98-544: The Vistula ( / ˈ v ɪ s tj ʊ l ə / ; Polish : Wisła [ˈviswa] ; German : Weichsel [ˈvaɪksl] ) is the longest river in Poland and the ninth-longest in Europe, at 1,047 kilometres (651 miles) in length. Its drainage basin , extending into three other countries apart from Poland, covers 193,960 km (74,890 sq mi), of which 168,868 km (65,200 sq mi)
196-499: 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
294-771: 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
392-669: 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
490-520: 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 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,
686-454: 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
784-765: A playful element of punning. Such names could be a cover for humble social origins. The title of the " Wilhelmus ", national anthem of the Netherlands , preserves a Latinised form of the name of William the Silent . In English, place names often appear in Latinised form. This is a result of many early text books mentioning the places being written in Latin. Because of this, the English language often uses Latinised forms of foreign place names instead of anglicised forms or
882-627: A project was undertaken to increase the traffic-carrying capacity of the river upstream of Warsaw by building a number of locks in and around Kraków , this project was not extended further, so that navigability of the Vistula remains limited. The potential of the river would increase considerably if a restoration of the east–west connection via the Narew – Bug – Mukhovets – Pripyat – Dnieper waterways were considered. The shifting economic importance of parts of Europe may make this option more likely. Vistula
980-402: 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
1078-491: 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,
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#17327658481821176-405: 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
1274-478: 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
1372-659: 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
1470-419: 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 ,
1568-705: Is in Poland. The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in the south of Poland, 1,220 meters (4,000 ft) above sea level in the Silesian Beskids (western part of Carpathian Mountains ), where it begins with the White Little Vistula ( Biała Wisełka ) and the Black Little Vistula ( Czarna Wisełka ). It flows through Poland's largest cities, including Kraków , Sandomierz , Warsaw , Płock , Włocławek , Toruń , Bydgoszcz , Świecie , Grudziądz , Tczew and Gdańsk . It empties into
1666-427: 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
1764-447: 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
1862-595: 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
1960-524: 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 ;
2058-648: Is the transliteration of a word to the Latin alphabet from another script (e.g. Cyrillic ). For authors writing in Latin, this change allows the name to function grammatically in a sentence through declension . In a scientific context, the main purpose of Latinisation may be to produce a name which is internationally consistent. Latinisation may be carried out by: Humanist names, assumed by Renaissance humanists , were largely Latinised names, though in some cases (e.g. Melanchthon ) they invoked Ancient Greek . Latinisation in humanist names may consist of translation from vernacular European languages, sometimes involving
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#17327658481822156-529: 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
2254-722: Is the northern part of the proposed E40 waterway , continuing eastward into the Bug River , linking the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea . Large parts of the Vistula Basin were occupied by the Iron Age Lusatian and Przeworsk cultures in the first millennium BC. Genetic analysis indicates that there has been an unbroken genetic continuity of the inhabitants over the last 3,500 years. The Vistula Basin along with
2352-430: 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
2450-401: 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
2548-596: 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
2646-601: The North Sea somewhere at the latitude of contemporary Scotland. The climate of the Vistula valley, its plants, animals, and its very character changed considerably during the process of glacial retreat. Vistula is navigable from the Baltic Sea to Bydgoszcz (where the Bydgoszcz Canal joins the river). It can accommodate modest river vessels of CEMT class II. Farther upstream the river depth lessens. Although
2744-922: The Oder river in Germany. After the war in late 1946, the former Austrian SS member Amon Göth was sentenced to death and hung on 13 September at the Montelupich Prison in Kraków, not far from the site of the Płaszów camp , the camp of which he was commandant throughout The Holocaust . His remains were cremated and the ashes thrown in the Vistula River. Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )
2842-666: 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
2940-522: 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
3038-537: The Vistula Lagoon ( Zalew Wiślany ) or directly into the Gdańsk Bay of the Baltic Sea with a delta of six main branches ( Leniwka , Przekop , Śmiała Wisła , Martwa Wisła , Nogat and Szkarpawa ). The river has many associations with Polish culture , history and national identity. It is Poland's most important waterway and natural symbol , flowing notably through Kraków and the capital Warsaw , and
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3136-474: 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 ,
3234-578: 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
3332-404: 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
3430-437: The 16th century most of the grain exported was leaving Poland through Gdańsk, which because of its location at the end of the Vistula and its tributary waterway and of its Baltic seaport trade role became the wealthiest, most highly developed, and by far the largest centre of crafts and manufacturing, and the most autonomous of the Polish cities. Other towns were negatively affected by Gdańsk's near-monopoly in foreign trade. During
3528-416: 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
3626-486: 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
3724-718: The Alpine zone to which the Alps and the Carpathians belong. The Vistula begins in the Carpathian mountains. The run and character of the river were shaped by ice sheets flowing down from the Scandinavian peninsula. The last ice sheet entered the area of Poland about 20,000 years ago. During periods of warmer weather, the ancient Vistula, "Pra-Wisła", searched for the shortest way to the sea—thousands of years ago it flowed into
3822-529: The Baltic area as a centre of merchants and trade and as a port city. At this time the surrounding lands were inhabited by Pomeranians , but Gdańsk soon became a starting point for German settlement of the largely fallow Vistulan country. Before its peak in 1618, trade increased by a factor of 20 from 1491. This factor is evident when looking at the tonnage of grain traded on the river in the key years of: 1491: 14,000; 1537: 23,000; 1563: 150,000; 1618: 310,000. In
3920-548: The German ). According to the most popular variant, popularized by the 15th-century historian Jan Długosz , Wanda, daughter of King Krak , became queen of the Poles upon her father's death. She refused to marry a German prince Rytigier (Rüdiger), who took offence and invaded Poland, but was repelled. Wanda however committed suicide , drowning in the Vistula River, to ensure he would not invade her country again. For hundreds of years
4018-583: 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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4116-577: The River Vistula and its valley spans over 2 million years. The river is connected to the geological period called the Quaternary , in which distinct cooling of the climate took place. In the last million years, an ice sheet entered the area of Poland eight times, bringing along with it changes of reaches of the river. In warmer periods, when the ice sheet retreated, the Vistula deepened and widened its valley. The river took its present shape within
4214-671: 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 ), /
4312-635: The Vistula Lagoon, now for flood control closed to the east with a lock) and a west-flowing branch (the Danzig (Gdańsk) Vistula, Przegalinie branch, reached the sea in Danzig). Until the 14th century, the Elbing Vistula was the bigger. List of right and left tributaries with a nearby city, from source to mouth: According to flood studies carried out by Zbigniew Pruszak, who is the co-author of
4410-606: The Vistula and the Neman . It provided a link with the Black Sea to the south through the Oginski Canal , Dnieper River , Berezina Canal, and Dvina River . The Baltic Sea– Vistula– Dnieper– Black Sea route with its rivers was one of the most ancient trade routes, the Amber Road , on which amber and other items were traded from Northern Europe to Greece, Asia, Egypt , and elsewhere. The Vistula estuary
4508-458: The Vistula below this point is sometimes called the Leniwka . Various causes (rain, snow melt, ice jams ) have caused many severe floods of the Vistula over the centuries. Land in the area was sometimes depopulated by severe flooding, and later had to be resettled. See (Figure 7, on page 812 at History of floods on the River Vistula ) for a reconstruction map of the delta area as it was around
4606-549: The border of his lands. In 1308 the Teutonic Knights captured the Gdańsk castle and murdered the population. Since then the event is known as the Gdańsk slaughter . The Order had inherited Gniew from Sambor II , thus gaining a foothold on the left bank of the Vistula. Many granaries and storehouses, built in the 14th century, line the banks of the Vistula. In the 15th century the city of Gdańsk gained great importance in
4704-485: 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
4802-482: The confluences with the Narew river and the Bug river; and bottom, from the confluence with Narew to the sea. The Vistula river basin covers 194,424 square kilometres (75,068 square miles) (in Poland 168,700 square kilometres (65,135 square miles)); its average altitude is 270 metres (886 feet) above sea level . In addition, the majority of its river basin (55%) is 100 to 200 m above sea level; over 3 ⁄ 4 of
4900-713: 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
4998-647: The course of their offensive and were waiting on the other side of the Vistula River in full force, would help in the battle for Warsaw. However, the Soviets let down the Poles, stopping their advance at the Vistula and branding the insurgents as criminals in radio broadcasts. In early 1945, in the Vistula–Oder Offensive , the Red Army crossed the Vistula and drove the German Wehrmacht back past
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#17327658481825096-588: The decisive battle of the Polish–Soviet War Battle of Warsaw (sometimes referred to as the Miracle at the Vistula ), was fought as Red Army forces commanded by Mikhail Tukhachevsky approached the Polish capital of Warsaw and nearby Modlin Fortress by the river's mouth. The Polish September campaign included battles over control of the mouth of the Vistula, and of the city of Gdańsk, close to
5194-479: 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
5292-430: 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 ,
5390-531: 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 ;
5488-617: The economic growth of the Commonwealth. The owner of a folwark usually signed a contract with the merchants of Gdańsk, who controlled 80% of this inland trade, to ship the grain to Gdańsk. Many rivers in the Commonwealth were used for shipping, including the Vistula, which had a relatively well-developed infrastructure, with river ports and granaries . Most river shipping travelled north, with southward transport being less profitable, and barges and rafts often being sold off in Gdańsk for lumber. In order to arrest recurrent flooding on
5586-569: The eighth century, some of which coalesced later into larger ones. Among the tribes listed in the Bavarian Geographer 's ninth-century document was the Vistulans ( Wiślanie ) in southern Poland. Kraków and Wiślica were their main centres. Many Polish legends are connected with the Vistula river and the beginnings of Polish statehood . One of the most enduring is that about Princess Wanda co nie chciała Niemca ( who rejected
5684-420: 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
5782-476: 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.
5880-467: 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
5978-595: The lands of the Rhine , Danube , Elbe , and Oder came to be called Magna Germania by Roman authors of the first century AD. This does not imply that the inhabitants were " Germanic peoples " in the modern sense of the term; Tacitus , when describing the Venethi , Peucini and Fenni , wrote that he was not sure if he should call them Germans, since they had settlements and they fought on foot, or rather Sarmatians since they have some similar customs to them. Ptolemy , in
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#17327658481826076-435: 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
6174-441: The last 14,000 years, after the complete recession of the Scandinavian ice sheet from the area. At present, along with the Vistula valley, erosion of the banks and collecting of new deposits are still occurring. As the principal river of Poland, the Vistula is also in the centre of Europe. Three principal geographical and geological land masses of the continent meet in its river basin: the Eastern European Plain , Western Europe, and
6272-439: 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
6370-414: The lower Vistula, the Prussian government in 1889–95 constructed an artificial channel about 12 kilometres (7 miles) east of Gdańsk (German name: Danzig )—known as the Vistula Cut (German: Weichseldurchstich ; Polish: Przekop Wisły )—that acted as a huge sluice, diverting much of the Vistula flow directly into the Baltic . As a result, the historic Vistula channel through Gdańsk lost much of its flow and
6468-431: 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
6566-460: 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
6664-466: The mouth, where the river Nogat splits off. The Nogat also starts separately as a river named (on this map ) Alte Nogat (Old Nogat) south of Kwidzyn , but further north it picks up water from a crosslink with the Vistula, and becomes a distributary of the Vistula, flowing away northeast into the Vistula Lagoon (Polish: Zalew Wiślany) with a small delta. The Nogat formed part of the border between East Prussia and interwar Poland. The other channel of
6762-429: The name Tarzan . Latinisation of names Latinisation (or Latinization ) of names , also known as onomastic Latinisation , is the practice of rendering a non - Latin name in a modern Latin style. It is commonly found with historical proper names , including personal names and toponyms , and in the standard binomial nomenclature of the life sciences. It goes further than romanisation , which
6860-498: The name Istula . Ammianus Marcellinus referred to the Bisula (Book 22) in the 380s. In the sixth century Jordanes ( Getica 5 & 17) used Viscla . The Anglo-Saxon poem Widsith refers to the Wistla . The 12th-century Polish chronicler Wincenty Kadłubek Latinised the river's name as Vandalus , a form presumably influenced by Lithuanian vanduõ 'water'. Jan Długosz (1415–1480) in his Annales seu cronicae incliti regni Poloniae contextually points to
6958-415: 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
7056-691: The original names. Examples of Latinised names for countries or regions are: Latinisation is a common practice for scientific names . For example, Livistona , the name of a genus of palm trees, is a Latinisation of Livingstone . During the age of the Roman Empire , translation of names into Latin (in the West) or Greek (in the East) was common. Additionally, Latinised versions of Greek substantives , particularly proper nouns , could easily be declined by Latin speakers with minimal modification of
7154-651: The original word. During the medieval period , after the Empire collapsed in Western Europe , the main bastion of scholarship was the Roman Catholic Church , for which Latin was the primary written language. In the early medieval period, most European scholars were priests and most educated people spoke Latin, and as a result, Latin became firmly established as the scholarly language for the West. By
7252-673: 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
7350-401: 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
7448-674: The phrase "Country upon Vistula" ( Polish : kraj nad Wisłą ) can be synonymous with Poland. Historically, the river was also important for the Baltic and German ( Prussian ) peoples. The Vistula has given its name to the last glacial period that occurred in northern Europe, approximately between 100,000 and 10,000 BC, the Weichselian glaciation . The name Vistula first appears in the written record of Pomponius Mela (3.33) in AD 40. Pliny in AD 77 in his Natural History names
7546-520: 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,
7644-495: The reign of Stephen Báthory Poland ruled two main Baltic Sea ports: Gdańsk controlling the Vistula river trade and Riga controlling the Western Dvina trade. Both cities were among the largest in the country. Around 70% the exports from Gdańsk were of grain. Grain was also the largest export commodity of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . The volume of traded grain can be considered a good and well-measured proxy for
7742-489: The river Vistla (4.81, 4.97, 4.100). The root of the name Vistula is often thought to come from Proto-Indo-European * weys- : 'to ooze, flow slowly' (cf. Sanskrit अवेषन् avēṣan "they flowed", Old Norse veisa "slime"), and similar elements appear in many European river-names (e.g. Svislach (Berezina) , Svislach (Neman) , Weser , Viešinta ). In writing about the river and its peoples, Ptolemy uses Greek spelling: Ouistoula . Other ancient sources spell
7840-545: The river basin (right-hand to left-hand side) is 73–27%. The most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch , which ended around 10,000 BC, is called the Vistulian glaciation or Weichselian glaciation in regard to north-central Europe. The river forms a wide delta called Żuławy Wiślane , or the "Vistula Fens" in English. The delta currently starts around Biała Góra near Sztum , about 50 km (31 mi) from
7938-606: The river basin ranges from 100 to 300 metres (328 to 984 feet) in altitude. The highest point of the river basin is at 2,655 metres (8,711 feet) (Gerlach Peak in the Tatra mountains ). One of the features of the river basin of the Vistula is its asymmetry—in great measure resulting from the tilting direction of the Central European Lowland toward the northwest, the direction of the flow of glacial waters, and considerable predisposition of its older base. The asymmetry of
8036-587: The river delta. During the Invasion of Poland (1939) , after the initial battles in Pomerelia , the remains of the Polish Army of Pomerania withdrew to the southern bank of the Vistula. After defending Toruń for several days, the army withdrew further south under pressure of the overall strained strategic situation, and took part in the main battle of Bzura . The Auschwitz complex of concentration camps
8134-492: The river was one of the main trading arteries of Poland, and the castles that line its banks were highly prized possessions. Salt , timber , grain , and building stone were among goods shipped via that route between the 10th and 13th centuries. In the 14th century the lower Vistula was controlled by the Teutonic Knights Order, invited in 1226 by Konrad I of Masovia to help him fight the pagan Prussians on
8232-592: The river, stating "of the eastern nations, of the Polish east, from the brightness of the water the White Water...so named" ( Alba aqua ), perhaps referring to the White Little Vistula ( Biała Wisełka ). In the course of history the river has borne similar names in different languages: German: Weichsel ; Low German : Wießel ; Dutch : Wijsel [ˈʋɛisəl] ; Yiddish : ווייסל Yiddish pronunciation: [ˈvajsl̩] ; and Russian : Висла , romanized : Visla . Vistula rises in
8330-540: 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
8428-536: The scientific paper Implications of SLR and further studies carried out by scientists attending Poland's Final International ASTRA Conference, and predictions stated by climate scientists at the climate change pre-summit in Copenhagen , it is highly likely most of the Vistula Delta region (which is below sea level) will be flooded due to the sea level rise caused by climate change by 2100. The history of
8526-589: The second century AD, would describe the Vistula as the border between Germania and Sarmatia . Vistula River used to be connected to the Dnieper River , and thence to the Black Sea via the Augustów Canal , a technological marvel with numerous sluices contributing to its aesthetic appeal. It was the first waterway in Central Europe to provide a direct link between the two major rivers,
8624-410: 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
8722-506: 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
8820-517: The southern Silesian Voivodeship close to the tripoint involving the Czech Republic and Slovakia from two sources: Czarna ("Black") Wisełka at altitude 1,107 m (3,632 ft) and Biała ("White") Wisełka at altitude 1,080 m (3,540 ft). Both are on the western slope of Barania Góra in the Silesian Beskids in Poland. Vistula can be divided into three parts: upper, from its sources to Sandomierz ; central, from Sandomierz to
8918-494: 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
9016-608: The territory of interbellum Poland was drained northward into the Baltic Sea by the Vistula (total area of drainage basin of the Vistula within boundaries of the Second Polish Republic was 180,300 km (69,600 sq mi), the Niemen (51,600 km [19,900 sq mi]), the Oder (46,700 km [18,000 sq mi]) and the Daugava (10,400 km [4,000 sq mi]). In 1920
9114-563: 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
9212-443: 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
9310-571: The year 1300: note much more water in the area, and the west end of the Vistula Lagoon (Frisches Haff) was bigger and nearly continuous with the Drausen See . As with some aggrading rivers, the lower Vistula has been subject to channel changing. Near the sea, the Vistula was diverted sideways by coastal sand as a result of longshore drift and split into an east-flowing branch (the Elbing (Elbląg) Vistula, Elbinger Weichsel, Szkarpawa, flows into
9408-593: Was at the confluence of the Vistula and the Soła rivers. Ashes of murdered Auschwitz victims were dumped into the river. During World War II prisoners of war from the Nazi Stalag XX-B camp were assigned to cut ice blocks from the River Vistula. The ice would then be transported by truck to the local beer houses. The 1944 Warsaw Uprising was planned with the expectation that the Soviet forces, who had arrived in
9506-787: Was known thereafter as the Dead Vistula (German: Tote Weichsel ; Polish: Martwa Wisła ). German states acquired complete control of the region in 1795–1812 (see: Partitions of Poland ), as well as during the World Wars, in 1914–1918 and 1939–1945. From 1867 to 1917, after the collapse of the January Uprising (1863–1865), the Russian tsarist administration called the Kingdom of Poland the Vistula Land . Almost 75% of
9604-454: Was settled by Slavs in the seventh and eighth century. Based on archeological and linguistic findings, it has been postulated that these settlers moved northward along the Vistula River. This however contradicts another hypothesis supported by some researchers saying the Veleti moved westward from the Vistula delta. A number of West Slavic Polish tribes formed small dominions beginning in
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