# Silesian (and its relationship to standard Polish)



## LilianaB

EDIT: Moved from HERE.

Silesian is a dialect which is by some considered a dialect of Polish, but it is also present in Slovakia, and some consider it a dialect of Slovak as well, or at least a separate Slavic dialect. Many consider it a separate dialect or even a language, but a language is apparently a dialect with a government and an army, as somebody said. It is very different from Polish, and as far as I am concerned it is a separate Slavic dialect with very distinct phonetic patterns: the vowel o often replaces a - Polish a for example. Short i is replaced with y. Nie - in Polish- Nye in Silesian. There are many other features I cannot think about right now. The syntax has a lot of influences from German as well as the vocabulary related to objects especially, things of everyday use are mostly of German origin. A lot of nouns tend to be borrowed from German, whereas verbs are usually of Slavic origin.


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## marco_2

LilianaB said:


> Silesian is a dialect which is by some considered a dialect of Polish, but it is also present in Slovakia, and some consider it a dialect of Slovak as well, or at least a separate Slavic dialect. Many consider it a separate dialect or even a language, but a language is apparently a dialect with a government and an army, as somebody said. It is very different from Polish, and as far as I am concerned it is a separate Slavic dialect with very distinct phonetic patterns: the vowel o often replaces a - Polish a for example. Short i is replaced with y. Nie - in Polish- Nye in Silesian. There are many other features I cannot think about right now. The syntax has a lot of influences from German as well as the vocabulary related to objects especially, things of everyday use are mostly of German origin. A lot of nouns tend to be borrowed from German, whereas verbs are usually of Slavic origin.



Hm, from the linguistic point of view Silesian is a dialect of Polish and people who claim that it is a separate language have their own political aims, but it is not the place for political debates. Apart from Poland the Silesian dialect exists mostly in the Czech Republic (Cieszyn / Česky Tešin region); in Slovakia there were only some separate villages close to the town of Czaca / Čadca; I wonder if they still exist). There is only one linguistic feature which we can call typically Silesian - it is lack of full paralelism in development between _ę _and the group _e + N, _and _a + N, _e.g. _rynka / ranka, zymby / zamby, ciymny. _The pronunciation _pon, wos _instead of _pan, was _(long _a _became similar to _o_) is typical for all root Polish dialects. All the German loans in vocabulary and syntaxis are typical for towns and cities when people had to attend German schools, they are scarce in the country.


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## LilianaB

Yes, Silesian was considered a Polish dialect when there was a lot of coal in Silesia. There are many linguistic features which separate this dialect from Polish. It is almost unintelligible to Polish speaking people. The same is true about Kashubian. German loans are present in Silesian in general, not just in certain cities. Those words are just a part of Silesian vocabulary. Silesian syntax is much different from Polish as well. I would personally call it a separate Slavic dialect. Your examples are not correct, except wos, but there many distinctive features. Pan/Pani is not used in Silesian, instead the the third person plural is used. rynka is not a Silesian word. Ciymny is not Silesian either. It is cymny, with soft c. ie - in Polish cognates is pronounced as y in Silesian. A is often pronounced as o, almost o. _ę _is
pronounced as a. Ida, widza. There are many more different features but I can't think about them right now.


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## marco_2

LilianaB said:


> Yes, Silesian was considered a Polish dialect when there was a lot of coal in Silesia. There are many linguistic features which separate this dialect from Polish. It is almost unintelligible to Polish speaking people. The same is true about Kashubian. German loans are present in Silesian in general, not just in certain cities. Those words are just a part of Silesian vocabulary. Silesian syntax is much different from Polish as well. I would personally call it a separate Slavic dialect. Your examples are not correct, except wos, but there many distinctive features. Pan/Pani is not used in Silesian, instead the the third person plural is used. rynka is not a Silesian word. Ciymny is not Silesian either. It is cymny, with soft c. ie - in Polish cognates is pronounced as y in Silesian. A is often pronounced as o, almost o. _ę _is
> pronounced as a. Ida, widza. There are many more different features but I can't think about them right now.



There is still a lot of coal in Silesia and it doesn't change objective facts. Silesia covers cca 60,000 sq.km. (twice as much as Belgium) and there are a lot of dialects on its territory, so you cannot say which form is more or less Silesian or truly Silesian. _Ida, widza _are the remnants of nasal _a, _which existed for some time on the whole Polish area and examples of the phenomenon I mentioned in my previous post. There are a lot of books on this subject written by Polish and German linguists (born in Silesia, so they are not partial). And _Pan / Pani _wasn't used by Polish peasants (if they didn't speak to a landowners or townspeople) anywhere in Poland up to the 1920s.


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## LilianaB

My post was referring to Silesian dialect, it is a specific dialect, not to different dialects present in the Silesian territory after WW2. The books written for years about this dialect were either to prove that Silesian was almost literary Polish, or almost German, or at least fully saturated with German words, depending who wanted the territory. I am only interested in language, but some fairness should be done. There weren't too many peasants in Silesia, I guess, not of the kind bound to their master, plus the landowners were not Polish, so people did not address them as Pan/Pani.


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## marco_2

LilianaB said:


> My post was referring to Silesian dialect, it is a specific dialect, not to different dialects present in the Silesian territory after WW2. The books written for years about this dialect were either to prove that Silesian was almost literary Polish, or almost German, or at least fully saturated with German words, depending who wanted the territory. I am only interested in language, but some fairness should be done. There weren't too many peasants in Silesia, I guess, not of the kind bound to their master, plus the landowners were not Polish, so people did not address them as Pan/Pani.



I am also writing about the Silesian dialects, not the dialects of people who settled down in Silesia after 1945. Neither prof.Bąk nor other philologists have ever written that Silesian dialect is "almost literary Polish" - they have always highlighted that the dialect preserved a lot of old Polish words which also existed in other Polish dialects but didn't enter the literary Polish language (due to obvious political situation). In Silesia there aren't only coal mines but also green cultivated fields and there have always been peasants, and they addressed each other using plural _wy _like everywhere in Poland. When they talked to educated Poles from the other parts of the country, they used the word _pan _with a German plural construction, e.g. _Wiedzom oni, panie rechtór? (Wissen Sie, Herr Rektor?) _Anyway, the topic is Inter-Slavic Isoglosses and we dominated it with an off-topic dispute which is interested but maybe not for everyone.


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## LilianaB

I am very sorry, Marco, but your knowledge of Silesian, Silesian culture and Silesia is based on books written during the communist era. It has very little to do with the reality. Do you actually believe that anybody, even a very educated person spoke Polish in Upper Silesia before 1920? The last time these lands belonged to Poland was in the 13th century, and even before Silesian culture was very distinct. The only Polish paper was only published for some two years in the 19th century. Many people had sentiments towards other Slavic cultures, but there was no Polish as such in Silesia before 1920. The very educated usually spoke German, and Silesian at home, or just German. The common people spoke mostly Silesian, although they had German in schools. It also depended on personal sympathies. So, Silesian should not be thrown at as a weird version of Polish: it is a different dialect, or even language. I am interested if there are any distinct features which distinguish the Silesian from Slovakia, and from the Czech Republic from the Upper Silesian dialect.


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## TriglavNationalPark

MOD NOTE: I've created a new thread for the ongoing discussion of Silesian and its relationship to standard Polish. Nevertheless, I would like to ask you to avoid political arguments (especially because the distinction between a dialect and a language is often arbitrary) and to focus instead on the linguistic features of Silesian.


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## LilianaB

Thank you, TringlavNationalPark. I am interested in language, not in politics so much. Some political background is sometimes necessary to understand the socio-linguistic conditions. I am just interested in specific linguistic features of Silesian as a dialect present in Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The differences between different versions of this dialect are interesting to me, too.


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## marco_2

LilianaB said:


> I am very sorry, Marco, but your knowledge of Silesian, Silesian culture and Silesia is based on books written during the communist era. It has very little to do with the reality. Do you actually believe that anybody, even a very educated person spoke Polish in Upper Silesia before 1920? The last time these lands belonged to Poland was in the 13th century, and even before Silesian culture was very distinct. The only Polish paper was only published for some two years in the 19th century. Many people had sentiments towards other Slavic cultures, but there was no Polish as such in Silesia before 1920. The very educated usually spoke German, and Silesian at home, or just German. The common people spoke mostly Silesian, although they had German in schools. It also depended on personal sympathies. So, Silesian should not be thrown at as a weird version of Polish: it is a different dialect, or even language. I am interested if there are any distinct features which distinguish the Silesian from Slovakia, and from the Czech Republic from the Upper Silesian dialect.



Liliana, I'm sorry but following your reasoning I could write that your knowledge of Silesia is based on some propagandist brochures printed by Siwinna in the 19th century or by RAŚ activists. And why Polish books weren't printed for a long time in Prussia, you should ask Chancellor Bismarck or Prussian emperors - it is necessary to know historical and political background if you want to understand the linguistic situation in Silesia. But history and politics apart: could you name any linguistic features which make the Silesian dialect so exceptional and different from other Polish dialects (because philologists give only one)?


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## LilianaB

Which one do linguists give? Marco, how can I take your linguists seriously, if even most the examples of Silesian words you provided are wrong. There are many linguistic features that distinguish Silesian from Polish. I provided three or four of the. Another one is ą is usually pronounced as om or even on, with dark o, kind of: I am not too good with describing sounds like some nations cannot describe colors. I know exactly how most things sound in many languages, but I cannot or refuse to describe sounds. I found phonetics the most boring part of linguistic studies, but now it would really be useful  to describe different sounds. Almost all sounds in Silesian are pronounced differently than in Polish, especially the vowels.


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## marco_2

marco_2 said:


> There is only one linguistic feature which we can call typically Silesian - it is lack of full paralelism in development between _ę _and the group _e + N, _and _a + N, _e.g. _rynka / ranka, zymby / zamby, ciymny._


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## LilianaB

What are these words: rynka?
                               ranka?
                               zymby is is teeth, probably, but it is zeyby, sort of
                               zamby
                               ciymny - cymny - dark


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## marco_2

So Polish nasal _ę _in the southern part of Silesia is pronounced "narrowly": _rynka _(a hand), _zymby _(teeth) etc. whereas in the north "broadly": _ranka, zamby, _at the end of the word in many dialects nasality disapears: _Widza ta baba _or _Widzam ta babam _(I can see this woman). Of course I am using conventional letters here, and the net of isoglosses connecting particular Silesian regions and even villages is rather complicated, there are some transitional regions etc.


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## marco_2

LilianaB said:


> Which one do linguists give? Marco, how can I take your linguists seriously, if even most the examples of Silesian words you provided are wrong. There are many linguistic features that distinguish Silesian from Polish. I provided three or four of the. Another one is ą is usually pronounced as om or even on, with dark o.



This feature is typical for most of Polish dialects: _robiom, idom _you can hear in Wielkopolska, Małopolska and Mazowsze, _oni robio, ido _is popular in Kielecczyzna, where nasality disapeared, and in Podlasie on Belorussian border.


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## LilianaB

Robiom, idom is not really the main Silesian dialect, the one from Upper Silesia that has been granted the status of a language as opposed to a dialect by the American Library of Congress. This might be something from the  Beskida Mountains version of Silesian. The vowels typical for Silesian are not present in any other dialect in Poland, most vowels as I said before are different from Polish. Some vowels in Kashubian may be similar. The o is totally different than the o in dialects near Podlasie. It is a very deep, long o bordering on y. Explanation: robiom pronounced the way you indicated is not the main Silesian dialect. It could be written out this way, though. There is a special alphabet to transcribe Silesian. You could have a look. It is very hard to transcribe this language in commonly used Latin letters or even Polish alphabet, with the diacritics added, since it as a very different phonetic system.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/silesian.php


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## marco_2

I looked carefully at this alphabet (not for the first time though) and I found only one different vowel: ů. I also looked at vocal systems of other Polish dialects (excluding Silesian and Kashubian) and I stated that the only vowels that are pronounced the same as in literary Polish are: (the former short) *a*, (the former short) *e*, *i *and *u*, the others are pronounced in a various way in separate dialects. And it is only phonetics we are comparing here - I don't think that if someone says: _robiům _instead of _robią, robiom _or _robio_, you should create a new language for them.


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## LilianaB

Do you understand this dialect without any problems, as a Polish speaking person? The articles in Wikipedia are written in moderate Silesian with more Slavic vocabulary as opposed to German, which is more present in certain variants of Silesian. Is it comprehensible? Do you think the Committee which decides which dialects should be called languages is a group of lay people interested in politics, or something of that sort, the committee by the US Library of Congress? Why would Polish linguists insist that Silesian is Polish with one feature that distinguishes it from Polish? Why do those lies have to go on from the communist era? This has always been a way to put down Silesian culture and make fun of people whose language was different by the people who treated it as a weird version of Polish. Here is a small sample:

http://szl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przodńo_zajta


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## marco_2

If I had never been to Silesia or had never studied Polish dialectology, I may have had problems with understanding some separate words, but the same could have happened in other parts of Poland. I'm sure that the average Pole wouldn't understand the sentence _Uślumprany bubek wypłechtoł szkity w wymborku _if he/she never visited Greater Poland (Wielkopolska) or the sentence _Wyczmychaj bodiaki ze sztanów _not being in contact with people from Eastern Galicia. Why do you always refer to communist era? - Silesian dialects were described long before WW2 by philologists who had nothing in common with communism. Neither Silesian nor other dialects were ever laughed at in Poland - who told you such nonsense? - they have always been our heritage. If Polish linguists' works are a pack of lies, they should be refuted by other specialists but with the decent counter-arguments, that's all. I wouldn't like to express my opinion on this committee by the US Library of Congress, they just indulge in multiplying languages. By the way: do you also consider žemaiteška a separate language?


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## LilianaB

I don't know what my opinion is about zemaiteska. I do not know anything about this dialect at all. I don't even like speaking in a dialect: literary languages have more appeal to me  I can't imagine myself speaking in any dialect which has mostly vernacular, no literary language. How would one express more complex ideas? How would you talk about philosophy or literature in this kind of dialect? Language reflects the interests of the people, their social position and the life the people who speak it have lived. Silesian is a working class dialect, the way it has developed. I don't think it has its origin in the Polish language, but it is a separate West Slavic languages which developed from the times of the Silesian Piasts. It is not degenerated Polish. My understanding of Silesian is about 99%. If the things you said were true, this would have been really great for the people who speak Silesian as their native language. Unfortunately, I think this has never been this way.


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## marco_2

So, Liliana, you see how it works: you think that Žemaiteška is a dialect (and I think you are right) but there are people who say that it is a separate language, spoken by 400,000 people and they aim for its standardization. And in a couple of years the Committee by the Library of US Congress will label it with its code. 
I live in Lower Silesia but I have some friends from Upper Silesia and when I showed them this "Silesian" website in Wikipedia some years ago, they said it is some artificial Wasserpolnisch and if they hadn't studied German, they wouldn't have understood many of these Germanisms. _Zajta, tajla, ajnflus, szauszpiler, bajszpil - _it sounded like a joke for them or an attempt to mock the Silesian dialect.


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## LilianaB

I called this language a dialect, because I know nothing about it. I did not call it a dialect of Czech or Slovak, though. I call Silesian often a dialect: I just do not think it is a dialect of Polish. The word dialect can mean many things in fact. The problem is not whether Silesian is called a dialect or a language: the problem is that Silesian is not a weird version of Polish, as some would refer to it. That's all. As for Wikipedia. I don't know if they added too many German words. My personal experience is that Silesian has a lot of German words, almost all words denoting objects of everyday use are of German origin. This is the way older people used to speak it. Now, young people in Silesia probably just speak Polish with a slight Silesian accent. It is just an interesting culture, and  it should not vanish.


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## marco_2

Silesian is not a weird version of Polish and nor is the dialect of our highlanders or inhabitants of Greater Poland - the word "weird" carries a certain imprint of offence to people who speak dialect. I have a collection of 26 Silesian texts printed in 1929. They are records made by Polish and German folklorists and philologists throughout the all Silesia (the oldest was from 1869) and believe me that the German words are scarce. The language of Silesian website is surely based on the jargon of big industrial cities of Upper Silesia but is it really representative of Silesian people? - I have some doubts.


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## LilianaB

It is not my idea about the weird version of a literary language: this is how Silesian has been always perceived by the common folk in Poland, I mean the majority, except some more educated people. I would be interested to see those samples. Could you post them somehow. I don't need them not to refute your claims or anything like that: I am simply interested in them. Thank you.


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## Duya

Without prejudice about status of Silesian, wouldn't be this thread much better suited for Polish subforum? If anything else, it would probably have much broader input than you two.


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