EN
The starting point for our reflection is the observation that the notion of nation has been gaining importance for Poles since the beginning of the 18th c. The political situation provoked viewing the history of the language through the prism of the nation’s fate. This left a stamp on the most important works in the field, in particular on Z. Klemensiewicz’s monumental Historia języka polskiego (‘History of the Polish language’), but also on the works of I. Bajerowa, T. Lehr-Spławiński and S. Urbańczyk. Regarding the history of Polish as the history of the language of the Polish nation has never been reappraised as yet. The author refers to the evolution of sociological concepts and considers the political, ethnogenealogical and cultural understanding of nation (Demos, Ethnos and Kulturnation respectively) to eventually declare his support for the latter. New interpretations of national culture are discussed, as they appear in the works of sociologists (A. Kłosowska, J. Kurczewska), historians and literary historians (A. Borowski, P. Bukowiec, L. Marinelli and E. Prokop-Janiec), in order to justify the postulate of introducing a new view on Polish into the linguists’ consciousness. The interpretation proposed here holds that not only those who were born Polish, are carriers of the language but also the representatives of national and ethnic minorities, immigrants and foreigners who learned Polish for various reasons. Thus understood, the user base learns and uses the language as L1 (Poles and people of Polish descent in different countries of residence), L2 (members of national and ethnic minorities, immigrants) or as a foreign language (foreigners). The phenomenon that the representatives of all these social groups use Polish, is suggested to be called polonofonia (‘polonophony’), to match the pattern of Fr. francophonie, Port. lusofonia. The author believes that future historical linguistic research should devote more space to Polish as L2 and as a foreign language. So far, history of the Polish language seen as the language of users of non-Polish descent, only occurred outside of the mainstream of Polish linguistics, in the works of such authors as M. Strycharska- -Brzezina, A. Burzyńska, A. Dąbrowska and W. Miodunka. Polish linguistics has till now paid little attention to such phenomena as bilingualism, multilingualism, linguistic and cultural contact, and to case studies of bilinguals, e.g. of Polish romantic authors. This ought to change. The author claims that such a view on the Polish language entails a change in the perception of its strength. It turns out that the language was taught as a foreign language to Germans as early as the first half of the 16th c., that it was used as L2 by the representatives of national minorities in the times of the First and Second Polish Republic, that members of other nations have for ages been accepting the Polish language and culture as their own, and not only were Poles becoming denationalized. When viewed from this perspective, Polish appears as one of the more eminent European languages, and also one that is particularly important for communication in Central and Eastern Europe.