History of Polish Language

History of Polish language

Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is the official language of Poland. It has the second largest number of speakers among Slavic languages (after Russian). Polish is the main representative of the Lechitic branch of the West Slavic languages. It originated in the areas of present-day Poland from several local Western Slavic dialects, most notably those spoken in Greater Poland and Lesser Poland.

Roots and changes

Polish was once a lingua franca in various regions of Central and Eastern Europe, mostly due to the political, cultural, scientific and military influence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Although no longer having as great an influence outside of Poland, due in part to the dominance of the Russian language, it is still sometimes spoken or at least understood in western border areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania as a second language. It shares some vocabulary with the languages of the neighboring Slavic nations, most notably with Slovak, Czech, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

Who speaks Polish?

The Polish language is the most widely spoken of the Slavic language subgroup of the Lechitic languages which include Kashubian (the only surviving dialect of the Pomeranian language) and the extinct Polabian, Sorbian, Czech and Slovak, belong to the West branch of Slavic languages.

See more: en.wikipedia.org