An introduction to the Polish language

With roughly 21 million Poles living outside of Poland, the Polish language is not an uncommon sight around the UK. From Polish shops to road signs, we’re sure you’ve seen the Polish language in use, but what sort of a language is it?

The Polish language in a nutshell

Polish belongs to the west Slavonic group of languages and is spoken primarily in Poland, however, there are areas in the Czech Republic and other border countries that speak Polish too. It’s similar to Czech, Slovak, and Russian but there are some considerable differences.

Polish uses the latin alphabet, but has 9 additional letters (ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, ż). There are four main dialects, but when it comes to writing etc. standard Polish is normally used.

Polish grammar

Polish grammar is something that scares the living daylights out of people, so we’re not going to go into it in too much detail 🙂 Polish is a highly inflected language, and the word order is pretty free. There are no articles and subject pronouns are normally dropped. Adjectives have 3 genders, and they have to agree with genders, numbers, and cases (there are 7!).

Borrowed words

Over the years, Polish has adopted a number of words from other languages, but have adapted them to suit Polish pronunciation and orthography. Some examples are Pomidor (tomato) which comes from the Italian word pomodoro and bagaż meaning luggage. There are also a number of words that are similar in both English and Polish e.g. piknik, papier, muzyka etc.

How to deal with the Polish language

If you’re reading this, the chances are you’re trying to get your head around Polish for one reason or another. If you’re looking to learn, you’re going to need a lot of perseverance. Polish isn’t easy but if you have Polish friends, they’ll be more than happy to help you learn and practice. Try speaking and listening as much as possible, and remember it doesn’t matter if your grammar isn’t perfect – grammar is something that even Poles have problems with.  

If you’re reading this because of business, then we’d suggest getting a professional Polish agency to help you. Beit translations or anything else business related, getting someone on board who understands the Polish language and Polish culture is going to prove really beneficial.