History of the Polish Language

Polish language has West Slavonic origins.

Jan 18, 2007 Kerry Kubilius

Polish language was once the language of diplomats, and is related to other Indo-European languages in Eastern Europe.

Polish language, a West-Slavonic language of the Indo-European languages, uses the Latin alphabet (unlike other Slavonic languages, which use Cyrillic). Roman Catholicism was responsible for the Latin alphabet used in Poland, where church texts were among the first written manuscripts.

It was in the 10th century that Poland became a state, under which tribes who shared linguistic and cultural traits were bound together under one ruler. While Polish language originated with the joining of Slavonic-language-speaking peoples, Polish has since acquired a variety of borrowed or loan words from Latin, German, Russian, and French.

While the Polish language was referred to by Poles as “Polska,” it is important to note that Poles considered themselves Slavs – this word is controversial in its origins, but the Polish word for “word” is slawa, which might indicate that the Poles thought of themselves as the originators of understandable language.

Polish language was an important language of the middle ages. It was used in diplomatic missions, became a language of law, and was learned by Russian rulers.

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