Cieszyn Silesian dialect

Silesian dialect spoken across the Polish Czech border

The Cieszyn Silesian dialect or Teschen Silesian dialect (Cieszyn Silesian: cieszyńsko rzecz; gwara cieszyńska or narzecze cieszyńskie; ; Silesian: ćeszyński djalekt) is one of the Silesian dialects. It has its roots mainly in Old Polish and also has strong influences from Czech and German and, to a lesser extent, from Vlach and Slovak. It is spoken in Cieszyn Silesia, a region on both sides of the Polish Czech border. It remains mostly a spoken language. The dialect is better preserved today than traditional dialects of many other West Slavic regions. On the Czech side of the border (in Trans Olza) it is spoken mainly by the Polish minority, where it was and still is strongly influenced mainly by Czech (mainly lexicon and syntax). Polish and Czech linguists differ in their views on the classification of the dialect. Most Czech linguists make a distinction between the dialect as spoken in Czechia and in Poland, and classify the dialect spoken on the Czech side of the border as a "mixed Czech Polish dialect", a designation already used in the 19th century. Polish linguists tend to classify the language on both sides of the border under the Silesian dialects of Polish. Although the dialect has its roots mainly in Polish (phonology and morphology are consistently shared with Polish), the diachronic development of the dialect is of a transitional nature. In the past, the dialect has been mostly lumped together with other, territorially bigger languages/dialects: beginning with Polish (the language of the concio Polonica, Polish congregation),1=By the 17th century canonical visitors from Breslau, as opposed to Moravian (concio Moravica) spoken in the western part of the region and the German spoken in and around Bielsko.|group=Note "Moravian" ("moravski / po moravsku"),1=After the area administratively became a part of Moravia in the year 1782 to 1848.|group=Note diluted Polish (Wasserpolnisch)1=Most commonly and slightly pejoratively by Germans in the 19th and 20th century|group=Note or less pejoratively hyphenated Silesian Polish (schlesisch polnisch)1=For example in a book by Reginald Kneifel (1804), whereas the dialect in the western part, along the Ostravice river was Sprache schlesisch mährisch (Silesian Moravian).|group=Note, but mostly with Silesian by the Upper Silesians and Poles. Polish linguists have mostly seen it as part of the Silesian dialect, first in 1974 recognising the Cieszyn Silesian dialect (narzecze cieszyńskie) as a specific and distinct subgroup of that dialect (Stanisław Bąk, 1974; Alfred Zaręba, 1988; Bogusław Wyderka, 2010). As such, from the 1990s the Cieszyn Silesian dialect became an object of the debate, whether Silesian is a separate language or just a dialect. The Gorals in the south of Cieszyn Silesia do not call their dialect Silesian but Goral (Górolski) and have more Vlach and Slovak influence.

The language of Cieszyn Silesia was a result of a historical evolution, shaped by the territory's geographical location, affected by political affiliation and migrations of people. The region was almost always peripheral—at the south eastern edge of Silesia and the Diocese of Wrocław, in Poland under the Piast dynasty, and as a fee of the Kingdom of Bohemia—however it is located near the wide, northern opening of the Moravian Gate, on the most popular if not the shortest route from Prague or Vienna to Kraków, and from Wrocław to Upper Hungary (modern day Slovakia). In a few decades after the establishment of the Duchy of Teschen, roughly at the same time it became a fee of the Kingdom of Bohemia (1327), written documents began to be produced in the local ducal chancellery. They closely followed patterns set by the capital of the country, Prague, including and foremost the chancellery language: Latin, German (alongside Latin from 1331), Czech (increasingly dominant over German from the mid 15th century). Probably due to the peripheral location and a certain level of autonomy the cancellaria bohemica in the Duchy of Teschen was preserved after the Battle of White Mountain (1620), in contrast to the region of Bohemia. The chancellery language did not reflect the ethnic composition of the majority of the population of Cieszyn Silesia, however it did affect the preference of the well established Czech over reimposed German, as it was linguistically much closer to the Cieszyn Silesian dialect. The earliest traces of the vernacular language were exposed in place names, as they were first mentioned in Latin and/or German speaking documents. They sometimes contained nasal vowels, one of the first traits differentiating early medieval Polish and Czech: they were present in the place names later inhabited by Cieszyn Silesian speaking people, like Dambonczal (Dębowiec), but not in the area settled by Moravian Lach population1=With two notable exceptions: the 1229 mention of Dubrawa — Doubrava, and Bludowicze — Bludovice, both polonised afterwards as Dambrowa (1268) and Blandowicze.|group=Note. From the 13th and consolidated in the 14th century was the spirantization g ≥ h, another major trait delineating from then on Polish and Czech, as well as Lach and Cieszyn Silesian dialects. Even after the introduction and dominance of Czech as an official language, those place names were adapted to the chancellary language only partially, for example Dębowiec as Dubowiec instead of Dubovec, or Ogrodzona as Ogrozena instead of Ohrazena, however for example Dombrowa continued to be written with the nasal vowel even in the Czech documents. The vernacular language especially seeped into half official and unofficial written documents, like diaries (zapiśniki dlo pamięci) or even chronicles written by local rural authors (piśmiorze) from the early 18th century, earlier than anything known in Poland. Probably the most discussed and analysed of them is the first Polish, rural bookplate by Jura (Jerzy) Gajdzica (1777 1840) from Cisownica. The text was written primarily in the local dialect, but was stylized to resemble standard Polish:

Roku 1812 przed Gody Francuz prziszeł na Mozgola do bitki, ale sie Francuzowi źle podarziło, Pon Bóg mu tam bardzo wybił, trefiła zima wielko i mroz, i zmorz tam, że sie go mało wróciło i musioł sie wrócić chned w poście z Galicje. ( )

Depending on the education of the writer a varying level of code switching between Czech, Moravian, Silesian and Polish can be observed, which apparently didn't impede much the communication between the Slavic speakers, as opposed to the language barrier, that could and often did exist between the local Slavic and German speaking population. After the First Silesian War in 1742 the majority of Silesia was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia. The influence of Czech in Upper Silesia, to that date similar in scope to the Duchy of Teschen, quickly waned, replaced by the growing imposition of the German culture and language, especially after 1749. This led to attempts of approximation of the two codes and large influx of the German borrowings, embodied in the term Wasserpolaken, later adopted also by the Austrian Germans. The Austrian Silesia, the part of the Silesia that remained in the Habsburg Empire, with the Duchy of Teschen and the neighbouring but separate state countries, in 1783 administratively became part of the Moravian Governorship, which, contrary to the Prussian Silesia, led to strengthening of the influence of Czech. For example, the text books for local schools were produced in Brno in the standard form of Czech, which was together with the dialect commonly referred to as "Moravian" ("moravski / po moravsku"), The higher education remained German speaking, which the Polish activists tried to change as well. For example, in 1874 , a Polish deputy to the Imperial Council of Austria, proposed to open a Polish speaking teachers' seminar in Teschen, as well as a Czech speaking one in Troppau (Opava). This was strongly opposed by Eduard Suess, who called the local language not Polish, but Wasserpolnisch, a Polish Czech mixture, not used in books.1=Earlier Suess defended the imposition of obligatory German in the primary schools|group=Note

From the 19th century up to World War II the dialect, like all Silesian dialects,1=However noticeably less than in the Upper Silesian towns.|group=Note was strongly influenced mainly by German, which at that time gained the most prestigious status, and increasing proportion of the urban population, not just in Bielsko and Teschen, but also in smaller towns were German speakers. After World War I two new nation states emerged: Poland and Czechoslovakia, followed by Polish–Czechoslovak border conflicts. The region was divided in 1920 by these two states. After that division the dialect in the Czech part of the region was and still is strongly influenced mainly by Czech (mainly lexicon and syntax), On the other hand, in the Polish part it was and still is influenced by standard Polish.

The Cieszyn Silesian dialect is spoken by around 200,000 people in the Czech Republic.

The native Slavic vocabulary of the Cieszyn Silesian dialect consists of some words shared with modern Czech and some words shared with modern Polish. It also contains words which has become obsolete in modern Polish but whose cognates are still used in Czech. Cieszyn Silesian has borrowed heavily from German, specifically the Silesian German dialects spoken in the area, and also contains some "Carpathianisms" of Romance, Albanian, Hungarian and East Slavic origin, which are mostly words relating to the pastoral lifestyle of shepherds in the highlands.