History of Polish

The Polish language is a West Slavic language, and thus descends from Proto-Slavic, and more distantly from Proto-Indo-European. More specifically, it is a member of the Lechitic branch of the West Slavic languages, along with other languages spoken in areas within or close to the area of modern Poland, including Kashubian, Silesian, and the extinct Slovincian and Polabian.

The history of the language can be divided into four periods of development: Old Polish, up to the start of the 16th century; Middle Polish, from the 16th century until the end of the 18th century; New Polish, up to 1930; and Modern Polish, since 1930.

This page lists the most important changes that have taken place in the history of the Polish language.

The declension of nouns has become simpler. Now it depends on the gender of a noun (smok, o smoku – foka, o foce) (a dragon, about a dragon - a seal, about a seal) and to some extent on the hardness of a noun's stem (liść, liście – list, listy) (leaf - leaves, letter - letters). Two categories have appeared in the masculine gender: the category of animacy and of personhood (but, widzę but, widzę buty – kot, widzę kota, widzę koty – pilot, widzę pilota, widzę pilotów) (a shoe, I see a shoe, I see shoes - a cat, I see a cat, I see cats - a pilot, I see a pilot, I see pilots).

Traces of consonant stems still remain but almost exclusively in neuter noun stems ending in -en, -ent- (cielę – cielęcia, imię – imienia) (a calf - of a calf, a name - of a name). For all other stems, the long or short form has become characteristic of all cases. In general, in the past endings characteristic of stems ending in -o-, -jo- and -a-, -ja- were most common. Other endings were disappearing. The endings which did not cause the alteration of the stem were becoming more popular. Traces of the lack of softness in some forms of words softened by front vowels (mainly forms ending with a consonant or ending with -i-, e.g. krъvaxъ > *krwach > krwiach) have disappeared. Often softness is the only remnant of old noun endings (Gen. kamane > kamienia) (of stone).

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