The Polish writing system uses the Latin alphabet, just like English, with some modifications. These modifications are diacritical signs that we use to represent sounds unique to the Polish language. They include:
- an acute mark (For example, the letter -ź consists of the consonant -z and an acute mark above it. The acute mark, however, is not an accent; we use it to mark the softness of a particular consonant.)
- a dot (For instance, the letter -ż consists of the letter -z and a dot above it. This forms a new letter with its own sound.)
- a hook (For example, the vowel -ą consists of the letter -a with a little hook attached to it. The hook gives the vowel a nasal sound.)
Each of these diacritical marks influences the pronunciation of a particular letter.
Besides these diacritical marks, throughout the centuries Polish has gained a lot of consonant clusters, such as -cz, -sz, -rz, -dz, -dź, -dż, -ch, -ci, -si, -zi, -dzi,and -ni, which also serve to represent Polish sounds that were not present in Latin.
The First Written Traces of the Polish Language and How They Led to Today’s Writing System
Even though the Polish state began its existence in 966, for almost the next two hundred years no written documents in Polish exist-at least none we know of. The first written, and at the same time, the oldest traces of the Polish language occurred in the twelfth century. That evidence is a Latin document entitled Bulla gnieźnieńska (”Papal Bull of Gniezno”), which contains 410 Polish words-mainly names of villages and towns, as well as the personal names of their inhabitants. It allows us to understand in some respects the Polish phonetic system, vocabulary, and morpheme features in use at that time.
The next step in our journey is the discovery of the first complete Polish sentence. It was probably written around 1270 by the Cistercian monks of Henryków. It said Daj, ać ja pobruszę, a ty poczywaj, which translates to “Let me grind and you rest.” We can assure you that a lot of Poles would have problems translating this sentence because of the many changes that have since taken place within the writing system as well as the archaic vocabulary the writers used in this sentence.
When it comes to entire texts in Polish, the first one was written either at the end of the thirteenth century or at the beginning of the fourteenth century. It is the Polish religious song, and at the same time the first Polish anthem, called Bogurodzica. Some believe that Polish knights sang Bogurodzica before the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, a famous victory of the Polish nation over the Teutonic Knights.
From that time on, an ever-increasing number of texts and documents appear that were written entirely in Polish. These were mainly devotional and religious texts, such as translations of the Old Testament or sermons that monks wrote, monks being among the few who could perform such translations because of their education and fluency in Latin. However, since in Polish there were some sounds that Latin did not have, very often, they used the same Latin letter to represent many different sounds in Polish. As you can imagine, this must have caused a great deal of confusion.
Together with the arrival of the printing era in Poland, which took place at the beginning of the sixteenth century, printers needed greater standardization within the alphabet. The Golden Age of Polish literature and culture brought new dictionaries, grammar books, and treatises on spelling that helped unify the Polish writing system, a system still used today.
Useful Tip
Knowing that Polish has many common vocabulary roots with other Slavic languages (Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian, etc.) will help you survive with limited knowledge of these languages in many parts of Europe, such as in Russian-speaking countries, as well as Poland’s neighbors like Belarus and the Czech Republic. And if you ever consider learning another Slavic language, your knowledge of Polish will come in quite handy.
The Polish Alphabet
The word “alphabet” refers to a writing system that has characters for representing both consonant and vowel sounds. The current Polish alphabet consists of nine vowels and twenty-three consonants, and thus it has thirty-two characters in total.
It also uses the diacritical marks and consonant clusters that we mentioned at the beginning of this lesson.
Say Hello in Polish
Introduce Yourself
Top Polish Phrases
Thank You in Polish
A language’s alphabet is its building blocks. Trying to learn how to write in Polish without first learning its alphabet is a bit like trying to build a brick house without touching the individual bricks! It is impossible to do a good job that way. So don’t believe language schools and methods that try to teach you otherwise. You will regret it later.
With a language, like with anything you have to learn from scratch, having a few mnemonic devices handy are key to learning it fast. A mnemonic device is basically any method or technique that helps you to retain or commit something to memory more easily.
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