A recent study found that artificial intelligence understands Polish better than any other language, with English trailing in sixth place. Conducted by the University of Maryland and Microsoft, the research examined 26 languages to determine which ones AI systems process most effectively.
The results surprised the research team. “English did not rank highest,” the authors noted. “It placed sixth for long-text tasks, while Polish led across models.” The study involved major systems from OpenAI, Google Gemini, Qwen, Llama, and DeepSeek, all tested using identical prompts.
AI Excels Where People Struggle
Polish achieved an average accuracy rate of 88%, proving to be the most effective for communicating with AI. The Polish Patent Office commented, “Humans may find Polish difficult to learn, but AI understands it perfectly.” Despite limited Polish data available for training, machines processed it with remarkable precision.
Chinese, however, ranked near the bottom, finishing fourth from last out of all 26 tested languages.
The Languages AI Understands Best
The ten languages AI handled most effectively were, in order: Polish at 88%, French at 87%, Italian at 86%, Spanish at 85%, Russian at 84%, English at 83.9%, Ukrainian at 83.5%, Portuguese at 82%, German at 81%, and Dutch at 80%.
The researchers concluded that AI proficiency does not always depend on data volume or linguistic simplicity. In this case, a language considered one of the hardest for humans became the easiest for machines to comprehend.
