The Polish language derives from the Proto-Slavic language. In the old days, all Slavic peoples used a similar language, but from the 5th to the 9th century CE. they expanded from their headquarters on the middle Dnieper and took over vast territories from the Balkans to what is now eastern Germany. Due to the great distance between the tribes, the languages they used began to differ more and more.
We distinguish three groups of Slavic languages: eastern, southern and western. The latter also includes Polish along with Czech and Slovak. The first sentence in Polish, certified in the sources, comes from the so-called Book of Henrykowska and it reads: “Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai”. For a long time it was the language of the people, without codified grammar and rules, while the official language used in Poland was Latin. This began to change in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the first Latin-Polish dictionaries and books written entirely in this language were created.
Over the centuries, the Polish language has evolved, drawing many words from Latin and German. In the 20th century, dialects were finally unified and today Polish is largely a homogeneous language, with the exception of minor regional differences.
