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79-465: Senftenberg is located in the southwest of the historic Lower Lusatia region at the border with Saxony . Its town centre is situated north of the river Black Elster and the artificial Senftenberger Lake , part of the Lusatian Lake District chain, approximately 20 kilometres (12 mi) northwest of Hoyerswerda , and 35 kilometres (22 mi) southwest of Cottbus . Senftenberg station

158-499: A / (spelled a ), / ɔ / (spelled o ) and / u / (spelled u and ó as separate letters). The nasal vowels are / ɛ w̃ / (spelled ę ) and / ɔ w̃ / (spelled ą ). Unlike Czech or Slovak, Polish does not retain phonemic vowel length — the letter ó , which formerly represented lengthened /ɔː/ in older forms of the language, is now vestigial and instead corresponds to /u/. The Polish consonant system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include

237-759: A dialect of Polish. Many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of Silesian as a regional language in Poland . The law recognizing it as such was passed by the Sejm and Senate in April 2024, but has been vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in late May of 2024. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguists (e.g. Tomasz Kamusella , Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz ) assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether

316-656: A few culturally and linguistically related tribes from the basins of the Vistula and Oder before eventually accepting baptism in 966. With Western Christianity , Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet , which made it possible to write down Polish, which until then had existed only as a spoken language . The closest relatives of Polish are the Elbe and Baltic Sea Lechitic dialects ( Polabian and Pomeranian varieties). All of them, except Kashubian , are extinct. The precursor to modern Polish

395-511: A large number of branches in all of these areas) offers services available in Polish at all of their cash machines in addition to English and Spanish . According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England and Wales who consider Polish to be their "main" language. In Canada , there is a significant Polish Canadian population : There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to

474-533: A lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue , Linguist List and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007,

553-543: A major obstacle to civilian and military traffic. Today it is roughly congruent of the border between Brandenburg and the state of Saxony . In the course of much of the 19th and the entire 20th century, Lower Lusatia was shaped by the lignite (brown coal) industry and extensive open-pit mining , by which more than 100 of the region's villages—many of them within the Sorbian settlement area—were damaged or destroyed, especially by order of East German authorities. While this process

632-454: A nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, ą in dąb ("oak") is pronounced [ɔm] , and ę in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced [ɛn] (the nasal assimilates to the following consonant). When followed by l or ł (for example przyjęli , przyjęły ), ę is pronounced as just e . When ę is at the end of the word it is often pronounced as just [ɛ] . Depending on

711-402: A reversed diacritic hook called an ogonek . Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases . It has fixed penultimate stress and an abundance of palatal consonants . Contemporary Polish developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries). Among the major languages, it

790-491: A single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), prze ze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable. The Polish alphabet derives from the Latin script but includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics . The Polish alphabet was one of three major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Western and some South Slavic languages,

869-405: A verse by Jan Brzechwa ) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed'). Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel. The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede

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948-478: A vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/ , palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew'). Some loanwords , particularly from

1027-631: Is twinned with: Lower Lusatia Lower Lusatia ( German : Niederlausitz ; Lower Sorbian : Dolna Łužyca [ˈdɔlna ˈwuʒɨtsa] ; Upper Sorbian : Delnja Łužica [ˈdɛlnʲa ˈwuʒitsa] ; Polish : Łużyce Dolne ; Czech : Dolní Lužice ) is a historical region in Central Europe , stretching from the southeast of the German state of Brandenburg to the southwest of Lubusz Voivodeship in Poland . Like adjacent Upper Lusatia in

1106-636: Is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script . It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2024, there were over 39.7 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union . Polish

1185-419: Is also spoken as a second language in eastern Germany , northern Czech Republic and Slovakia , western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in southeast Lithuania and Latvia . Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II , millions of Polish speakers can also be found in countries such as Canada , Argentina , Brazil , Israel , Australia ,

1264-427: Is most closely related to Slovak and Czech but differs in terms of pronunciation and general grammar. Additionally, Polish was profoundly influenced by Latin and other Romance languages like Italian and French as well as Germanic languages (most notably German ), which contributed to a large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures. Extensive usage of nonstandard dialects has also shaped

1343-556: Is north of the centre and a major railway freight yard is located to its north-east, with a locomotive depot. Senftenberg was first mentioned in a 1279 deed issued by Henry III the Illustrious of Wettin , then margrave of Lusatia . In 1319, the town became part of the Duchy of Jawor , the southwesternmost duchy of fragmented Piast -ruled Poland. In 1346 it passed to the Bohemia , then in 1350 to

1422-550: Is part of the so-called Lusatian Lakeland, a group of 23 artificial lakes. After the second half of the 19th century the inhabitants increased because of workers coming to Senftenberg to work in the coal mines. After the German Reunion, many inhabitants moved to the western part of Germany. In Senftenberg is the soccer club FSV Glückauf Brieske-Senftenberg . They currently play at the Elsterkampfbahn but previously played at

1501-447: Is possible to say ko goście zoba czy li? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are considered part of a "usable" norm of standard Polish - in contrast to the "model" ("high") norm. Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were

1580-587: Is still going on, most notably around Jänschwalde Power Station , run by EPH , some now exhausted open-pit mines are being converted into artificial lakes, in the hope of attracting tourism, and the area is now referred to as the Lusatian Lake District ( Lausitzer Seenland ). Today the area comprises the Brandenburg districts of Oberspreewald-Lausitz and Spree-Neiße with the unitary authority of Cottbus , as well as parts of Elbe-Elster , Dahme-Spreewald , and Oder-Spree . Important towns beside Cottbus and

1659-595: Is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics , and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals. The traditional 32-letter Polish alphabet has nine additions ( ą , ć , ę , ł , ń , ó , ś , ź , ż ) to the letters of the basic 26-letter Latin alphabet , while removing three (x, q, v). Those three letters are at times included in an extended 35-letter alphabet. The traditional set comprises 23 consonants and 9 written vowels , including two nasal vowels ( ę , ą ) defined by

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1738-512: Is the Old Polish language . Ultimately, Polish descends from the unattested Proto-Slavic language. The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska , Latin : Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau ), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj ;

1817-518: Is the most widely-used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County , by 26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results, as Vilnius was part of Poland from 1922 until 1939. Polish is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. In Ukraine, it is most common in the western parts of Lviv and Volyn Oblasts , while in West Belarus it is used by the significant Polish minority, especially in

1896-430: The kropka (superior dot) over the letter ż , and the ogonek ("little tail") under the letters ą, ę . The letters q, v, x are used only in foreign words and names. Polish orthography is largely phonemic —there is a consistent correspondence between letters (or digraphs and trigraphs ) and phonemes (for exceptions see below). The letters of the alphabet and their normal phonemic values are listed in

1975-401: The ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound / ɕ / . The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s , e.g. sinus , sinologia , do re mi fa sol la si do , Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści , Sierioża , Siergiej , Singapur , singiel . In other loanwords

2054-579: The Brest and Grodno regions and in areas along the Lithuanian border. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries. In the United States , Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. According to the 2000 United States Census , 667,414 Americans of age five years and over reported Polish as

2133-557: The Duchy of Jawor , the southwesternmost duchy of fragmented Piast -ruled Poland. In the northern part, in 1319, Gubin was unsuccessfully besieged by King John of Bohemia , and eventually fell to the Dukes of Saxe-Wittenberg . In 1324, the northern part passed to the House of Wittelsbach . From 1364, entire Lower Lusatia was ruled by the Duchy of Jawor-Świdnica, and after the death of Duke Bolko II

2212-557: The Margraviate of Brandenburg . With Lower Lusatia, the settlement was re-acquired by the Kingdom of Bohemia under Charles IV of Luxembourg in 1368. The town was located on a trade route connecting Leipzig with Poland. Elector Frederick II of Saxony acquired Senftenberg in 1448, whereafter the area as a border stronghold of the House of Wettin was separated from Bohemian Lusatia, until in 1635 all Lusatian territories fell to Saxony by

2291-774: The Oder at Fürstenberg to Chlebowo . In the glacial valley between Lübben and Cottbus , the Spree River branches out into the Spreewald ("Spree Woods") riparian forest . Other rivers include the Berste and Oelse tributaries as well as the Schlaube and the Oder–Spree Canal opened in 1891. In the east, the Bóbr River from Łagoda via Krzystkowice down to the historic town of Żary forms

2370-565: The Peace of Prague . During the Great Northern War , in 1701, troops marched through the town towards Poland. In 1704, the defensive walls were strengthened against a possible Swedish attack. According to the 1815 Congress of Vienna , Lower Lusatia was annexed by Prussia and incorporated into the Province of Brandenburg . During World War II , the present-day district of Großkoschen ( Kóšyna )

2449-647: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 's influence gave Polish the status of lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe . The process of standardization began in the 14th century and solidified in the 16th century during the Middle Polish era. Standard Polish was based on various dialectal features, with the Greater Poland dialect group serving as the base. After World War II , Standard Polish became

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2528-631: The Thirty Years' War ; thus the lands returned to the House of Wettin. One of the two main routes connecting Warsaw and Dresden ran through the region in the 18th century and Kings Augustus II the Strong and Augustus III of Poland often traveled the route. Numerous Polish dignitaries also traveled through Lower Lusatia on several occasions, and some Polish nobles owned estates in Lusatia. A distinct remnant of

2607-511: The United Kingdom and the United States . Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. At the time, it was a collection of dialect groups with some mutual features, but much regional variation was present. Mieszko I , ruler of the Polans tribe from the Greater Poland region, united

2686-474: The classical languages , have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka ( /ˈfizɨka/ ) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation ,

2765-569: The flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) , as well as the expulsion of Ukrainians and Operation Vistula , the 1947 migration of Ukrainian minorities in the Recovered Territories in the west of the country, contributed to the country's linguistic homogeneity. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish ( język ogólnopolski ) appear relatively slight. Most of

2844-404: The standard language ; considerable colloquialisms and expressions were directly borrowed from German or Yiddish and subsequently adopted into the vernacular of Polish which is in everyday use. Historically, Polish was a lingua franca , important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe . In addition to being the official language of Poland, Polish

2923-560: The 1018 Treaty of Bautzen , which ceded large parts of eastern Lusatia to Poland. Emperor Conrad II reconquered the territories in 1031. In 1136 Conrad the Great of the House of Wettin , margrave of Meissen , also received the March of Lusatia. In the early 13th century, Lower Lusatia was either entirely or partly, reintegrated with Poland under Henry the Bearded . Later on, it was once again lost to

3002-416: The 16th century, which is also regarded as the " Golden Age of Polish literature". The orthography was modified in the 19th century and in 1936. Tomasz Kamusella notes that "Polish is the oldest, non-ecclesiastical, written Slavic language with a continuous tradition of literacy and official use, which has lasted unbroken from the 16th century to this day." Polish evolved into the main sociolect of

3081-668: The 1815 Congress of Vienna , whereafter the territory became part of the Province of Brandenburg and the Province of Saxony . One of the main escape routes for insurgents of the unsuccessful Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through Lübben and Luckau . In the interbellum, the Poles and Sorbs in Germany closely cooperated as part of the Association of National Minorities in Germany , established at

3160-481: The 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto (91,810 speakers) and Montreal . The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II and Polish population transfers (1944–46) . Poles settled in the " Recovered Territories " in the west and north, which had previously been mostly German -speaking. Some Poles remained in

3239-649: The Bohemian kingdom. Both Lusatias formed separate Bohemian crown lands under the rule of the Luxembourg , Jagiellon and—from 1526— Habsburg dynasties. In the course of the Reformation the vast majority of the population turned Protestant . The Bohemian era came to an end when Emperor Ferdinand II of Habsburg ceded the Lusatias to Elector John George I of Saxony under the 1635 Peace of Prague in return for his support in

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3318-578: The Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish"). The earliest treatise on Polish orthography was written by Jakub Parkosz  [ pl ] around 1470. The first printed book in Polish appeared in either 1508 or 1513, while the oldest Polish newspaper was established in 1661. Starting in the 1520s, large numbers of books in the Polish language were published, contributing to increased homogeneity of grammar and orthography. The writing system achieved its overall form in

3397-671: The Silesian language was recognized by ISO , and was attributed an ISO code of szl. Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include: Polish linguistics has been characterized by a strong strive towards promoting prescriptive ideas of language intervention and usage uniformity, along with normatively-oriented notions of language "correctness" (unusual by Western standards). Polish has six oral vowels (seven oral vowels in written form), which are all monophthongs , and two nasal vowels . The oral vowels are / i / (spelled i ), / ɨ / (spelled y and also transcribed as /ɘ/ or /ɪ/), / ɛ / (spelled e ), /

3476-564: The Small it passed to the Kingdom of Bohemia (Czechia). In 1367 Elector Otto V sold it to Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg who incorporated Lower Lusatia into the Bohemian Crown . Charles' father King John of Bohemia had already acquired the adjacent territory to the south around Bautzen and Görlitz , which became known as Upper Lusatia . The former Lordship of Cottbus was acquired by Brandenburg in 1455 and remained an exclave within

3555-643: The Wettin dynasty, who ruled it until in 1303 it was acquired by the Ascanian margraves of Brandenburg . For centuries, from as early as the Middle Ages, trade flourished, and several important trade routes ran through Lower Lusatia, connecting German states in the west, Poland in the east and Bohemia in the south. In 1319, the southern portion of Lower Lusatia with the towns of Żary and Komorów Zły (now German: Senftenberg , Lower Sorbian: Zły Komorow ) became part of

3634-551: The border with the lands of Lower Silesia . In the west the course of the upper Dahme River down to Golßen separates it from the former Electoral Saxon lands of Saxe-Wittenberg . Between Lower and Upper Lusatia is a hill region called the Grenzwall (literally "border dike", although it is in fact a morainic ridge), the eastern continuation of the Fläming Heath . In the Middle Ages this area had dense forests, so it represented

3713-633: The borders of Poland or Czechoslovakia , or as an independent Sorbian state in alliance with Poland. With the implementation of the Oder–Neisse line by the 1945 Potsdam Conference , the lands east of the Neisse river became again part of Poland, and the remaining German population was expelled by the Soviet-installed Communist authorities in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement , whereas

3792-485: The cases mentioned above, the letter i if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents / j / , yet a palatalization of the previous consonant is always assumed. The reverse case, where the consonant remains unpalatalized but is followed by a palatalized consonant, is written by using j instead of i : for example, zjeść , "to eat up". The letters ą and ę , when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by

3871-687: The corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij ; and in English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest ), written around 1280. The book is exhibited in the Archdiocesal Museum in Wrocław, and as of 2015 has been added to UNESCO 's " Memory of the World " list. The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of

3950-479: The disappearance of yers . Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from

4029-430: The distinction between regular penultimate and exceptional antepenultimate stress. Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy , etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zro biłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zro bi libyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities ,

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4108-589: The eastern March of Lusatia or Saxon Eastern March between the Saale and Bóbr rivers, which about 965 was severed from the vast Marca Geronis , conquered by the Saxon count Gero in the course of his campaigns against the Polabian Slavs from 939 onwards. Odo I became the first margrave ; his successor Gero II from 1002 onwards had to face several attacks by Polish duke Bolesław I Chrobry , which did not end until

4187-520: The eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth wrote Polish in the Arabic alphabet. The Cyrillic script is used to a certain extent today by Polish speakers in Western Belarus , especially for religious texts. The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent ) over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and through the letter in ł ;

4266-420: The end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where assimilation occurs). For details, see Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology. Most Polish words are paroxytones (that is, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions. Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from

4345-469: The entire country. Polish has traditionally been described as consisting of three to five main regional dialects: Silesian and Kashubian , spoken in Upper Silesia and Pomerania respectively, are thought of as either Polish dialects or distinct languages , depending on the criteria used. Kashubian contains a number of features not found elsewhere in Poland, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs.

4424-462: The following table. The following digraphs and trigraphs are used: Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the tables); this occurs at the end of words and in certain clusters, due to the neutralization mentioned in the Phonology section above. Occasionally also voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds in clusters. The spelling rule for

4503-467: The former Glück-Auf Stadium (known as the Old Stadium). It opened on 4 November 4, 1953, when 33,000 fans showed up for the inaugural match against Torpedo Moscow. It also hosted motorcycle speedway and was the venue for a qualifying round of the 1966 Speedway World Team Cup . The old stadium on Briesker Straße was torn down in 1997 and is marked by the housing on the "Im alten Stadion" road. Senftenberg

4582-420: The historic capitals Lübben and Luckau include Calau , Doberlug-Kirchhain , Finsterwalde , Forst , Guben / Gubin , Lauchhammer , Lübbenau , Senftenberg , Spremberg , Vetschau , and Żary . Since 1945, when a small part of Lusatia east of the Oder–Neisse line was incorporated into Poland , Żary has been touted as the capital of Polish Lusatia. The area of Lower Lusatia roughly corresponds with

4661-910: The history of the region include the Sorbian museum in Cottbus ( Serbski muzej Chóśebuz ) and the Muzeum Pogranicza Śląsko-Łużyckiego ("Museum of Silesian-Lusatian Borderland") in Żary . Żary is the origin place of kiełbasa żarska , a local type of kiełbasa , whereas the Gubin area is the place of cultivation of the gubinka plum , both traditional foods officially protected by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland . 52°N 14°E  /  52°N 14°E  / 52; 14 Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )

4740-696: The initiative of the Union of Poles in Germany in 1924. There were still notable Polish communities in Lower Lusatia, such as Klettwitz (Upper Sorbian: Klěśišća , Polish: Kletwice ). During World War II , the Germans established and operated the Stalag III-B, Oflag III-C and Oflag 8 and prisoner-of-war camps for Polish, French , Belgian, Serbian, British, Australian, New Zealander, Soviet, American, Dutch and Italian POWs with several forced labour subcamps in

4819-435: The language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English , 0.25% of the US population, and 6% of the Polish-American population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) were found in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740), and New Jersey (74,663). Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services (which has

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4898-439: The letter y . The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first. Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent

4977-431: The middle aged and young speak vernaculars close to standard Polish, while the traditional dialects are preserved among older people in rural areas. First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional and social differences. The modern standard dialect , often termed as "correct Polish", is spoken or at least understood throughout

5056-460: The most widely spoken variant of Polish across the country, and most dialects stopped being the form of Polish spoken in villages. Poland is one of the most linguistically homogeneous European countries; nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their first language . Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in areas which were once administered or occupied by Poland, notably in neighboring Lithuania , Belarus , and Ukraine . Polish

5135-415: The nobles in Poland–Lithuania in the 15th century. The history of Polish as a language of state governance begins in the 16th century in the Kingdom of Poland . Over the later centuries, Polish served as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , Congress Poland , the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , and as the administrative language in the Russian Empire 's Western Krai . The growth of

5214-511: The others being Czech orthography and Croatian orthography , the last of these being a 19th-century invention trying to make a compromise between the first two. Kashubian uses a Polish-based system, Slovak uses a Czech-based system, and Slovene follows the Croatian one; the Sorbian languages blend the Polish and the Czech ones. Historically, Poland's once diverse and multi-ethnic population utilized many forms of scripture to write Polish. For instance, Lipka Tatars and Muslims inhabiting

5293-401: The palatal sounds / ɕ / , / ʑ / , / tɕ / , / dʑ / and / ɲ / is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulfur") and

5372-414: The previously Polish-ruled territories in the east that were annexed by the USSR , resulting in the present-day Polish-speaking communities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, although many Poles were expelled from those areas to areas within Poland's new borders. To the east of Poland, the most significant Polish minority lives in a long strip along either side of the Lithuania - Belarus border. Meanwhile,

5451-432: The region's ties to Poland are the 18th-century mileposts decorated with the coat of arms of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth located in various towns in the region. Polish-Sorbian contacts increased in that period. With the Age of Enlightenment , the Sorbian national revival began and resistance to Germanization emerged. As the Kingdom of Saxony had sided with Napoleon it had to cede Lower Lusatia to Prussia in

5530-442: The region, several Nazi prisons with multiple forced labour subcamps, including in Luckau and a prison solely for women in Cottbus , and several subcamps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp , the prisoners of which included Jewish women and Polish, French, Soviet, Croatian and Czech men. During the war, the Poles postulated that after the defeat of Germany, the Sorbs should be allowed free national development either within

5609-540: The same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście , although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zro bi liśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobi li śmy ). These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of ko go zoba czy liście? ('whom did you see?') it

5688-410: The series of affricate and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist): Neutralization occurs between voiced – voiceless consonant pairs in certain environments, at

5767-500: The six of standard Polish) and (in the northern dialects) phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the West Slavic languages . However, it was described by some linguists as lacking most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood. Many linguistic sources categorize Silesian as a regional language separate from Polish, while some consider Silesian to be

5846-555: The south, Lower Lusatia is a settlement area of the West Slavic Sorbs whose endangered Lower Sorbian language is related to Upper Sorbian and Polish . This sparsely inhabited area within the North European Plain ( Northern Lowland ) is characterised by extended pine forests, heathlands and meadows. In the north it is confined by the middle Spree River with Lake Schwielochsee and its eastern continuation across

5925-494: The stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet ( /uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/ , 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/ ) and derived adjective uniwersytecki ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/ ) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Loanwords generally become nativized to have penultimate stress. In psycholinguistic experiments, speakers of Polish have been demonstrated to be sensitive to

6004-563: The vowel i is changed to y , e.g. Syria , Sybir , synchronizacja , Syrakuzy . The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling: Digraphs and trigraphs are used: Similar principles apply to / kʲ / , / ɡʲ / , / xʲ / and /lʲ/ , except that these can only occur before vowels, so the spellings are k, g, (c)h, l before i , and ki, gi, (c)hi, li otherwise. Most Polish speakers, however, do not consider palatalization of k, g, (c)h or l as creating new sounds. Except in

6083-453: The western part became part of also Communist East Germany . The Lower Lusatian bull is first documented in 1363. In 1378, upon the death of Emperor Charles IV, it appeared in gules on a field argent (red on silver), similar to the coat of arms of Luckau, in which the bull has gold horns and hooves, and turns his head to look at the viewer. After over 600 years it is still used today as Lower Lusatia's coat of arms. Main museums dedicated to

6162-443: The word, the phoneme / x / can be spelt h or ch , the phoneme / ʐ / can be spelt ż or rz , and / u / can be spelt u or ó . In several cases it determines the meaning, for example: może ("maybe") and morze ("sea"). In occasional words, letters that normally form a digraph are pronounced separately. For example, rz represents /rz/ , not / ʐ / , in words like zamarzać ("freeze") and in

6241-521: Was the location of a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp , in which some 850 men, including Soviet citizens and Poles , were imprisoned. From 1952 to 1990, it was part of the Bezirk Cottbus of East Germany . Lake Senftenberg is a popular tourist destination. In 1973, the former open cast mine, was officially opened to the public. Today, the lake is known for its excellent water quality. It

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