West Slavic language of Poland, spoken by more than 41 million people, including 23 million in North America and perhaps 1.
5 million in the former Soviet Union. The earliest continuous text in Polish dates from the 14th century. The standard language, formulated in the 16th century, combines features of western and southeastern dialects. Polish is written in the Latin alphabet and utilizes both digraphs (combinations of letters) and diacritics to distinguish its fairly elaborate repertory of consonants. Stress is fixed on the next-to-last syllable.