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Russian & Slavonic Studies

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Why Study Polish?

  • Polish is the language of 38 million new citizens of the European Union; it is also the language of an estimated 13 million people of Polish origin currently residing outside of Poland.
  • Polish is now an official EU language and the language of one of the biggest trading blocks and markets in modern Europe.
  • Central and Eastern European cultures have had a profound effect on the development of Western European thinking.
  • The changing shape of countries such as modern-day Poland, their expansion and contraction, their disappearance and partition reflect the traumas and tragedies, as much as the achievements and breakthroughs of modern European history.
  • Figures from a distant past, such as Dr Johann Faustus (magician) and Nicholas Copernicus (astronomer), figures from a more recent era such as Adam Mickiewicz (bard) and Marie Sklodowska-Curie (chemist) and contemporary figures, such as Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Lech Walesa (the legendary "Solidarity" leader) and Czeslaw Milosz (winner of Nobel prize for literature) have shaped modern European consciousness.