Polish language Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Polish (polski, język polski) is the official language of Poland.
| Polish (Polski) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Poland and 19 other countries |
| Region: | -- |
| Total speakers: | 46 Million |
| Ranking: | 22 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Slavic West Lekhitic Polish |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Poland |
| Regulated by: | Polish Language Council |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | pl |
| ISO 639-2 | pol |
| SIL | PQL |
| Table of contents |
|
2 Classification 3 Geographic distribution 4 Dialects 5 Phonetics 6 Orthography 7 Grammar 8 Vocabulary 9 Notes 10 See also: 11 External Links |
Polish has been influenced by contact with foreign languages (foremost Latin, German, Czech, French, Italian, Russian and English). In Greater Poland and especially Silesia the inimitable regional dialects are influenced by German elements. Since 1945, as the result of mass education and mass migrations (forced by the socialistic government on the society to suppress the development of the local communities), standard Polish has become far more homogeneous, although regional dialects persist. In the western and northern territories, resettled in large measure by Poles from the territories annexed by the Soviet Union, the older generation came to speak a language characteristic of the former eastern provinces.
The Polish language, together with other Lekhitic languages (Kashubian, Polabian), Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak, belongs to the West branch of Slavic languages.
Polish is mainly spoken in Poland, but Polish emigrants have brought the language with them, and there are significant numbers of Polish speakers in Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, UAE, and the USA.
Also, there are still Polish-speaking minorities in the lands annexed by the Soviet Union after the WWII - in Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine.
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 Polish (spoken in the northwest), Little Polish (spoken in the southeast), Mazovian (Mazur), and Silesian. Mazovian shares some features with the Kashubian language, whose remaining speakers (estimates vary from 100,000 to over 200,000) live west of Gdansk near the Baltic Sea.
Small numbers of people also speak Belarusian, Ukrainian, and German as well as several varieties of Romany.
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:
History
Classification
Geographic distribution
Dialects
Phonetics
Vowels
| Polish script | IPA | Description | English approximation | Polish example1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| i | [i] | front closed unrounded | seek | ('teddy bear') |
| e | [ε] | front half open unrounded | ten | ('this') |
| y | [ | central closed unrounded | sick | ('mouse') |
| a | [a] | central open unrounded | cut | ('executioner') |
| u | [u] | back closed rounded | boom | ('boom') |
| o | [ɔ] | back half open rounded | caught | ('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.
Unlike in French, 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 then [ɔ̃]. For the sake of simplicity these asynchronous nasal vowels will be henceforth represented as ordinary (synchronous) nasal vowels.
| Polish script | IPA | Description | English approximation | Polish example1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ę | [ε̃] | nasal front half open unrounded | length | ('snakes') |
| ą | [ɔ̃] | nasal back half open rounded | nasal o (not a), as in long | ('snake') |
The length of a vowel is not phonemic 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 ó, pronounced [u] long u --> normal u
Note that the normal u which was once a long o is still distinguished in script as ó.
Consonants
Polish consonant system is more complicated and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. Affricates are often marked by digraphs. 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 phonemic but aspiration is not.
| Polish script | IPA | Description | English approximation | Polish example1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b | [b] | voiced bilabial plosive | bus | ('bass') |
| p | [p] | voiceless bilabial plosive | top | ('belt') |
| m | [m] | bilabial nasal | man | ('mass') |
| w | [v] | voiced labiodental fricative | vase | ('bag') |
| f | [f] | voiceless labiodental fricative | phase | ('fur') |
| d | [d] | voiced alveolar plosive | dog | ('home') |
| t | [t] | voiceless alveolar plosive | talk | ('volume') |
| n | [n] | alveolar nasal | not | ('leg') |
| r | [r] | alveolar trill | rolled (vibrating) r as in carramba | ('step') |
| z | [z] | voiced alveolar fricative | zero | ('zero') |
| s | [s] | voiceless alveolar fricative | some | ('catfish') |
| dz | [ʣ] | voiced alveolar affricate | woods | ' ('leader'), ' ('bell') |
| c | [ʦ] | voiceless alveolar affricate | pots | ('what') |
| l | [l] | lateral alveolar approximant | lock | ('field') |
| ź | [ʑ] | voiced alveolo-palatal fricative | where's your | ('foal') |
| ś | [ɕ] | voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative | sheer | ('screw') |
| dź | [dʑ] | voiced alveolo-palatal affricate | would you | ('sound') |
| ć | [tɕ] | voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate | what's your | ('moth') |
| ż / rz | [ʒ] | voiced postalveolar fricative | treasure | ' ('wife') ' ('river') |
| sz | [ʃ] | voiceless postalveolar fricative | shoe | ('rustle') |
| dż | [ʤ] | voiced postalveolar affricate | jam | ('jam') |
| cz | [ʧ] | voiceless postalveolar affricate | chair | ('time') |
| ń | [ɲ] | palatal nasal | el Niño | ('horse') |
| j | [ȋ] or [j] | palatal semivowel or palatal approximant | yes | ('tomorrow') |
| ł | [ȗ] or [w] | labial-velar semivowel or labial-velar approximant | power | ' ('small'), ' ('grace') or |
| g | [g] | voiced velar plosive | god | ' ('plebs'), ' ('god') |
| k | [k] | voiceless velar plosive | duck | ' ('caraway'), ' ('beech tree') |
| h / ch | [x] | voiceless velar fricative | loch | ' ('hook') ' ('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
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 ['ʧ
ista] ('clean' fem.) vs. trzysta ['tʃista] ('three hundred') - dżem [ʤεm] ('jam') vs. drzemka ['dʒεmka] ('nap')
- ['wutka] ('boat'), [d] --> [t] (k is normally voiceless)
- ['kafka] ('jackdaw'), [v] --> [f] (k is normally voiceless)
- ['tagʒε] ('also'), [k] --> [g] (ż is normally voiced)
- ['jagb
i] ('as if'), [k] --> [g] (b is normally voiced) - [krul] ('king'), [k] does not change (r is an approximant)
- [vart] ('worth'), [r] does not change (r is an approximant)
- [kʃak] ('bush'), [ʒ / Z] --> [ʃ / S] (k is normally voiceless)
- [ɔt'tfɔʒ
itɕ] ('to reproduce'), [d] --> [t] & [v] --> [f] (t is normally voiceless)
- [v ʃʧεbʒεʃiɲε xʒɔ̃ʃʧ bʒmi v tʃtɕiɲε]
- In [the town of] Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed.
Stress
In Polish the 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 have mostly fell 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. The standard character encoding for the Polish alphabet is ISO 8859-2 (Latin-2).
| 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], [εn], [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 | 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 | [ | |||
| Z | z | [z] | [s], [ʑ] | ||
| Ź | Ź | ź | ź | [ʑ] | [ɕ] |
| Ż | Ż | ż | ż | [ʒ] | [ʃ] |
The letters Q, V and X do not belong to the Polish alphabet but they are used in some commercial names and foreign words.
Polish orthography also includes seven digraphs:
| Capitalized | HTML code | Lower case | HTML code | Usual phonetic value | Other phonetic values |
| Ch | ch | [x] | [γ] | ||
| Cz | cz | [ʧ] | [ʤ] | ||
| Dz | dz | [ʣ] | [ʦ], [dʑ], [d-z] | ||
| Dź | DŹ | dź | dź | [dʑ] | [tɕ] |
| Dż | DŻ | dż | dż | [ʤ] | [ʧ], [dʒ] |
| Rz | rz | [ʒ] | [ʃ], [r-z] | ||
| Sz | sz | [ʃ] | [ʒ] | ||
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
- [ʒ] as either ż or rz (though rż denotes a [rʒ] cluster)
- [u] as either u or ó
- some soft consonants as either ć, dź, ń, ś, ź, or ci, dzi, ni, si, zi
Polish is often said to be one of the most difficult languages for non-native speakers to learn. It has a complex 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:
Grammar
| 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) | 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.
So what have you done ? can be:
- Co zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili?
- Cóżeście zrobili?
- Co wy zrobiliście?
- Coście zrobili? (in fact, a Pole won't use subject here)
- Co żeście zrobili? (as above)
- Co wyście zrobili? (here the stress goes to "you" -- "wy"+ście)
- zrobił (he made/did)
- zrobiła (she made/did)
- zrobiło (it made/did)
Word order
From Wikibooks' . In Polish it is possible to move words around in the sentence, and to drop subject or object 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
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 does have a cat?")
There is a tendency in Polish to drop the subject rather than the object and rarely you 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" and "ty", and also their plural equivalents "my" and "wy", are almost always dropped.
ja - I
my - we
1 You can hear the voice samples by clicking on the Polish example (ogg format).
This is an Article on Polish language. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Polish language Vocabulary
ty - you
on - he
ona - she
ono - it
wy - you
oni - they (many men)
one - they (many women or things)Notes
See also:
External Links