Indo-European · ISO 639-3 pol · pl
Polish Language polski
Polish is an Indo-European language spoken by about 40 million people in 9 countries. It is an official language of Poland. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Polish is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Polish
About the Polish language
Polish (polski) is spoken by about 40 million people, which makes it the 44th most spoken language in the world — just behind Xiang Chinese (40 million) and ahead of Sindhi (38 million). It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Polish-Silesian group within the Balto-Slavic branch.
Where is Polish spoken?
Polish is used in 9 countries. The largest communities live in Poland (37 million), United Kingdom (2.7 million), Ukraine (855,883), Germany (243,945) and Canada (217,250). More than half of the population speaks it in Poland — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Share of the population that speaks Polish: Poland 96% (37 million), United Kingdom 4% (2.7 million), Ukraine 2.4% (855,883), Germany 0.3% (243,945), Canada 0.6% (217,250) and Israel 1.5% (141,039).
Polish is an official language in 1 country: Poland.
Writing system and status
Polish is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Kashubian, Czech, Slovak, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 pl, ISO 639-3 pol.
Frequently asked questions about Polish
How many people speak Polish?
Where is Polish spoken?
In which countries is Polish an official language?
What language family does Polish belong to?
What is Polish called in Polish?
Is Polish an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.