Polish
Polish belongs to the West Slavic subgroup of the IndoEuropean family of languages, a branch which also includes Czech and Slovak It is spoken by about 43 million people most of whom live in Poland, where it is the official language. Standard Polish is the variant spoken by most urban dwellers and is the official language of government, media, administration, and education, however dialects exist. Dialect variation corresponds to historical-geographical regions in Poland and the main dialects include: Wielkopolska (Great Poland), spoken in western Poland and Malopolska (Little Poland) spoken in southeastern Poland including the cities of Lodz, Lublin, Krakow and Rzeszow. In rural areas away from large urban areas local dialects are the norm in casual social interaction; in more formal situations code-switching beween rural modes and the standard forms of speech is common. Like other slavic languages Polish is a richly inflected language with 7 noun cases and 4 verb conjugations. Polish has borrowed extensively from German and Yiddish, and there is some borrowing from East Slavic langauges.
Sources:
UCLA Language Materials Project
Information on writing system:
Independent Study Courses Available at UCSD:
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UCSD International Center
Mingei museum of folk art
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Landmark
Theaters: foreign films
Polonia San Diego
Balboa Park House
of Pacific Relations