Polish is a West Slavic language, closely related to Czech and Slovak.

Polish uses the Latin alphabet with additional diacritics specific to the language. The Polish alphabet contains 32 letters.

Polish includes 9 letters that do not exist in English: ą, ć, ę, ł, ń, ó, ś, ź, and ż.

Polish is known for its complex consonant clusters, as seen in the word źdźbło (“blade of grass”).

The most difficult Polish word for foreigners to pronounce is often said to be szczęście (“happiness”).

The letter ł is pronounced like the English “w.”

The dot above the letter ż is unique among Slavic languages that use the Latin alphabet.

Polish uses 7 grammatical cases.

The Polish word for “Poland” is Polska. The word “Polish” in Polish is polski.

Many Polish surnames end in ski or ska, a tradition historically associated with nobility.

The oldest known sentence written in Polish dates from 1270.

Polish does not use articles (“a,” “an,” or “the”).

The Polish word nie means “no.”

Kraków was historically the center of Polish literary culture.

The Polish national anthem is written in an older style of Polish from 1797.

There are approximately 45 million native Polish speakers worldwide.

Polish is the second most spoken Slavic language after Russian.

The language survived intense suppression during partitions and occupations, strengthening its role as a symbol of national identity.