Polish belongs to the West Slavic group of Indo-European languages. Due to its structure, it is classified as an inflectional, synthetic language. As a separate language, Polish began to form in the 10th century, playing an important role in the establishment and development of the Polish state. The earliest surviving records of single words in Polish date back to the 12th century. The oldest surviving complete sentence written in Polish is „Daj, ać ja pobruszę, a ty poczywaj”. It was found in a Latin text from 1270. Until the 14th century, Polish existed only in regional and folk spoken varieties. A literary, supra-regional variety of the language developed in the 15th and 16th centuries, as evidenced by the rich Renaissance literature written in Polish. Initially, the development of Polish was strongly influenced by the languages of its neighbours - German and Czech, as well as Latin. Later centuries saw a significant influence of French, while today Polish, like other European languages, has adopted much from English.
The number of Polish language users can be estimated at over 45 million people, of which approximately 38 million live in Poland. Polish is also spoken by numerous groups of Poles or people of Polish origin living abroad, including in the USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, Great Britain, France, Ireland, Iceland, as well as in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lithuania and Ukraine.
Nowadays, Polish is used in Poland in the form of an official, literary all-Polish form, which originated from the dialects of Wielkopolska and Małopolska, as well as under the influence of the dialect of Mazovia. Locally, dialects such as Kashubian, Silesian, Malopolska, Mazovian and Wielkopolska are used most often in spoken variety.
The most comprehensive dictionaries of the Polish language include more than 130 000 units, of which approximately 20 000 are in daily use. An increasing number of people are learning Polish as a foreign language. Their number can be estimated at nearly 10 000 worldwide, of which about one third study Polish at universities and language schools in Poland. They are intrigued by the fact that some nouns in Polish can have as many as 14 different inflectional forms, and are not afraid of pronouncing linguistic jumbles such as „W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie”. They are amazed to find words in Polish that are familiar to them from their own languages. For the Germans, these will be e.g.: roof, metal sheet, fair, edifice, town hall; for the Italians: fountain, grace, tomato, windowsill; for the French: luggage, ticket, bouquet, affair, visit; for the English and Americans: coach, computer, floppy disk, businessman, folder, mixer, dribbling, relax, ketchup, jeans. Everyone will easily recognise the subject matter of newspaper texts whose titles sound like this, for example: „Rational economic policy”, „Catastrophic inflation - the central bank intervenes”, „Press conference of the finance minister”, „Corruption in local administration”, „New doping scandal in tennis”. And it's all in Polish!