Polish Learning Community and Resources

History of Polish Language

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Here at OLS we always talk about Polish – learning Polish, speaking Polish etc., but have you ever wondered how this language actually came to be and how it's related to its linguistic siblings?

First of all, let's talk about family. Polish is a Western Slavic language, which means that it shares many features (such as vocabulary and grammar) with other Slavic languages, particularly the western branch (Czech and Slovak). That is to say that if you speak a Slavic language, Polish might be easier for you to learn.

Of course, when talking about the history of a language it is impossible to give any precise dates but in any case most linguists agree that Polish emerged as a separate language around the late 9th, early 10th century, more or less when Poland emerged as a country. At that point it wasn't a written language. How do we know that it existed, then? There are some documents, written in Latin, that list names of Polish tribes and settlements that existed in that period. From the spelling of these names we can deduct that Polish was already quite different from the surrounding Slavic languages.

The period from the 10th or mid-12th century until the end of the 15th/beginning of the 16th century is called Old Polish. Besides the Latin documents that list Polish names, for the first time we can find the first Polish sentence ever written down. We can find this sentence in the 1270 Book of Henryków, it says: "day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai" or, in modern orthography: "daj, ać ja pobruszę, a ty poczywaj" – in present-day Polish one would say "daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpocznij" – quite different, isn't it? Reportedly it is a sentence a husband said to his wife and means "Give [it to me], I shall grind, and you take a rest" – how progressive!

Marked in red: The first sentence ever recorded in Polish, that's when it all started!

Source: Wikimedia Commons

 Fifteen years later, in 1285 in Łęczyca it was decided that Polish should be used in monastery schools alongside Latin (which was the language of instruction and international communication in Europe back then). This, of course, contributed to language development but it wasn't until the 16th century when the writers started creating exclusively in Polish. Mikołaj Rej, a Renaissance poet and writer is considered to be one of the pioneers of Polish literature. The mean ones say that he decided to write in Polish only because his Latin wasn't good enough. In any case, undoubtedly, he ultimately contributed to Polish becoming a language in its own right. He is known to have said:

"A niechaj narodowie, wżdy postronni znają iż Polacy nie gęsi, iż swój język mają" 

in contemporary English: 

"Let all the nations and strangers be known, that Poles are not of geese and have a language of their own".

It's one of those quotes that every Pole knows, if you refer to it you will definitely impress your Polish friends :) Anyway, there's some confusing as to what he meant by gęsi, it could either mean geese or it could be an adjective and it could either refer to Latin that was written using goose feathers or it could be a playful way to refer to speaking a foreign language that is as unintelligible as the gabbling of geese… I’d say that it’s not extremely important what Rej actually meant, what is really important, however, is the fact that thanks to him Polish could develop as a proper language rendering world-changing thoughts and putting into words the imagination of the poets but let’s talk about this some other time…

Source: Wikimedia Commons