Defunct
106-549: The Balcerowicz Plan ( Polish : plan Balcerowicza ), also termed " Shock Therapy ", was a method for rapidly transitioning from an economy based on state ownership and central planning , to a capitalist market economy . A group of experts, which they formed together with Balcerowicz, including Stanisław Gomułka , Stefan Kawalec and Wojciech Misiąg , in September 1989 created a reform plan based on an earlier idea of Jeffrey Sachs , and on October 6, an outline of this plan
212-473: A stabilization fund of US $ 1 billion and an additional stand-by credit of US$ 720 million. Following this, the World Bank granted Poland additional credits for modernization of exports of Polish goods and food products. Many governments followed and paid off some of the former Communist debt (about 50% of the sum of debt capital and all cumulated interest rates to 2001). Balcerowicz's policies resulted in
318-499: A / (spelled a ), / ɔ / (spelled o ) and / u / (spelled u and ó as separate letters). The nasal vowels are / ɛ w̃ / (spelled ę ) and / ɔ w̃ / (spelled ą ). Unlike Czech or Slovak, Polish does not retain phonemic vowel length — the letter ó , which formerly represented lengthened /ɔː/ in older forms of the language, is now vestigial and instead corresponds to /u/. The Polish consonant system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include
424-423: A coherent programme, and acted under the dictates of Jeffrey Sachs and other Western advisers. To Kowalik, the excessive social costs of the transformation resulted in the ‘ugly face of Polish transformation’, manifesting itself in the form of high and persistent unemployment, impoverishment of the countryside, a wide area of poverty and high, ever-growing social inequalities, a crisis of the welfare state visible in
530-771: A dialect of Polish. Many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of Silesian as a regional language in Poland . The law recognizing it as such was passed by the Sejm and Senate in April 2024, but has been vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in late May of 2024. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguists (e.g. Tomasz Kamusella , Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz ) assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether
636-669: A few culturally and linguistically related tribes from the basins of the Vistula and Oder before eventually accepting baptism in 966. With Western Christianity , Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet , which made it possible to write down Polish, which until then had existed only as a spoken language . The closest relatives of Polish are the Elbe and Baltic Sea Lechitic dialects ( Polabian and Pomeranian varieties). All of them, except Kashubian , are extinct. The precursor to modern Polish
742-528: A high public debt and budget deficit throughout the entire transformation period - the last positive budget budget balance was recorded in 1989, in the People's Republic of Poland shortly before the beginning of the Balcerowicz Plan. The plan resulted in a budget deficit through extensive trade with main foreign partners and an "avalanche" of imported goods in Poland through lack of regulation. In 1990,
848-520: A large number of branches in all of these areas) offers services available in Polish at all of their cash machines in addition to English and Spanish . According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England and Wales who consider Polish to be their "main" language. In Canada , there is a significant Polish Canadian population : There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to
954-543: A lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue , Linguist List and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007,
1060-400: A massive collapse of large factories in Poland and their replacement with small ones. In 1989, 3.2 million Poles worked in large factories - by 2010s, this figure dropped to 640,000. The economic share of large industrial enterprises is less than in developed countries. In an average developed country, the share of large industrial enterprises is over one-third percent, while in case of Poland it
1166-454: A nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, ą in dąb ("oak") is pronounced [ɔm] , and ę in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced [ɛn] (the nasal assimilates to the following consonant). When followed by l or ł (for example przyjęli , przyjęły ), ę is pronounced as just e . When ę is at the end of the word it is often pronounced as just [ɛ] . Depending on
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#17327830281191272-507: A peculiar current of thought, or rather a current of platitudes, according to which the only thing that matters is the efficiency of the free market, so we should not look at those who find themselves in the sphere of social collapse. At the threshold of the Third Republic of Poland, much was said in liberal circles about the development of the Polish middle class. Meanwhile, an upper class and a much lower class emerged, somewhat like in
1378-535: A relatively developed private sector), Balcerowicz Plan should not be considered a success. Kowalik emphasises that Balcerowicz squandered a unique opportunity to create the foundations of a fair socio-economic system. Instead, a system was created "whose trademarks became mass and permanent unemployment, for many years the highest in Central Europe and then the highest in the EU; one of the highest income disparities;
1484-402: A reversed diacritic hook called an ogonek . Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases . It has fixed penultimate stress and an abundance of palatal consonants . Contemporary Polish developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries). Among the major languages, it
1590-488: A significant decline in the living wage of numerous groups of the population, especially workers in unprofitable state-owned enterprises and the state agricultural farms , creating poverty areas and structural unemployment, which in many places continues to this day. Some economists also criticized the Balcerowicz plan for insufficiently protecting the internal market during the transition and of allowing entire sectors of
1696-454: A significant reduction of inflation and budget deficit (in 1990 a surplus), the elimination of the market deficiency and central distribution of materials, obtaining the agreement of creditors to reduce the foreign debt, and a significant increase in foreign exchange reserves . There is no consensus among experts whether the Balcerowicz plan had a direct impact on the development of entrepreneurship and trade, which had already been liberalised
1802-491: A single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), prze ze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable. The Polish alphabet derives from the Latin script but includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics . The Polish alphabet was one of three major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Western and some South Slavic languages,
1908-466: A strictly controlled and limited privatization process, unemployment would have been 50% lower, and national income 33% higher. Privatization was most aggressive between 1990 and 1994, and yielded underwhelming results in terms of profit. For example, a cost of privatization of 314 Polish enterprises was about USD 710 million. Privatization programs involved high foreign consultancy costs, and were paid for through privatization as well as loans and grants from
2014-405: A verse by Jan Brzechwa ) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed'). Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel. The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede
2120-478: A vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/ , palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew'). Some loanwords , particularly from
2226-448: A year earlier by the so-called Wilczek Act, a package of market reforms implemented by Mieczysław Wilczek in 1988. An international Fund for Stabilisation of the Złoty of US$ 1 billion was established. The exchange rate of the złoty was frozen at 10,000 per dollar for about a year and a half. Later, the crawling peg method was used for several years. Polish złoty was heavily devaluated against
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#17327830281192332-711: Is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script . It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2024, there were over 39.7 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union . Polish
2438-526: Is about 20%. This lack of large enterprises made Polish economy on importing technology from abroad, and is also considered a factor in stifling innovation and brain drain. A factor also considered an effect of the transformation that contributed to brain drain are low wages, that continue to persist in Poland. Marianna Księżyk wrote in 2013: "The assurances of economists carrying out the market-oriented transformation about Poland's rapid development and society's glorious capitalist future have not come true. Poland
2544-419: 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 ,
2650-427: Is most closely related to Slovak and Czech but differs in terms of pronunciation and general grammar. Additionally, 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. Extensive usage of nonstandard dialects has also shaped
2756-511: Is not a country of high economic growth and, moreover, it does not translate into an increase in the standard of living of the general population, as shown by the wages of Polish workers in comparison with other countries and the percentage of the population living in relative poverty. According to the Central Statistical Office (CSO), the relative poverty indicator defines the minimum subsistence level determined (monthly) by
2862-479: Is particularly critical of the thesis that the Balcerowicz Plan was the only good solution. He Kowalik argues that an excellent basis for the transformation policy could have been the Round Table Agreements . He also spoke against comparing Polish economic performance to that of other countries such as Ukraine or Russia, writing that given that Poland had much better initial economic conditions (e.g.
2968-447: Is possible to say ko goście zoba czy li? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are considered part of a "usable" norm of standard Polish - in contrast to the "model" ("high") norm. Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were
3074-595: Is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics , and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals. 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. The traditional set comprises 23 consonants and 9 written vowels , including two nasal vowels ( ę , ą ) defined by
3180-524: Is the Old Polish language . Ultimately, Polish descends from the unattested Proto-Slavic language. The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska , Latin : Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau ), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj ;
3286-529: Is the most widely-used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County , by 26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results, as Vilnius was part of Poland from 1922 until 1939. Polish is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. In Ukraine, it is most common in the western parts of Lviv and Volyn Oblasts , while in West Belarus it is used by the significant Polish minority, especially in
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3392-430: The kropka (superior dot) over the letter ż , and the ogonek ("little tail") under the letters ą, ę . The letters q, v, x are used only in foreign words and names. Polish orthography is largely phonemic —there is a consistent correspondence between letters (or digraphs and trigraphs ) and phonemes (for exceptions see below). The letters of the alphabet and their normal phonemic values are listed in
3498-401: The ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound / ɕ / . The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s , e.g. sinus , sinologia , do re mi fa sol la si do , Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści , Sierioża , Siergiej , Singapur , singiel . In other loanwords
3604-596: The Brest and Grodno regions and in areas along the Lithuanian border. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries. In the United States , Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. According to the 2000 United States Census , 667,414 Americans of age five years and over reported Polish as
3710-666: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 's influence gave Polish the status of lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe . The process of standardization began in the 14th century and solidified in the 16th century during the Middle Polish era. Standard Polish was based on various dialectal features, with the Greater Poland dialect group serving as the base. After World War II , Standard Polish became
3816-522: The United Kingdom and the United States . Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. At the time, it was a collection of dialect groups with some mutual features, but much regional variation was present. Mieszko I , ruler of the Polans tribe from the Greater Poland region, united
3922-474: The classical languages , have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka ( /ˈfizɨka/ ) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation ,
4028-578: The flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) , as well as the expulsion of Ukrainians and Operation Vistula , the 1947 migration of Ukrainian minorities in the Recovered Territories in the west of the country, contributed to the country's linguistic homogeneity. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish ( język ogólnopolski ) appear relatively slight. Most of
4134-404: 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. Historically, Polish was a lingua franca , important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe . In addition to being the official language of Poland, Polish
4240-416: The 16th century, which is also regarded as the " Golden Age of Polish literature". The orthography was modified in the 19th century and in 1936. Tomasz Kamusella notes that "Polish is the oldest, non-ecclesiastical, written Slavic language with a continuous tradition of literacy and official use, which has lasted unbroken from the 16th century to this day." Polish evolved into the main sociolect of
4346-486: The 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto (91,810 speakers) and Montreal . The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II and Polish population transfers (1944–46) . Poles settled in the " Recovered Territories " in the west and north, which had previously been mostly German -speaking. Some Poles remained in
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4452-475: The EU, when a large group of young, mostly well-educated Poles left for EU countries for work. In total, 1,675 industrial plants in Poland were liquidated during the transformation, which amounted to 33% of the total country assets. Polish economist Andrzej Karpiński estimated that about 25% of these liquidations were directly planned by the government, while the remaining 75% were a result of land speculation and hostile takeovers. Karpiński estimated that in case of
4558-583: The Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish"). The earliest treatise on Polish orthography was written by Jakub Parkosz [ pl ] around 1470. The first printed book in Polish appeared in either 1508 or 1513, while the oldest Polish newspaper was established in 1661. Starting in the 1520s, large numbers of books in the Polish language were published, contributing to increased homogeneity of grammar and orthography. The writing system achieved its overall form in
4664-487: The Latin American countries." Witold Kieżun wrote similarly of the plan, arguing that instead of creating a team of professionals made up of Polish professors working at Western universities, "it was decided to do the transformation under the dictates of a young, inexperienced American, Jeffrey Sachs, and a few capitalistically indoctrinated party academics". He concluded that "the direction taken then has determined
4770-465: The Party to any economic reforms that would break this status quo led to the introduction of martial law (1981-83) which further hindered economic growth and resulted in international sanctions. In 1982 the government imposed further large (up to 100%) price increases and significantly extended rationing of food and other basic goods. In the late 1980s, after 45 years of communist rule, Poland's economy
4876-459: The Polish economy underwent a process of ‘over-liberalization’. In the first four months of 1990, the wage indexation factor was set at a very low level. The transformation resulted in a sharp decline in the real income of citizens. Consequently, the level of demand and, in turn, sales and production also fell. The result was an economic recession. In the first two months of the transformation, real wages decreased by more than 40%. Kołodko argues that
4982-457: The Polish economy was affected by the phenomenon of slumpflation, i.e. a decrease in production and an increase in unemployment was accompanied by high inflation. Finland has been included in the tables as a reference point. It is a country whose economy was oriented towards trade with the USSR, but at the same time did not require a costly systemic transformation. The impact of the external shock of
5088-671: The Silesian language was recognized by ISO , and was attributed an ISO code of szl. Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include: Polish linguistics has been characterized by a strong strive towards promoting prescriptive ideas of language intervention and usage uniformity, along with normatively-oriented notions of language "correctness" (unusual by Western standards). Polish has six oral vowels (seven oral vowels in written form), which are all monophthongs , and two nasal vowels . The oral vowels are / i / (spelled i ), / ɨ / (spelled y and also transcribed as /ɘ/ or /ɪ/), / ɛ / (spelled e ), /
5194-485: The US dollar, which together with additional import levies, became a heavy contributor to inflation. Nevertheless, as a result of the bankruptcies and liquidation of many state-owned enterprises and the reduction of employment in those that survived, the unemployment rate after the political transformation reached a level in the order of 16.4% in 1993. Since 1990, there has been an increase in unemployment in Poland - throughout
5300-582: The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Because the Balcerowicz Plan involved austerity, the proceeds from privatization were not invested or allocated into development programs, but were kept in the state budget. Despite the proceeds from privatisation, Poland's foreign debt has increased during the transformation period. Balcerowicz did assume that the initial effects of his reforms would be detrimental. He estimated that
5406-521: The amount of PLN 466 in a one-person household and PLN 1257 in a four-person household." Księżyk notes that the Balcerowicz Plan and low wages that came through it caused the phenomenon of "working poor" in Poland - people who receive the Polish minimum wage, which is among the lowest in the EU. While the Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe considers 68% of the average national wage a fair wage,
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#17327830281195512-485: The cases mentioned above, the letter i if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents / j / , yet a palatalization of the previous consonant is always assumed. The reverse case, where the consonant remains unpalatalized but is followed by a palatalized consonant, is written by using j instead of i : for example, zjeść , "to eat up". The letters ą and ę , when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by
5618-584: The collapse of the USSR economy can be estimated using this example. Dynamics of GDP (according to PPP in USD ) in selected countries - "GGDC" Inflation at the end of year in selected countries Dynamics of employees number in selected countries - "GGDC" Unemployment rate in selected countries Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )
5724-713: The corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij ; and in English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest ), written around 1280. The book is exhibited in the Archdiocesal Museum in Wrocław, and as of 2015 has been added to UNESCO 's " Memory of the World " list. The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of
5830-571: The decline in production was not accompanied by the elimination of inefficient companies. The authorities did not attempt to revitalize state-owned enterprises, which were guided neither by the central plan nor by market mechanisms. Kołodko emphasises that this sector was often subject to deliberate attacks, e.g. in the form of a hard tax policy (‘popiwek’). State-owned companies were discriminated against compared to private companies. State-owned enterprises were denied investment loans, regardless of their financial condition. According to Kołodko, in 1990-1991
5936-406: The defining effect of Balcerowicz Plan was pauperisation of the budgetary sphere, especially the spheres such as health and education. Austerity at the expense of administration and public services that defined the reform led to the pauperisation of the ‘middle class of the public sector’. In short term, it caused reduction of the public money pool through loss of revenues (unpaid taxes and duties); in
6042-404: The degradation of social security. Kowalik argued that privatisation benefited the few who firmly held the once chosen course of transformation, and that what emerged was "a market economy that did not suit the majority of Polish society". Kowalik believed that a social democratic model would have been the best for Poland, contrasting it with Balcerowicz Plan that was "colossally overdone". Kowalik
6148-479: The disappearance of yers . Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from
6254-404: The dismantling of the welfare state. Added to this was the breaking down of workers' negotiating power. The shock operation meant consenting to the introduction into Poland of the worst variety of capitalism." Karol Modzelewski wrote of the plan: "freedom is a value for all, which does not mean that in the social dimension freedom has to be so dramatically bought with economic inequality. We have
6360-430: The distinction between regular penultimate and exceptional antepenultimate stress. Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy , etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zro biłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zro bi libyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities ,
6466-531: The eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth wrote Polish in the Arabic alphabet. The Cyrillic script is used to a certain extent today by Polish speakers in Western Belarus , especially for religious texts. The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent ) over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and through the letter in ł ;
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#17327830281196572-463: The economy to collapse for many years as a result of the lack of a state policy to influence its structure. Among the most frequently criticised (mainly by Grzegorz Kołodko ) elements accompanying the introduction of the plan include: According to some economists, in the 1990s the plan led to a collapse of domestic demand, flooding the domestic market with imported production, as well as the collapse of state enterprises indebted by financial policy and
6678-402: The emergence of a capitalist class of their own, and of citizens receiving income from capital sold to foreigners". Poznański also criticised excessive concessions to the European Union, including the liberalisation of foreign trade. According to his calculations, in 1996 Poland had reached the level of the economy in 1989 and the level of national income in 1976. He accused Balcerowicz of reducing
6784-420: The end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where assimilation occurs). For details, see Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology. Most Polish words are paroxytones (that is, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions. Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from
6890-476: The entire country. Polish has traditionally been described as consisting of three to five main regional dialects: Silesian and Kashubian , spoken in Upper Silesia and Pomerania respectively, are thought of as either Polish dialects or distinct languages , depending on the criteria used. Kashubian contains a number of features not found elsewhere in Poland, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs.
6996-581: The financial situation of the poorest members of society. The unofficial talks at Magdalenka and then the Polish Round Table talks of 1989 allowed for a peaceful transition of power to the democratically elected government. Initially, it was agreed that the government would be formed by Tadeusz Mazowiecki and the opposition, while the seat of the president of Poland would be given to former Polish United Workers' Party leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski . The state of Poland's economy as of 1989
7102-407: The first months of transition was the cause of the deep downturn. Attempts to improve the situation, in mid-1990, did not bring the expected result. The recession in the real sphere was also caused by the drastic increase in the level of interest rates from the beginning of January 1990 and their maintenance until the end of February. It was during these two months that the biggest - 30% - collapse in
7208-467: The following table. The following digraphs and trigraphs are used: Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the tables); this occurs at the end of words and in certain clusters, due to the neutralization mentioned in the Phonology section above. Occasionally also voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds in clusters. The spelling rule for
7314-461: The following years, however, this trend was reversed and by December 1998 the unemployment rate had been reduced to 10.4%, but by January 2004 it had risen to 20.6%. According to Marianna Księżyk, the percentage of Polish population living in poverty steadily rose in the 1990s and reached 17.1% by 2000; this percentage flunctuated in the 2000s between 17 and 20%, and by 2010 it was back to 17.1%. According to Polish political scientist Michał Sutowski ,
7420-404: The form of a deep recession must be assessed in a negative way, writing that "a 30% drop in industrial production would have been a very difficult cost to accept, even if the stabilisation of the economy had been unequivocally successful". The 1990 recession was ‘sterile’, as it most affected enterprises producing consumer goods for households (and therefore socially desirable companies). However,
7526-488: The income of the wealthiest group of households accounted for 121% of the income in employee households and was 2.5 times higher than that of the poorest group. The withdrawal of the state from its socialist-era welfare functions, as well as increasing social and economic disparities resulted in a sharp increase in the number of socially marginalised families. In 2005, the Federation for Social Reintegration estimated that
7632-500: The language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English , 0.25% of the US population, and 6% of the Polish-American population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) were found in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740), and New Jersey (74,663). Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services (which has
7738-439: The letter y . The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first. Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent
7844-403: The medium term, it became an impulse for privatisation and differentiation of society according to the wealth. In the long term, according to Sutowski, "it is another brick in the wall of contempt for the state and the sphere of the public good, portrayed as a hotbed of incompetence, entitlement and vested interests inhibiting capitalist modernisation." Sutowski sums up: "In one government report on
7950-431: The middle aged and young speak vernaculars close to standard Polish, while the traditional dialects are preserved among older people in rural areas. First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional and social differences. The modern standard dialect , often termed as "correct Polish", is spoken or at least understood throughout
8056-474: The minimum wage never exceeded 40% in Poland throughout the transformation period. The main negative effect of Balcerowicz Plan was the stratification of society. This trend was not even halted by the accelerated development of the economy between 1995 and 1997, and the decline in the rate of economic growth in the following years contributed to the further deterioration of the economic situation of Polish households. According to research by Elżbieta Mikuła, in 2000
8162-524: The most basic foodstuffs in the shops. In September 1989, a commission of experts was formed under the presidency of Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland's leading economist, Minister of Finance and deputy Premier of Poland . Among the members of the commission were Jeffrey Sachs , Stanisław Gomułka , Stefan Kawalec and Wojciech Misiąg. The commission prepared a plan of extensive reforms that were to enable fast transformation of Poland's economy from "obsolete and ineffective central planning" to capitalism, as adopted by
8268-460: The most widely spoken variant of Polish across the country, and most dialects stopped being the form of Polish spoken in villages. Poland is one of the most linguistically homogeneous European countries; nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their first language . Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in areas which were once administered or occupied by Poland, notably in neighboring Lithuania , Belarus , and Ukraine . Polish
8374-484: The national income would fall by 3% and industrial production would decline by 5%; he also assumed that about 400,000 workers would become unemployed, and that inflation would fall to a single digit in a year. However, the consequences were about five times more severe than estimated - national income fell by 22%, industrial production declined by 25%, over 3 million people became unemployed, and inflation fell to single digit only after 9 years into transformation. Poland had
8480-480: The negative balance of trade amounted to USD 4793 million, in 2000 it already exceeded USD 17000 million, and in 2010 it amounted to USD 13119 million. This negative balance of trade was associated with the shortage of goods on the Polish market a well as cutting off Polish enterpresises from credit, most of which were sold of to foreign capital and subsequently liquidated. According to Witold Kieżun , Polish enterprises experienced hostile takeovers by foreign capital - as
8586-649: The nobles in Poland–Lithuania in the 15th century. The history of Polish as a language of state governance begins in the 16th century in the Kingdom of Poland . Over the later centuries, Polish served as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , Congress Poland , the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , and as the administrative language in the Russian Empire 's Western Krai . The growth of
8692-545: The old one that came from the socialist era. Socialist-era workplaces that survived the transformation had to honor their contracts with existing employees, which gave much more safety and power to the employee, but was less profitable to the company. Economists such as Jarosław Urbański also tied this to brain drain in Poland, arguing that the "new industry" led by foreign capital is locating assembly plants, rather than research or development centres, in Poland, offering non-innovative jobs. The capitalist transformation also led to
8798-673: The others being Czech orthography and Croatian orthography , the last of these being a 19th-century invention trying to make a compromise between the first two. Kashubian uses a Polish-based system, Slovak uses a Czech-based system, and Slovene follows the Croatian one; the Sorbian languages blend the Polish and the Czech ones. Historically, Poland's once diverse and multi-ethnic population utilized many forms of scripture to write Polish. For instance, Lipka Tatars and Muslims inhabiting
8904-401: The palatal sounds / ɕ / , / ʑ / , / tɕ / , / dʑ / and / ɲ / is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulfur") and
9010-520: The previously Polish-ruled territories in the east that were annexed by the USSR , resulting in the present-day Polish-speaking communities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, although many Poles were expelled from those areas to areas within Poland's new borders. To the east of Poland, the most significant Polish minority lives in a long strip along either side of the Lithuania - Belarus border. Meanwhile,
9116-425: The real sphere took place, after which the Polish economy found itself in a state of depression. Kołodko emphasises that the phenomenon of so-called ‘correlative inflation’ occurred mainly in the first half of January. Later, the very high nominal interest rate, instead of having an anti-inflationary effect, began to deepen the scale of the recession. Kołodko states that the ‘side effect’ of the transformation process in
9222-423: The result, out of the 100 largest firms in Poland, only 17 are Polish. Balcerowicz Plan had long-term effect on the Polish economy, and thoroughly transformed aspects of it such as the labour market. Lost jobs were not substituted with others - replacing old socialist contracts, new job contracts were much less secure and based on economic precarity. This also resulted in the new, foreign-owned industry outperforming
9328-455: The role of the state, and wrote that the Balcerowicz Plan made it impossible to control the national economy, resulting in the outflow of profits abroad, which failed to increase labour productivity or introduce modern technology. Tadeusz Kowalik was also sharply critical of the course and effects of the transformation, accusing Balcerowicz of a reluctance to consult and disregarding the opinion of others. He claimed that Balcerowicz did not have
9434-490: The sale of the best of them into the hands of mainly Western capital. It also led to a strong pauperisation of the majority of the population and a spike in unemployment. The plan's most decisive effect for generations was to create the possibility of privatising state assets in the Latin American formula in the form of selling off, to the point of economic partition, enclaves of modernity and profitability to foreign corporations for 4.5-5% of their replacement value. The course of
9540-540: The same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście , although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zro bi liśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobi li śmy ). These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of ko go zoba czy liście? ('whom did you see?') it
9646-410: The series of affricate and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist): Neutralization occurs between voiced – voiceless consonant pairs in certain environments, at
9752-439: The shock reduction in domestic demand resulted in a price-maximising response which, in the reality of moving away from a shortage economy, encountered a barrier to effective demand. There was therefore a drastic decline in production. Interventionism was attempted late, and in the period of the ‘systemic void’, monetary and fiscal policy instruments worked differently than in a properly formed market economy. According to G. Kołodko,
9858-506: The six of standard Polish) and (in the northern dialects) phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the West Slavic languages . However, it was described by some linguists as lacking most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood. Many linguistic sources categorize Silesian as a regional language separate from Polish, while some consider Silesian to be
9964-425: The so-called old poverty (about 1,000,000 families nationwide, marginalised and affected by social pathology for many generations) had been joined by more than 1,500,000 families of the so-called new poverty, i.e. people whose life situation had dramatically deteriorated as a result of capitalist transformation implemented by Balcerowicz. From January 1990 to December 1994, unemployment rose steadily from 0.3% to 16%. In
10070-486: The stabilising effect could have been achieved by a 20% reduction in real wages. In addition, the reduction in real wages was influenced by the poorly constructed ‘popiwek’ mechanism. In the first months of 1990, it had a significant impact on the deepening of the recession, as it excessively restricted demand. From September onwards, it also started to have a pro-inflationary effect, as wages grew without any relation to stagnant production. The excessive decline in real wages in
10176-648: The states of Western Europe and America. On 6 October, the program was presented on public television and in December the Sejm passed a packet of 10 acts, all of which were signed by the president on 31 December 1989. These were: In late December the plan was approved by the International Monetary Fund . The IMF's support was especially important because the national debt in various foreign banks and governments reached an amount of US $ 42.3 billion (64,8% of GDP ) in 1989. The IMF granted Poland
10282-494: The stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet ( /uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/ , 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/ ) and derived adjective uniwersytecki ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/ ) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Loanwords generally become nativized to have penultimate stress. In psycholinguistic experiments, speakers of Polish have been demonstrated to be sensitive to
10388-423: The structure of the Polish economy to this day. Big industry and trade dominated by foreign capital. Likewise the banks." According to Kołodko, a mistake of the Balcerowicz's stabilisation package was the assumption of a rapid increase in supply from enterprises. Balcerowicz believed that production would recover on its own, without interference from economic policy. However, the low elasticity of business supply and
10494-538: The subject, we can read that parents finance the operation of public education to the tune of 17 per cent, e.g. by bringing coal to schools; teachers have had their already meagre salaries cut. Customs officers received an incentive allowance of about one salary for detecting an attempt at large-scale smuggling. Doctors only went on strike for civilised salaries in the late 1990s, and nurses are still fighting for them today, even though thirty years have passed." The Balcerowicz plan has been criticised for having contributed to
10600-522: The transformation period it has been at double-digit levels. At the beginning of the introduction of the Balcerowicz Plan (in January 1990), the unemployment rate was only 0.3%, and already in December 1990 it was 12.2%. In the next two years it rose to 16%, as a result of the continued process of liquidation of state-owned enterprises. In 2003, the unemployment rate reached as high as 20%. The drop in unemployment did not occur until after Poland's accession to
10706-495: The transformation was most severely criticised by Kazimierz Z. Poznański , doctor of economics. He condemned the selling off of national assets to foreign capital, which according to him was sold for only 9 to 12% of their real value. Poznański states that it deprived the economy of profits and made it only an income from labour - while communism had expropriated foreign capital, the capitalist transformation under Balcerowicz had fully enfranchised foreign subjects, "removing any hope of
10812-563: The vowel i is changed to y , e.g. Syria , Sybir , synchronizacja , Syrakuzy . The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling: Digraphs and trigraphs are used: Similar principles apply to / kʲ / , / ɡʲ / , / xʲ / and /lʲ/ , except that these can only occur before vowels, so the spellings are k, g, (c)h, l before i , and ki, gi, (c)hi, li otherwise. Most Polish speakers, however, do not consider palatalization of k, g, (c)h or l as creating new sounds. Except in
10918-443: The word, the phoneme / x / can be spelt h or ch , the phoneme / ʐ / can be spelt ż or rz , and / u / can be spelt u or ó . In several cases it determines the meaning, for example: może ("maybe") and morze ("sea"). In occasional words, letters that normally form a digraph are pronounced separately. For example, rz represents /rz/ , not / ʐ / , in words like zamarzać ("freeze") and in
11024-510: Was dire. After failed social and economic reforms of 1970s the communist government had secretly declared its insolvency to Western creditors in 1981. Food price increases introduced first in 1970s to preserve the basic cash flow led to social unrest and formation of mass Solidarity social change movement which, by early 1980s had over 10 million members. Desperate attempts to maintain the Marxian-style economy and internal opposition in
11130-435: Was ineffective, paralyzed by central planning and discontent of poorly paid workers. The inflation rate had reached 639.6% and was constantly rising. Foreign debt reached $ 42 billion. The majority of state-owned monopolies and holdings were largely ineffective and completely obsolete in terms of technology. Although there was practically no unemployment in Poland, wages were low and the shortage economy led to lack of even
11236-430: Was presented to the public by Balcerowicz at a press conference broadcast by TVP. Named after the Polish minister and economist Leszek Balcerowicz , the free-market economic reforms were adopted in Poland in 1989. There was a 3 year drop in output. Similar reforms were made in a number of countries. The plan has resulted in reduced inflation and budget deficit, while simultaneously increasing unemployment and worsening
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