 10:03, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Thanks! You're right about points 1,2,4, and I've already made the changes. As for ł and j, aren't semivowels a class of approximants? :: I don't think so. There's a great site with animations showing how people pronounce different sounds. It's a pity they only describe English and Spanish. But the site shows the difference between glides and non-syllabic vowels. See http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/about.html , click on "Launch Spanish Library" and you'll be able to watch animations for glides ("semi-consonantes" in Spanish) and correspondent non-syllabic vowels ("semi-vocales" in Spanish) :-) :: BTW I'm editing the Ortography section right now. Please don't touch it! ;-) User:Boraczek 11:45, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Feel free to add sounds in the table, if you think any are missing. As for IPA characters, I can't type them either; I copy-pasted them from SAMPA chart and other related articles. User:Kpalion 11:15, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) Done with the table of Polish letters. We had an editing conflict, but I think everything's all right now (I was careful so as not to overwrite your changes). I didn't manage to insert IPA symbols for [i_^] and [u_^]. Now I'm making an analogous table for Polish digraphs. User:Boraczek 12:03, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) :I couldn't find fonts with an inverted breve below i and u so I put those letters with an inverted breve above instead. I hope it won't cause too much confusion. User:Kpalion 17:31, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) ==Stress== '' the word akurat ('exactly') - stress on the last syllable'' - that part seems to be incorrect. Perhaps it is so in some regional dialects, but I've neverd heard it stressed that way. Could anyone provide some more info?User:Halibutt 23:35, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC) :This pronunciation ("akuRAT") is old-fashioned but still correct (together with a more modern altenrative - "aKUrat"). For example, it is still used by poets when they need a word stressed on the last syllable for a masculine rhyme. I mentioned it because it is probably the only Polish word (excluding one-syllable and compound words) which may be correctly stressed on the last syllable. User:Kpalion 00:34, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC) :: I can confirm what Kpalion said. "akuRAT" is correct even though it sounds strange. "aKUrat" is correct too. (source: "Nowy słownik poprawnej polszczyzny PWN" ed. by A. Markowski). BTW I'd have translated "akurat" as "just" rather than "exactly". But I agree that in some sentences "akurat" can be translated as "exactly", so the current translation isn't incorrect. :: Thanks for the corrections, Kpalion! My browser doesn't display IPA fonts, so I can't see my possible mistakes in IPA script. I hope you checked that too. User:Boraczek 10:51, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC) ''akuRAT'' is not correct in any reasonably modern Polish. Neither is ''RzeczposPOlita''. ''MateMAtyka'', ''FIzyka'' etc. can be considered correct, but are rarely heard nowadays, with ''matemaTYka'' etc. being much more common. User:Taw 05:38, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC) :You are likely true, but still when I was studying not so much time ago, everybody was stressing ''FIzyka''. Then again, it was physics department, so it was a natural way to stress it, as this word was used quite often. I mean that if someone is within ''FIzyka'' or ''mateMAtyka'' professionally, she/he is almost always using the older (less common) stress. User:Przepla 11:52, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC) :::''RzeczpospoLIta''. ''MatemaTYka'' and ''fiZYka'' are common mistakes, but are far from being a norm. My friends are somehow obsessed with correct Polish and I barely hear the incorrect forms. However, it is probable that in some time both forms will become equally correct. User:Halibutt 17:07, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC) akuRAT, RzeczpospoLIta, matemaTYka, fiZYka are correct. My source: ''Nowy s�ownik poprawnej polszczyzny PWN'', red. Andrzej Markowski, PWN, Warszawa 2000. If you want to argue, please cite an alternative source. User:Boraczek 13:06, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC) :Good Lord, you're right. It's time to die. User:Halibutt 13:20, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC) Well, forms like ''FIzyka'', ''mateMAtyka'', ''rzeczposPOlita'', ''akuRAT'', cannot be (IMHO) considered obsolete or unnatural as long as there are persons who speak so naturally (i.e. without forcing themselves to pronounce words the correct way, but rather just because it was pronounced so at their home). I can prove that such persons exist (and I am one of them). User:82.210.159.30 00:57, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC) == Lithuania and Wilno == Ok, could someone explain to me what is the exact status of the Polish language in Lithuanian Vilnius County? AFAIK it is an official language there. However, User:RickK erased this piece of info ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Polish_language&curid=22975&diff=0&oldid=0]). What's the fuzz then? User:HalibuttUser_Talk:Halibutt">User:Halibutt|User:HalibuttUser Talk:Halibutt 05:35, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC) What is the source of your information, Halibutt? As far as I know, the Polish minority is trying to make Lithuanian authorities respect rights of the Polish language as a local minority language. So Polish is even endangered in its position of a minority language, thus far from being an official language. Please confer these links (text in Polish): [http://www.wspolnota-polska.org.pl/index.php?id=l_uw5 Ustawa Republiki Litewskiej o j?zyku pa?stwowym] [http://www.wspolnota-polska.org.pl/index.php?id=p40429 10-lecie polsko-litewskiego Traktatu] ::That's why I asked for more info. Thanks. User:HalibuttUser_Talk:Halibutt">User:Halibutt|User:HalibuttUser Talk:Halibutt 14:44, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC) == Phonetics and voice samples == Some time ago I prepared voice samples for most of the Polish cities and some famous personalities. Perhaps I could prepare some voice samples with phonetics or some basic texts for the Polish language page? Any ideas? User:HalibuttUser_Talk:Halibutt">User:Halibutt|User:HalibuttUser Talk:Halibutt 05:42, Aug 20, 2004 (UTC) I added those samples anyway. Any comments? User:HalibuttUser_Talk:Halibutt">User:Halibutt|User:HalibuttUser Talk:Halibutt 15:15, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC) ::Boraczek recently [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Polish_language&diff=8054814&oldid=8016807 sugested] we removed two of the samples. Indeed, the final consonants in those examples are voiceless, but this does not mean that they make no sound. User:Halibutt">User:Halibutt|User:Halibutt 18:34, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC) ::: ??? I think this is an obvious misunderstanding. You can't give a word which does not contain any voiced velar plosive consonant as an example of a voiced velar plosive consonant. The word ''b�g'' does not contain any voiced velar plosive consonant, it only contains a letter ''g''. Therefore, I remove these examples. BTW thank you for adding soundclips! User:Boraczek 08:37, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC) == Czech and Russian influence == I've seen some anon user erase the mention of Czech and Russian influence on the Polish language several times in a row. It is not clear to me why did he (or she) do so. There are zillions of Russian words in Polish and the Czech influence, although not that clear, is also visible. The Polish grammar is an almost exact copy of the Czech grammar coined by Jan Hus (with the notable difference of past tense construction). Whole morphology, parts of speech, declension model, usage of present and future tenses are almost identical. There are also countless lexical connections, for instance most of Polish words related to religion come from Czech language (msza, kości�ł, wierni, opat, poganin) as well as some military terms (rycerz, pułk). User:HalibuttUser_Talk:Halibutt">User:Halibutt|User:HalibuttUser Talk:Halibutt 02:49, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC) :"Whole morphology, parts of speech, declension model, usage of present and future tenses are almost identical." Because Polish and Czech are both West-Slavonic languauges, Polish and Czech are sister lang. not mother and sister as you suggest. Polish and Czech declension patterns differ in many point. eg. soft declensions in Czech compared with Polish ones are oft very "degenarated" (most vowels after soft consonnnt became 'i' in Czech). Yes, there are countless lexical connections, but in both direction. There are also words of polish origine in czech. They were borrowed in 19. century. ::Of course, but the main bulk of Czech lexicalisms in Polish came in 9th to 15th centuries, and the number of borrowed words is indeed awesome. Also you are right that the grammar is similar because both languages are Western Slavic. However, there are several parts of grammar in Polish that were actually modelled on purpose after the grammar of our southern neighbours. So, all in all, Polish language was influenced by Czech language heavily. User:Halibutt">User:Halibutt|User:Halibutt 20:28, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC) Halibutt, don't you mix the Czech influence on Polish with an influence of the Latin grammar system on both languages? User:82.210.159.30 00:59, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==German Influence== Someone also erased the list of Polish words that originated from German. What is wrong with that? It is perfectly legitimate, and I'll be damned if s/he deleted it because s/he thought it was politically motivated or some other equally foolish reason. :Thank you to the person who put it back in! ==Word order== I have some remark on this fragment of the article: 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. In fact, all these sentences sound natural, and all of them are in daily usage; nevertheless this strongly depends on context. Only the first one is completely neutral from the point of view of grammar (and handbooks): * Ala ma kota - Ala has a cat. The remaining sentences depend on context and also imply something: * Ala kota ma, (ale go nie karmi) - Ala does have a cat (but f.e. she doesn't feed it) * Kota ma Ala, (a psa ma Ola) - Ala has the cat (but f.e. the dog belongs to Ola) * Ma Ala kota, (ale nie ma psa) - Ala does have a cat (but f.e. she doesn't have a dog) * Kota Ala ma, (ale nie ma nic poza tym) - Ala has a cat (but f.e. she doesn't have anything else) * Ma kota Ala, (ale nie ma kota Ola) - Ala has a cat (but f.e. Ola doesn't have a cat) User:82.210.159.30 01:24, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Number of speakers== I think the information on number of speakers in respective countries is quite informative. I believe it should stay as it does no harm. 14:37, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC) ==Russian== Is pure Russian mutually intelligible with Polish.? Please see Mutually intelligible languages--User:Jondel 04:40, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See other meanings of words starting from letter:

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Words begining with Polish_language:

Polish-language_operas
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