One can trace the roots of the Polish language (Polski) back to the Eastern Indo-European group. From then, it branched into the Slavic language, again branching into the Western Slavic afterwards. 

Around the 9th century AD, 'Old Polish' begun to develop during the next six centuries. It was Mieszko I who first united several tribes culturally related with his Polan tribe, and created the Polish State in the area called the Greater Polland (Wielkoposka).

Around the end of the 10th century, and with the introduction of the Latin alphabet, Polish starts to be written. It became an official language in the Jagiellonian dynasty (1386-1569), alongside Latin.

Between 1500 and 1700, Polish was a lingua franca due mainly to its close relation to other Slavic languages like Czech, Lithuanian and Ukrainian, which differ slightly on pronunciation and grammar. It is said that Poles can understand Russian, but the reverse doesn't happen so well.

Between 1795 and 1918 Poland was erased from the map, when it was divided between the Russian Empire, Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia (later on called Germany).

Later on, during both world wars, Polish suffered major influence from the Germanic languages gaining an array of loanwords from them.

Modern Polish

Modern Polish is the result of these developments and the influence of that boiling and melting pot Central Europe has always been. In the Slavic Group and after Russian, Polish is the most spoken language in that area, being spoken by 97% of Poles in Poland, making it the most homogeneous language in Europe.

There are 4 main dialects in Poland:

• Greater Polish

• Lesser Polish

• Masovian

• Silesian

And a separate language which is closely related:

• Kashubian

They added nine letters to the Latin alphabet:

• Ą, Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź, Ż;

And seven diagraphs (pairs of letters representing individual sounds):

• CH, CZ, DZ, DŹ, DŻ, RZ, SZ

• Z is the most common letter

• Ł reads as W

• W reads as V

• KS is used instead of X

• No use of V or Q

They can have as much as 5 consonants clusters:

• Bezwzgledny = Ruthless

Some consonants are voiced while some others are not, depending on their position in the word. The devoicing is what makes it not a fully phonetic language, together with the fact that some sounds lost their distinction.

• Ź / RZ – CH / H – U / Ó

They don't use definitive or indefinite articles.

The normal grammar order is SVO (Subject/Verb/Object), but words can freely move around due to the fact that Polish is a highly inflated language, with nouns among other words having case endings, which tell the function of the word in the sentence.

There are seven types of case endings, all with different endings for singular and plural:

1. Nominative

2. Genitive

3. Dative

4. Accusative

5. Instrumental

6. Locative

7. Vocative

For instance, the number "two" has about 72 forms and “both” around 50.

Adjectives also agree with nouns in gender, number and case and have their own set of endings. 

There are three genders: 

1. Neutral 

2. Masculine

3. Feminine.

They use double negative:

• Miasto nigdy nie śpi = The city never don't sleep (The city never sleeps)

It's estimated that Polish language has around 200,000 words, which is quite a lot compared to English, which most estimations put at around 170,000.