ABSTRACT
Polish is the official language of the Republic of Poland, and is also spoken by substantial communities in neighbouring territories (Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Czech Republic) as well as in the United States. The total number of speakers is at least 40 million, ranking it about equal with Ukrainian in number of speakers of Slavonic languages after Russian. The language belongs to the Lechitic sub-group of West Slavonic languages that also includes the similar but distinctive Kashubian (considered by most analysts these days to be a separate language, though others classify it as an aberrant dialect of Polish) and the now extinct Pomeranian and Polabian. It vies (with Belarusian and Ukrainian) for the distinction of having the most complex morphology of any Slavonic language, in particular displaying both formal conservatism and extensive intradeclensional phonological variation in its nominal system.
