Polish Voice Over Agency

Everything you never needed to know about speaking Polish

The Alphabet
The Polish language has 32 letters in the alphabet. There are nine vowels and 23 consonants. The letters Q V and X aren’t used in native Polish. Around 55 million people speak Polish across the world including Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania. It is considered to be one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn.

British Poles
The UK has a large community of Polish people and now Polish is the third most spoken language after English and Welsh. Since 2001 the Polish population has increased tenfold, but Polish people were in England as far back as the 1500s.

The upside-down house
In the village of Szybark you can visit Poland’s first upside down house. It was built as a symbol to show that communism had turned the lives of the Polish people upside down. You can visit it in the forest where it is located. To enter the house, you must go through the attic windows which are on the ground floor.

Enjoy your meal
If you like to eat in places with a bit of history, then head to Wroclaw in Poland and book a table at the Piwinca Swidnicka in the basement of the old town hall. This restaurant first opened in 1275 and it’s the oldest restaurant in Europe. That’s what you call a successful business.

Confusing films
If you want to watch a film in Poland that has English speaking actors, you won’t be able to see sub titles. Instead, the voices are dubbed into Polish, which isn’t a disaster but only one voice is used, so every person in the film has the same voice!

Watch your weight
European Bisons are the heaviest land mammal in the world. They weigh on average 610 kilos which is around 96 stone. You’ll find 800 of them them in Bialowieza forest which is on the border between Poland and Belarus.

Doughnut day
The Polish people celebrate the Thursday before Ash Wednesday by eating doughnuts. They are cooked with different flavours and about a million doughnuts are eaten on this day. The celebration is called fat Thursday and it’s the last day you get to indulge yourself before lent.

It’s Springtime
If you want to celebrate the coming of Spring in Poland you need to make a straw doll on March 21st, set it alight and drop it in a local river. The doll is called Marzanna and really she is a witch, the Slavic goodness of winter, plague and death. To protect themselves and encourage a pleasant spring the doll which is decorated with colourful ribbons is burnt and drowned.

Poles are strong
Poland’s strongest man is Mariusz Pudzianowski and he has won the WSM championship five times, which is more than other person taking part in the whole of the competition’s history. His nickname is the Dominator and he won 43 international victories. He is considered to be the best strength athlete of all time.

Don’t keep your hat on
If you are wearing a hat in Poland don’t forget to take it off before you go into someone’s house. Polish people think it is disrespectful to wear a hat indoors.

A short history on the Polish language

Polish belongs to the West Slavic branch of the Indo-European family of languages, along with Czech and Slovak. Its development is usually grouped into four periods – Old Polish (up to the beginning of the 16th century), Middle Polish (16th – 18th centuries), New Polish (up to 1918) and Modern Polish (1918 onwards).

Poland’s central position in Europe brought the country into contact with many other languages over the years – especially during the Old Polish period. The first major external influence during this period was Latin, which was introduced to the country in 966 when Poland adopted Christianity. Czech, Hungarian and German also had an impact on the development of the Polish language during the 10th to 16th centuries.

After the Partitions of Poland – a series of three partitions that took place in the second half of the 18th century – Poland didn’t exist as a country until after the First World War. This marked the beginning of the Modern Polish period, with the language becoming an important symbol of national identity.

Which countries have Polish as a national language?

Polish is the official language of Poland, where it is spoken by almost 97% of the population. It is a minority language in Russia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

How many people speak Polish as their first language?

It is estimated that 50 million people speak Polish as their first language worldwide. Outside Poland, the largest numbers are in the United States (668,000), the United Kingdom (500,000), Canada (243,000) and Lithuania (200,000).

Did you know…

• It’s estimated that there are around 200,000 words in the Polish language (as a comparison, there are around 170,000 in the English language). While a third of these words are foreign adaptations, a quarter are still directly related to Old Slavonic.
• Polish has been a key language in the political and cultural history of Europe. It was the language of diplomacy in east central Europe from the late 14th century, when Poland acted as mediator between the Baltic and Black Seas. Polish translations of Latin texts were used throughout the region for many years; as a result of this, nearly all the ruling members of the Russian Romanov Dynasty (1613 – 1917) were fluent in Polish.
• After the Latin alphabet was adopted, certain diacritics were gradually added to the characters to represent distinct Polish sounds – including the ogonek on ę and ą; the kropka on ż; the kreska on ć, ń, ó, ś and ź; and the stroke on ł.

The Polish economy

Poland has a high income economy – the sixth largest in the European Union, the 20th largest in the world (in terms of GDP), and one of the fastest growing in Europe. It was the only country in the EU to avoid a recession during the 2008-2009 economic downturn. Despite this, GDP per capita is significantly below the EU average, and unemployment is above the EU average. Poland is a founding member of the World Trade Organisation, and joined the European Union in 2004.