Poland Languages

The official language and the widely spoken language in Poland is Polish. It primarily belongs to the larger Indo-European family of languages. Polish is a West Slavic language under Lechitic sub-group and is closely related Czech and Slovak. The Polish Alphabet has 32 letters, 23 consonants, and 9 vowels. Q, V, and X are excluded from the 32 letters since they are originally not Polish, they are mainly used in foreign words only.

Polish, after Russian, is the second most widely spoken Slavic language. Approximately 38.5 million Poles speak Polish as their first and native language, accounting for over 95% of the population. This is a great percentage keeping in mind that there are approximately 55 million Polish speakers worldwide. More than half the Poles speak English-Russian as their second language.

Polish utilizes a free-word order. However, the most common word order used in Polish is Subject-Verb-Object. The nouns are categorized into 3 genders: feminine, masculine, and the neuter, just like in most Indo-European languages. Polish has quite a large number of loanwords. As Polish borrows vocabulary from other languages, the pronunciation and the spellings of the words are altered a little so that they correspond with the Polish Orthography rules. Polish has mostly borrowed from English. Other languages that Polish has heavily borrowed from include Turkish, Italian, French and Czech.

Besides Polish, there are other languages spoken in Poland. Among the common languages spoken in Poland include Lithuanian, Czech, Belarusian, Slovak, Kashubian, and other Jewish Languages such as Yiddish and Hebrew. Silesian has approximately half a million speakers. English is spoken by approximately 103,000 people whereas German has approximately 96,461 speakers. 16 languages in the country are officially recognized as minority languages; one as a regional language, ten as national minority languages, and five as ethnic minority languages.

This page was last modified on May 1st, 2018

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Published on 2019-11-06


Capital	Warsaw
Languages	Polish (official) 98.2%, Silesian 1.4%, other 1.1%, unspecified 1.3%
Ethnic Groups	Polish 96.9%, Silesian 1.1%, German 0.2%, Ukrainian 0.1%, other and unspecified 1.7%
Religion	Catholic 87.2% (includes Roman Catholic 86.9% and Greek Catholic, Armenian Catholic, and Byzantine-Slavic Catholic .3%), Orthodox 1.3% (almost all are Polish Autocephalous Orthodox), Protestant 0.4% (mainly Augsburg Evangelical and Pentacostal), other 0.4% (includes Jehovah's Witness, Buddhist, Hare Krishna, Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Muslim, Jewish, Mormon), unspecified 10.8% (2012 est.)
Government	Parliamentary republic
Independance	11 November 1918 (republic proclaimed); notable earlier dates: 966 (adoption of Christianity, traditional founding date), 1 July 1569 (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created)
Area	312,685.00 km²
Water Area	8,430.00 km²
Land Area	304,255.00 km²
Population	38,523,261.00 Population concentrated in the southern (Krakow) and central (Warsaw, Lodz) areas, with an extension to the northern coastal city of Gdansk
Location	Central Europe, east of Germany
No. Bordering Countries	7
Bordering Countries	Belarus 418 km, Czech Republic 796 km, Germany 467 km, Lithuania 104 km, Russia (Kaliningrad Oblast) 210 km, Slovakia 541 km, Ukraine 535 km
GDP(PPP)	$1,050,000,000,000.00 (USD)
GDP (Per Capita)	$27,700.00 (USD)
Export Partners	Its major export partners are Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic.
Export Commodities	Its main exports are machinery and transport equipment, and intermediate manufactured goods.
Import Partners	Its major import partners are Germany, China, and Russia.
Import Commodities	Its major imports include machinery and transport equipment, intermediate manufactured goods, and chemicals.
Climate	Maritime temperate; cool and rainy in north, warmer and drier in south
Terrain	Mostly flat plain; mountains along southern border
Learn More	Poland

Poland Languages

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