page_title: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
section_title: Languages
hierarchical_section_title: Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth / Culture / Languages
context_page_description: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth – formally, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, after 1791, the Commonwealth of Poland – was a country and bi-federation of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch in real union, who was both King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. It was one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th- to 17th-century Europe. At its largest territorial extent, in the early 17th century, the Commonwealth covered almost 1,000,000 square kilometres and as of 1618 sustained a multi-ethnic population of almost 12 million. Polish and Latin were the two co-official languages.
  The Commonwealth was established by the Union of Lublin in July 1569, but the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been in a de facto personal union since 1386 with the marriage of the Polish queen Hedwig and Lithuania's Grand Duke Jogaila, who was crowned King jure uxoris Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland.
context_section_description: Polish – officially recognized; dominant language, used by most of the Commonwealth's nobility and by the peasantry in the Crown province; official language in the Crown chancellery and since 1697 in the Grand Duchy chancellery. Dominant language in the towns.
  Latin – off. recog.; commonly used in foreign relations and popular as a second language among some of the nobility.
  French – not officially recognized; replaced Latin at the royal court in Warsaw in the beginning of the 18th century as a language used in foreign relations and as genuine spoken language. It was commonly used as a language of science and literature and as a second language among some of the nobility.
  Ruthenian – also known as Chancellery Slavonic; off. recog.; official language in the Grand Duchy chancellery until 1697 (when replaced by Polish); used in some foreign relations its dialects (modern Belarusian and Ukrainian) were widely used in the Grand Duchy and eastern parts of the Crown as spoken language.
  Lithuanian – not officially recognised; but used in some official documents in the Grand Duchy and, mostly, used as a spoken language in the northern most part of the country (in Lithuania Proper) and the northern part of Ducal Prussia (Polish fief).
  German – off. recog.; used in some foreign relations, in Ducal Prussia and by minorities in the cities especially in the Royal Prussia.
  Hebrew – off. recog.; and Aramaic used by Jews for religious, scholarly, and legal matters.
  Yiddish – not officially recognized; used by Jews in their daily life
  Italian – not officially recognised; used in some foreign relations and by Italian minorities in cities.
  Armenian – off. recog. used by the Armenian minority.
  Arabic – not officially recognised; used in some foreign relations and by Tatars in their religious matters, they also wrote Ruthenian in the Arabic script.
caption: First anniversary anthem of the Constitution of 3 May 1791 (1792) in Hebrew, Polish, German and French
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