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84-529: National Armed Forces ( NSZ ; Polish : Narodowe Siły Zbrojne) was a Polish right-wing underground military organization of the National Democracy operating from 1942. During World War II , NSZ troops fought against Nazi Germany and communist partisans . There were also cases of fights with the Home Army . At the end of the war, some units and structures of this organization cooperated with

168-499: 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

252-509: A bill in 2012 commemorating the 70th anniversary of the creation of Narodowe Siły Zbrojne in 1942. Members of the Sejm who supported the resolution pointed out that NSZ members became the most obstinate target of repressions and hate propaganda by security apparatus under Stalinism . In the 1990s the topic of " cursed soldiers ", or anti-communist partisans, was not discussed much in Poland. By

336-718: 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

420-669: 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

504-520: 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

588-543: A large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures. 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. Historically, Polish was a lingua franca , important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe . In addition to being

672-543: 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,

756-454: 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

840-491: 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,

924-405: 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

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1008-478: 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

1092-447: 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

1176-770: 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 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

1260-524: 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 ;

1344-529: 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

1428-430: 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

1512-401: 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

1596-596: 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

1680-881: The Home Army (AK) and the Bataliony Chlopskie ). NSZ units participated in the Warsaw Uprising . In March 1944 the NSZ split, with the more moderate faction coming under the command of the AK. The other part became known as the NSZ-ZJ (the Lizard Union). This branch of the NSZ conducted operations against Polish communist activists , partisans and secret police, the Soviet partisans , NKVD and SMERSH , and their own (NSZ) former leaders. The NSZ's program included

1764-612: 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

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1848-522: 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

1932-474: 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 ,

2016-578: 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

2100-537: The " cursed soldiers " of the Polish underground, and most were eventually captured or killed by the security services and special assassination squads. On the night of 3–4 January 1944 the advancing Red Army crossed the former eastern border of the Second Polish Republic in the area of Volhynia (near the village of Rokitno). In several months, they pushed the Wehrmacht further west, reaching

2184-416: 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

2268-457: The 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries). Among the major languages, it 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

2352-561: The 2000s however, the cult of "cursed soldiers" gained prominence. In 2012, the Polish Parliament ( Sejm ) passed a bill commemorating the 70th anniversary of the creation of Narodowe Siły Zbrojne in 1942. The role of NSZ and its relations with the Jews remains a controversial topic in modern Poland. The 2012 Sejm declaration has been criticized by former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller . Several members of parliament criticized

2436-486: 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

2520-640: The Chrobry II unit), Jerzy Zmidygier-Konopka, Feliks Pisarewski-Parry, Eljahu (Aleksander) Szandcer ( nom de guerre Dzik ), Dr. Kaminski, a physician who served in an NSZ unit led by Captain Władysław Kolaciński ( nom de guerre Zbik ), Major Stanisław Ostwind-Zuzga , and others. In January 1945, the National Armed Forces Holy Cross Mountains Brigade ( Brygada Świętokrzyska ) retreated before

2604-583: 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

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2688-516: The Home Army (which was officially disbanded on 19 January 1945) and other organizations decided to continue fighting for freedom after the end of World War II . The situation in Poland in the immediate aftermath of World War II has been described as an all-out civil war, or near civil war by many historians, as members of the independence movement carried out numerous attacks on both Soviet and Polish communist offices and institutions. In return,

2772-489: The Independence Underground in Poland 1944–1956 , listing scores of armed attacks on communist prisons after World War II, in which hundreds of political prisoners were freed. The most daring assaults were conducted before October 1946. For a chronological list of anti-Communist operations, please use table-sort buttons. In 2001 the Polish Parliament ( Sejm ) passed a resolution recognizing

2856-573: The Jewish question is almost as important for the future of our nation as the regaining of independence. The loss of independence and the continuation of Jewish presence in Poland are both an equal danger of slow death for the Poles. We may condemn the Germans for their bestial methods but we must not forget that Jewry was always and will remain a destructive element in our state organism. The liquidation of

2940-644: The Jews in the Polish territories is of great importance for future development because it frees us from a million-headed parasite. From November 1944 to mid-1947, during the period of armed anti-communist insurgency against the Soviet takeover of Poland, many Jews who were part of communist groups were killed by the National Armed Forces. In Warsaw, the National Armed Forces killed Jerzy Makowiecki and Ludwik Widerszal, two Polish Home Army officers of Jewish origin. Polish historian Alina Cała said that

3024-944: The National Armed Forces were on the lookout for Jews hiding in the forests to deliver to the Germans. In Radom, the National Armed Forces cooperated with the Germans towards that goal in 1943–1944. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust , Polish Jews who had sought shelter among ethnic Poles after escaping from ghettos were directly murdered by the National Armed Forces. According to other sources, many National Armed Forces soldiers and their families are credited with having saved Jews, including such noted ones as Maria Bernstein, Leon Goldman, Jonte Goldman, and Dr. Turski. The National Armed Forces did have Jews in its ranks, including Calel Perechodnik , Wiktor Natanson, Captain Roman Born-Bornstein (chief physician of

3108-545: The Nazis and Gestapo (as in the case of the Holy Cross Mountains Brigade and Hubert Jura ) and committed crimes motivated by antisemitism . Most NSZ units did not submit to the Polish government-in-exile and conducted fratricidal fights with other Polish partisan units. From 1944 to 1946, the NSZ fought as part of the anti-communist resistance, including after the postwar Polish People's Republic

3192-821: The Red Army's occupation of the country. Meanwhile, acting together under the command of Soviet General Ivan Serov , the forces of the NKVD , SMERSH and the Polish communist secret service (UB), which was modelled on the Soviet secret police, began countrywide operations against the members of the Armia Krajowa and other Polish resistance units loyal to the government-in-exile. Approximately 25,000 underground soldiers, including 300 Home Army officers, were arrested, disarmed, and interned before October 1944. On 15 October 1944, Lavrentiy Beria signed Order No. 0012266/44 , which established NKVD Division 64, whose only task

3276-671: 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 ), /

3360-666: The Soviet Gulag camp system, or tried by kangaroo courts and murdered out of sight after extreme beatings (see, the Uroczysko Baran killing fields among similar others). As a result of repression, Armia Krajowa (AK) members quickly stopped trusting the new government, and some of them regrouped clandestinely to oppose the new Soviet occupiers. They formed various post-AK resistance organisations, such as Wolność i Niezawisłość ("Freedom and Sovereignty"), and liberated hundreds of political prisoners. They became known as

3444-695: The Soviets and Polish communist forces (see: Battle of Kuryłówka ). Resistance units loyal to the Polish government-in-exile did not hesitate to attack even large cities, to free their fellow soldiers kept in various prisons and detention camps across Poland. In 2007, the Institute of National Remembrance Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (IPN), published the Atlas of

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3528-718: The Stalinist authorities carried out brutal pacifications of partisans and civilians, mass arrests (see: Augustów chase 1945 ), deportations, as well as executions (see: Mokotów Prison murder , Public execution in Dębica ) and many secret assassinations. The anti-communist movement responded with attacks on NKVD and UB camps, such as the Attack on the NKVD Camp in Rembertów . The underground units often engaged in regular battles with

3612-543: The World Union of Home Army Soldiers (Światowy Związek Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej) and the Association of Soldiers of the National Armed Forces (Związek Żołnierzy Narodowych Sił Zbrojnych). The initiative was backed by local authorities and parliamentary groupings including Poland's two main political parties, Civic Platform and Law and Justice . The legislative initiative for the enactment of the new national holiday

3696-630: The advancing Red Army and, after negotiating a ceasefire with the Germans, moved into the Nazi-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . It resumed operations against the Nazis on 5 May 1945 in Bohemia , where the brigade liberated prisoners from a concentration camp in Holýšov , including 280 Jewish women prisoners slated for death. Members of the NSZ, like other " cursed soldiers ", and their families were persecuted during

3780-524: The bill and walked out of a related commemorative ceremony. Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script . It

3864-485: 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

3948-713: 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

4032-771: The declarations of the Allied governments which did not concede to any territorial changes that took place in Poland after August 1939." During the war, the NSZ fought the Polish communists, including their military organizations such as the Gwardia Ludowa (GL) and the Armia Ludowa (AL). After the war, former NSZ members were persecuted by the newly installed communist government of the Polish People's Republic . Reportedly, communist partisans engaged in planting false evidence, such as documents and forged receipts at

4116-479: 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

4200-430: 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 ,

4284-458: The doctrine of the National Armed Forces was primarily the elimination of what they considered to be Communist bands. According to sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski , these attacks later "became more focused on individual Jews who were placed in highly visible positions of authority in the PRL [People's Republic of Poland]". In some districts, the National Armed Forces actively pursued Jews. Some units of

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4368-531: 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 ;

4452-616: The eastern town of Chełm created a pro-Soviet Committee , which became the Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland after re-locating to Lublin . After moving to Warsaw in January 1945, and with full political control by Stalin and Soviet sponsorship, the communists abandoned the parliamentary system of prewar Poland and ignored the wishes of the Polish people, basing their new government's power solely on

4536-420: 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

4620-476: 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.

4704-608: The face of crossing of Polish borders by Soviet forces, the Polish Government in London and its Polish citizens living on the territory of Poland express their unwavering desire for the return of the sovereignty to the entire area of Poland within the Polish borders established prior to 1939 through the mutually-binding Treaty of Riga and reaffirmed by the general principles of the Atlantic Charter , as well as by

4788-462: The fight for Poland's sovereignty, Polish authorities recognized National Armed Forces underground soldiers as war veterans. NSZ soldiers were rehabilitated, including some controversial ones, for instance, Mieczysław Pazderski, who in 1945 murdered almost 200 Ukrainian villagers in Wierzchowina , and who was awarded two medals by Polish president Lech Wałęsa . The Polish Parliament Sejm passed

4872-419: The fight for Polish independence against Nazi Germany as well as against the Soviet Union . Its goal was to keep the Second Polish Republic 's prewar eastern territories and borders , while regaining additional former German territories to the west , which they deemed "ancient Slavic lands". The General Directive Nr. 3 of the National Armed Forces General Command, L. 18/44 from January 15, 1944, reads: "In

4956-459: The fighters of the armed anti-communist underground. The bill was signed into law by President Bronisław Komorowski on 9 February 2011 and published in the Poland's Dziennik Ustaw Nr 32 / 160 on 15 February 2011. The National Day of Remembrance of the "cursed soldiers" is now commemorated every year in Poland on 1 March. The original request to establish the Day of Remembrance was submitted in 2009 by Polish war veterans' organizations, including

5040-412: 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

5124-435: 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

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5208-439: 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

5292-537: 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 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

5376-415: The line of the Vistula river on 24 July 1944. The Soviet advance stopped short of Warsaw , while the Armia Krajowa attempted to liberate the Polish capital from the Nazis ahead of the Red Army's offensive. The Warsaw Uprising by forces loyal to the Polish government-in-exile in London was crushed after 63 days. On 22 July 1944, acting upon orders from Moscow , the Polish communists who arrived in

5460-430: The merits of underground organizations and groups fighting for Poland's sovereignty after World War II. The resolution acknowledged their unequal struggle against the Soviet takeover of Poland and paid tribute to the fallen and murdered soldiers and the imprisoned members of all organizations that were persecuted by the postwar communist authorities. This was the first official recognition of such magnitude intended to honour

5544-431: 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

5628-460: 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

5712-574: The name Tarzan . Anti-communist resistance in Poland (1944%E2%80%9346) In January 1945, the pro-Soviet government installed in Poland by the advancing Red Army declared as "illegal" the Polish anti-Nazi resistance movement, principally the Home Army , and ordered its surviving members to come out into the open while guaranteeing them freedom and safety. Many underground fighters decided to lay down their arms and register, but after doing so, most of them were arrested and thrown in prison. Thousands of them were tortured and later deported into

5796-415: 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

5880-459: The official language of Poland, Polish 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 ,

5964-511: 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

6048-401: 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

6132-676: The postwar Stalinist period. In the fall of 1946, 100-200 soldiers of an NSZ unit under the command of Henryk Flame , nom de guerre "Bartek," were lured into a trap and massacred by communist military and police forces. On December 10, 1946, the District Military Court in Warsaw issued a verdict in the trial of the NSZ command. It was one of many trials organized in the pre-election period to intimidate society. Among those sentenced to death were NSZ officers Col. Piotr Abakanowicz and Michał Pobocha, as well as Stefania Broniewska,

6216-520: 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,

6300-540: 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

6384-410: 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

6468-431: The sites of their own robberies, in order to blame the NSZ. It was a method of political warfare practiced against the NSZ also by the Ministry of Public Security of Poland and Milicja Obywatelska (MO) right after the war, as revealed by communist Poland's court documents. The National Armed Forces (though not uniformly) did not accept Jews in their ranks, and expressed explicit anti-semitic sentiment. The solution of

6552-506: 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

6636-494: 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

6720-563: 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

6804-642: The wife of the NSZ commander-in-chief Zygmunt Broniewski , who was in exile. On March 2, 1948, the verdict was announced in the trial of the NSZ Headquarters, accused by the communists of fascism. The District Military Court in Warsaw sentenced to death Col. Stanisław Ksznica and Lech Neyman . Some of the NSZ were responsible for the 1946 pacification of villages in northeast Poland, in which ethnic Belarusian Polish citizens were attacked; 79 were killed. The National Armed Forces were officially dissolved in 1947. In 1992, acknowledging its contribution to

6888-443: 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

6972-596: Was established. The NSZ was created on September 20, 1942, as a result of the merger of the Military Organization Lizard Union ( Organizacja Wojskowa Związek Jaszczurczy ) and part of the National Military Organization ( Narodowa Organizacja Wojskowa ). At its maximum strength in 1943–44, the NSZ reached between 70,000 and 75,000 members, making it the third-largest organization of the Polish resistance (after

7056-607: Was to fight against the Polish resistance. Tens of thousands of Polish partisans were deported to Siberia . Many members of the Polish underground were given the choice between a lengthy prison sentence, and service in the Soviet-run Polish Armed Forces in the East . Faced with an unacceptable choice, and knowing about the grave fate of their own leaders (see: Trial of the Sixteen ), thousands of soldiers of

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