Polish (Polski)
Dear European, let us invite you to the linguistic land of rustle, complex conjugations and declinations but also to the land of unlimited possibilities of expression offered by Polish.
Polish has its significant place in the family of Slavonic languages and deep roots in the scientifically well grounded, though hypothetical, pre-Slavonic language. Europe has resounded with the Polish language far beyond the boarders of Poland since the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It was spread by the Poles, a people interested in the world and creative thrills but also forced to travel by political circumstances.
It is difficult to account for all Polish immigrants and even more difficult to establish how many still speak their mother tongue. As far as the number of permanent users of Polish, the language takes third place in the Slavonic family, preceded by Russian and Ukrainian.
Modern ethnic Polish language is not internally uniform but extremely diverse. This is not its weakness but its strength, as both the functions of language in general and the communicative situations are exceptionally varied. However, there is one permanent and certain point of reference: the general Polish language, shaped in the second half of the 16th century and was fostered by the Polish school, now dominates in literary discourse and in the official oral communication.
Polish is definitely a consonantal language (with almost six times as many consonants as vowels), so it rustles, hums and swishes, but also rumbles, rattles, drums... it always needs consonants to create syllables and words although it has only six vowel phonemes: i, u, e, o, o nasal, a.
Also, Polish is an inflected language, presenting diverse word forms words change endings in particular syntactical constructions. (An Englishman was very surprised that the same person is sometimes called Andrzej, and sometimes Andrzeja or Andrzeju).
Dear European, let us invite you to the linguistic land of rustle, complex conjugations and declinations but also to the land of unlimited possibilities of expression offered by Polish.
Polish has its significant place in the family of Slavonic languages and deep roots in the scientifically well grounded, though hypothetical, pre-Slavonic language. Europe has resounded with the Polish language far beyond the boarders of Poland since the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It was spread by the Poles, a people interested in the world and creative thrills but also forced to travel by political circumstances.
It is difficult to account for all Polish immigrants and even more difficult to establish how many still speak their mother tongue. As far as the number of permanent users of Polish, the language takes third place in the Slavonic family, preceded by Russian and Ukrainian.
Modern ethnic Polish language is not internally uniform but extremely diverse. This is not its weakness but its strength, as both the functions of language in general and the communicative situations are exceptionally varied. However, there is one permanent and certain point of reference: the general Polish language, shaped in the second half of the 16th century and was fostered by the Polish school, now dominates in literary discourse and in the official oral communication.
Polish is definitely a consonantal language (with almost six times as many consonants as vowels), so it rustles, hums and swishes, but also rumbles, rattles, drums... it always needs consonants to create syllables and words although it has only six vowel phonemes: i, u, e, o, o nasal, a.
Also, Polish is an inflected language, presenting diverse word forms words change endings in particular syntactical constructions. (An Englishman was very surprised that the same person is sometimes called Andrzej, and sometimes Andrzeja or Andrzeju).