ABSTRACT
West Slavic language with approx. 42 million speakers, predominantly in Poland (about 35 million speakers) and the United States (about 6 million speakers). Polish has existed as a written language since the fourteenth century, attested in the Papal Bull of Gniezno, which contains over 400 names. The oldest complete text, Kazania Świętokrzyskie ‘Holy Cross sermons’ dates from the fourteenth century. Polish literature flowered during the sixteenth century. Today Polish is written in the Latin alphabet with diacritics and special characters: ‹ł Ł›, ‹ż, Ż›.
