Hello everyone. Welcome to the Langfocus Channel and my name is Paul.
Today's topic is the Polish language, or język polski as it's called in Polish.
Polish is the official language of the Central European country of Poland where
97% of the population speaks it as a native language. That makes Poland the
most linguistically homogeneous country in Europe. It's the second most widely
spoken Slavic language after Russian with around 45 million native speakers
and an additional 5 million second language speakers. As you may know, Slavic
languages are a branch of the indo-european language family. Between
the Year 500 CE and 1000 CE, Proto-Slavic gradually diverged into dialects
and by 1000 CE there were already distinct West Slavic, East Slavic, and
South Slavic languages. Dialects of these three languages developed into the
languages of each Slavic branch. The West Slavic languages include Polish, Czech
Slovak, Sorbian (a minority language in eastern
Germany) and Kashubian (a minority language in Poland). Poland first became a
state in the 10th century around the time that Slavak was developing into
various distinct languages. The unification of various Slavic tribes
within one Polish state helped tie their dialects together as a single language.
The Christianization of Poland took place in the decades following the
creation of the Polish state, and along with that came Latin via the Roman
Catholic Church, which became the formal written language and the language of the
nobility. Polish continued to be the predominant spoken language among the
general population, but Latin certainly had some influence on polish because of
its prestigious position. Polish was not a written language until the adoption of
Christianity and the arrival of Latin. From that point on vernacular Polish
began to be written informally using the Latin alphabet.
The oldest sample of written Polish that we know of is a list of names dating
back to the year 1136. The oldest written Polish sentence that we know of
dates back to 1270. There are more substantial texts from
the 14th century onwards as Polish became more commonly written. From the
beginning the Latin alphabet was insufficient for writing all the
different sounds of Polish, so overtime Polish writers began using a variety of
diacritics that have become part of the Polish alphabet and a characteristic
part of Polish writing. During the Jagiellonian dynasty Polish became an
official language alongside Latin. Also during this time, cities were founded and
administered under a German system of law known as Magdeburg law. Due to the
influence of this system of law, numerous German words entered Polish. German
loanwords in Polish include "ratusz" meaning "town council", and "bBurmistrz"
meaning "mayor". Also, there had always been contact with Germanic speakers,
especially in the northwestern areas, all the way back to Proto-Slovak. So there
are other Germanic loanwords in Polish that go back a long way.
Latin remained an official language alongside Polish through the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but Polish had gradually become more widely
used by the nobility than Latin. In the sixteenth century while Polish was
becoming more standardized, it served as the vehicle for the Golden Age of Polish
literature. It also became the lingua franca throughout much of Central and
Eastern Europe, spoken by the ruling classes not only in Lithuania but also
in Ukraine and Belarus, which were mostly part of the Commonwealth at the time. The
third official language of the Commonwealth was Ruthenian which was
spoken in the eastern areas and would later develop into Ukrainian and
Belarusian dialects. Polish was influenced by Ruthenian to some extent
due to contact. Poland was erased from the map between 795 in 1918 after being
partitioned between the Russian Empire, Austria, and the Kingdom of Prussia and
later the German Empire which it was a part of. Polish ceased to be an official
language anywhere and dialectal differences grew in the different
occupied parts of Poland. After the First World War, the borders of Europe were
redrawn and an independent Polish state was restored. Lands which were considered
historically Polish were taken back from occupying powers, but not all lands.
The borders were once again redrawn after World War II with the "Recovered
Territories" being given from Germany to Poland, and the Soviet Union occupying
Eastern areas and making them part of Belarus and Ukraine. Many Poles were
forcibly transferred from those neighboring countries to Poland,
"transferred" being a euphemism for "kicked out". This forced transfer of Poles from
their homes to different dialect areas resulted in dialect leveling, the loss
of dialectal differences. And transfer, in other words expulsion, of non-Poles to
neighboring countries made Poland a very linguistically homogeneous country. Today
four main dialects of Polish are usually recognized, but the differences are now
slight. There is Greater Polish; Lesser Polish; Masovian; and Silesian, though
speakers often consider themselves a separate language community; and
sometimes counted is Kashubian, which is generally considered a separate language
but is closely related to Polish. So what is Polish? Like pronunciation and
orthography, Polish writing has a number of characteristic features that are
quite striking at first glance. The Polish alphabet has 32 letters, but there
are also seven digraphs, pairs of letters which represent individual sounds. Notice
that 4 of those digraphs feature the letter Z. This makes Z the most common
(consonant) letter in Polish writing. And notice that there are two additional letters that
are derived from Z which appear in another two digraphs. If you include
those, people seeing polish in writing for the first time willdefinitely
notice the abundance of Z's and Z-like letters. But those two Z-derived letters
are not the only special letters in Polish. There are 9 in total. This letter (ł)
is pronounced /w/, while in Polish the letter "w" is normally
pronounced /v/. These letters represent nasal vowels
More specifically, vowels followed by nasal semivowels. The exact quality of
the nasal sound varies depending on the surrounding sounds. And the nasal sound
is normally absent before ł /w/ or in the nasal "e" (ę) at the end of a word. For example,
this word (się) is normally pronounced [ɕɛ] and is only pronounced like this: [ɕɛ̃w̃]
in very careful formal speech. There are some noticeably long consonant
clusters in Polish. This one has a cluster of five consonants in a row:
"bezwzględny" meaning "ruthless". Then there's this one: przestępstwo
meaning "crime". It has a cluster of only four consonants, but
there's also a digraph in this first cluster which makes it appear to have
three consonants instead of two. So to someone looking at Polish for the first
time, it probably appears to be full of long consonant clusters, even though some
of them are just digraphs. Most simple Polish consonants are pronounced like
their English equivalents, but note that C is pronounced as /ts/ and as I
mentioned before "w" is pronounced /v/. And also note that the letters X, V, and Q
are not used in Polish. The sound /ks/, usually represented by X in English, is
spelled KS in Polish. One important feature of Polish pronunciation is hard
and soft consonants, a common feature of Slavic languages. Soft consonants are
generally palatalized, like a hard consonant pronounced together with a /j/
sound. Aside from "j" and "l" which are always
soft, soft consonants are indicated by an accent above the letter, or by a "i"
following the consonant. For example, /s/ - /ɕ/, /n/ - /ɲ/, /p/ - /pʲ/.
Most of the digraphs we saw before belong to a subset of hard consonants
that derived from historically soft consonants. Why do hard and soft
consonants matter? Because in Polish some inflectional suffixes are different
depending on whether they are preceded by a hard consonant or a soft consonant.
Most consonants, specifically obstruents: stops affricates and fricatives, when
they appear in consonant clusters, must all be voiced or voiceless.
This results in voiced obstruents becoming voiceless when they come before
or after a voiceless consonant. For example, "kwiat" /kfʲat/, łódka /wutka/. This also happens at
the ends of words. This word meaning "car": "samochód" /saˈmɔ.xut/, and this word meaning "doctor":
"lekarz" /ˈlɛ.kaʂ/. This type of devoicing is one of the main things that keeps Polish
from being a fully phonetic language, in other words, a language in which one
grapheme equals one sound. Another thing is that the distinction
between a few sounds has been lost, so that now these letters are pronounced
the same. Grammar. Let's start with the word order of Polish. The unmarked or
neutral word order in Polish is SVO as in English. For example, "Moje dziecko jest
słodkie", meaning my child is cute or my child is
sweet. The word order here is exactly like in English: subject-verb-complement.
The sentence has no object, but the adjective here is a compliment. Another
example. "Mężczyzna je obiad", which means "The man is eating dinner".
Subject-verb-object. Notice that there is no definite article in Polish, and
actually there isn't an indefinite article either. Now this is the unmarked
or neutral word order, but polish word order is quite flexible, and elements of
the sentence can be moved in order to emphasize them. In the first sentence we
could emphasize "my child" by moving it to the end.
"Słodkie jest moje dziecko". In the second sentence we could emphasize "man"
by moving it to the end. "Obiad je mężczyzna". So this sentence is now "Dinner - eats -
the man". Technically, any word order is possible. though some sound unnatural and
would be most suitable for written poetry or something. How can these words
be moved around freely like this? Doesn't that get confusing? The main reason is
that Polish is a highly inflected language and nouns, among other words,
have case endings endings that tell us the function of the word in the sentence.
Because the function of the word is obvious from its ending, we don't
need to use word order or syntax to determine the function of the word. "Dziecko"
means "child". This is the singular form in the nominative case, which is usually
used for the subject of a sentence or a predicate adjective after a linking verb.
There are six other cases in Polish: genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental,
locative, and Vocative. These are the singular forms but there are also plural
forms. It's important to note that polish has grammatical gender. "Dziecko" is a
neuter noun. In their most basic form, the nominative form, neuter nouns end in ~e, ę,
~o, or ~um. There are also masculine and feminine
nouns. Masculine nouns in their nominative form usually end in a consonant. An
example is "chłopak" meaning "boy". Some case endings differ between different
types of masculine nouns. Compare "chłopak", a masculine person, to "bank", a
masculine object. Notice there's a difference in the accusative plural. The
endings are different for masculine people on the one hand, and masculine
objects and animals on the other. For many nouns this is also true for the
nominative plural. Also notice that the genitive and accusative singular endings
are different. In these cases the endings are different for masculine animate
nouns, in other words humans and animals, on the one hand, and inanimate objects on
the other. Though in the genitive case a few types of nouns are exceptions.
Feminine nouns in their nominative form usually end in a or i. For example,
"matka" meaning mother. Adjectives also agree with nouns in gender, number, and
case, and they have their own sets of endings. For example, "młoda matka" means
"a young mother" in the nominative case. But here's a phrase in the genitive case:
"dziecko młodej matki" - the young mothers child. Not only the noun has a genitive
case ending, but so does the adjective. And notice that the adjective's genitive
ending is different from the noun's. Adjectives have endings for all cases, in
all genders, for both singular and plural. Verbs. Polish verbs have two tenses: past
and non-past, but there are also two major aspects which indicate completion
of an action (the perfective aspect) or incompletion of an action (the
imperfective aspect). Each verb has separate infinitives for the
imperfective and perfective aspect, and then conjugations are built around those
infinitives in order to indicate the tense (in other words, the time at which
the complete or incomplete action is done). Let's take a look at the verb
meaning "to read". "Czytać" - this is an imperfective infinitive. In other words,
the reading is in progress or ongoing. "Przeczytać". This is a perfective
infinitive meaning the reading is complete. The perfective form of verbs is
derived from the imperfective form by adding a prefix to it, or sometimes by
adding a suffix or changing a vowel in the verb stem now. Let's conjugate these
in the past tense. You drop the ć from the end of the infinitive and add
one of these endings to the remaining stem. For example, "(Ja) czytałem" means "I
was reading". In other words, the reading was ongoing at a certain point in the
past. "(Ja) przeczytałem" means "I read". In other
words, I completed the action of reading within a certain time period in the past.
By the way, please note that Polish is a "pro-drop" language, meaning that the
subject pronoun can often be left out. That's because the verb endings often
make it clear who the subject is. But something to note is how the verbs are
conjugated for gender in the past tense. In the first and second person singular
there are masculine and feminine forms. The third person singular also has a
neuter form. For the plural forms, the distinction is between masculine
personal endings, in other words for people, and all the others. A masculine
inanimate object or animal will be conjugated the same as for feminine or
neuter nouns. So while a man would say "(ja) czytałem" a woman would "(ja)
czytałam". And if you're talking to a man you would say "Ty czytałeś" but if
you're talking to a woman you would say "(Ty) czytałaś". Speakers of other
Slavic languages won't see anything strange about this, but speakers of
Germanic and Romance languages might need to get used to this. Now let's take
a look at the non past conjugations. "Non- past? What do you mean by non-past? Is it
present or future? Well, that depends on whether it's imperfective or perfective.
For an imperfective verb like "czytać", the non-past conjugation has present
tense meaning. For a perfective verb like "przeczytać" the non past conjugation
has future tense meaning. "(Ona) czyta książkę". This means "She's reading
a book", while this sentence: on "(Ona) przeczyta książkę" means "She will read a
book" Unlike the past tense conjugations, the non-past conjugations don't have any
gender distinctions. The tricky thing about the non-past conjugation is that
there isn't just one of them. There are actually four different conjugations,
with virtually all verbs following one of them. Conjugation I and conjugation
IV are characterized by an "e" vowel in the 3rd person singular form. Conjugation
II by an "i" vowel in the 3rd person singular form. In conjugation III by
"a" vowel in the third-person singular. The perfective non-past form is sometimes
referred to as the simple future. There's another compound future tense that
expresses the imperfective future, in other words, an action that is ongoing or
repeating in the future. "(Ona) będzie czytać książkę". This sentence means "She
will be reading a book". It's formed by using the future tense of "być" - the word
meaning "to be", followed by the imperfective infinitive. "Być" is an
irregular verb, using a different verb stem in the past, present, and future
forms. Here's an example in the present tense. "Nie jestem Polakiem." This means "I'm not
Polish". And as a quick side note, here we see how Polish negation works. You simply
place the negation particle "nie" before the verb. Now that we've examined some of
the major features of Polish, let's take a look at a few more sentences and see
what we find. This sentence means "My father reads 2 books every day". "Mój ojciec
codziennie czyta dwie książki." Word-for-word it's: my father - everyday -
read - two - books. First off we see a possessive adjectives before the noun
meaning "father". Possessive adjectives in Polish are inflected for the gender and
number of the noun. Here the word "ojciec" meaning "father" is masculine and
singular, so the possessive is in it's masculine singular form. And "ojciec" is
in the nominative case. Next "codziennie" is an adverb meaning "every day". The word for
"day" is "dzień". Next we see the third-person masculine singular present tense form of
the verb. Next we see the number "dwie" which means 2. Numbers 1 to 4 in Polish
have different forms depending on the case and gender of the noun they are
referring to. "Dwie" is feminine and is used for
nominative and accusative case. Here it's the accusative. The number is feminine
because the word for book is feminine. Książki is the plural form used for
nominative and accusative cases, and here it's the accusative. A moment ago I
mentioned that numbers 1 to 4 have different numerous forms. Numbers higher
than 4 have only two forms. When counting masculine personal nouns they are in the
genitive case and the nouns they refer to are in the genitive case. And when
counting all other nouns they are in the nominative/
accusative case, but the noun is still in the genitive case. So if we change the
number in this sentence say from two to five the sentence would look like this.
"My father reads five books every day". "Mój ojciec codziennie czyta pięć książek." The
number five has two forms: pięciu for masculine people, and pięć for all others,
including objects like books. "Książek." This noun is in the genitive
plural form. And one more sentence. This sentence means "Everyone likes him
because he often laughs". she's single "Wszyscy go lubią, bo często się śmieje." Word-for-
word it's: everyone-him-they-like-because- often-reflexive-pronoun-laughs. First we
see the pronoun meaning "everyone". Pronouns in Polish have different case
forms. Since this is the subject of the sentence, it's in the nominative case.
Next we see a personal pronoun meaning "him". Personal pronouns also have
different case forms. This one is in the accusative case. There are two other
accusative forms: jego, niego. "Go" is used when the pronoun is not being
emphasized. "Lubią" is the third-person plural form of the verb "lubić" meaning
"to like". This verb belongs to conjugation II and has an "i" vowel in the
third-person singular. Next we see "bo", a conjunction meaning
"because". And after that we see "często" - an adverb meaning "often". Next we see a
reflexive verb meaning "he laughs". Polish has lots of reflexive verbs meaning that
both the doer and the receiver of the action are the same. That may not always
be obvious in terms of meaning, but in terms of grammar that's how it works.
This word "się" is a reflexive pronoun which you simply add to the verb to form
the reflexive. It has only one form. Finally something simple in Polish! The
verb here is in the third-person singular present tense, and this verb
belongs to conjugation I. Let me take this part of the sentence and ask a
question about it. "Czy wszyscy go lubią?" meaning "Does everyone like him?" The way
you ask yes or no questions in Polish is very simple. You simply add the question
marker "czy". Let's formulate another question. This means "Who do they like?"
"Kogo lubią?" This is an open-ended question using an interrogative pronoun
meaning "who". Interrogative pronouns in Polish have
different case forms. This one is in the accusative case. In the nominative case
it takes a different form, so if you wanted to ask "Who likes him?" it would be
Kto go lubi? "Kto" is the nominative form. Honorable Mention. This is a last-minute
addition to the video, but several Polish speakers have asked me to include this
particular feature of the language. When talking about the presence of something
in Polish you use the verb "być", meaning "to be". For example, "On tu jest" means "He is
here". That seems straightforward. The unusual part is the negative form. "Nie ma
go tu." NOT- IT- HAS-HIM. So this is like saying "It doesn't have him here". But who
is IT? I don't know, but I suppose it's like a
dummy subject in English, like when we say "It's sunny".
It doesn't really refer to anything. As you can see Polish is an extremely
interesting language, but it's also one that many learners find daunting and
intimidating. But as with any language, there are people who learn it, whether
they move to Poland or they're simply deeply interested in Polish culture.
Those people didn't learn everything about the language all at once. They
learned certain pieces first, then they learned other pieces afterwards, until
eventually they had a fuller picture of the language. So don't let the details of
Polish scare you off if you have the interest and the motivation to go for it.
The Question of the Day. To native speakers of Polish: what additional
features of Polish would you like to tell us about? For example, are there any
features of informal speech that you would like to share? And to students of
Polish: what do you find most challenging about the language? Do you have any tips
on how to deal with it? If you enjoyed this video then please check out the
various Langfocus social media accounts, and of course as always I want
to give a very special thanks to my Patreon supporters, especially these ones
right here on the screen who are my top tier Patreon supporters, so I want to say
a very special thanks to them for their support. And to everyone, thank you for
watching, and have a nice DAY!