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🇵🇱 Polish #38 Most Spoken Language (48M speakers)

Polish (Polski)

West Slavic • Latin alphabet with diacritics • 7 cases • SVO (flexible)
Number of Speakers (est.)
Native ~38–40M • Total ~45–55M+ worldwide
PolandEU diasporaUKUSGermany
Family / Branch
Indo-European → Balto-Slavic → Slavic → West Slavic → Lechitic
Close to Czech & Slovak
Writing System
Latin with diacritics: ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż; digraphs: sz cz rz dż dź ch
No articlesPenultimate stress
Typical Word Order
SVO by default, but cases allow free ordering for focus and rhythm
Aspect: imperfective/perfectiveRich agreement
ISO Codes
ISO 639-1: pl • 639-2: pol • 639-3: pol
Standard: Warsaw-based
Difficulty (for English speakers)
Medium–Hard: cases, gender splits, and consonant clusters; spelling is regular once sounds click
Transparent orthographyPredictable stress
Quick Overview

Polish is a West Slavic language with seven cases, three grammatical genders in the singular (masculine, feminine, neuter) and a special masculine-personal category in the plural. Verbs come in aspectual pairs: imperfective for ongoing/habitual actions and perfective for single, completed events. There are no articles; meaning is carried by case endings, aspect, and word order.

Sound & Spelling Tips
  • ą/ę are nasal vowels; before stops they often sound like on/en.
  • ł sounds like English w in most accents: łódź ≈ wooj.
  • sz cz rz ż dż dź are retroflex/palato-alveolars; rz usually equals ż.
  • ci/si/zi/ni before a vowel are the soft versions of ć/ś/ź/ń.
  • Primary stress is on the penultimate syllable; past plural has antepenultimate stress in traditional speech.
Grammar Snapshot
  • Cases (7): nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, vocative.
  • Gender: masculine animate vs inanimate; plural splits out masculine-personal for agreement.
  • Verbs & aspect: present for imperfectives; perfectives form a simple future; imperfectives use compound future with będę.
  • Prepositions: do + GEN, z + GEN (“from”), z + INST (“with”), w/na + LOC (place) or ACC (motion/time).
Sample & Breakdown

Dziś idę do szkoły.
Dziś idę do szkoły
today go.1sg to school.GEN → “I’m going to school today.”

Jestem nauczycielem. → copula + instrumental for professions: “I am a teacher.”

Common Phrases
Dzień dobry (Good day)Cześć (Hi) Jak się masz? (How are you?)Dziękuję (Thank you) Proszę (Please/You’re welcome)Do widzenia (Goodbye)

Przepraszam (Sorry) • Ile to kosztuje? (How much is it?)

Semantic SEO Notes
  • Primary topics: Polish pronunciation guide, Polish cases and declension, Polish verb aspect, Polish diacritics and digraphs.
  • Entities & terms: West Slavic, Lechitic, nasal vowels (ą/ę), masculine-personal plural, imperfective/perfective aspect, preposition case government.
  • Intent coverage: quick case routing for prepositions, ASCII→diacritic fixer, present-tense conjugation for frequent verbs.
FAQ
Does Polish have articles?
No. Definiteness is inferred from context and word order.
What’s the deal with masculine-personal?
In plural, groups including at least one male use special agreement: moi koledzy są vs non-masc-personal moje koty są.
How do I pick future forms?
Perfective verbs form a simple future (napiszę), imperfectives use będę + infinitive/participle (będę pisać/pisał).
Numbers (1–10)

jeden, dwa, trzy, cztery, pięć, sześć, siedem, osiem, dziewięć, dziesięć

Diacritic Helper (ASCII → Polish)

Paste text using simple marks and convert to Polish letters. Supported: a~→ą, e~→ę, s'→ś, c'→ć, z'→ź, z.→ż, n'→ń, o'→ó, l/→ł. Uppercase works too.

Lightweight converter; it won’t guess context-dependent spelling.

Preposition → Case Router

Enter a noun and pick a preposition. For w/na choose location vs motion; for z choose “from” vs “with”. The router shows the governed case and a hint.

Shows case governance; endings are not auto-declined here.

Present-Tense Conjugator (Heuristic)

Type an infinitive and pick a person. Regular patterns supported: -ać (-am, -asz…), -eć (-ę, -esz…), -ić/-yć (-ę, -isz/-ysz…). Irregulars covered: być, mieć, móc, chcieć, iść.

A teaching aid. It ignores many stem alternations and spelling changes.