About the Polish Language
Polish is the official language of the Republic of Poland, and the first language of the vast majority of its 39 million people. Those who learn Polish would also be able to communicate with over 3 million people living abroad who speak Polish, mostly in the United States and Canada.
Polish (along with Czech and Slovak) 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 extent than have the Romance and Germanic languages. The spoken Slavic languages also show more similarity among themselves than do the Germanic or the Romance languages.
The Polish language 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 written in the Polish language date back to the 14th century. Prior to that time, both literary and official documents in Poland were written in Latin.
Formal and Informal Address
When you speak Polish to anyone 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, the person’s first name, rather than their title, may follow the words Pan or Pani. Formal and informal address is also an aspect of learning Portuguese and many other languages.
Polish Looks like English, But Watch Out!
When it comes to learning Polish vocabulary, be warned that "false cognates" exist. These are words that are tricky because they resemble English words but have a very different meaning. 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.
Polish Grammar and Pronunciation
As you learn Polish, you will notice that Polish grammar can be quite complex. For example, Polish nouns (as well as adjectives, and most of the 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 that help create perfective verbs 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.
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