Polish (endonym: język polski, [ˈjɛ̃zɨk ˈpɔlskʲi] ⓘ, polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɨzna] ⓘ or simply polski, [ˈpɔlskʲi] ⓘ) is a

West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin
script.[9] It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to
being the official language of Poland, it is also used by the Polish diaspora. There are over 50 million[10][11]
Polish speakers around the world. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European
Union.[12] Polish is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns,
honorifics, and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals. [13]

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, although they are not used in native words. [14] The traditional set comprises
23 consonants and 9 written vowels, including two nasal vowels (ę, ą) defined by a reversed diacritic
hook called an ogonek.[15] Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases.[16]
It is one of very few languages in the world possessing continuous penultimate stress (with only a few
exceptions) and the only in its group having an abundance of palatal consonants.[17] Contemporary Polish
developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle
Polish (16th–18th centuries).[18]

Among the major languages, it is most closely related to Slovak[19] and Czech[20] but differs in terms of
pronunciation and general grammar. In addition, 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. [21][22][23] Extensive usage of
nonstandard dialects has also shaped 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.[24][25]

Historically, Polish was a lingua franca,[26][27] important both diplomatically and academically in Central and
part of Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by approximately 38 million people as their first language
in Poland. It 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, the
United Kingdom and the United States.