POLISH: A Language of Culture and Consonant Clusters
LINGUAFILES
Written by Anthony Burger
Published April 27, 2024
This article will soon be available in German.
A journey into the depths of Polish, a language with fascinating complexities and a rich heritage spanning centuries. From its unique grammatical features to its significant contributions to science and art, Polish stands as a powerful Slavic language, both within Poland and across the vast Polish diaspora worldwide.
Portrait of the composer and pianist Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849), notably one of the most famous Polish speakers in history. 3D modeled with reference to Chopin's deathmask.
(Hadi Karimi, 2020)
POLISH
Name of the language in English: Polish
Native Name: Polski
Location: Poland, Polish diaspora
Family: Slavic
Related Languages: Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and more!
Number of Speakers: around 41 million speakers worldwide
Official Status: Polish is the official language of Poland and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union
UNESCO Classification: Not Endangered
Writing System: Modified Latin alphabet
UNIQUE FEATURES OF POLISH
Polish has three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), but…it’s not that simple! In the singular, masculine nouns have a further distinction based on animacy – a professor (profesor) and a stone (kamień), for example, are both masculine nouns, but behave differently: a professor is alive, while a stone is not. This is reflected in noun endings related to a word’s role in the sentence: for example, you can “see a profesora” (check out that shiny new suffix!). You can also “see a kamień” – which, in the same role, stays the same because it’s inanimate. In the plural form, there is a different two-way distinction: adjectives and verbs will agree with a plural noun depending on whether it refers to a male person or…anything else (including women, animals, and things).
Polish is generally known for the amount of consonants used to write it – one popular poem that doubles as a tongue twister begins with the line:
“w Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie / I Szczebrzeszyn z tego słynie.”
Despite the enormous amount of z’s in this line, this sentence doesn’t actually contain a z sound! Polish uses digraphs extensively (two letters combined to make one sound, like th in English), so combinations like sz and rz make one sound! Here’s a recording of the intro to the poem:
Like in many other Slavic languages, verbal aspect – a grammatical feature sharing information about how an event occurs over time – is a core part of Polish verbs. Each Polish verb is either imperfective (refers to an ongoing/repeated/incomplete action) or perfective (refers to a completed action). For instance, both robić and zrobić mean “to do,” but robić is used for an action that hasn’t been finished, whereas zrobić is used for something that has been completed once.
A LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE AND ART
The Polish language, which first appeared in writing in the 12th century, has a long history and a fascinating cultural output. From Nobel prize-winning authors like Henry Sienkiwicz and Olga Tokarczyk to the extremely popular Witcher series, Polish works are powerful and well-known. Polish speakers are also common household names, from Chopin to Marie Curie. Polish speakers’ scientific and artistic accomplishments reach far beyond just Poland. The huge Polish diaspora – around 3 million Polish speakers living outside of Poland – means that there’s also a touch of Poland in many other places around the world. While being remarkably unique in many ways, the Polish language is also closely related to several of its neighbors – if you know Czech, Slovak, or even Ukrainian, you’re likely to understand some Polish from the start!
An colorized photo of Marie Curie. Born Maria Skłodowska in Poland in 1867, Marie Curie was a pioneering physicist and chemist whose groundbreaking research revolutionized our understanding of radioactivity. In 1903, she became the first woman in history to win a Nobel Prize. In 1911, she secured her second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry, for her discovery of radium and polonium, further cementing her legacy as one of the most influential scientists in history.
(Colorized in 2020)
Edited by
Alice Pol, Aline Vitaly & Marvin Nauendorff
Cite This Article
Burger, Anthony. 2024. "Polish: A Language of Culture and Consonant Clusters." Linguaphile Magazine. https://www.linguaphilemagazine.org/editorial/linguafiles-polish.
Further Reading
coming soon
Bibliography
Gutman, Alejandro, and Beatriz Avanzati. 2013. "Polish." The Language Gulper. https://languagesgulper.com/eng/Polish.html.
"Lingvopedia: Polish." Accessed April 6, 2024. Lingvo.info. https://lingvo.info/en/lingvopedia/polish.
"English Grammar: Aspects." Accessed April 6, 2024. Study Smarter. https://www.studysmarter.co.uk/explanations/english/english-grammar/aspects/.