Silesian,[a] occasionally called Upper Silesian, is an ethnolect[4][5] of the Lechitic group spoken by part of people in Upper Silesia. Its vocabulary was significantly influenced by Central German due to the existence of numerous Silesian German speakers in the area prior to World War II and after.[6] The first mentions of Silesian as a distinct lect date back to the 16th century, and the first literature with Silesian characteristics to the 17th century.[7]
| Silesian | |
|---|---|
| Upper Silesian | |
| ślōnskŏ gŏdka ślůnsko godka[1] | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈɕlonskɔ ˈɡɔtka] |
| Native to | Poland (Silesian Voivodeship, Opole Voivodeship) Czech Republic (Moravia–Silesia, Jeseník) |
| Region | Silesia |
| Ethnicity | Silesians |
Native speakers | 457,900 (2021 census)[2] |
| Dialects | |
| Latin script (Steuer's alphabet and ślabikŏrzowy szrajbōnek)[3] | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | szl |
| Glottolog | sile1253 |
| ELP | Upper Silesian |
| Linguasphere | 53-AAA-cck, 53-AAA-dam |
Linguistic distinctiveness of Silesian has long been a topic of discussion among Poland's linguists, especially after all of Upper Silesia was included within the Polish borders, following World War II.[8] Some regard it as one of the four major dialects of Polish,[9][10][11][12] while others classify it as a separate regional language, distinct from Polish.[13][14][15] According to the official data from the 2021 Polish census, about 500 thousand people consider Silesian as their native language.[2] Internationally, Silesian has been fully recognized as a language since 2007, when it was accorded the ISO 639-3 registration code szl.[16]
Several efforts have been made to gain recognition for Silesian as an official regional language in Poland. Shortly before the 2007 Polish parliamentary election, the MPs of Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland, League of Polish Families, People's National Movement and the Polish People's Party submitted a bill recognizing Silesian as a regional language in Poland,[17] but the Sejm was dissolved before the bill could have been passed.[18] In April 2024, the Polish Sejm took a significant step by passing a bill recognizing it as such,[8] however, the bill was vetoed by President Andrzej Duda on 29 May 2024.[19]
Distribution
Silesian speakers currently live in the region of Upper Silesia, which is split between southwestern Poland and the northeastern Czech Republic. At present Silesian is commonly spoken in the area between the historical border of Silesia on the east and a line from Syców to Prudnik on the west as well as in the Rawicz area.
Until 1945, Silesian was also spoken in enclaves in Lower Silesia, where the majority spoke Lower Silesian, a variety of Central German. The German-speaking population was either evacuated en masse by German forces towards the end of the war or deported by the new administration upon the Polish annexation of the Silesian Recovered Territories after its end. Before World War II, most Slavic-language speakers also knew German and, at least in eastern Upper Silesia, many German speakers were acquainted with Slavic Silesian.
According to the last official census in Poland in 2021, about 460,000[2] people declared Silesian as their native language, whereas in the country's census of 2011, the figure was about 510,000.[20] In the censuses in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, nearly 900,000 people declared Silesian nationality; Upper Silesia has almost five million inhabitants, with the vast majority speaking Polish in the Polish part and declaring themselves to be Poles and the vast majority speaking Czech in the Czech part and declaring themselves to be Czechs.[20][21][22][23]
Grammar
Although the morphological differences between Silesian and Polish have been researched extensively, other grammatical differences have not been studied in depth.
A notable difference is in question-forming. In standard Polish, questions which do not contain interrogative words are formed either by using intonation or the interrogative particle czy. In Silesian, questions which do not contain interrogative words are formed by using intonation (with a markedly different intonation pattern than in Polish) or inversion (e.g. Je to na karcie?); there is no interrogative particle.
Example
According to Jan Miodek, standard Polish has always been used by Upper Silesians as a language of prayers.[24] The Lord's Prayer in Silesian, Polish, Czech, and English:
| Silesian[25] | Polish | Czech | English |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Fatrze nŏsz, kery jeżeś we niebie, |
Ojcze nasz, któryś jest w niebie, |
Otče náš, jenž jsi na nebesích, |
Our Father who art in heaven, |
Dialects of Silesian
 |
Silesian has many dialects:
- Dialects spoken in areas which are now part of Poland, former Prussian Silesia:
- Kluczbork Silesian dialect (1)
- Opole Silesian dialect (2)
- Niemodlin Silesian dialect (3)
- Prudnik Silesian dialect (4)
- Gliwice Silesian dialect (5)
- Sulkovian Silesian dialect
- Borderland Silesian-Lesser Polish dialect (6a & 6b)
- Borderland Silesian-Lach dialect (9)
- Dialects spoken on both sides of the Czech–Polish border, former Austrian Silesia:
- Cieszyn Silesian dialect (7)
- Jabłonków Silesian dialect (8)
- Lower Silesian dialect group
- Lach dialects spoken in areas which are now part of the Czech Republic, often considered linguistically apart from the ones mentioned above:
- Opava subdialect
- Ostrava subdialect
- Frenštát subdialect
Dialect vs. language
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Politicization
Opinions are divided among linguists regarding whether Silesian is a distinct language, a dialect of Polish, or, in the case of Lach, a variety of Czech. The issue can be contentious, because some Silesians consider themselves to be a distinct nationality within Poland. When Czechs, Poles, and Germans each made claims to substantial parts of Silesia as constituting an integral part of their respective nation-states in the 19th and 20th centuries, the language of Slavic-speaking Silesians became politicized.
Slavicist of Upper Silesian extraction, de:Rudolf Abicht, who worked at the University of Breslau and proposed an early standardization of the Belarusian language, clearly recognized that standardizing and making Silesian into a language is a socio-political process. In 1920, he expressed his opinion on the subject in an extensive essay on the 'Upper Silesian language question.'[26][27]
Some, like Óndra Łysohorsky (a poet and author in Czechoslovakia), saw the Silesians as being their own distinct people, which culminated in his effort to create a literary standard which he called the "Lachian language". Silesian inhabitants supporting the cause of each of these ethnic groups had their own robust network of supporters across Silesia's political borders which shifted over the course of the 20th century prior to the large-scale ethnic cleansing in the aftermath of World War II.
In 2011, Tomasz Kamusella and pl:Andrzej Roczniok published a Silesian-language article on the standardization of the Silesian language.[28]
Views
Some linguists from Poland, such as Jolanta Tambor,[29][full citation needed] Juan Lajo,[30][full citation needed] Tomasz Wicherkiewicz,[31][full citation needed] philosopher Jerzy Dadaczyński,[32][full citation needed] sociologist Elżbieta Anna Sekuła,[33][full citation needed] and sociolinguist Tomasz Kamusella,[34][35] support its status as a language. According to Stanisław Rospond, it is impossible to classify Silesian as a dialect of the contemporary Polish language because he considers it to be descended from Old Polish.[36][original research?] According to Kamusella, "between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, several popular Silesian-Polish dictionaries were published, some of which were quite extensive. Initially, they referred to Silesian as a gwara (dialect) but then increasingly termed it a language."[37]
Other Polish linguists, such as Jan Miodek and Edward Polański, do not support its status as a language.[citation needed] Jan Miodek and Dorota Simonides, both of Silesian origin, prefer to see the preservation of the entire range of Silesian dialects rather than standardization.[38] The German linguist Reinhold Olesch was greatly interested in the "Polish vernaculars" of Upper Silesia and other Slavic varieties such as Kashubian and Polabian.[39][40][41][42] Miodek argues that "there is no major grammatical feature within Silesian, which would not function simultaneously in the dialects of Lesser Poland or Greater Poland, Mazovian or Kashubian".[43]
The United States Immigration Commission in 1911 classified it as one of the dialects of Polish.[44][45] In their respective surveys of Slavic languages, most linguists writing in English, such as Alexander M. Schenker,[46] Robert A. Rothstein,[47] and Roland Sussex and Paul Cubberley[48] list Silesian as a dialect of Polish, as does Encyclopædia Britannica.[49] On the question of whether Silesian is a separate Slavic language, Gerd Hentschel wrote that "Silesian ... can thus ... without doubt be described as a dialect of Polish" ("Das Schlesische ... kann somit ... ohne Zweifel als Dialekt des Polnischen beschrieben werden").[50][51][52]
In contrast, Silesian linguist Henryk Jaroszewicz who codified Silesian, argues that Silesian constitutes a separate language, and bases his view on the need to prioritize extralinguistic factors of the intralinguistic ones:
The narrative discussed above, according to which the Silesian ethnolect is currently a dialect of the Polish language, is not acceptable in the light of contemporary linguistic theories. The basic mistake committed by the quoted researchers - J. Miodek, J. Wronicz or A. Markowski - is to adhere to the view that the status of certain linguistic codes can be determined, solely on the basis of facts of intra-linguistic nature: genetic or structural. Modern linguistics, however, proved as early as the 1960s that there are no intralinguistic criteria that would ‘stand the more serious test of verification’ and unquestionably allow one to separate languages from dialects (Haugen 1980: 169). This is because it is not intralinguistic properties, but extralinguistic features that have a decisive influence on the final arrangement of linguistic typologies. Among these, the self-consciousness of the users, ‘the will of the users and the respect for this will expressed by their fellow citizens’ (Czesak 2008a: 22), plays a key role, secondarily the steps taken by a given community to codify its own ethnolect.[43]
Polish linguist Kazimierz Polański wrote: "The problem of distinguishing languages from dialects is not a purely linguistic problem, it is rather a sociological, psychological problem. To a certain extent, it is also political. It is not possible to establish linguistic criteria to distinguish between a language and a dialect. The main issue here is linguistic awareness, which causes a linguistic community to mature at a certain point and decide to become independent: it develops a dictionary of its language, codifies the rules of its use, its spelling, choice of alphabet, etc. From this point onwards, it is possible to speak of a separate language. From this point onwards, it is possible to speak of a distinct language."[53]
Among the linguists who argue that Silesian is a language, Witold Mańczak wrote that "the defining feature between ethnolects is lexical, not grammatical, convergence".[54] In this context, Silesian has a lexical similarity of 53% with Polish;[43] similarly, English language was evaluated to have a lexical similarity of 60% with the German language.[55] Percentages higher than 85% usually indicate that the two languages being compared are likely to be related dialects.[56]
In Czechia, disagreement exists concerning the Lach dialects which rose to prominence thanks to Óndra Łysohorsky and his translator Ewald Osers.[57] While some have considered it a separate language, most now view Lach as a dialect of Czech.[58][59][60]
Phonology
Vowels
Consonants
Writing system
There have been a number of attempts at codifying the language spoken by Slavophones in Silesia. Probably the most well-known was undertaken by Óndra Łysohorsky when codifying the Lachian dialects in creating the Lachian literary language in the early 20th century.
Ślabikŏrzowy szrajbōnek is the relatively new alphabet created by the Pro Loquela Silesiana organization to reflect the sounds of all Silesian dialects. It was approved by Silesian organizations affiliated in Rada Górnośląska. Ubuntu translation is in this alphabet[62] as is some of the Silesian Wikipedia, although some of it is in Steuer's alphabet. It is used in a few books, including the Silesian alphabet book.[63]
- Letters: A, Ã, B, C, Ć, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, Ł, M, N, Ń, O, Ŏ, Ō, Ô, Õ, P, R, S, Ś, T, U, W, Y, Z, Ź, Ż.[63]
One of the first alphabets created specifically for Silesian was Steuer's Silesian alphabet, created in the Interwar period and used by Feliks Steuer for his poems in Silesian. The alphabet consists of 30 graphemes and eight digraphs:
- Letters: A, B, C, Ć, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, Ł, M, N, Ń, O, P, R, S, Ś, T, U, Ů, W, Y, Z, Ź, Ż
- Digraphs: Au, Ch, Cz, Dz, Dź, Dż, Rz, Sz
Based on the Steuer alphabet, in 2006 the Silesian Phonetic Alphabet was proposed:
- Letters: A, B, C, Ć, Č, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, Ń, O, P, R, Ř, S, Ś, Š, T, U, Ů, W, Y, Z, Ź, Ž.
Silesian's phonetic alphabet replaces the digraphs with single letters (Sz with Š, etc.) and does not include the letter Ł, whose sound can be represented phonetically with U. It is therefore the alphabet that contains the fewest letters. Although it is the most phonetically logical, it did not become popular with Silesian organizations, with the argument that it contains too many caron diacritics and hence resembles the Czech alphabet. Large parts of the Silesian Wikipedia, however, are written in Silesian's phonetic alphabet.
Sometimes other alphabets are also used, such as the "Tadzikowy muster" (for the National Dictation Contest of the Silesian language) or the Polish alphabet, but writing in this alphabet is problematic as it does not allow for the differentiation and representation of all Silesian sounds.[63]
Culture
Silesian has recently seen an increased use in culture, for example:
- Wachtyrz.eu, online news and information platform (founded in January 2018)[64]
- YouTube personalities such as Niklaus Pieron[65]
- TV and radio stations (for example: TV Silesia, Sfera TV, TVP3 Katowice, Slonsky Radio,[66] Radio Piekary, Radio Silesia, Radio Fest);
- Music groups (for example: Jan Skrzek, Krzysztof Hanke, Hasiok, Dohtor Miód, FEET);
- Theatre[67] (for example: Polterabend in Silesian Theatre[68]);
- Plays[69]
- Film (for example: The Sinful Life of Franciszek Buła ("Grzeszny żywot Franciszka Buły")
- Books (for example, the so-called Silesian Bible; poetry: "Myśli ukryte" by Karol Gwóźdź)
- Teaching aides (for example, a Silesian basal reader)[70]
Recognition
In 2003, the National Publishing Company of Silesia (Narodowa Oficyna Śląska) commenced operations.[71] This publisher was founded by the Alliance of the People of the Silesian Nation (Związek Ludności Narodowości Śląskiej) and it prints books about Silesia and books in Silesian language.
In July 2007, the Slavic Silesian language was given the ISO 639-3 code szl.[72]
On 6 September 2007, 23 politicians of the Polish parliament made a statement about a new law to give Silesian the official status of a regional language.[73]
On 7 September 2007, the MPs of Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland, League of Polish Families, People's National Movement and the Polish People's Party submitted a bill recognizing Silesian as a regional language in Poland.[17] The bill did not pass because the Sejm was dissolved before it could be voted on, triggering a snap election.[18]
The first official National Dictation Contest of the Silesian language (Ogólnopolskie Dyktando Języka Śląskiego) took place in August 2007. In dictation as many as 10 forms of writing systems and orthography have been accepted.[74][75]
On 30 January 2008 and in June 2008, two organizations promoting Silesian language were established: Pro Loquela Silesiana and Tôwarzistwo Piastowaniô Ślónskij Môwy "Danga".[76]
On 26 May 2008, the Silesian Wikipedia was founded.[77][78]
On 30 June 2008 in the edifice of the Silesian Parliament in Katowice, a conference took place on the status of the Silesian language. This conference was a forum for politicians, linguists, representatives of interested organizations and persons who deal with the Silesian language. The conference was titled "Silesian – Still a Dialect or Already a Language?" (Śląsko godka – jeszcze gwara czy jednak już język?).[79]
In 2012, the Ministry of Administration and Digitization registered the Silesian language in Annex 1 to the Regulation on the state register of geographical names;[80] however, in a November 2013 amendment to the regulation, Silesian is not included.[81]
On 26 April 2024, the Sejm voted 236-186 with five abstentions to recognise Silesian as a regional language.[82][83][84] On 29 May 2024, President Andrzej Duda vetoed the bill.[85]
On 26 June 2024, Silesian was added to the languages offered in the Google Translate service.[86][87][88]
Gallery
A waste container with the inscription in Silesian Czerwony Hasiok (red trash can)
An advertising billboard of Galeria Katowicka shopping mall that means "Black Friday. Buy something and get a bag with a graphic designed by Roobens"
A promotional poster of the ZTZ Rybnik bus company with the phrase Gryfnyj rajzy po Rybniku, which means "Have a nice trip around Rybnik"
An advertising billboard in Silesian which means "True comfort in the cinema returns to Katowice! Helios"
Public transport bus in Rybnik with the inscription "Jeżech na sztrom" (I'm electric)
"Leave the empty glasses here so there is no mess" as a cartoon speech of Jerzy Ziętek (former general and governor of Katowice) in Rebel Garden Café in Chorzów
See also
- List of Silesian-language films
- Silesian German
- Texas Silesian
- Wymysorys, West Germanic language in Wilamowice, Silesian Voivodeship
- Alzenau, East Central German dialect spoken in the former village of Hałcnów, which is now a district of Bielsko-Biała, Silesian Voivodeship
- Cieszyn Silesian
Notes
- Silesian: ślůnsko godka (Steuer's alphabet), ślōnskŏ gŏdka (Ślabikŏrzowy szrajbōnek), [ˈɕlonskɔ ˈɡɔtka]
- Czech: slezština
- Polish: język śląski, śląszczyzna
- German: Schlesisch, Schlonsakisch
References
Further reading
External links
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