A West Slavic language spoken by about 45 million people — Poland's national language and a major European tongue with a famously consonant-rich phonology.
Where it’s spoken
Polish is the official language of Poland and is spoken by Polish minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Major diaspora communities live in the UK, the US (especially Chicago), Canada, Ireland, and Brazil. It is the second-most-spoken Slavic language after Russian.
What it sounds like
Polish is known for dense consonant clusters — words like wszczęcie (“initiation”) and chrząszcz (“beetle”) are famously hard for non-natives. It distinguishes alveolo-palatal and retroflex sibilant series and has two nasal vowels (ą, ę). Stress almost always falls on the penultimate syllable.
How it’s written
Polish uses the Latin alphabet with diacritics including the slash (ł), tail (ą, ę), acute (ć, ń, ó, ś, ź), and dot (ż). The digraphs cz, sz, rz, ch, dz, and dż represent additional sounds. Spelling is highly regular once the rules are learned.
History
Polish emerged as a literary language during the 14th–16th centuries, with the Kingdom of Poland’s golden age producing works by Jan Kochanowski. Polish survived suppression during the 19th-century partitions and Russification efforts.
Find more languages by letter
Polish starts with P and ends with H. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Polish":