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93-427: Cieszyn Silesia , Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia ( Polish : Śląsk Cieszyński [ˈɕlɔ̃sk tɕɛˈʂɨj̃skʲi] ; Czech : Těšínské Slezsko [ˈcɛʃiːnskɛː ˈslɛsko] or Těšínsko [ˈcɛʃiːnsko] ; German : Teschener Schlesien or Olsagebiet ) is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia , centered on the towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín and bisected by

186-621: A castellany , which together with Castellany of Racibórz formed the Duchy of Racibórz in 1172. From 1202 it was a part of the united Duchy of Opole and Racibórz . From 1290 to 1653 the Duchy of Cieszyn/Teschen was ruled by the local branch of the Piast dynasty . In 1327 Casimir I, Duke of Cieszyn , swore homage to the Bohemian king John of Bohemia , and the duchy became an autonomous fiefdom of

279-499: A / (spelled a ), / ɔ / (spelled o ) and / u / (spelled u and ó as separate letters). The nasal vowels are / ɛ w̃ / (spelled ę ) and / ɔ w̃ / (spelled ą ). Unlike Czech or Slovak, Polish does not retain phonemic vowel length — the letter ó , which formerly represented lengthened /ɔː/ in older forms of the language, is now vestigial and instead corresponds to /u/. The Polish consonant system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include

372-771: A dialect of Polish. Many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of Silesian as a regional language in Poland . The law recognizing it as such was passed by the Sejm and Senate in April 2024, but has been vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in late May of 2024. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguists (e.g. Tomasz Kamusella , Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz ) assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether

465-669: A few culturally and linguistically related tribes from the basins of the Vistula and Oder before eventually accepting baptism in 966. With Western Christianity , Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet , which made it possible to write down Polish, which until then had existed only as a spoken language . The closest relatives of Polish are the Elbe and Baltic Sea Lechitic dialects ( Polabian and Pomeranian varieties). All of them, except Kashubian , are extinct. The precursor to modern Polish

558-520: A large number of branches in all of these areas) offers services available in Polish at all of their cash machines in addition to English and Spanish . According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England and Wales who consider Polish to be their "main" language. In Canada , there is a significant Polish Canadian population : There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to

651-543: A lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue , Linguist List and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007,

744-454: A nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, ą in dąb ("oak") is pronounced [ɔm] , and ę in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced [ɛn] (the nasal assimilates to the following consonant). When followed by l or ł (for example przyjęli , przyjęły ), ę is pronounced as just e . When ę is at the end of the word it is often pronounced as just [ɛ] . Depending on

837-402: A reversed diacritic hook called an ogonek . Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases . It has fixed penultimate stress and an abundance of palatal consonants . Contemporary Polish developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries). Among the major languages, it

930-491: A single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), prze ze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable. The Polish alphabet derives from the Latin script but includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics . The Polish alphabet was one of three major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Western and some South Slavic languages,

1023-405: A verse by Jan Brzechwa ) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed'). Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel. The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede

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1116-478: A vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/ , palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew'). Some loanwords , particularly from

1209-711: Is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script . It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2024, there were over 39.7 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union . Polish

1302-514: Is about 360/km (932/mi). The southern, mountainous part of the region is home to the Silesian Gorals , the indigenous people of the region. They have their own distinct culture which has influenced the culture of whole region. Cieszyn Silesia is known for its religious pluralism. The most widespread religions are Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism . The region is distinct in large part because of its Protestantism, which has an influence on

1395-533: Is also distinct for its dialect, the Cieszyn Silesian dialect , which differs from the other Silesian dialects spoken in Upper Silesia . It is a distinct dialect with predominantly Polish influences; Czech and German influences are also strong. The inhabitants of Cieszyn Silesia feel a strong regional (Cieszyn Silesian, Goral etc.) identity – locals will say they are (tu) stela (from here) – but

1488-419: Is also spoken as a second language in eastern Germany , northern Czech Republic and Slovakia , western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in southeast Lithuania and Latvia . Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II , millions of Polish speakers can also be found in countries such as Canada , Argentina , Brazil , Israel , Australia ,

1581-913: Is in fact also partly rooted in a liberal and pluralistic attitude toward national and ethnic groups, liberal in comparison to other empires of that time, especially Prussia and the Russian Empire . Even in 2006 there were still portraits of Habsburg rulers on the wall in the assembly room of the Cieszyn local council. The most widespread folk costume in the area used to be a Cieszyn folk costume associated with Cieszyn Vlachs . In 1900 Cieszyn Silesia had 361,015 inhabitants, of whom 218,869 were Poles (60.6%), 85,553 Czechs (23.7%) and 56,240 Germans (15.6%). Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )

1674-427: Is most closely related to Slovak and Czech but differs in terms of pronunciation and general grammar. Additionally, Polish was profoundly influenced by Latin and other Romance languages like Italian and French as well as Germanic languages (most notably German ), which contributed to a large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures. Extensive usage of nonstandard dialects has also shaped

1767-447: Is possible to say ko goście zoba czy li? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are considered part of a "usable" norm of standard Polish - in contrast to the "model" ("high") norm. Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were

1860-664: Is separated from the rest of Silesia (and Upper Silesia in particular) by the Vistula River (the part beginning in Strumień ) and from the region of Lesser Poland by the Biała River and Barania Góra mountain, the highest peak of the Polish part of the region at 1,220 metres (4,000 ft). The highest peak of the region is Lysá hora (1,323 m (4,341 ft)) in the Czech part. The region also borders Slovakia , along

1953-595: Is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics , and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals. The traditional 32-letter Polish alphabet has nine additions ( ą , ć , ę , ł , ń , ó , ś , ź , ż ) to the letters of the basic 26-letter Latin alphabet , while removing three (x, q, v). Those three letters are at times included in an extended 35-letter alphabet. The traditional set comprises 23 consonants and 9 written vowels , including two nasal vowels ( ę , ą ) defined by

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2046-524: Is the Old Polish language . Ultimately, Polish descends from the unattested Proto-Slavic language. The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska , Latin : Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau ), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj ;

2139-529: Is the most widely-used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County , by 26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results, as Vilnius was part of Poland from 1922 until 1939. Polish is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. In Ukraine, it is most common in the western parts of Lviv and Volyn Oblasts , while in West Belarus it is used by the significant Polish minority, especially in

2232-430: The kropka (superior dot) over the letter ż , and the ogonek ("little tail") under the letters ą, ę . The letters q, v, x are used only in foreign words and names. Polish orthography is largely phonemic —there is a consistent correspondence between letters (or digraphs and trigraphs ) and phonemes (for exceptions see below). The letters of the alphabet and their normal phonemic values are listed in

2325-401: The ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound / ɕ / . The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s , e.g. sinus , sinologia , do re mi fa sol la si do , Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści , Sierioża , Siergiej , Singapur , singiel . In other loanwords

2418-727: The Bishops of Wrocław with their residence at Castle Jánský Vrch (Johannisberg) . When in 1804 the Habsburg emperor Francis II established the Austrian Empire, his title would include the "Duke of Upper and Lower Silesia". Austrian Silesia was connected by rail with the Austrian capital Vienna , when the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway line was extended to Bohumín station in 1847. In

2511-596: The Brest and Grodno regions and in areas along the Lithuanian border. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries. In the United States , Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. According to the 2000 United States Census , 667,414 Americans of age five years and over reported Polish as

2604-508: The Habsburg monarchy , consisting of: forming the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia, which remained a Bohemian crown land with its capital in the city of Opava . In 1766 the title of a Duke of Teschen was granted to Prince Albert of Saxony , son-in-law of Maria Theresa, while the title of a Duke of Troppau and Jägerndorf remained with the House of Liechtenstein . The Nysa territory was held by

2697-621: The Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. Cieszyn Silesia was cemented as a uniform historic, geopolitical, socio-cultural and economic entity during the period of Habsburg rule. It is distinct from the rest of Silesia because after the First Silesian War between the Habsburg Monarchy and Prussia it remained part of Austria , whereas most of Silesia became a part of Prussia. After the end of World War I , both of

2790-693: The Kingdom of Bohemia and later the Bohemian Crown . Piast rule continued until 1653 and the death of the last Piast descendant, Elizabeth Lucretia, Duchess of Cieszyn , after which it lapsed directly to the Kings of Bohemia, at that time from the Habsburg dynasty . From 1722, the dukes of Teschen hailed from the Dukes of Lorraine dynasty, from 1767 to 1822 from the Wettin dynasty , and from 1822 to 1918 from

2883-602: The Olza River . Since 1920 it has been divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia , and later the Czech Republic . It covers an area of about 2,280 square kilometres (880 sq mi) and has about 810,000 inhabitants, of which 1,002 square kilometres (387 sq mi) (44%) is in Poland, while 1,280 square kilometres (494 sq mi) (56%) is in the Czech Republic. The historical boundaries of

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2976-705: The Polish–Czechoslovak War was split in 1920 along the Olza river with its eastern part falling to the Autonomous Silesian Voivodeship of Poland . Smaller parts of the duchy also became a part of Poland, while the adjacent Hlučín Region of Prussian Silesia fell to Czechoslovakia. According to an Austrian census, Austrian Silesia in 1910 was home to 756,949 people, speaking the following languages: Towns with more than 5,000 people in 1880: (km ) The Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia

3069-666: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 's influence gave Polish the status of lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe . The process of standardization began in the 14th century and solidified in the 16th century during the Middle Polish era. Standard Polish was based on various dialectal features, with the Greater Poland dialect group serving as the base. After World War II , Standard Polish became

3162-522: The United Kingdom and the United States . Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. At the time, it was a collection of dialect groups with some mutual features, but much regional variation was present. Mieszko I , ruler of the Polans tribe from the Greater Poland region, united

3255-576: The West Ukrainian National Republic and Czechoslovakia in the war with the Hungarian Soviet Republic over Upper Hungary . The impetus for the Czech invasion in 1919 was Poland's organising of elections to the Sejm (parliament) of Poland in the disputed area. The elections were to be held in the whole of Cieszyn Silesia. The Czechs claimed that the polls must not be held in the disputed area, as

3348-474: The classical languages , have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka ( /ˈfizɨka/ ) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation ,

3441-578: The flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) , as well as the expulsion of Ukrainians and Operation Vistula , the 1947 migration of Ukrainian minorities in the Recovered Territories in the west of the country, contributed to the country's linguistic homogeneity. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish ( język ogólnopolski ) appear relatively slight. Most of

3534-404: The standard language ; considerable colloquialisms and expressions were directly borrowed from German or Yiddish and subsequently adopted into the vernacular of Polish which is in everyday use. Historically, Polish was a lingua franca , important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe . In addition to being the official language of Poland, Polish

3627-416: The 16th century, which is also regarded as the " Golden Age of Polish literature". The orthography was modified in the 19th century and in 1936. Tomasz Kamusella notes that "Polish is the oldest, non-ecclesiastical, written Slavic language with a continuous tradition of literacy and official use, which has lasted unbroken from the 16th century to this day." Polish evolved into the main sociolect of

3720-486: The 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto (91,810 speakers) and Montreal . The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II and Polish population transfers (1944–46) . Poles settled in the " Recovered Territories " in the west and north, which had previously been mostly German -speaking. Some Poles remained in

3813-466: The Czech provinces to Slovakia at that time). The western area of Cieszyn Silesia is also very rich in coal . Many important coal mines , facilities and metallurgy factories are located there. The Polish side based its claim to the area on ethnic criteria: a majority of the area's population was Polish according to the last (1910) Austrian census. Two local self-government councils, Polish and Czech, were created. Initially, both national councils claimed

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3906-583: The Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish"). The earliest treatise on Polish orthography was written by Jakub Parkosz  [ pl ] around 1470. The first printed book in Polish appeared in either 1508 or 1513, while the oldest Polish newspaper was established in 1661. Starting in the 1520s, large numbers of books in the Polish language were published, contributing to increased homogeneity of grammar and orthography. The writing system achieved its overall form in

3999-568: The Polom mountain range and Jablunkov Pass at Mosty u Jablunkova , and Moravia across the rivers Ostravice and Oder . Geomorphologically, the area of Cieszyn Silesia is located in the Western Carpathians and extends into the mesoregions: Major towns of the Polish part of the region include Cieszyn , Bielsko (western part of Bielsko-Biała ), Czechowice-Dziedzice , Skoczów , Strumień , Ustroń and Wisła . The Czech part of

4092-671: The Silesian language was recognized by ISO , and was attributed an ISO code of szl. Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include: Polish linguistics has been characterized by a strong strive towards promoting prescriptive ideas of language intervention and usage uniformity, along with normatively-oriented notions of language "correctness" (unusual by Western standards). Polish has six oral vowels (seven oral vowels in written form), which are all monophthongs , and two nasal vowels . The oral vowels are / i / (spelled i ), / ɨ / (spelled y and also transcribed as /ɘ/ or /ɪ/), / ɛ / (spelled e ), /

4185-616: The area of Cieszyn Silesia, along with 67.9% of the population, was taken over by Czechoslovakia on 28 July 1920 by decision of the Spa Conference . This decision divided a historically unified region, leaving a sizeable Polish minority in Czechoslovakia and in practice created Trans-Olza , the eastern part of the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia delimited by the Olza River. The division of 1920 had an immediate impact on

4278-776: The border with Prussian Silesia in the north. In the east the Biała river at Bielsko separated it from the Lesser Polish lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , incorporated into the Austrian Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria upon the First Partition of Poland in 1772. The territory west of the Oder river stretching from the town of Opava up to Bílá Voda was confined by the Jeseníky mountain range of

4371-485: The cases mentioned above, the letter i if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents / j / , yet a palatalization of the previous consonant is always assumed. The reverse case, where the consonant remains unpalatalized but is followed by a palatalized consonant, is written by using j instead of i : for example, zjeść , "to eat up". The letters ą and ę , when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by

4464-713: The corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij ; and in English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest ), written around 1280. The book is exhibited in the Archdiocesal Museum in Wrocław, and as of 2015 has been added to UNESCO 's " Memory of the World " list. The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of

4557-558: The course of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia became a crown land of Cisleithanian Austria . In November 1918 the Dual Monarchy was abolished. The major part of Austrian Silesia was ceded to the newly created state of Czechoslovakia by the 1919 Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye , with the exception of Cieszyn Silesia (the former Duchy of Teschen), which after

4650-469: The delimitation was only interim and no sovereign rule should be executed there by any party. The Czech demand was rejected by the Poles and, following the rejection, Czechs decided to resolve the issue by force. Czech units led by Colonel Josef Šnejdárek and Polish units commanded by General Franciszek Latinik clashed after the swift Czech advance near Skoczów where a battle took place on 28–30 January. It

4743-479: The disappearance of yers . Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from

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4836-430: The distinction between regular penultimate and exceptional antepenultimate stress. Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy , etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zro biłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zro bi libyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities ,

4929-807: The eastern Sudetes in the south, separating it from Moravia, and the Opava river in the north. In the west the Golden Mountains formed the border with the County of Kladsko . The area originally formed the south-eastern part of the Medieval Duchy of Silesia . During the 14th century the Dukes of Silesia were vassals of the King of Bohemia. As part of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown , Silesia

5022-531: The eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth wrote Polish in the Arabic alphabet. The Cyrillic script is used to a certain extent today by Polish speakers in Western Belarus , especially for religious texts. The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent ) over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and through the letter in ł ;

5115-420: The end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where assimilation occurs). For details, see Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology. Most Polish words are paroxytones (that is, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions. Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from

5208-414: The entire country. Polish has traditionally been described as consisting of three to five main regional dialects: Silesian and Kashubian , spoken in Upper Silesia and Pomerania respectively, are thought of as either Polish dialects or distinct languages , depending on the criteria used. Kashubian contains a number of features not found elsewhere in Poland, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs.

5301-522: The extent that some contemporary authors claim that Cieszyn Silesia and Upper Silesia are separate regions. Cieszyn Silesia as a region consolidated in the 19th century, which later became a discrete eastern part of Austrian Silesia , crownland of the Cisleithanian part of Austria-Hungary , which helped to form a distinct local identity based on language, religious and ethnic pluralism, and distinctiveness from other parts of Silesia . The region

5394-467: The following table. The following digraphs and trigraphs are used: Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the tables); this occurs at the end of words and in certain clusters, due to the neutralization mentioned in the Phonology section above. Occasionally also voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds in clusters. The spelling rule for

5487-541: The inability of the two national councils to come to final delimitation , and on 5 November 1918 the area was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia by another interim agreement. In 1919 the councils were absorbed by the newly created and independent central governments in Prague and Warsaw . The former was not satisfied with the situation and on 23 January 1919 invaded the area while both parties were engaged in much larger conflicts elsewhere, Poland in its war against

5580-548: The language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English , 0.25% of the US population, and 6% of the Polish-American population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) were found in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740), and New Jersey (74,663). Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services (which has

5673-409: The larger War of the Austrian Succession . His campaign was concluded in 1742 with the Prussian victory at the Battle of Chotusitz leading to the treaties of Breslau and Berlin , in which Silesia was divided. Under the terms of the treaty, the Kingdom of Prussia received most of the territory including the Bohemian County of Kladsko , while only a small part of southeastern Silesia remained with

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5766-439: The letter y . The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first. Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent

5859-491: The life of the region. Many families were divided by the new border. Several municipalities were divided between the two states— Cieszyn (PL) / Český Těšín (CS), Leszna Górna (PL) / Horní Líštná (CS), and Marklowice Górne (PL) / Dolní Marklovice (CS), to name a few. On 1 October 1938 Trans-Olza was annexed by Poland following the Munich Conference . On 1 September 1939 Zaolzie was annexed by Nazi Germany after it invaded Poland . During World War II Cieszyn Silesia

5952-431: The middle aged and young speak vernaculars close to standard Polish, while the traditional dialects are preserved among older people in rural areas. First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional and social differences. The modern standard dialect , often termed as "correct Polish", is spoken or at least understood throughout

6045-460: The most widely spoken variant of Polish across the country, and most dialects stopped being the form of Polish spoken in villages. Poland is one of the most linguistically homogeneous European countries; nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their first language . Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in areas which were once administered or occupied by Poland, notably in neighboring Lithuania , Belarus , and Ukraine . Polish

6138-439: The name Tarzan . Austrian Silesia Austrian Silesia consisted of two territories, separated by the Moravian land strip of Moravská Ostrava between the Ostravice and Oder rivers. The area east of the Ostravice around Cieszyn reached from the heights of the Western Carpathians ( Silesian Beskids ) in the south, where it bordered with the Kingdom of Hungary , along the Olza and upper Vistula rivers to

6231-415: The nobles in Poland–Lithuania in the 15th century. The history of Polish as a language of state governance begins in the 16th century in the Kingdom of Poland . Over the later centuries, Polish served as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , Congress Poland , the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , and as the administrative language in the Russian Empire 's Western Krai . The growth of

6324-511: The others being Czech orthography and Croatian orthography , the last of these being a 19th-century invention trying to make a compromise between the first two. Kashubian uses a Polish-based system, Slovak uses a Czech-based system, and Slovene follows the Croatian one; the Sorbian languages blend the Polish and the Czech ones. Historically, Poland's once diverse and multi-ethnic population utilized many forms of scripture to write Polish. For instance, Lipka Tatars and Muslims inhabiting

6417-401: The palatal sounds / ɕ / , / ʑ / , / tɕ / , / dʑ / and / ɲ / is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulfur") and

6510-451: The past had a larger Jewish community, but the local Jews were almost completely annihilated by the Nazis during World War II and the local Germans were all deported to Germany or Austria after the war. Today, many other religious, mostly Christian, denominations are present in small numbers, including Jehovah's Witnesses , Seventh-day Adventists and Pentecostals whose movement within Poland originated in Cieszyn Silesia. Cieszyn Silesia

6603-414: The previously Polish-ruled territories in the east that were annexed by the USSR , resulting in the present-day Polish-speaking communities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, although many Poles were expelled from those areas to areas within Poland's new borders. To the east of Poland, the most significant Polish minority lives in a long strip along either side of the Lithuania - Belarus border. Meanwhile,

6696-585: The region are roughly the same as those of the former independent Duchy of Cieszyn . Currently, over half of Cieszyn Silesia forms one of the euroregions , the Cieszyn Silesia Euroregion , with the rest of it belonging to Euroregion Beskydy . From an administrative point of view, the Polish part of Cieszyn Silesia lies within the Silesian Voivodeship and comprises Cieszyn County , the western part of Bielsko County , and

6789-438: The region includes the eastern part of Ostrava (called Slezská Ostrava ), Bohumín , Český Těšín , Frýdek (the eastern part of Frýdek-Místek ), Havířov , Karviná , Orlová and Třinec . Historically Duchy of Teschen and therefore Cieszyn Silesia formed a part of Upper Silesia . After Silesian Wars in the 18th century it was separated from the rest of Silesia, which began the process of forming its own specificity, to

6882-540: The same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście , although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zro bi liśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobi li śmy ). These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of ko go zoba czy liście? ('whom did you see?') it

6975-410: The series of affricate and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist): Neutralization occurs between voiced – voiceless consonant pairs in certain environments, at

7068-462: The situation declared a state of emergency in the territory on 19 May 1920. The situation in the territory remained very tense. Mutual intimidation, acts of terror, beatings and even killings affected the area. A plebiscite could not be held in this atmosphere. On 10 July both sides renounced the idea of plebiscite and entrusted the Conference of Ambassadors with the decision. Eventually 58.1% of

7161-506: The six of standard Polish) and (in the northern dialects) phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the West Slavic languages . However, it was described by some linguists as lacking most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood. Many linguistic sources categorize Silesian as a regional language separate from Polish, while some consider Silesian to be

7254-494: The stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet ( /uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/ , 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/ ) and derived adjective uniwersytecki ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/ ) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Loanwords generally become nativized to have penultimate stress. In psycholinguistic experiments, speakers of Polish have been demonstrated to be sensitive to

7347-547: The two disconnected parts of the crown land. In 1860 administrative responsibility for Silesia returned to the Moravian Statthalterei in Brünn/Brno; however, it remained a formally separate crown land and its administrative divisions remained unchanged. Following the compromise of 1867 the political districts were re-established and continued in some form until Austria-Hungary's dissolution, with

7440-535: The two newly created independent states of Poland and Czechoslovakia claimed the area. Czechoslovakia claimed the area partly on historic and ethnic grounds, but especially on economic and strategic grounds. The area was important for the Czechs, as the crucial railway line connecting Czech Silesia with Slovakia crossed the area (the Košice–Bohumín Railway , which was one of only two railroads that linked

7533-476: The vast majority declare themselves to be of Polish or Czech nationality in their respective national censuses. This is somewhat different from the situation in Upper Silesia where a tendency toward autonomy still exists . Local people however regard the Habsburg era rather fondly. The time of Maria Theresa and Franz Josef is viewed nostalgically as a time of justice, development, order and peace. This

7626-563: The vowel i is changed to y , e.g. Syria , Sybir , synchronizacja , Syrakuzy . The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling: Digraphs and trigraphs are used: Similar principles apply to / kʲ / , / ɡʲ / , / xʲ / and /lʲ/ , except that these can only occur before vowels, so the spellings are k, g, (c)h, l before i , and ki, gi, (c)hi, li otherwise. Most Polish speakers, however, do not consider palatalization of k, g, (c)h or l as creating new sounds. Except in

7719-706: The western part of the town of Bielsko-Biała . The Czech part lies within the Moravian-Silesian Region and comprises the Karviná District , the eastern part of the Frýdek-Místek District , and the eastern parts of the Ostrava-City District and of the city of Ostrava itself. Cieszyn Silesia covers the area of the former Duchy of Teschen, which existed from 1290 to 1918. Before 1290 the area constituted

7812-588: The whole of Cieszyn Silesia for themselves, the Polish Rada Narodowa Księstwa Cieszyńskiego in its declaration "Ludu śląski!" of 30 October 1918 and the Czech Národní výbor pro Slezsko in its declaration of 1 November 1918. On 31 October 1918, in the wake of World War I and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, most of the area was taken over by local Polish authorities. The short-lived interim agreement of 2 November 1918 reflected

7905-501: The whole region. Some of the municipalities with a Protestant majority include those in the vicinity of Skoczów and Wisła , the only town in Poland with a Protestant majority. Protestant influence is reflected in the regional saying in the Cieszyn Silesian dialect "Dzierży sie twardo jak lutersko wiara kole Cieszyna." (Stays strong like the Lutheran faith around Cieszyn.) Several towns, especially Bielsko , Cieszyn and Fryštát , in

7998-443: The word, the phoneme / x / can be spelt h or ch , the phoneme / ʐ / can be spelt ż or rz , and / u / can be spelt u or ó . In several cases it determines the meaning, for example: może ("maybe") and morze ("sea"). In occasional words, letters that normally form a digraph are pronounced separately. For example, rz represents /rz/ , not / ʐ / , in words like zamarzać ("freeze") and in

8091-461: Was a part of Nazi Germany. Immediately after the war, its borders were returned to their 1920 state. Poland signed a treaty with Czechoslovakia in Warsaw on 13 June 1958 confirming the border as it had existed on 1 January 1938. The Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia continued to be part of Czechoslovakia until the latter's dissolution in 1993 and since then has been part of the Czech Republic . The region

8184-867: Was administered with Moravia ( Moravia-Silesia  [ cs ] ), with its Kreise subordinate to the Moravo-Silesian Gubernium  [ cs ; pl ] in Brünn. Following the Revolutions of 1848 , Austrian Silesia was separated administratively from Moravia, its Kreise and the Duchy of Bielsko were disbanded and it was re-organised into political districts ( Bezirke or Bezirkshauptmannschaften ). The first division consisted of seven districts – Troppau, Freiwaldau, Jägerndorf, Freudenthal, Teschen, Friedek and Bielitz – which were each constituted from several judicial districts ( Gerichtsbezirke ). In Bach 's reforms of 1854 it

8277-418: Was inconclusive, and before the reinforced Czech forces could resume the attack on the town, they were pressed by Entente to stop operations and a cease-fire was signed on 3 February. In this tense climate it was decided that a plebiscite would be held in the area asking its people which country the territory should join. Plebiscite commissioners arrived there at the end of January 1920 and after analysing

8370-478: Was inhabited by several ethnic groups. Most numerous were Poles (historically called also Wasserpolaks ), Czechs (mainly in the western part of the region), Germans (especially in the German language island of Bielsko-Biała ) and Jews . The northern part, strongly industrialised and urbanised, is more densely populated than the southern part, which is more mountainous. The population density of Cieszyn Silesia

8463-651: Was inherited by the Habsburg Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria in 1526, after King Louis II of Bohemia had died at the Battle of Mohács . With the female succession of the Habsburg empress Maria Theresa to the throne in 1740, the Prussian king Frederick the Great laid claim to the Silesian province and, without waiting for any reply, on 16 December started the First Silesian War , thereby opening

8556-432: Was originally divided into the two districts/' circles ' ( Kreise , Czech: kraje ) of Teschen ( Kreis Teschen/Teschner Kreis  [ de ] , Těšínský kraj  [ cs ; pl ] , pop. 213,040 in 1847) and Troppau ( Kreis Troppau/Troppauer Kreis , Opavský kraj , pop. 260,199) with its seat at Krnov. In eastern Teschen, the autonomous Duchy of Bielsko was established in 1754. From 1784 it

8649-611: Was reorganised into 22 districts or Amtsbezirke  [ de ] (distinct from the political districts listed above, rather corresponding to the judicial districts ( Gerichtsbezirke )) plus the statutory city of Troppau: These districts were grouped into five Bezirksämter ('district offices'): Judicially the Landesgericht in Troppau and Kreisgericht in Teschen remained separate, each covering one of

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