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Polish

POL-skee
Also Known As polski
Slavic Languages

Polish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland, written in the Latin alphabet with a set of diacritics that mark sounds the plain Latin letters do not cover. It preserves a system of nasal vowels and a fixed penultimate stress that most of its Slavic relatives have lost.

Facts
ISO 639-3 Code
pl 2
Speaker Count
40,000,000 2
Figure is for first-language speakers in Poland; a substantial diaspora, chiefly in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, adds several million more heritage speakers of varying fluency not counted here.
Status
Living 2
Region
Poland (official); minority communities in Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine; diaspora in Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Israel, Australia, United Kingdom, United States 3
Classification
Official Status
Official Language 1
Polish
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Connections

Associated With

Latin, Languages

This source names Latin directly: "language of Poland, written in the Latin alphabet with a set of diacritics that mark sounds the plain Latin letters do not cover."

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)

In Family

Source The Cambridge Encyclopedia of LanguageDavid Crystal (editor)
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Written In

Latin Script, Scripts
Source Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
Sources
1. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language
David Crystal (editor), Cambridge University Press, 2010
  • Official status, Polish entity page
    Polish is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland, written in the Latin alphabet with a set of diacritics that mark sounds the plain Latin letters do not cover.
  • In Family: Slavic
2. Ethnologue: Languages of the World
SIL International, 2024View the Source
3. Wikipedia: Polish Language
Wikipedia
Quote
[ˈpɔlskʲi]
View the Source
Omniglot: The Online Encyclopedia of Writing Systems and Languages
Written In: Latin ScriptView the Source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
In Family: West SlavicView the Source
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