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114-839: The Polish Underground State ( Polish : Polskie Państwo Podziemne , also known as the Polish Secret State ) was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile in London. The first elements of the Underground State were established in the final days of the German and Soviet invasion of Poland , in late September 1939. The Underground State

228-499: 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

342-657: A 12-point declaration demanding that the Soviet army leave Poland and the repression of the non-communist political parties cease. The Government Delegate's Office at Home, restructured after the arrests of its leadership and headed by the last Delegate, Stefan Korboński , disbanded on 1 July, after the creation in Moscow of the Provisional Government of National Unity (Tymczasowy Rząd Jedności Narodowej, TRJN) on 28 June 1945. The disbanding of those structures marked

456-771: 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

570-669: 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

684-520: 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

798-543: 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

912-543: 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,

1026-454: 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

1140-491: 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,

1254-405: 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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1368-478: 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

1482-447: 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

1596-524: 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 ;

1710-529: 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

1824-430: 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

1938-401: 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

2052-596: 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

2166-585: The Council of Ministers at Home (Krajowa Rada Ministrów, KRM) was created. The Underground State however declined sharply in the aftermath of the nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest , initiated in the spring of 1944. In addition to the costly and eventually unsuccessful Warsaw Uprising part of the Operation Tempest, the hostile attitude of the Soviet Union and its puppet Polish government,

2280-564: The Council of National Unity (Rada Jedności Narodowej, RJN), created on 9 January 1944. The council, headed by Kazimierz Pużak , was seen as the Underground State's parliament. Meanwhile, the military arm of the Underground State expanded dramatically, and the ZWZ was transformed into Armia Krajowa (AK, or the Home Army) in 1942. ZWZ-AK commanders included Stefan Rowecki, Tadeusz Komorowski and Leopold Okulicki . In August 1943 and March 1944,

2394-755: The Jews were. The most important groups that refused to join the structures of the Polish Underground State included the communists ( Polish Workers Party (PPR) and its military arm, the People's Guard , later transformed into the People's Army ), and the far-right extremists from the National Radical Camp ABC ( Group Szaniec and its military arm, the Military Organization Lizard Union ). Both

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2508-986: 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 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

2622-765: The Polish Committee of National Liberation (PKWN), a Soviet puppet government. The government in exile, located first in France and later in the United Kingdom, with the President , Prime Minister and the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army was the top military and civilian authority, recognized by the authorities of the Underground State as their commanders. The government in exile

2736-410: The Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego, PKWN) towards the non-communist resistance loyal to the Polish government in exile proved to be disastrous. The Underground State assumed that the Polish resistance would aid the advancing Soviet forces, and AK commanders and representatives of the administrative authority would assume the role of legitimate hosts. Instead,

2850-511: The Polish Secret State during World War II . It was designed to be able to unite Poland in a national struggle, and claimed all of the pre-partition Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lands. The last " dictator " of the National Government was Romuald Traugutt , who was arrested from the night of the 10th to 11 April 1864 by Russian authorities. With his execution, the uprising had its symbolic end. The National Government

2964-612: 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

3078-615: The Soviet one ) appeared inevitable. SZP founder General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski received orders from Polish Commander-in-Chief Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły to organize and carry out the struggle in occupied Poland. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski decided that the organization he was creating needed to move beyond a strictly military format; and in line with the traditions of the underground 19th-century Polish National Government and World War I -era Polish Military Organization , it would need to encompass various aspects of civilian life. Hence,

3192-522: 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

3306-474: 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 ,

3420-837: The cursed soldiers , fighting the Soviet-backed communist forces until eradicated. The Underground State represented most, though not all, political factions of the Second Polish Republic . The Political Consultative Committee (PKP) represented four major Polish parties: the Socialist Party (PPS-WRN), the People's Party (SL), the SN , and the Labor Party (SP). The SP joined the PKP in June 1940, four months after

3534-526: The fall of France , in London). Sikorski's government opted for a much more democratic procedure then the less democratic prewar Sanacja regime. The National Council (Rada Narodowa) was formed by the government in exile in December 1939, including representatives from different Polish political factions. Meanwhile, in occupied Poland, a major step toward the development of the organization's civilian structure

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3648-413: The fall of communism , Poland regained full independence and Polish scholars could begin unrestricted research into all aspects of Polish history. Scholars who chose to investigate the Underground State were also confronted with the issue of its uniqueness (no country or nation has ever created a similar institution), and hence, the problem of defining it. Polish historian Stanisław Salmonowicz , discussing

3762-578: 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

3876-419: The historiography of the Polish Underground State, defined it as a "collection of state-legal, organizational and citizenship structures, which were to ensure the constitutional continuation of Polish statehood on its own territory". Salmonowicz concluded that "This constitutional continuity, real performance of the state's functions on its past territory and the loyalty of a great majority of Polish society were

3990-416: 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

4104-457: 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

4218-486: 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

4332-588: The Delegate could be seen as equivalent to that of a Deputy Prime Minister (particularly since the legislation of 1944). Unlike the GRP and PKP, which operated alongside the military structures but had no influence over them, the Delegation had budgetary control over the military. The Delegation was to oversee the military and recreate the civilian administration. As early as 1940, the Underground State's civilian arm

4446-650: The Department for Elimination of the Consequences of War, the Department for Public Works and Reconstruction, and the Department for Information and the Press; the other departments mirrored pre-war Polish ministries (e.g., Department of Post Offices and Telegraphs, or Department of the Treasury). The Delegate's Office was divided into departments, 14 of which existed toward the end of the war; the full list included:

4560-405: The Department of National Defence. On the geographical division level, the Delegation had local offices, dividing Polish territories into 16 voivodeships , each under an underground voivode , further divided into powiats headed by starostas , and with separate municipal bodies. In early 1944, the Delegation employed some 15,000 people in its administration; those were primarily older people, as

4674-593: The French government, Wieniawa-Długoszowski was replaced by Władysław Raczkiewicz on 29 September. General Władysław Sikorski , a long-term opponent of the Sanacja regime who resided in France and had the support of the French government, would become the Polish Commander-in-Chief (on 28 September) and Poland's Prime Minister (on 30 September). This government was quickly recognized by France and

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4788-552: The German and Soviet occupation of Poland was illegal. Hence, all institutions created by the occupying powers were considered illegal, and parallel Polish underground institutions were set up in accordance with Polish law . The scale of the Underground State was also inadvertently aided by the actions of the occupiers, whose attempts to destroy the Polish state, nation, and its culture, including most importantly genocidal policies that targeted Polish citizens, fuelled popular support for

4902-546: The German defeat in World War II. By the final years of the war, the civilian structure of the Underground State included an underground parliament, administration, judiciary ( courts and police ), secondary and higher-level education , and supported various cultural activities such as the publishing of newspapers and books, underground theatres, lectures, exhibitions, concerts and safeguarded various works of art. It also dealt with providing social services , including to

5016-583: 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

5130-653: The PKP was created; and the PPS-WRN withdrew from the PKP between October 1941 and March 1943. Those parties, known as the Big Four , were also represented in the Home Political Representation (KRP). Compared to PKP and KRP, the Council of National Unity was much more representative, and included representatives of several smaller political groupings. Several other groups lacked significant representation in PKP and KRP, but nonetheless had supported

5244-694: The PKWN was proclaimed in 1944. PKWN was recognized by the Soviet Government as the only legitimate authority in Poland, while Mikołajczyk's Government in London, was termed by the Soviets an "illegal and self-styled authority." Mikołajczyk would serve in the Prime Minister's role until 24 November 1944, when, realizing the increasing powerlessness of the government in exile, he resigned and was succeeded by Tomasz Arciszewski , "whose obscurity", in

5358-450: The Polish Underground State announced its long-term plan, which was partly designed to undercut the attractiveness of some of the communists' proposals. The communists, in their increasingly radical What We Fight For declarations (from March and November 1943), were proposing the creation of a heavily socialist or even communist state , denouncing capitalism, which they equated to slavery. They demanded nationalization of most if not all of

5472-459: The Polish Underground State mirrors that of the Polish non-communist resistance in general. The Underground State traces its origins to the Service for Poland's Victory (Służba Zwycięstwu Polski, SZP) organization, which was founded on 27 September 1939, one day before the surrender of the Polish capital of Warsaw , at a time when the Polish defeat in the German invasion of Poland (accompanied by

5586-596: The Polish government in exile. A rift developed between Poland and the Soviet Union, an increasingly important ally for the West, particularly after the revelation of the Katyn massacre in 1943 (on 13 April), followed by the breaking-off of diplomatic relations with Poland by the Soviets (on 21 April). The subsequent death (on 4 July) of the charismatic General Sikorski, succeeded by less influential Stanisław Mikołajczyk as

5700-459: The Polish resistance movement and its development. During the Cold War era, research on the Underground State was curtailed by Polish communist officials, who instead emphasized the role that communist partisans played in the anti-Nazi resistance. Hence, until recently, the bulk of research done on this topic was carried out by Polish scholars living in exile. In many respects, the history of

5814-515: The Presidential Department, the Department of Internal Affairs, Justice Department, Employment and Social Welfare Department, Agriculture Department, Treasury Department, Trade and Industry Department, Postal and Telegraph Services Department, the Department for Elimination of the Consequences of War, Transport Department, Information and the Press, Department of Public Works and Reconstruction, Department of Education and Culture and

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5928-690: The Prime Minister, and General Sosnkowski as the Commander-in-Chief, contributed to the decline. No representative of the Polish government was invited to the Tehran Conference (28 November – 1 December 1943) or the Yalta Conference (4–11 February 1945), the two crucial events in which the Western Allies and the Soviet Union discussed the shape of the post-war world and decided on the fate of Poland, assigning it to

6042-799: The SZP, in contact with (and subordinate to) the Polish Government in Exile , envisioned itself not only as an armed resistance organization, but also as a vehicle through which the Polish state continued to administer its occupied territories. Following the Polish Constitution , President Ignacy Mościcki , interned in Romania after the Polish government evacuated itself from Poland on 17 September, resigned and appointed General Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski as his successor; unpopular with

6156-407: The Sanacja regime, and supported the formation of the Main Political Council (Główna Rada Polityczna, GRP). Sikorski named General Kazimierz Sosnkowski the head of the ZWZ and Colonel Stefan Rowecki was appointed the commander of the ZWZ German occupation zone. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski became the commander of the ZWZ Soviet zone but was arrested in March 1940 by the Soviets when attempting to cross

6270-671: 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 ), /

6384-417: The Soviet sphere of influence . In Tehran, neither Churchill nor Roosevelt objected to Stalin 's suggestion that the Polish government in exile in London was not representing Polish interests; as historian Anita Prażmowska noted, "this spelled the end of that government's tenuous influence and raison d'être." After the Tehran Conference, Stalin decided to create his own puppet government for Poland, and

6498-402: The Soviet military. Polish intelligence operatives supplied valuable intelligence information to the Allies; 43 percent of all reports received by British secret services from continental Europe in 1939–45 came from Polish sources. At its height, AK numbered over 400,000 and was recognized as one of the three largest, or even the largest, resistance movement of the war. Axis fatalities due to

6612-583: The Soviet-backed and increasingly communist TRJN body. Seeing this as a " Western betrayal ", the government in exile protested that decision and continued to operate till the fall of communism in 1989, when it recognized the post-communist Polish government. Following the rigged Polish legislative election of 1947, the few independent politicians like Mikołajczyk who attempted to form an opposition were threatened with arrests, retired or emigrated. The Underground State's military arm, Armia Krajowa, officially disbanded on 19 January 1945 to avoid armed conflict with

6726-415: The Soviets and civil war. Over the next few years the communists solidified their hold on Poland, falsifying elections, persecuting the opposition and eliminating it as a political power. Remnants of the armed resistance ( NIE , Armed Forces Delegation for Poland , Freedom and Independence ) that refused to lay down their weapons and surrender to the communist regime continued to hold out for several years as

6840-538: The Soviets commonly surrounded, disarmed and arrested the Underground's military authority members and its civilian representatives, instituting their own administrative structures instead. In early July 1944, even as the AK resistance continued its struggle against the Germans, the Underground State was forced to order the AK and its administrative structure to remain in hiding from the Soviets, due to continued arrests and reprisals experienced by those who revealed themselves. Events taking place in 1943 significantly weakened

6954-476: The Underground State enjoyed broad support throughout much of the war, it was not supported or recognized by the communists and some of the right-wing extremists . The influence of the communists eventually declined amid military reversals (most notably, the failure of the Warsaw Uprising ) and the growing hostility of the USSR. The Soviet Union had created an alternative, puppet government in 1944 (the Polish Committee of National Liberation ) and ensured it formed

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7068-414: The Underground State. For example, the nationalists from the National Radical Camp Falanga formed the Confederation of the Nation , which included most members of the pre-war far-right, partially merging with the ZWZ around 1941 and finally joining the AK around fall 1943. Non-Polish ethnic minorities , primarily the Ukrainians and the Belarusians , were not represented in the Underground State; however

7182-519: The United Kingdom. Raczkiewicz, described as "weak and indecisive", held relatively little influence compared to charismatic Sikorski. Due to political differences among factions in the Polish exile government, and in particular, SZP ties to the Sanacja regime which dominated the Polish government since the mid-1920s, the SZP was reorganized into the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ) on 13 November 1939. Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski supported that move, aiming to include parties marginalized by

7296-445: The actions of the Polish underground, of which AK formed the bulk, are estimated at up to 150,000. For decades, research on the Polish Underground State was restricted, largely because the communist People's Republic of Poland did not wish to fully acknowledge the role of the non-communist resistance. During the first postwar Stalinist years, efforts to explore this topic were regarded as dangerous, bordering on illegal. Research into

7410-412: The basis of the post-war government in Poland . During the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland at the end of the war, many Underground State members were prosecuted as alleged traitors and died in captivity. Abandoned by the Western Allies , finding it impossible to negotiate with the Soviets, and wishing to avoid a civil war, the key institutions of the Underground State dissolved themselves in

7524-485: 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

7638-418: 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

7752-404: The day of 27 September (anniversary of the founding of the Service for Poland's Victory organization) to be the Day of the Polish Underground State . Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] ) is a West Slavic language of

7866-514: The destitute Jewish population (through the council to Aid Jews, or Żegota ). Through the Directorate of Civil Resistance (1941–1943) the civil arm was also involved in lesser acts of resistance, such as minor sabotage , although in 1943 this department was merged with the Directorate of Covert Resistance , forming the Directorate of Underground Resistance , subordinate to AK. The departments can be seen as loosely corresponding to ministries . Three departments were dedicated to war-related issues:

7980-479: 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

8094-430: 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 ,

8208-531: 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 ;

8322-402: The economic sector, planned economy would be endorsed, by embracing the socialist and Christian Democrat principles, such as income redistribution , aiming at a reduction of economic inequality . The plan promised land reform , nationalization of the industrial base, demands for territorial compensation from Germany, and re-establishment of the country's pre-1939 eastern border. According to

8436-534: The economy, introduction of central planning , The Underground State's declaration What the Polish Nation is Fighting For declared the reconstruction of Poland as a democratic parliamentary state as its goal, guaranteeing full equality to the minorities, as well as full freedom of speech , freedom of religion , and freedom of political activity. The plan also called for the creation of a Central European federal union, without domination by any single state. In

8550-548: The end of the Underground State. The TRJN was composed primarily of communist representatives from the PKWN, with a token representation of the opposition as a gesture towards the Western Allies. With the establishment of the TRJN, the government in exile stopped being recognized by the Western Allies (France withdrew its recognition on 29 June, followed by United Kingdom and the United States on 5 July), who decided to support

8664-420: 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

8778-476: 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.

8892-504: The events occurring in the Soviet-annexed territories in the 1939–1941 period was particularly difficult. The limited research devoted to the Underground State that did take place was done mainly by Polish émigré historians living in the West. The communist state downplayed the importance of the non-communist resistance movements, while the communist movement ( Armia Ludowa ) was emphasized as being of primary importance; in fact,

9006-542: The extreme left (the communists) and the extreme right (the nationalists) did not recognize the Underground State and in some cases actively persecuted people connected with it. Only the PPR, however, opposed to Polish independence and supporting full inclusion of Poland in the Soviet Union, was seen as completely outside the framework of the State; the other groups were seen as a justifiable opposition. In 1944 PPR would become part of

9120-465: The first half of 1945. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of people were directly involved with various agencies of the Underground State ( the estimates for membership in Armia Krajowa alone are often given at approaching half a million people), and they were quietly supported by millions of Polish citizens. The rationale behind the creation of the secret civilian authority drew on the fact that

9234-467: 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

9348-521: The government in exile, through radio communications and "hundreds, if not thousands" of couriers, such as Jan Karski . One of the most significant developments of 1940 was the creation of the office of Government Delegation for Poland (Delegatura Rządu na Kraj), with Cyryl Ratajski (nominated on 3 December) as the first Delegate ; this event marked the official beginning of the Underground State (Ratajski would be followed by Jan Piekałkiewicz , Jan Stanisław Jankowski and Stefan Korboński ). The post of

9462-548: 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

9576-603: The last AK Commander-in-Chief, General Leopold Okulicki , who decided to reveal themselves and upon the Soviet invitation begun open negotiations with the communist authorities, were arrested and sentenced by the Soviets in Moscow in the infamous Trial of the Sixteen (arrests were carried out in March 1945, and the trial itself took place in June that year). On 27 June 1945 the Council of National Unity held its last session, issuing

9690-439: 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

9804-537: 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

9918-431: 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

10032-509: The most significant elements of its existence." The Underground State also became officially recognized by the Polish government, local authorities and the community, with most major cities in Poland erecting various memorials to the Underground State-affiliated resistance. In Poznań , there is a dedicated Polish Underground State Monument erected in 2007. On 11 September 1998 the Sejm (parliament) of Poland declared

10146-460: 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

10260-467: The name Tarzan . Polish National Government (January Uprising) During 1863–1864 it was a real shadow government supported by the majority of Poles who even paid taxes for it, and a significant problem for the Russian secret police ( Third Section ). "It organized one of the world's earliest campaigns of urban guerrilla warfare ", according to Norman Davies . It became the prototype for

10374-480: The new German-Soviet border. In June Sikorski appointed Rowecki as the commander of both zones. Given that the ZWZ focused on military aspects of the struggle, its civilian dimension was less clearly defined and developed more slowly—a situation exacerbated by the complex political discussions that were then unfolding between politicians in occupied Poland and the government in exile (first located in Paris, and after

10488-649: 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

10602-459: 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 ,

10716-461: The opposite was true. The absence of research by Polish scholars, along with obstacles presented to foreign scholars seeking access to source material in communist Poland, contributed to a situation in which there was virtually no discussion by Western scholars of one of Europe's largest resistance movements—the non-communist Polish resistance movement. The bulk of Western research centred on the much smaller French Resistance ( la Résistance ). With

10830-673: 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

10944-401: 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

11058-491: The plan, the country's Eastern borders, as delineated by the 1921 Treaty of Riga, would be kept while in the north and west compensation would be sought from German territories. Thus, the main differences between the Underground State and the communists, in terms of politics, were not rooted in radical economic and social reforms, which both sides advocated, but rather in their divergent positions on such issues as national sovereignty, borders, and Polish-Soviet relations. The program

11172-520: 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,

11286-540: 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

11400-410: 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

11514-506: 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

11628-585: The state's military arm was responsible for maintaining communication with the London-based government in exile, and for protecting the civilian arm of the state. The Armia Krajowa's primary resistance operations were the sabotage of German activities, including transports headed for the Eastern Front in the Soviet Union. The sabotage of German rail and road transports to the Eastern Front

11742-494: 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

11856-563: 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

11970-443: 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

12084-517: The words of historian Mieczysław B. Biskupski , "signaled the arrival of the government in exile at total inconsequentiality." The communists refused to deal with the Underground State just like they refused to deal with the government in exile; its leaders and soldiers in "liberated" Polish territories were persecuted. A number of prominent leaders of the Underground State, including the Government Delegate, Jan Stanisław Jankowski and

12198-481: The younger ones were recruited for the military side of the operations. The military arm of the Polish Underground State consisted primarily of various branches of the Armia Krajowa (AK) and, until 1942, the Union of Armed Struggle . This arm of the state was designed to prepare the Polish society for a future fight for the country's liberation. Apart from armed resistance, sabotage, intelligence, training, and propaganda,

12312-405: Was actively supporting underground education ; it then set out to develop social security , information (propaganda) and justice networks. By 1942, most of the differences between politicians in occupied Poland and those in exile had been positively settled. By 1943, the PKP had evolved into the Home Political Representation (Krajowa Reprezentacja Polityczna, KRP), which served as the basis of

12426-454: Was an inspiration for many Poles throughout the rest of the 19th and early 20th century, including Józef Piłsudski , who was inspired by it to create his Polish Legions . In official documents of the time, Piłsudski uses the name of the Rząd Narodowy with the coat of arms of the 1863 January Uprising. All the fallen veterans and participants of the government were awarded posthumously with

12540-578: Was criticized by the nationalist factions, for being too socialist, and not "Christian" enough. The Underground State achieved its zenith of influence in early 1944. In April, the Polish government in exile recognized the administrative structure of the Delegate's Office as the Temporary Governmental Administration. This was when the Delegate officially became recognized as the Deputy Prime Minister, and

12654-415: Was perceived by supporters as a legal continuation of the pre-war Republic of Poland (and its institutions) that waged an armed struggle against the country's occupying powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union . The Underground State encompassed not only military resistance, one of the largest in the world, but also civilian structures, such as justice, education, culture and social services. Although

12768-589: Was represented in the occupied Poland by the Government Delegation for Poland, headed by the Government Delegate for Poland . The main role of the civilian branch of the Underground State was to preserve the continuity of the Polish state as a whole, including its institutions. These institutions included the police, the courts , and schools . This branch of the state was intended to prepare cadres and institutions to resume power after

12882-521: Was so extensive it is estimated that one-eighth of all German transports to the Eastern Front were destroyed or significantly delayed due to AK's activities. The AK also fought several full-scale battles against the Germans, particularly in 1943 and 1944 during Operation Tempest . They tied down significant German forces, worth at least several divisions (upper estimates suggest about 930,000 troops), diverting much-needed supplies, while trying to support

12996-741: Was taken in late February 1940, when the ZWZ established its local version of the National Council, the Political Consultative Committee (Polityczny Komitet Porozumiewawczy, PKP). PKP was formed in 1940 pursuant to an agreement between several major political parties: the Socialist Party , People's Party , National Party and Labor Party . In 1943 it was renamed to Home Political Representation ( Krajowa Reprezentacja Polityczna ) and in 1944 to Council of National Unity ( Rada Jedności Narodowej ). The structures in occupied Poland maintained close communication with

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