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105-619: The Frog House stands on Bielsko-Biała 's Polish Army Square ( plac Wojska Polskiego ). 49°49′25.8″N 19°3′5.4″E  /  49.823833°N 19.051500°E  / 49.823833; 19.051500 This article about a Polish building or structure is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about Art Nouveau is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Bielsko-Bia%C5%82a Bielsko-Biała ( Polish: [ˈbjɛlskɔ ˈbjawa] ; Czech : Bílsko-Bělá ; German : Bielitz-Biala , Silesian : Biylsko-Biołŏ ; Wymysorys : Byłc-Bejł )

210-438: A grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender . The values present in a given language, of which there are usually two or three, are called

315-559: A 2020 report by the IQAir company, it was ranked thirty-eighth in Europe and fifth in Poland. The biggest contributor to air pollution is the fact that many households, including in the inner city area, still use traditional heating systems based on burning coal. The environmental situation in the city has been gradually improving in recent years. This is influenced by municipal measures such as

420-400: A bridge ( German : Brücke , f. ) more often used the words 'beautiful', 'elegant', 'pretty', and 'slender', while Spanish speakers, whose word for bridge is masculine ( puente , m. ), used 'big', 'dangerous', 'strong', and 'sturdy' more often. However, studies of this kind have been criticized on various grounds and yield an unclear pattern of results overall. A noun may belong to

525-699: A castle (which still survives today) was built on a hill. In the second half of the 13th century, the Piast dukes of Opole invited German settlers to colonize the Silesian Foothills . As the dukes then also ruled over the Lesser Poland lands east of the Biała River, settlements arose on both banks like Bielitz (now Stare Bielsko ), Nickelsdorf ( Mikuszowice Śląskie ), Kamitz ( Kamienica ), Batzdorf ( Komorowice Śląskie ) and Kurzwald in

630-592: A forest-park complex on the model of the Vienna Forest with many summer villas of Bielsko's factory owners built in its surroundings. However, the demographic boom was weaker than, for example, in the Upper Silesian conurbation , due to the restriction of the settlement of workers in the city proper. Many of them lived in the surrounding villages, which formally remained separate, even though they were taking on an increasingly urban character. According to

735-470: A fortified settlement in what is now the Stare Bielsko (Old Bielsko) district of the city were discovered between 1933 and 1938 by a Polish archaeological team. The settlement was dated to the 12th – 14th centuries. Its dwellers manufactured iron from ore and specialized in smithery . The current centre of the town was probably developed as early as the first half of the 13th century. At that time

840-401: A given class because of characteristic features of its referent , such as sex, animacy, shape, although in some instances a noun can be placed in a particular class based purely on its grammatical behavior. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each. Many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in

945-445: A language relate to sex, such as when an animate –inanimate distinction is made. Note, however, that the word "gender" derives from Latin genus (also the root of genre ) which originally meant "kind", so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning. A classifier, or measure word , is a word or morpheme used in some languages together with a noun, principally to enable numbers and certain other determiners to be applied to

1050-462: A language which uses classifiers normally has a number of different ones, used with different sets of nouns. These sets depend largely on properties of the things that the nouns denote (for example, a particular classifier may be used for long thin objects, another for flat objects, another for people, another for abstracts, etc.), although sometimes a noun is associated with a particular classifier more by convention than for any obvious reason. However it

1155-814: A long time, they were administratively combined for the first time by the Nazi authorities after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Biała became a district of Bielsko under the name Bielitz-Ost . During the World War II , the city belonged to the Third Reich , within the province of Upper Silesia . Germans committed various crimes against the Polish and Jewish population. Several Polish teachers and principals were deported to Nazi concentration camps and murdered there. Many Jewish residents were murdered at

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1260-580: A monument to Martin Luther was unveiled there. It was one of only two in the whole of Austria-Hungary (the other was erected in the Bohemian town of Aš ), and now is the only one within the borders of Poland. In the second half of the 19th century, Lutherans ceased to constitute the majority of the population due to the influx of new inhabitants, mostly Catholic or Jewish. After the Prussian king Frederick

1365-455: A negative impact on human health and can also have destructive effects on buildings, especially historical ones. Pollution from traffic is concentrated within densely built-up areas known as "street canyons." The city's air quality is significantly influenced by transregional factors, such as the influx of pollutants from neighboring municipalities. The quality of the water flowing through the city has been gradually improving. However, in 2022,

1470-417: A noun manifests itself in two principal ways: in the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, and in modifications of other related words ( agreement ). Grammatical gender manifests itself when words related to a noun like determiners , pronouns or adjectives change their form ( inflect ) according to the gender of noun they refer to ( agreement ). The parts of speech affected by gender agreement,

1575-475: A result of disputes with the Lipnik municipality, which refused to give up part of its territory, even though the western part of Lipnik formed an urban and functional unity with Biała. West Lipnik also formed the de facto Jewish quarter of Biała , due to the official ban on Jewish settlement in the town, which was in effect from 1757 to 1848. Joachim Adler's cloth factory, considered the first mechanized factory in

1680-618: A single industrial region with Bielsko, also with a predominance of textile industry . From 1867 it was the capital of Biała County . At the turn of the 20th century, a number of "Vienna-like" buildings were constructed in Biała, too, including a pompous Neo-Renaissance town hall in 1895–1897. According to the 1910 census, Biała had a population of 8,668. 69.3% used German in their domestic interactions, 29.3% used Polish , and 1.4% used another language (mainly Czech or Ukrainian ). 72.1% were Roman Catholic , 17,7% Jewish and 12.3% Lutheran . Of

1785-497: A system include later forms of Proto-Indo-European (see below ), Sanskrit , some Germanic languages , most Slavic languages , a few Romance languages ( Romanian , Asturian and Neapolitan ), Marathi , Latin , and Greek . Here nouns that denote animate things (humans and animals) generally belong to one gender, and those that denote inanimate things to another (although there may be some deviation from that principle). Examples include earlier forms of Proto-Indo-European and

1890-554: A town in the 17th century, Biała officially was granted borough rights by the Polish king Augustus II the Strong in 1723. At that time it counted only 40 inhabited houses and about 300 residents, mostly German-speaking and Lutheran . There has been a new urban layout made, in the center of which was a rectangular market square - today's Wojska Polskiego Square . In the course of the First Partition of Poland in 1772, Biała

1995-542: A way that sounds like the masculine declensions in South-Eastern Norwegian dialects. The same does not apply to Swedish common gender, as the declensions follow a different pattern from both the Norwegian written languages. Norwegian Nynorsk , Norwegian Bokmål and most spoken dialects retain masculine, feminine and neuter even if their Scandinavian neighbors have lost one of the genders. As shown,

2100-601: Is a city in southern Poland, with a population of approximately 166,765 as of December 2022, making it the 22nd largest city in Poland , and an area of 124.51 km (48.07 sq mi). It is the core of the broader metropolitan area with around 335,000 inhabitants. It serves as the seat of the Bielsko County , Euroregion Beskydy , Roman Catholic Diocese of Bielsko–Żywiec and the Evangelical Church Diocese of Cieszyn . Situated north of

2205-492: Is a third available gender, so nouns with sexless or unspecified-sex referents may be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. There are also certain exceptional nouns whose gender does not follow the denoted sex, such as the German Mädchen , meaning "girl", which is neuter. This is because it is actually a diminutive of "Magd" and all diminutive forms with the suffix -chen are neuter. Examples of languages with such

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2310-463: Is also an important commercial and industrial hub, as well as a road and railway junction. It is a significant tourist destination due to its numerous architectural monuments (a popular slogan Little Vienna refers to many Revivalist and Art Nouveau buildings shaping the cityscape of the central districts) and its direct proximity to the mountains (fourteen mountain peaks lie within the city limits). Both Bielsko and Biała derive their names from

2415-534: Is also found in Dravidian languages . (See below .) It has been shown that grammatical gender causes a number of cognitive effects. For example, when native speakers of gendered languages are asked to imagine an inanimate object speaking, whether its voice is male or female tends to correspond to the grammatical gender of the object in their language. This has been observed for speakers of Spanish, French, and German, among others. Caveats of this research include

2520-523: Is also possible for a given noun to be usable with any of several classifiers; for example, the Mandarin Chinese classifier 个 ( 個 ) gè is frequently used as an alternative to various more specific classifiers. Grammatical gender can be realized as inflection and can be conditioned by other types of inflection, especially number inflection, where the singular-plural contrast can interact with gender inflection. The grammatical gender of

2625-613: Is assigned to one of the genders, and few or no nouns can occur in more than one gender. Gender is considered an inherent quality of nouns, and it affects the forms of other related words, a process called "agreement" . Nouns may be considered the "triggers" of the process, whereas other words will be the "target" of these changes. These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners , pronouns , numerals , quantifiers , possessives , adjectives , past and passive participles , articles , verbs , adverbs , complementizers , and adpositions . Gender class may be marked on

2730-418: Is masculine (meaning "lake") its genitive singular form is Sees , but when it is feminine (meaning "sea"), the genitive is See , because feminine nouns do not take the genitive -s . Gender is sometimes reflected in other ways. In Welsh , gender marking is mostly lost on nouns; however, Welsh has initial mutation , where the first consonant of a word changes into another in certain conditions. Gender

2835-430: Is not enough to constitute a gender system. In other languages, the division into genders usually correlates to some degree, at least for a certain set of nouns, such as those denoting humans, with some property or properties of the things that particular nouns denote. Such properties include animacy or inanimacy, " humanness " or non-humanness, and biological sex . However, in most languages, this semantic division

2940-416: Is one of the factors that can cause one form of mutation (soft mutation). For instance, the word merch "girl" changes into ferch after the definite article . This only occurs with feminine singular nouns: mab "son" remains unchanged. Adjectives are affected by gender in a similar way. Additionally, in many languages, gender is often closely correlated with the basic unmodified form ( lemma ) of

3045-454: Is only partially valid, and many nouns may belong to a gender category that contrasts with their meaning, e.g. the word for "manliness" could be of feminine gender, as it is in French with "la masculinité" and "la virilité". In such a case, the gender assignment can also be influenced by the morphology or phonology of the noun, or in some cases can be apparently arbitrary. Usually each noun

3150-415: Is reserved for abstract concepts derived from adjectives: such as lo bueno , lo malo ("that which is good/bad"). Natural gender refers to the biological sex of most animals and people, while grammatical gender refers to certain phonetic characteristics (the sounds at the end, or beginning) of a noun. Among other lexical items, the definite article changes its form according to this categorization. In

3255-688: Is still popular today, refers. The local architect of the Jewish origin Carl Korn had the greatest influence on the architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, shaping the character of "Little Vienna", while the plan for urban regulation was prepared in 1899 by the Viennese urban planner Max Fabiani . In 1855 a branch of the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway was built from Dziedzice to Bielsko, which in 1877

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3360-426: Is usually feminine), or may be arbitrary. In a few languages, the assignment of any particular noun (i.e., nominal lexeme, that set of noun forms inflectable from a common lemma) to one grammatical gender is solely determined by that noun's meaning, or attributes, like biological sex, humanness, or animacy. However, the existence of words that denote male and female, such as the difference between "aunt" and "uncle"

3465-599: The Beskid Mountains , Bielsko-Biała is composed of two former towns which merged in 1951— Bielsko in the west and Biała in the east—on opposite banks of the Biała River that divides the historical regions of Silesia and Lesser Poland . The history of Bielsko dates back to the 13th century, while Biała was founded in the 16th century and obtained city rights in 1723. Despite the administrative separation, both towns effectively functioned as one urban area already in

3570-953: The Bohemian kings in 1327 and the Duchy of Oświęcim was sold to the Polish Crown in 1457, returning to Lesser Poland after three centuries, the Biała River for next centuries marked the border between the Bohemian crown land of Silesia within the Holy Roman Empire and the Lesser Poland Province of the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . With Bohemia and the Upper Silesian Duchy of Cieszyn, Bielsko in 1526

3675-572: The Duchy of Bielsko as a Bohemian state country ; acquired by the Austrian chancellor Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz in 1743, and afterwards by Polish aristocrat Aleksander Józef Sułkowski in 1752, the ducal status was finally confirmed by Empress Maria Theresa in 1754. It remained in possession of the Polish Sułkowski family until the dissolution of the duchy in 1849, while the castle

3780-464: The Slavic stem *bělъ meaning "white" (in modern Polish biały , in modern Czech bílý ). The river Biała was the first to be named in this way. The reason was probably the general impression of the color of the water: "white", that is, bright and clear. Some researchers also linked the city's name to the bleaching of fiber, which is questionable, however, due to the fact that in the 13th century

3885-431: The genders of that language. Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each. Many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex or gender . According to one estimate, gender is used in approximately half of the world's languages . According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in

3990-425: The "Low Emission Economy Plan", which has been implemented since 2015. In 2020, 454 coal-fired boilers in residentional buildings were replaced by gas or district heating using municipal subsidies. Bielsko-Biała belongs to the cities where the environmental condition has been gradually improving over the past few years. The number of days when the permissible daily concentration of suspended particulate matter PM10

4095-455: The "triggers" of the process, because they have an inherent gender, whereas related words that change their form to match the gender of the noun can be considered the "target" of these changes. These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners , pronouns , numerals , quantifiers , possessives , adjectives , past and passive participles , verbs , adverbs , complementizers , and adpositions . Gender class may be marked on

4200-473: The 0 °C isotherm, the climate is a Dfb-type called of humid continental climate , which explains its considerable thermal amplitude for Central Europe . The extremes may still be moderated by the western patterns and winds of this direction, which still maintains hybrid characteristics in the city's climate. Foëhn winds help maintain a milder winter in Bielsko-Biała and average about 4 °C lower than

4305-468: The 1910 census, Bielsko had a population of 18,568. 84.3% used German in their domestic interactions, 14.3% used Polish , 0.7% used Czech or Slovak , and 0.7% used another language. 55.9% were Roman Catholic , 27.6% Lutheran , 16.3% Jewish , and 1.1% were of another denomination or with no religion. After 1918, when Austro-Hungary collapsed, Bielsko found itself within a disputed territory between Poland and Czechoslovakia . Attempts to incorporate

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4410-570: The 1930s some ethnic German citizens, under the leadership of Rudolf Wiesner , formed an anti-Polish , anti-Jewish Jungdeutsche Partei , which de facto served as a foreign branch of the NSDAP . A considerable number of young Germans joined this Party during the mid-1930s. On the other hand, the interwar period is associated with numerous construction projects, such as a new residential district in Modernist style created since 1934 in place of

4515-506: The 1970s. Bielsko-Biała reached its highest population (184,421) in 1991. Since then, as in most cities in Poland, there has been a gradual decline in population. Between 2002 and 2021, the population declined by 5.1%. According to forecasts by the Central Statistical Office , Bielsko-Biala is expected to have a population of 161,900 in 2025, 150,400 in 2035 and 133,300 in 2050. Neuter gender In linguistics ,

4620-605: The 19th century. Industrialization, especially the textile and automotive industries, was of great importance for its development in the past. Between 1975 and 1998, the city was the seat of Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship and currently lies within the Silesian Voivodeship . Bielsko-Biała is the administrative, economic, academic and cultural centre for the Silesian-Lesser Polish border region, sometimes colloquially referred to as Podbeskidzie . It

4725-416: The 20th century, as well as the boundaries of the historical districts (suburbs) of Bielsko. These are: Some peripheral areas are also included within obręby ewidencyjne of Bystra Śląska , Jaworze , Mazańcowice , Międzyrzecze Górne and Pisarzowice , which is a result of the incorporation of parts of these villages into Bielsko-Biała. In some cases (e.g. Mikuszowice Krakowskie, Stare Bielsko, Straconka)

4830-462: The 20th century, such as between Bielsko in the neuter gender and Bielsk in the masculine gender . In the case of Biała, the Polish wording of the name was the only official one, even when the town belonged to the Habsburg monarchy . The Germanized form Beil was used only in the local dialect. The Wymysorys language uses the form Byłc-Bejł which is close to how the two towns were called by

4935-658: The Bielsko town council and disputes between the suburban population and the privileged burghers of the Old Town. The settlement was established on the land of the village of Lipnik , from which it became independent in 1613. Further development of the village was associated with the influx of refugees from neighboring Silesia during the Thirty Years' War and the Counter-Reformation . Though already named

5040-531: The Bielsko-Biala area, was also established within Lipnik's borders in 1810. Lipnik was finally incorporated into Biała in 1925. The town thus expanded its territory more than sixteen times (before 1925 it had only 1.22 square kilometres (0.47 sq mi), while Lipnik had 20.76 square kilometres (8.02 sq mi)), and the population increased two and a half times. In the 19th century, Biała formed

5145-546: The Deep Stołów Cave ( Jaskinia Głęboka w Stołowie ) was also discovered on the slopes of Stołów. With a length of 554 m (1,818 ft) and a depth of 25 m (82 ft), it is one of the largest caves in the Polish part of Carpathians . Several smaller caves can also be found in the Klimczok area. Bielsko-Biała has an oceanic climate ( Köppen : Cfb ) with cold, damp winters and warm, wet summers. However, using

5250-514: The Department of Environmental Protection and Energy, Municipal Office in Bielsko-Biała]. Bielsko-Biała is officially divided into 30 osiedla , which are auxiliary units of the municipality. In parallel, there is a division into obręby ewidencyjne ( cadastral areas), the boundaries of which reflect the former boundaries of the municipalities gradually incorporated into Bielsko-Biała in

5355-520: The Great had invaded Silesia, Bielsko remained with the Habsburg monarchy as part of Austrian Silesia according to the 1742 Treaty of Breslau . In late 1849 Bielsko became a seat of political district . In 1870 it became a statutory city . The town's development in the 19th century was primarily linked to the textile industry , and to a lesser extent the engineering industry. The Bielsko-Biała area

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5460-643: The Western Beskid Foothills ( Pogórze Zachodniobeskidzkie ) physiographic macroregion. Within the administrative borders of Bielsko-Biała—in the southern districts—there are also mountain massifs of the Little Beskids ( Beskid Mały ) and the Silesian Beskids ( Beskid Śląski ). Most of the mountainous areas of Bielsko-Biała lie within two landscape parks : Little Beskids Landscape Park and Silesian Beskids Landscape Park . At

5565-517: The area of Poland. The latitudinal extent is approximately 13 km (8.1 mi) km and the meridional extent approximately 17.5 km (10.9 mi). The straight line distance from the city center to the Czech border is 31 km (19 mi), and to the Slovak border 35 km (22 mi). The greater part of Bielsko-Biała lies in the Silesian Foothills ( Pogórze Śląskie ), which are part of

5670-437: The area of the former Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship was divided and Bielsko-Biała was incorporated into the Silesian Voivodeship . The economic transformation after 1989 affected the industrial city with a serious socio-economic crisis. The textile industry, which almost disappeared from Bielsko-Biała, was the most affected. The car factory bought directly by Fiat limited its production only to components. The bad condition of

5775-499: The autochthonous German population. The combined name Bielsko-Biała in Polish or Bielitz-Biala in German was used as early as the 19th century in the names of various societies, clubs, branches of institutions and businesses (e.g. Bielitz-Bialaer Leseverein , Bielitz-Bialaer Actienbrauerei or Bielsko-Bialski Związek Adwokatów ), in the titles of local newspapers (e.g. Bielitz-Bialaer Anzeiger or Bielitz-Bialaer Wochenblatt ), as

5880-408: The behavior of associated words." Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine, and neuter; or animate and inanimate. Depending on the language and the word, this assignment might bear some relationship with the meaning of the noun (e.g. "woman"

5985-539: The boundaries of osiedla and obręby ewidencyjne are similar, in many others (e.g. Aleksandrowice, Dolne Przedmieście, Lipnik, Mikuszowice Śląskie) osiedla and obręby ewidencyjne with the same names do not correspond territorially. The commons understanding of 'districts' in Bielsko-Biała and the belonging of particular areas to them draws loosely on both types of division. There has been human habitation in Bielsko since around 1400 BC, wooden tools have been found along with stone axes dating from 1000 BC. The remnants of

6090-400: The circumstances in which it occurs, and the way words are marked for gender vary between languages. Gender inflection may interact with other grammatical categories like number or case . In some languages the declension pattern followed by the noun itself will be different for different genders. The gender of a noun may affect the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, particularly

6195-663: The city into the Republic of German-Austria failed. In July 1920, the Conference of Ambassadors decided to divide Cieszyn Silesia in such a way that Bielsko became part of the autonomous Silesian Voivodeship in the Second Polish Republic . Political life was largely shaped by nationalist disputes. The influx of Polish officials and teachers increased the proportion of the Polish population, but Bielsko nevertheless retained its predominantly German character. In

6300-499: The city limits: Cyberniok, Dębowiec, Klimczok, Kołowrót, Kopany, Kozia Góra, Łysa Góra, Palenica, Przykra, Równia, Stołów, Szyndzielnia, Trzy Kopce and Wysokie. In addition, the slopes of Czupel, Gaiki and Magurka Wilkowicka mountains partly reach the peripheral districts of Bielsko-Biała. On the south-western slopes of Stołów is the Stołów Cave ( Jaskinia w Stołowie ), whose passages are 21 m (69 ft) long. In 2003, an entrance to

6405-540: The cloth industry in Bielsko was not yet developed. The German name was derived from the Slavic one. In medieval and early modern documents, the name of the town appears both in a form close to modern Polish and Czech ( Bilsko , Belsko ) and German ( Bilitz , Belicz , Bylitz ). Over time, the official name Bielitz in German and Bílsko in Czech became established, while in Polish there were still various fluctuations in

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6510-790: The earliest family known to have split off from it, the extinct Anatolian languages (see below ). Modern examples include Algonquian languages such as Ojibwe . Here a masculine–feminine–neuter system previously existed, but the distinction between masculine and feminine genders has been lost in nouns (they have merged into what is called common gender ), though not in pronouns that can operate under natural gender. Thus nouns denoting people are usually of common gender, whereas other nouns may be of either gender. Examples include Danish and Swedish (see Gender in Danish and Swedish ), and to some extent Dutch (see Gender in Dutch grammar ). The dialect of

6615-481: The effect for German speakers has also led to a proposal that the effect is restricted to languages with a two-gender system, possibly because such languages are inclined towards a greater correspondence between grammatical and natural gender. Another kind of test asks people to describe a noun, and attempts to measure whether it takes on gender-specific connotations depending on the speaker's native language. For example, one study found that German speakers describing

6720-436: The former castle gardens, or the building of the first Polish high school (now Nicolaus Copernicus High School ) put into use in 1927. In 1938, the municipality of Aleksandrowice was incorporated, where an airport and a pilot school were established. The history of Biała dates back to the second half of the 16th century. The first written mention comes from 1564 and describes a small craftsmen settlement of thirteen houses. It

6825-602: The highest peak is Klimczok in Silesian Beskids at 1,117 m (3,665 ft) above sea level. The upland part of Bielsko-Biała consists of dozens of hills, separated by valleys of rivers and streams, the central one being the valley of the Biała River . The Beskid massifs are separated by the Wilkowice Gate ( Brama Wilkowicka ) connecting the Silesian Foothills ( Pogórze Śląskie ) with the Żywiec Basin ( Kotlina Żywiecka ). There are 14 mountain peaks within

6930-437: The historic Old Town was the clearest sign of the city's decline in the 1990s, while its gradual revitalization started in 2002 became an important symbol of changes for the better. During the first and second decades of the 21st century, Bielsko-Biała managed to return to the path of economic prosperity. Between 2001 and 2009, on the site of the demolished Lenko and Finex textile factories, a large shopping mall, Galeria Sfera ,

7035-712: The merger of masculine and feminine in these languages and dialects can be considered a reversal of the original split in Proto-Indo-European (see below ). Some gender contrasts are referred to as classes ; for some examples, see Noun class . In some of the Slavic languages , for example, within the masculine and sometimes feminine and neuter genders, there is a further division between animate and inanimate nouns—and in Polish , also sometimes between nouns denoting humans and non-humans. (For details, see below .) A human–non-human (or "rational–non-rational") distinction

7140-632: The most effective strike of the first wave of Solidarity . The strikers forced the mayor of the city, the provincial governor, the commander of Milicja Obywatelska and the municipal and voivodeship secretaries of the Communist party to resign. From 1975 to 1998, Bielsko-Biała was the capital of the Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship , covering most of Polish Cieszyn Silesia and south-western Lesser Poland (counties of Żywiec , Oświęcim , Wadowice and Sucha Beskidzka ). To describe its territory,

7245-439: The name Podbeskidzie was adopted, which is still popular among Bielsko-Biała residents ("Bielsko-Biała - the capital of Podbeskidzie"), but elsewhere it is criticized as an artificial term that is trying to replace traditional historical and geographical lands. The subject of a lively public debate is the long-term effects of the loss of the status of a provincial capital as a result of the administrative reform in 1998 , when

7350-616: The name Bielsko-Biała was created on January 1, 1951. Until 1975, it was part of the Katowice Voivodeship . In post-war Poland, the city has remained an important centre of textile industry (second only to Łódź ), alongside which new branches have developed: in 1946 the Gliding Institute was established and in 1948 the car engine plant WSM, on the basis of which the FSM Automobile Factory

7455-414: The name of a railroad station, on maps printed jointly for both cities, and in many other publications. Bielsko-Biała is located in the southern part of the Silesian Voivodeship , on the border of historical regions: Cieszyn Silesia (left-bank districts, 57.89% of the area) and Lesser Poland (right-bank districts, 42.11% of the area). The city represents 1.01% of the area of the voivodeship and 0.04% of

7560-418: The nearby Auschwitz extermination camp . Only less than 1000 people of the city's Jewish community of nearly 8000 survived the war. Several widely known Holocaust survivors from Bielsko-Biała were Roman Frister , Gerda Weissmann Klein and Kitty Hart-Moxon , all of whom wrote accounts of their experiences during the war. However, when it comes to material losses, the city survived the war almost intact. It

7665-438: The noun itself, but can also be marked on other constituents in a noun phrase or sentence. If the noun is explicitly marked, both trigger and target may feature similar alternations. As an example, we consider Spanish , a language with two gender categories: "natural" vs "grammatical". "Natural" gender can be masculine or feminine, while "grammatical" gender can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. This third, or "neuter" gender

7770-1022: The noun itself, but will also always be marked on other constituents in a noun phrase or sentence. If the noun is explicitly marked, both trigger and target may feature similar alternations. Three possible functions of grammatical gender include: Moreover, grammatical gender may serve to distinguish homophones. It is a quite common phenomenon in language development for two phonemes to merge, thereby making etymologically distinct words sound alike. In languages with gender distinction, however, these word pairs may still be distinguishable by their gender. For example, French pot ("pot") and peau ("skin") are homophones /po/ , but disagree in gender: le pot vs. la peau . Common systems of gender contrast include: Nouns that denote specifically male persons (or animals) are normally of masculine gender; those that denote specifically female persons (or animals) are normally of feminine gender; and nouns that denote something that does not have any sex, or do not specify

7875-455: The noun, and sometimes a noun can be modified to produce (for example) masculine and feminine words of similar meaning. See § Form-based morphological criteria , below. Agreement , or concord, is a grammatical process in which certain words change their form so that values of certain grammatical categories match those of related words. Gender is one of the categories which frequently require agreement. In this case, nouns may be considered

7980-659: The noun. They are not regularly used in English or other European languages, although they parallel the use of words such as piece(s) and head in phrases like "three pieces of paper" or "thirty head of cattle". They are a prominent feature of East Asian languages , where it is common for all nouns to require a classifier when being quantified—for example, the equivalent of "three people" is often "three classifier people". A more general type of classifier ( classifier handshapes ) can be found in sign languages . Classifiers can be considered similar to genders or noun classes, in that

8085-563: The old Norwegian capital Bergen also uses common gender and neuter exclusively. The common gender in Bergen and in Danish is inflected with the same articles and suffixes as the masculine gender in Norwegian Bokmål . This makes some obviously feminine noun phrases like "a cute girl", "the well milking cow" or "the pregnant mares" sound strange to most Norwegian ears when spoken by Danes and people from Bergen since they are inflected in

8190-516: The partition of the Duchy of Opole in 1281, Bielsko passed to the Dukes of Cieszyn within fragmented Poland . The town was first documented in 1312 when Duke Mieszko I of Cieszyn granted a town charter . The Biała again became a border river, when in 1315 the eastern Duchy of Oświęcim split off from Cieszyn as a separate under Mieszko's son Władysław . After the Dukes of Cieszyn had become vassals of

8295-475: The population of the Silesian Voivodeship. Population density was 1,356 people per square kilometer. The natural increase , according to data for 2020, was negative, at -610 (-3.58 per thousand residents). 1519 children were born and 2129 deaths were registered. The fertility rate at 1.44 was slightly higher than that of the voivodeship and Poland as a whole. The balance of internal migration

8400-420: The population of the neighboring communes is increasing. On December 31, 2021, the population of Bielsko-Biała was 168,835, including 79,740 (47.2%) men and 89,095 (52.8%) women. This means that there were 112 women for every 100 men. 56.4% of Bielsko-Biała's residents were of working age , 17.5% were of pre-working age, and 26.0% of residents were of post-working age. The city's population accounted for 3.77% of

8505-463: The possibility of subjects' "using grammatical gender as a strategy for performing the task", and the fact that even for inanimate objects the gender of nouns is not always random. For example, in Spanish, female gender is often attributed to objects that are "used by women, natural, round, or light" and male gender to objects "used by men, artificial, angular, or heavy." Apparent failures to reproduce

8610-514: The remaining 0.9%, there were small groups of Greek Catholics , Orthodox Christians , Calvinists and five people with no religion. With the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, Biała became part of the Second Polish Republic . Throughout the interwar period it belonged to the Kraków Voivodeship . From 1925, the official name of the town was Biała Krakowska . Although the two towns effectively functioned as one urban area for

8715-461: The same time, they are protected under the Natura 2000 nature protection programme. The relief of Bielsko-Biała is quite diverse. Within the administrative borders of the city there are both upland and mountainous areas. The centrally located Bolesław Chrobry Square is 313 m (1,027 ft) above sea level. The lowest point are Komorowice Ponds at 262 m (860 ft) above sea level, while

8820-577: The sex of their referent, have come to belong to one or other of the genders, in a way that may appear arbitrary. Examples of languages with such a system include most of the modern Romance languages , the Baltic languages , the Celtic languages , some Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Hindi ), and the Afroasiatic languages . This is similar to systems with a masculine–feminine contrast, except that there

8925-533: The state of a significant portion of surface water, both in the Biała and Wapienica rivers, was classified as poor. The city's ecological situation has been gradually improving in recent years, thanks in part to the actions of municipal authorities, such as the implementation of the "Low-Emission Economy Plan" since 2010. Between 2008 and 2022, with the city's support, over 7200 solid fuel boilers and furnaces were eliminated in residential buildings in Bielsko-Biała. The first municipal Energy Management Bureau in Poland

9030-736: The surrounding Beskid forests (the so-called forest churches)—and immediately after the issuing of the Patent of Toleration by Emperor Joseph II in 1781, an Evangelical district was established north of the historical centre, with the Church of the Saviour , the present seat of the Lutheran bishop and schools, known as the Bielsko Zion ( Bielski Syjon ). To this day, it remains a Protestant cultural centre of supra-regional significance. In 1900,

9135-545: The surrounding mountains each year. The sunniest days are between late summer and early fall, with a few months reaching 9 sunny days. In the 1960s 55 cm of snow cover was recorded. Bielsko-Biała is a city with relatively high air pollution . According to a 2016 report by the World Health Organization , it was ranked as the twenty-seventh most polluted city in the European Union. Then in

9240-488: The town. Jiří Třanovský was active in the Bielsko castle. Bielsko retained its Protestant character also after the Thirty Years' War . The recatholisation campaign, which started in the second half of the 17th century, was not very successful. Throughout the Counter-Reformation period, Lutheran services were held—at first in the Holy Trinity Church with the permission of the authorities, later in homes or in

9345-467: The town. Poles transferred from the eastern areas that had been annexed to the USSR , as well as new settlers from central Poland, especially Lesser Poland , came to Bielsko-Biała. The new Polish authorities initially restored the pre-war borders, including the division into Bielsko and Biała in two different voivodeships. But soon the decision to re-unify the two towns was made. The new municipality under

9450-407: The way in which the noun inflects for number and case . For example, a language like Latin , German or Russian has a number of different declension patterns, and which pattern a particular noun follows may be highly correlated with its gender. For some instances of this, see Latin declension . A concrete example is provided by the German word See , which has two possible genders: when it

9555-408: The west as well as Kunzendorf ( Lipnik ), Alzen ( Hałcnów ) and Wilmesau ( Wilamowice ) in the east. Nearby settlements in the mountains were Lobnitz ( Wapienica ) and Bistrai ( Bystra ). Those settlements did not undergo Slavonicisation in the following centuries, which led to the creation of a German language island ( Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel ) that survived until the 20th century. After

9660-432: Was -355 in 2020, while foreign migration was +24. 592 marriages were concluded. 28.6% of residents were single, 55.0% were married, 6.9% were divorced, and 9.4% were widows and widowers. At the time of the merger of Bielsko and Biała in 1951, the city had a population of about 60,000. Over the years, the population increased with the development of industry and the incorporation of nearby municipalities, particularly fast in

9765-602: Was annexed by the Habsburg Empire and incorporated into the crownland of Galicia . After that the town underwent major urban transformations in the 1780s in connection with the construction of the Central Galician Road, part of which is today's 11 Listopada Street . At that time, the New Market was also delineated - the present Wolności Square . The town's boundaries were artificially limited as

9870-479: Was associated with the construction of new housing estates with large panel system-buildings , like Złote Łany (1970–1975), Wojska Polskiego (1976–1980), Beskidzkie (1976–1982) or Karpackie (1979–1982). The population has also increased due to the incorporation of surrounding communes: Kamienica and Mikuszowice (together with Olszówka  [ pl ] ) in 1969, Straconka in 1973, Stare Bielsko , Komorowice , Hałcnów and Wapienica in 1977. Bielsko-Biała

9975-403: Was built. It is a characteristic post-modernist architectural structure on the banks of the Biała river, however criticised for its negative influence on the traditional commercial zone located around the nearby 11 Listopada Street pedestrian zone. Like other contemporary cities, Bielsko-Biała is strongly affected by suburbanization , which results in a decrease in the number of inhabitants while

10080-545: Was described as the third largest centre of the textile industry in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy , after Brno and Liberec . In the second half of the 19th century, new tenements, villas of wealthy industrialists and public buildings in Revival and Art Nouveau styles began to spring up in the landscape of the city. These were often inspired by the architecture of Vienna, to which the slogan "Little Vienna", which

10185-587: Was established in Bielsko-Biała in 1997, and it currently operates as an energy team within the Department of Environmental Protection and Energy of the Municipal Office. In 2022, there were three monitoring stations in the city as part of the National Air Quality Monitoring System, and the city installed 36 air quality sensors in urban areas to depict the distribution of pollutants within the city [Source: Data from

10290-418: Was exceeded in the years 2018-2022 were as follows: 52, 30, 33, 41, 24, respectively. The main contributors to air pollution are the use of outdated solid fuel sources in households, emissions of gases and particles from industrial plants, and traffic. The operation of outdated heating systems and solid fuel combustion sources within the city promotes the formation of smog during the heating season. Smog has

10395-494: Was extended to Żywiec and connected to the Galician Transversal Railway . A 268 metres (879 ft) long tunnel under the centre of Bielsko was then built. In 1888, a railway connection to Cieszyn and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska was opened. In 1895, an electric tram line was established in Bielsko. It connected the railway station with Zigeunerwald/Cygański Las, which in the meantime was transformed into

10500-556: Was founded in 1972. The factory was born from an agreement between the FSO and Fiat for the construction of a new model, the Polski Fiat 126p, Polish version of Fiat 126 commonly known as Maluch . A huge industrial complex has been built in the northern part of the city. Thousands of people came from all over Poland to work then; in the 1970s Bielsko-Biała observed the biggest population boom in its history. The influx of new residents

10605-544: Was inherited by the Austrian House of Habsburg and incorporated into the Habsburg monarchy . From 1560 Bielsko was held by Frederick Casimir of Cieszyn , son of Duke Wenceslaus III Adam , who due to the enormous debts his son left upon his death in 1571, had to sell it to the Promnitz noble family at Pless . With the consent of Emperor Maximilian II , the Promnitz dynasty and their Schaffgotsch successors ruled

10710-482: Was located near the mouth of Niwka to the Biała River , in the area of today's Łukowa Street. Administratively, it belonged to the Silesian County of the Kraków Voivodeship within the Kingdom of Poland . The first residents most likely came from the suburbs of neighboring Bielsko. They crossed to the other side of the river tempted by the opportunity to build new houses in the face of restrictions imposed by

10815-650: Was made famous on a large scale by the Studio Filmów Rysunkowych (Animated Film Studio), founded in 1947. It was one of five animation studios in post-war Poland. Among the children's TV series produced here were Reksio , Bolek i Lolek , Margo the Mouse and Porwanie Baltazara Gąbki . The general strike launched by the workers of the Bewelana textile factory in January 1981 is considered

10920-513: Was not bombed, and fighting during the Soviet offensive in the winter of 1945 was limited to today's peripheral districts, such as Hałcnów and the eastern part of Lipnik . After World War II, the ethnic structure of the place changed. Most of the German population was expelled and those who remained assimilated with the Poles. In the 21st century, there is only a small German minority circle in

11025-487: Was still owned by the Sułkowskis until World War II. Bielsko was the first town in the Duchy of Cieszyn where the teachings of Martin Luther spread in the late 1530s, even before Duke Wenceslaus III Adam adopted Lutheranism in 1545. Also later, Bielsko was home to the strongest Protestant community in the whole of Cieszyn Silesia, which in 1587 obtained a privilege guaranteeing that only Lutheran services would be held in

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