Months in Polish
If you are travelling to Poland, knowing the names of months in Polish will come in handy, as they are both written and spoken quite differently from months in English.
Read on to learn about them!
Months of the Year in Polish
Polish language, although beautiful, is not known for making things easy for those who learn it. Although numerous Germanic and Slavic languages call their months in the same or similar way (as they all derive from Latin names), months in Polish and English are very different. Slavic month names have roots in different native languages and influences of different cultures they came in touch with during the course of time.
The Polish year is divided into four seasons: wiosna (spring), lato (summer), jesień (fall), zima (winter).
When reading Polish dates, it is important to note that they are written in the form of DD/MM/YY. So if you’re asked to type in your birthday on an official Polish document, this is how you would do it.
As for months, they first letters are not capitalized (unless they stand at the beginning of a sentence), and they are, as follows:
- January in Polish is styczeń
- February in Polish is luty
- March in Polish is marzec
- April in Polish is kwiecień
- May in Polish is maj
- June in Polish is czerwiec
- July in Polish is lipiec
- August in Polish is sierpień
- September in Polish is wrzesień
- October in Polish is październik
- November in Polish is listopad
- December in Polish is grudzień
There are numerous children’s rhymes, verses and songs that talk about months, as well as popular sayings. One of them is: ‘’kwiecień, plecień,bo przeplata, trochę zimy trochę lata’’ (talking about how April likes to mix things up - a little bit of summer, a little bit of winter…)
Looking at Polish months - when is your birthday? Don’t forget to check out our shop and gift yourself something Polish-ed!
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Peter Blinn
January 02, 2024
I notice most west Slavic languages appear to share Polish’s etymologies for their months, though the Kashubian dialect of Pomeranian differs interestingly in several of its entries. For the record, its twelve months are:
01: stëcznik (refers to tree cutting time)
02: gromicznik “Candlemas”
03: strëmiannik “Month of streams (melting snow)”
04: łżëkwiôt “Lying flower”
05: môj
06: czerwińc “Red” (refers to insect source)
07: lëpińc “Linden”
08: zélnik (refers to green plants)
09: séwnik “Sowing new grains”
10: rujan “Animal mating”
11: lëstopadnik “Falling leaves”
12: gòdnik “Christmas”
(Pomeranian’s other major dialect, Slovincian, has been extinct since World War I and, unlike Kashubian, simply borrowed the neo-Roman series like English.)