Polish
Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is a West Slavic language and the official language of Poland. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet which corresponds basically to the Latin alphabet with a few additions. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland.
Despite the pressure of non-Polish administrations in Poland which often attempted to suppress the Polish language, a rich literature developed over the centuries and the language is currently the largest in terms of speakers of the West Slavic group.
Nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their mother language. Ethnic Poles constitute significant minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County (26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results), and it is also present in other counties. In Ukraine, Polish can often be heard in the cities of Lviv and Lutsk. Western Belarus has a significant Polish minority, particularly in the Brest and Grodno regions.
Polish speakers also live in: Argentina, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Peru, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, UAE, the UK, Uruguay and the United States.
In the United States, it is estimated that citizens of Polish ethnic extraction number more than 11 million, but many no longer speak Polish fluently. According to the United States 2000 Census, 667,414 Americans of age 5 years and over reported Polish as the language spoken at home: about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English, or 0.25% of the U.S. population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) occur in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740) and New Jersey (74,663).
Canada has a large Polish Canadian population. The 2006 census recorded 242,885 speakers of Polish, with a significant concentration.
The Polish language became far more homogeneous in the second half of the 20th century, in part due to the mass-migration of several million Polish citizens from the eastern to the western part of the country after the Soviet annexation of the Kresy in 1939.
The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still [update] speak "Standard" Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between these broad "dialects" appear slight. First-language speakers of Polish never experience any difficulty in mutual understanding; however non-native speakers have difficulty distinguishing regional variations. The differences are slight compared to the variety of dialects in English.
The regional differences correspond to old tribal divisions from around a thousand years ago; the most significant of these in terms of numbers of speakers relate to:
Greater Polish (spoken in the west)
Lesser Polish (spoken in the south and southeast)
Mazovian (Mazur) spoken throughout the central and eastern parts of the country. Mazovian shares some features with the Kashubian language (see below).
Silesian, spoken in the southwest (controversial)
