Polish (
jezyk polski,
polszczyzna) is a
Slavic language spoken primarily in
Poland and the
native language of the
Poles. It belongs to the
Lechitic subgroup of
West Slavic languages. Polish is the
official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by
Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the official
languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the
Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic
Latin script (
a,
c,
e,
l,
n,
ó,
s,
z,
z). Polish is closely related to
Kashubian,
Lower Sorbian,
Upper Sorbian,
Czech and
Slovak.