A global study by the University of Maryland and Microsoft found that artificial intelligence understands Polish better than any other language. English, often assumed to be AI’s native tongue, only placed sixth. The researchers tested 26 languages across leading AI systems from OpenAI, Google Gemini, Qwen, Llama, and DeepSeek to see which produced the most accurate responses.
Their findings surprised even the experts. “English did not come first,” the report noted. “It ranked sixth when evaluating long-form text, while Polish produced the strongest results overall.”
Machines Excel at a Language Humans Find Hard
Polish achieved an average accuracy score of 88%, far surpassing expectations. “Polish turns out to be the most exact language for AI commands,” said the Polish Patent Office. “Humans struggle to master it, but AI does not.”
The result astonished researchers because Polish data makes up only a fraction of the information used to train global AI systems. Chinese, which dominates AI training datasets, ranked near the bottom—just four places from last.
Languages Where AI Performs Best
The study ranked the most effective languages for AI communication in this order: Polish first with 88%, followed by French at 87%, Italian at 86%, and Spanish at 85%. Russian placed fifth with 84%, then came English at 83.9%, Ukrainian at 83.5%, Portuguese at 82%, German at 81%, and Dutch at 80%.
The researchers concluded that AI comprehension doesn’t depend on how simple or widely used a language is. Ironically, one of the hardest languages for humans turned out to be the one machines understand best.
