Language
But the pronunciation, a pure tongue twister and the size of the vocabulary and the many turns of phrase make the language a bottomless pit for someone learning it. Even the conjugation of verbs is challenging. It depends on gender, person, mood and time. It is said that there are more than five different Polish equivalents for one word in English.
Polish developed 5,000 years ago from the Urslavic language, like Czech and Slovak, and has been influenced over the centuries by Latin, German, Russian and French. However, it has a tendency to avoid internationalisms.
Polish is spoken by around 45 million people as their mother tongue. This makes it the Slavic language with the second largest number of speakers after Russian and before Ukrainian. There are also around 10 million speakers worldwide. Around 2500 of them live in Dresden.
Script
As in Hungary, Polish was initially written in Latin script. In the 10th century, when Christianity was introduced to Poland, the influence of the Latin script began to increase. In the 14th century, the Polish language was also written in Cyrillic script, due to the influence of the Orthodox Church in some regions of Poland.
In the 16th century, during the Polish Renaissance, the Latin script became predominant again. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation contributed to the development of the Polish script, as religious writings and literature played an important role.
In the 19th century, during the division of Poland, the Polish script was reformed and adapted to the needs of the Polish language. Today, Polish is written with an alphabet of 32 letters, which contains special characters to enable correct pronunciation.
Dresden spricht …
Workshops, tours, writing and printing workshops under the motto “Dresden speaks many languages”
Period
03-12.2024
Porject coordination
Yvonn Spauschus (Projektleitung)
Yulia Vishnichenko · Moussa Mbarek · Nadine Wölk · Rosa Brockelt · Yuliya Firsova · Martin Mannig (workshop leader)
Rosa Brockelt · Rosa Hauch · Falk Goernert · Birthe Mühlhoff (moderation, documentation)
Adina Rieckmann · Lydia Hänsel (tourguides)
Inge · Mahsa · Karin (voluntary help)
Cooperation partners
JugendKunstschule Dresden – Standort Passage, Omse e.V., Nachbarschaftshilfeverein, Stadtteilverein Johannstadt e.V., Malteser Hilfsdienste e.V., Jugendhaus LILA as well as Chinesisch-Deutsches Zentrum e.V., Lebenshilfe Dresden e.V., GEH8 Kunstraum und Ateliers e.V., Umweltzentrum Dresden – ABC Tische and many more
Supported by
The project is funded by the State Ministry for Social Affairs and Social Cohesion. This measure is co-financed with tax funds on the basis of the budget passed by the Saxon state parliament within the framework of the state programme Integrative Maßnahmen.
