The history of the Polish language
If you’re interested in languages, you may have asked yourself how Shakespeare’s English has transformed into the English we’re using today? And have other languages changed as much as English has? Polish, just like English, has seen its fair share of changes over the years, which is why we thought we’d take a look at how Polish came to be what it is today.
Due to Poland’s history, the Polish language has seen a lot of influence from its neighbours. Many latin words were brought in through Czech (e.g. Kosciol – Church). Plus, a good few hundreds of years ago, Poland was governed by German law which saw a number of German legal terms becoming pretty common in Old Polish.
Old Polish spelling
Back in the days of old Polish, spelling wasn’t standardized. This made it very difficult for people to express the sounds of the Polish like ó, ę, cz etc. It wasn’t until 1440 when Jakub Parkoszowic, a professor at Jagiellonian University, tried to codify the Polish language. He wrote down rules for the language, but unfortunately his work was never adopted.
Is Old Polish really different?
Compared to English, Old Polish isn’t as different as you’d expect it to be from modern Polish, as it’s rather like other Slavic languages. Just to give you an example of what we mean, Russians actually love the Czech language because it reminds them of Old Russian, and this is similar when it comes to Polish. To give you an example, here’s the first sentence ever written in Polish – Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (pronounced as Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj) which is Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj in modern Polish.
Has Polish changed a lot recently?
Although Polish really hasn’t changed all that much in the last 100 years, there are examples of minor changes. For example, your granny uses different words to you when she speaks your language, right? Well, it’s the same in Polish. Words go in and out of fashion over time, meaning different generations speak slightly differently. This has actually become really apparent for Polish-Americans. Although born and raised in the USA, they speak fluent Polish as it was spoken at home by their parents and grandparents. As they learnt Polish from an older generation without having a young Polish influence around them, they find that they come across some big differences when speaking with young Poland-born Poles.
The impact of English on Polish
Polish is now seeing its own little revolution. English is now having such an impact on young Poles that Poles are simply using English words instead. Unlike other European languages that create their own word for something (e.g. a tablet), we just Polishize it. We don’t have a word for weekend, so we just use English (Jak Ci się udał weekendowy wyjazd?)!
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Suggested read: You might also be interested in reading about the history of Poland in this article.
