Talk:Cieszyn Silesian dialect

Deleted edits
Why were my edits deleted as "misleading"? Could Darwined perhaps explain?--Xixaxu 07:49, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

NPOV tag
External references links to which are contained in the article differ on classification of the dialect. Some claim the Cieszyn Silesian dialect is (i) a dialect of Polish, (ii) transitional dialect between Polish and Czech, or (iii) an independent language. Despite of that, the article claims the Cieszyn Silesian dialect is a dialect of Polish and does not mention any other classification. An edit requesting that this claim is referenced was reverted as being "misleading". Hence the NPOV tag.--Xixaxu 09:05, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * There is no doubt it is a Polish dialect. One can doubt only by not knowing a history and listening to todays' dialect. But go back to the beginning of the 20th century and read some texts written in the dialect from that period and you'll clearly see it is a Polish dialect with very little Czech influence. Today it sounds like a transitional dialect because of the presence (from 1920) of local people in the Czech state, which heavily linguistically influenced the dialect. But let's move some 500 metres to the Polish side of the border and you will hear more original version of the dialect (but more tainted by the correct Polish language). Btw. read pl:Dialekt śląski. - Darwinek 10:57, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If there is no doubt it is a Polish dialect, I am sure you will find reliable sources to support the statement that it is a Polish dialect and not anything else. If you do not, the text should be altered. Before you support the statement by references or the article is altered, the NPOV tag should remain.--Xixaxu 11:15, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I meant reliable sources. Yes, I would expect that Zahradnik does not have any doubts whatsoever that Cieszyn Silesian dialect is a dialect of Polish. I would not expect anything else from a Polish activist in Zaolzie.--Xixaxu 11:51, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe you are unemployed, well I am not, so I don't have time to browse libraries for literature. However in the future it will be altered to reflect the truth which you (as a Czech activist from MS Region) constantly try to revise. I would recommend you to stay away from these topics and get a life. P.S. And don't accuse Zahradnik of Polish activism, you don't know that historian! - Darwinek 11:58, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Personal attacks will not resolve anything. I am not Czech and I am not from MS Region (whatever that means). I do have a life. And stop threatening me.--Xixaxu 12:09, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Your tricks are fascinating as always. Other user added Hannan reference months ago with knowledge that article text is accurate and compatible also with Hannan. And suddenly you bring it and cite it adding a citation to your views. Hmm, where you get that book from, so suddenly? Give me Google Books link, because I don't believe you own that book or that you borrowed it suddenly from some library. I will revert you again and again, you can't stand a chance in pushing your views. - Darwinek 19:36, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I do not do tricks and will not play any game of personal attacks and accusations. How do you know that "other user added Hannan reference months ago with knowledge that article text is accurate and compatible also with Hannan"? I do not know that. For summary of Hannan's book see Summary. Note that I am immune to intimidation.--Xixaxu 09:02, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As for the external link, read WP:EL to discover that that link doesn't qualify. As for the Hannan book summary, it is very nice and btw it isn't with contradiction with my edits. I will make a clarification. - Darwinek 12:24, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Please explain in greater detail why do you think that (i) the external link is not in line with WP:EL and (ii) the Hannan's book summary is not in contradiction with your edits. According to the summary Hannan demonstrates that "the diachronic development of the Teschen dialects is that of a "mixed" language". Your edits are constantly excluding this sourced view as they claim that the dialect is simply a dialect of Polish, nothing else. As a result of this, your edits are contrary to the Neutral point of view - the article does not represent fairly and without bias all significant views. It would be good if you could read the Hannan's book. I will find the editor who first inserted the reference to the Hannan's book and ask him/her for his/her views if you do not trust me.--Xixaxu 12:41, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Sweb is a personal sites repository and thus is not eligible, same as MySpace or members.tripod etc. Btw user who inserted Hannan reference is my friend :), I am going to borrow that book and will reference the truth also with his book, to shut you up forever. - Darwinek 14:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I propose - as the solutiton of present debate - to insert exact citation from Hannan's sutdy into the article. Hannan is neither Czech, nor Polish, but he is perhaps a Canadian. His book was awarded Orbis Prize in 1996. So, even if his conclusions may be considered as controversial, his book is very important for the topic of the article and it should be cited there. --Qasinka 19:37, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I will borrow that book to the end of June, at latest, will read it and insert citations to resolve it at last. - Darwinek 19:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, Darwinek please borrow the book and read it yourself if you do not trust me. Before you do that, please leave the NPOV tag in the article. As an appetizer, please see the Amazon Product Description of the book. Hopefully you will be brave enough to insert also quotations which are not in line with your view.--Xixaxu 08:36, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

"Czech linguists tend to class CS as a Moravian dialect"
I don't have access to the holy grail Hannan paper cited in this article, I just wonder if someone can state which Czech linguists make this claim? None of the literature on Moravian dialects which I have access to does. - filelake shoe  &#xF0F6;   15:22, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Will have to look for it. If Hannan is available in Czech libraries, we can look for a specific citation. - Darwinek (talk) 20:10, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
 * There's a copy in some obscure branch of Charles University but it's closed til the new year, not sure if their library is open to the public, I'll try. - filelake shoe  &#xF0F6;   11:59, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the effort, let me know if I can be of any help. - Darwinek (talk) 12:12, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

German language
Hello. I would like to propose the following statement to be reworded:
 * ...influenced mainly by the German language, as most of the rest of Silesia then belonged to the German Empire.

The influence of German in Cieszyn Silesia stemmed from the fact, that this area belonged to the Austro-Hungary + the significant portion of the urban population was German. - Darwinek (talk) 18:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've changed it but I would say we're both correct. Nearly all urban areas in Austria-Hungary were significantly German. The German influence in Silesian dialects (all Silesian dialects, not just this one) is clearly a lot stronger, because of the proximity to non-urban populations aswell. Is there any other reason why this dialect would have more German loanwords than Haná dialect, as most of the urban population of Olomouc was German too? - filelake shoe  &#xF0F6;   18:48, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I would say that the difference between Silesian dialects and, for example, Haná dialect is that non-German people in Silesia identified themselves more with the language and culture, than their counterparts in Haná. - Darwinek (talk) 19:02, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Example text
I am considering putting this up for GA soon, once I find a few more specific references to expand the new sections so that it's not so WP:SINGLESOURCEy. One problem is that the example text is unsourced. Would we be able to source it or perhaps find another?

If nothing else, I can take one of the recorded texts out of Hannan or maybe Lamprecht's české nářeční texty, but those are just mundane examples of everyday language - something culturally relevant like on Moravian dialects would be preferable. Or something familiar, like the lords prayer if we can source it.

Pinging and  – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:44, 27 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Let me say first, great work so far . Having this article as GA would be amazing. For that to happen though, it would be great to not only have a sourced example text, but to use more Polish sources and sources in general. That would bring more balance to the article too. Unfortunately I can't get to the Polish books on the subject matter, as I am residing out of "the region". Maybe could help. - Darwinek (talk) 17:44, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * More Polish sources would be great, I unfortunately can't read Polish very well so I'm sure I inadvertently stuck a slight Czech POV in here. I'd be interested in what Polish sources say about the mutual intelligibility with Standard Polish as I've got mixed messages about this from English and Czech sources. Also an estimate of number of speakers in Poland would be good (this estimates around 200,000 in the Czech Republic.) I also think the "vocabulary" section could be expanded as the lexicon is an interesting topic, what with the multiple strata and the variation between different villages etc. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 18:09, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * What definitely should be addressed in more detail as well, is the historical development of Cieszyn Silesian dialect. It was very different, say, a hundred years ago from now - more Polish and German words, less Czech. As for the numbers of speakers, 200,000 in the Czech Republic is grossly exaggerated. In my view it's all of Polish minority (i.e. some 30,000 people) plus few thousands more of people identifying themselves as Czech, Silesian or just local. From what I can see in the Czech part of Cieszyn Silesia, the number of Czechs speaking actively the dialect dropped significantly in the past 20-30 years. The majority of the 200,000 figure above would be some Moravian dialects. On the Polish side of the border the situation is also interesting. You can rarely hear native Cieszynians speaking the dialect in the streets of Cieszyn. However the dialect is still in widespread use in plenty of villages around Cieszyn. Separate development of the divided region also caused, that the dialect on the Polish side of the border is not that much influenced by Czech language. On the outskirts of Cieszyn Silesia in Poland, on the other hand, there's already noticeable influence of Upper Silesian dialects. - Darwinek (talk) 18:33, 27 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed on a history section. Perhaps estimating the number of speakers of a dialect is a fools game, dependent on the rather wonky definition of "can speak". 200,000 might be a fair estimate of people with a passive knowledge but not active, everyday speakers. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 18:44, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

I do have a book at hand that tries to relate the historical development of the dialect: Zbigniew Greń: Śląsk Cieszyński. Dziedzictwo językowe. Warszawa: Towarzystwo Naukowe Warszawskie. Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2000. ISBN 83-86619-09-0. It begins with the medieval place names, which is corroborated by Robert Mrózek (1987) that goes deeper into details. As far as I understand the earliest traceable difference between, or indication of the origin of, the Polish/Czech place names are the presence or lack of the nasal vowels. Anyway Greń points at a document written by a locksmith from Frysztat/Fryštat from 1589 and calls it the earliest full regional, Polish text. Afterwards the texts in the regional dialect were very heterogeneous. I also have a dictionary that contains 9800 words. Regarding classification: I once googled a doctoral thesis from 2017 that listed all of major works of the Polish linguists defining the extent and internal subgroups of the Silesian dialect. As you can see here all of them included Cieszyn, but some excluded the Czech part of the region. D_T_ G ( P  L ) 09:59, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Earliest examples
So I am reading the Greń's book and I think the chapter 7. Internal history of Cieszyn Polish (the author unequivocally classifies the dialect as Polish) is actually the most apt for this article. First it has a list of some differences between Cieszyn Silesian and Czech and then explains those differences in sub-chapters. This is based on the analysis of the Czech language documents from the 15th to 17th centuries, and interestingly the author argues mostly with and criticizes two articles by A. Knop: ''Spisovná čeština ve Slezsku v 16. století., 1965, Spisy Pedagogické fakulty v Ostravě 1, Praha and Podoba mluveně spisovné češtiny ve Slezsku v 16. a 17. stol.'', 1968, [in:] Sborník prací jazykovědných a literárněvědných věnovaný VI. MSS, 31-38. Apparently Knop continued Kellner's thought, as I understand from the link in the reference number 30: "Důmyslným rozborem některých jevů a s pomocí historického materiálu dospívá konečně k překvapujícímu závěru, že celá oblast východolašských dialektů západního Těšínska a přilehlého Čadecka náležela od původu k jazykovému celku československému; silný příliv polské kolonisace během staletí, zejm. od 17. stol., byl sice příčinou popolštění těchto krajů, ale starý český a slovenský podklad nářečí je podnes patrný (...)" and also theorized that the language of the region was originally Czechoslovak and the differences from the above Greń's list reduced to dialectal changes towards the Polish language (signs of polonisation). Greń argued that Knopp did not take previous and contemporary Latin and German documents into account, like, at all, completely preventing the obvious conclusion that the language of the region was [closer to, if you will] Polish from the get go. D_T_ G ( P  L ) 07:39, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Knop's conclusion doesn't surprise me at all. It is a reflection of the time it was written, and in line with the broader Czechoslovak political attempt to label Polish minority on the Czech side of Cieszyn Silesia as Polonised Moravians (popolštění moravci) and/or immigrants from Galicia.--Darwinek (talk) 18:02, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
 * To be precise, the quote is from the review of Kellner's work (1949), and to be fair Polish linguists generally classified the Lach dialects as Part of the Polish-Silesians dialects, up to pl:Alfred Zaręba (1988). I don't think Greń ever did, he only mentioned that maybe the labial consonant + i + Vocalis is present in the Lachian dialect because of the Polish influence. D_T_ G ( P  L ) 07:34, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

In the dictionary from 2010 there are also examples from 4 places (Pruchna, Ustroń, Wisła, Koniaków) of the same text, to show gradual changes from North to South.

Pruchna: "We strzode byłech w Cieszynie. Kupiłech ujcowi zdrzadło. Weź putnie i przyniyś wody ze studni. Muszym sie uwijać, bo chcym jechać z tatóm na Baranióm. Jeszczech tam nie był. Rożgnij lampe, bo już ćma. Jutro albo pojutrze bydymy siyc. Dobróm kosóm sie pryndko siecze. Jo rod siekym, bo móm nowóm kose. Jano chrómie, musiół go kóń kopnóć."

Koniaków: "We strzodym byłech w Cieszinie. Kupiłech ujcowi zdrzadło. Weź putniym, a prziniyś wody ze studnie. Musim sie uwijać, bo chcym jechać z tatóm na Baranióm. Jeściech tam nie był. Rożgnij lampym, bo uż je ćma. Jutro abo pojutru bedymy kosić. Dobróm kosóm sie hute kosi. Jo rod koszim, bo móm nowóm kosym. Jano chrómie, isto go kóń kopnół."

D_T_ G ( P  L ) 07:47, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

As for the Polish side of the border the most extensive website in the dialect that I know of is www.gwaracieszynska.pl with plenty of text. The author, from Kończyce Małe, also has a youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZNdNagFyFa2Jc2F5ZYBOqw with recorded voice. D_T_ G ( P  L ) 07:53, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Recent example
, Gents, I have a recent photo from Gorolski Święto festival with alcohol age limitation sign in Cieszyn Silesian dialect: "Młodym (smarkoczóm) kwitu nie lejymy." Do you think it can be useful for the article here? If so, I can upload it to Commons. Let me know what do you think. - Darwinek (talk) 00:14, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes please! Not enough pics in the article. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 05:17, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Done - one and two. Please choose the one you like more, and add to the article as apropriate. - Darwinek (talk) 17:39, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Official codification
It lacks official codification and remains a spoken language. - well, there were recently a few codifications made by our noble Upper Silesian colleagues, intended to cover all of Silesian dialects (!), thus also Cieszyn Silesian on both sides of the border (!), and some books and websites, including the Silesian wikipedia (szl:Przodńo zajta), which would render the sentence from the lead deprecated. However I would say this codification was not and will not be adopted warmly in the Polish part of Cieszyn Silesia, jokes and poems in local newspapers continued to be written with Polish spelling. In the Czech part, I imagine, they are most probably not even aware of these codifications. Just like they are not aware of the Upper Silesian meaning of the word 'gorol', that is now very pejorative. Zbigniew Greń actually wrote about that in his book. Two thirds of that book is an analysis of surveys conducted among 3000 primary school pupils on both sides of the border: they were asked about their attitude toward the dialect, their national and local identity, and so on. And so it appears that the people in Beskid Śląski after decades of interaction with throngs of Upper Silesian tourists ceased to identify as Silesians, eventhough the Cieszyn vel Jabłonków (in Istebna) dialect is believed to be best preserved right there. In Zaolzie it is nothing strange to identify as a Silesian and 'Gorol' at the same time, the surveys demonstrate that, and also this video of a Czech TV Soužití Čechů a Poláků, around the minute 4:00 all the guests proudly pronounce „[…] miyndzy nami gorolami […]“, quite unthinkable for Upper Silesians :D D_T_ G ( P  L ) 08:04, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I have seen written Silesian in a contemporary natural habitat before (the Tauron Nowa Muzyka website had a "Silesian" version a few years back) but it was just written like it was Polish. If there are books written in the new ausbau orthographies we can mention this in a couple of sentences (Moravian dialects mentions a similar initiative). I think the sentence in the lead is still truthful (if misleading) as an "official" codification would be one adopted by a state for use in government, education, media etc, which I don't think is the case here. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 08:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Well not yet, but as far as I know there is a ready-to-use textbook for the new subject regional education, supported by the Silesian Voivodeship government but voluntary to use by the teachers. I have not seen it, only heard about the controversies it sparked in non-Silesian Żywiec, but if they had snippets or even chapters in that codified spelling, would that count? D_T_ G ( P  L ) 09:06, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * One thing we have to bear in mind is that Upper Silesian autonomists hijacked the whole "dialect/language" debate for political reasons. Trying to lump Cieszyn Silesian dialect with Upper Silesian just doesn't make any sense for various reasons. The linguistic misunderstanding between people in Cieszyn Silesia and Upper Silesia is truly perfectly demonstrated with the word "Gorol", which in Upper Silesia is a pejorative term for people from the rest of Poland (mainly Warsaw), wheresas in Cieszyn Silesia it's a regular word for highlander (see e.g. Gorolski Święto).--Darwinek (talk) 23:32, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Any "language or dialect" debate is already a political one 110% of the time. But that's interesting about "Gorol", surely that flipped in meaning if it now refers to people from Warsaw?! I remember reading that "Valach" and "Lach" used to be a pair of uphill/downhill ethnic slurs at one point as well, and that these words tend to be quite variable... – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 07:26, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Multitude of online papers by Zbigniew Greń
Two in English that may be useful for us here: there are more papers in Polish, sometimes with short summaries in English, for example:
 * The hierarchy of territorial units in the multi - identificational community of Cieszyn Silesia,
 * Identity at the Borders of Closely-Related Ethnic Groups in the Silesia Region,
 * Miejsce języka czeskiego w historii Śląska Cieszyńskiego, [The place of the Czech language in the history of Cieszyn Silesia],
 * Wpływy górnośląskie na dialekty cieszyńskie [Upper Silesian influences on the Cieszyn dialects]
 * Zakresy 'swojskości' i 'obcości' na Śląsku Cieszyńskim
 * Współczesna sytuacja gwar Śląska Cieszyńskiego [The current situation of the dialects of Cieszyn Silesia];

Less specifically about the dialect by other authors: www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Cieszyn_Silesia. This article in English is also tagged Cieszyn Silesia: Mutual Intelligibility of Languages in the Slavic Family, but it slows my browser a lot. Probably a very big PDF.

D_T_ G ( P  L ) 18:21, 10 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Nice find! Right, well, I wouldn't waste your time reading Mutual Intelligibility of Languages in the Slavic Family, it makes some absurd claims, certainly politically motivated, and I assume it isn't peer reviewed. Here is my favourite gem: Czech is part of the Czechoslovak macrolanguage which consists of three and possibly seven languages: Czechoslovak (with two dialects, Czech and Slovak), Eastern Lach, Western Lach, Central Lach, Pemci Czech, Hantec and Eastern Slovak. A very intriguing way of slicing the frgál...
 * There are some numbers in the paper that try and measure unidirectional intelligibility but they're a bit strange and the information about how the data was collected is pitifully vague:
 * Czech to Lach = 50%
 * Czech to Cieszyn 37% Czech intelligibility of Cieszyn Silesian is estimated at 37%. This figure is very rough and is derived from a large intelligibility range. Czech understanding of this language can definitely be very poor and in some cases has been described as zero.
 * Czech to Polish 36%
 * Czech to Hutorčina 70%
 * Czech to Slovak 91%
 * Polish to "Silesian Polish" = 94%
 * Polish to "Silesian" = "26% with no knowledge of Old Polish or German, much higher with that knowledge"
 * Polish to Cieszyn and v.v. 60% ("this is just a guess")
 * Polish to Slovak 41%
 * Polish to Czech 36%
 * Cieszyn to Czech 70% ("estimate")
 * He also claims Lach and Cieszyn are separate languages. I think it's all ever so slightly too batshit insane to be WP:RS.
 * Will check the other English ones later on. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 08:27, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Hm well, they didn't have much on language in but the "identity at the borders" one rung a bell. In the list of possible classifications of the dialect one of them is "typologically a creole". I definitely seem to remember one esteemed dialectologist labelling all Silesian dialects as "Slavo-Germanic creoles"... again, not entirely sure how seriously to take that... – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 08:52, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, the whole chapter 5. Relationship between identity and language in Silesia. This sentence struck and hurt me: There are instances where people who reject the regional identity actually speak the dialect well, or very well. As was shown by a test for knowledge of the dialect. These cases - it is seen as an obstacle to Polishness (and to the Polish literary language) (cf, Greń 2002b). I have also heard claims about Slavic-Germanic creole, but never regarding to Cieszyn Silesian. Zbigniew Greń explicitly stated that contrary to Prussian Upper Silesia large influx of the German loanwords was delayed in Cieszyn Silesia for over half a century, and generally the Slavic languages were held in higher (not necessarily completely tolerant, though) regards in multi-ethnic Austria-Hungary. Of course there were, but never in such a number as in Upper Silesian, and Greń has also a paper about that in Polish: Zakres wpływów niemieckich w leksyce gwar Śląska Cieszyńskiego. I mean you know the history of Czech language, right? Wasn't it artificially cleansed from German loanwords at some point? I imagine Cieszyn Silesian would not have many more German loanwords than Czech before the cleansing. D_T_ G ( P  L ) 12:05, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

An excerpt from Magic in the Social Construction of the Past: the Case of Teschen Silesia by Jan Kajfosz: "In Czech schools, in the Czech part of Teschen Silesia, from the fifties to the nineties (and in part until today), children were taught that the Teschen dialect is an East Lachian dialect. In newer Czech textbooks one can read that the dialect belongs to the Polish-Czech (or Czech-Polish) mixed dialect (Bělič1972,Hannan1996:86). In Polish schools on either side of the border(6) children learn that the dialect belongs to the group of Silesian dialects.(7) Such a conceptual difference—as between the names East Lachian or Silesian—is a world-forming difference. In the irst instance, the source of the Teschen dialect is conceptually situated in Moravia, and thus on the Czech side of the border, while in the second instance, it is situated in Upper Silesia,on the Polish side. In this manner, the Teschen dialect is tacitly given one or the other‘national affinity’ (or, according to newer thinking of Czech linguists, simultaneously one and the other national affinity). By subordinating the Teschen dialect to the appropriate national language, the national claims of the dialect’s users, or the institutions which represent them, can be legitimized (cf. Malinowski 2004: 229–239). This happens on the basis of a cognitive mechanism that causes a word to ‘transfer’ the traits of the mental image (prototype and stereotype) associated with it onto a phenomenon, which is understood by means of the given word. Metaphorically speaking: the word and the phenomenon in the spontaneous experience ‘merge’ with one another—the map is identified with the terrain. In this sense, the rivalry between the above-mentioned ways of conceptualizing the local dialect is a ‘battle’ over an image of the past—anachronic past, as naming the given dialect does not comprehend its transformation, only a state that was to exist ‘from the beginning’."

D_T_ G ( P  L ) 07:14, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Schlesisch-Pohlnisch in 1804
I made this map based on this book by Reginald Kneiffl from 1804. It surprised me in a few places. D_T_ G ( P  L ) 15:18, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the map. Great work!--Darwinek (talk) 00:41, 28 April 2020 (UTC)