Talk:Silesian language

Silesian language does not equal Silesian dialect

Because someone obviousely mixed it up, I added, that the Silesian language discribed here, is totally unrelated to the german dialect before WWII. Because in Germany the term "Schlesischer Dialekt" (Silesian dialect) still is used for this nearly died German dialect this hint should be given in text. But, I propose, that this article primarly shoud be used for the current Silesian language, spoken by the mayority in this area _today_. Steven, Germany 82.82.117.221 22:50, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I don't know which side (there may even be more than two sides) to believe here, so I'm going purely with the Ethnologue classifications. If you want to convince me that Ethnologue is wrong, then attempt to do so using neutral and credible sources. Otherwise, I'll keep reverting both sides.

• http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SLI
• http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=PQL

Daniel Quinlan 22:56, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

three languages with the same name -> that should be expressed

Obviously we are talking about three (!) languages/dialects with a similar name know (1. slawonic language, 2. polish dialect, 3. german dialect). All of them may be correct, but I think that should be expressed in the text. Naming just the German dialect is escapist. Steven, Germany 82.82.117.221 22:57, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Your conclusion is not obvious to me at all. I see:

• A Polish dialect, Upper Silesian — in the Slavic language family
• A Germanic language, Lower Silesian — in the Germanic language family

The second some may consider to be a dialect and the first some may consider to be a language, but I'm choosing to go by the Ethnologue reports which seem to be the most credible and neutral source available. Did you read the Ethnologue reports? What is the third language/dialect that you see? Daniel Quinlan 23:12, Nov 3, 2003 (UTC)

Naming, even it is not correct!

Even it is not the same it could be mixed up. Therefore it is indicated to name both, also the polish dialect.

Upper != Upper, Lower != Lower Silesian (-: Language!=Dialect?

The third one was named by Grzes above. I don't know about its background.

I just can tell, that I have both upper (grand father) and lower silesian (grand mother) (german) relatives (expulsed in the 1950ies). Both groups spoke a german regional dialect (Oberschlesisch=upper silesian german dialect // and // (Niederschlesisch=lower silesian german dialect, which you may name "Lower Silesian language"). Because a Gerhard Hauptmann link in the article exists, I can tell you that this is the dialect of my Grandmother. She always called her dialect just "Schlesisch" (Silesian).Of course today you will find an upper and lower silesian regional dialect of polish in the area that may have the same name. Perhaps -- even though you are right scholarly -- you should post your article putting in these commentarial details to avoid mix-ups. Steven 82.82.117.221 23:26, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Please protect the page!

Since there seems to be a disagreement, I propose to protect the article. Perhaps other voices of language experts should discuss "Silesian language" in this Talk area. To propose a compromise, in the article should both be named the nearly died "german dialect" and the now spoken "polish dialect" to avoid confusions, adding the hopefully generally accepted scholary view of the linguists. Steven 82.82.117.221 23:49, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

No need to protect, the content of the Lower Silesian language is perfectly OK. I reverted because I wanted the contents of the previous page back, andwhne I wanted to return to your version, you stepped in. I am sorry I made you angry. I will abstain from editing The Lower Silesian lang page. Thank you CC, 23:56, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I was asked to protect this page, which I have done, primarily to stop it being moved until the correct title can be ascertained. Angela 00:01, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Now I'm a little bit confused. Therefore I will stay away for some hours, too, to see what has happend here. (-: Steven 82.82.117.221 00:04, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Questions

This page is about the Germanic language/dialect, not the Slavic language/dialect. The Slavic one is currently located at Upper Silesian. Please don't rename it. I probably should have moved the Silesian language article to Upper Silesian instead of here, but let's forget about the history and just try to figure out the right solution for both pages. My initial questions are:

• is "Lower Silesian", the Germanic dialect/language, still spoken?
• is "Upper Silesian", the Slavic dialect/language a dialect or a language? Ethnologue is quite clear that they consider it to be a dialect, but some people here seem to be quite firm in the belief that it is a language. We can and should, of course, list both views on that page. I respectfully suggest that we not do that just yet, though, and perhaps allow a neutral person who does not have a firm opinion to make those changes.
• are there better English names for either? What does UNESCO, Ethnologue, or another plausibly neutral organization call these languages/dialects?

I may have additional questions as we proceed. Thanks for your patience. Daniel Quinlan 00:16, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

I want to support this approach and want to add the following questions:

• is the english term "Lower Silesian language/dialect" (what ever it may be) used for the german dialect that "Gerhard Hauptmann" spoke and that was spoken until WWII or is it used for the polish dialect spoken today in the part of Silesia that was former german Lower Silesia? Or is it even used for both? The same question for "Upper Silesian".
• the german terms "Oberschlesisch" (literally Upper Silesian) and "Niederschlesisich" (literally Lower Silesian, also just "Schlesisch") both were used for german dialects spoken in the region. Is the literal translation to english wrong and is there as claimed a distinction between _slawic_ Upper Silesian and _german_ Lower Silesian (which I doubt).
• As I know "the Lower Silesian in Hauptmann's sense" still is used between Dresden and Görlitz in Germany (which is part of the german state of Saxony today but belonged to the german state of Lower Silesia until WWII) and a small german minority in (polish) Silesia, because of expulsory it is only a small rest. Can anyone confirm, that "Hauptmann's Silesian" is not completely dead off?

I want to stress, that this is not a political discussion, but a discussion about linguistic terms in english. Steven 82.82.117.221 00:33, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC) t"

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To begin to answer my questions:

• It seems that the term "Silesian" may be more commonly used than "Upper Silesian".
• I am getting the impression that "Lower Silesian" may be extinct, perhaps we can figure that out later.
• Most signs point to "(Upper) Silesian", the Slavic language, being a dialect of Polish rather than a language. However, it seems that many Silesians believe it is a language. I think the page discussing the Slavic language (Upper) Silesian should not be named either a "language" or a "dialect". So, for the time being I would propose:
  • move the current text of Upper Silesian to Silesian without further modification for now
  • have redirects point from Silesian language, Silesian dialect, Upper Silesian, Silesian ethnolect point to Silesian
  • leave Lower Silesian alone for now

Daniel Quinlan 01:45, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

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Silesian region, Silesian nation and Silesian language

I don't necessarily agree with all the quotations below, but I think they will explain much.

Culture, language and traditions of Silesia

The majority of the ethnic Silesians,who live only in Upper Silesia and make up about 40% of the Upper silesian population speak Silesian – a tongue which is stil not codified. It can be branched out into several dialects used rather in rural areas. In the future a Silesian-Polish dictionary i due to appear – an initiative of persons forming the Silesian Academic Association. This may lead to the codification of Silesian. The Silesian tongue, a hybrid of Czech, German and Polish, although almost on the verge of extinction, is still used by the native Upper Silesians.

Silesians are Roman Catholics – only in the southernmost part of Upper Silesia, Lutherans make up the majority. The Silesians are a very religious community – they are active in their parish life and attend religious celebrations in great numbers. Every year the Silesians attend pilgrimages of which the most important are the Workers` Pilgrimage to the Sanctuary at Piekary Slaskie and Men`s Pilgrimage to the St.Annaberg`s Sanctuary.

St.Annaber which is situated right in the centre of upper Silesia is the cultural and religious symbol of the Silesian identity.

The Silesians have always loved music. Nowadays many people still play traditional Silesian melodies in hundreds of music bands all over Upper Silesia. Particularly brass-bands are very popular among Silesians, that like lively melodies. They can also boast of many groups that maintain the traditional Silesian dances.

Cultural actions are essentially conducted by the very active regional movements, as for instance Silesian Academic Association (Slaski Zwiazek Akademicki) – an ally of the Silesian Autonomy Movement.

Ruch Autonomii Slaska publish a monthly “Jaskólka Slaska" where texts in Silesian often appear. It also sponsors prizes for winners of the Silesian dialect competiotion held every year. Activists of the Silesian Academic Association put much emphasis on the regional education – in fact their main aim is a formation of the Upper Silesian intelligentsia that would care much more about regional affairs. Many of the regionalists work in regional newspapers, magazines and radios, where they promote Silesian culture, traditions and language.

It is notable that the silesians, after forty years of communist and state indoctrination, are now witnessing the revival of the Silesian folklore.

http://www.rams.pl/ras/RuchAutonomiiSlaska/eng/culture/CultureLanguageTraditions.htm

This seems to support the "Upper Silesian" name for the dialect/language that we are talking about. However, while some Silesians may view themselves as German-Silesians and some may view themselves as Polish-Silesians, I haven't seen anything that would indicate more than one active Silesian dialect/language. Daniel Quinlan 21:07, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Silesians are Roman Catholics – only in the southernmost part of Upper Silesia, Lutherans make up the majority. - I'm Cieszyn Silesian --(and Lutheran as well, however we, Lutherans are not in majority, so for me this Silesia Autonomy Movement text is far from real situation in my home part of Silesia)-- not Upper Silesian, I speak Cieszyn Silesian dialect, we feel quite distinct from Upper Silesia, and Upper Silesians, and most of us declare thememselves as Poles, even patriotic, and the tounge of our ancestors will propably always be for as a dialect of Polish, not seperate language, no matter of official codifications... Regards, D_T_G (PL) 13:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Jynzyk Siloonski - Silesian language

This shows a proposal for the Silesian language spelling. I don't think it is accepted widely, but ceirtanly this is not Polish, or Polish dialcet.

http://www.republikasilesia.com/silesia-club/jynzyksiloonski.html

This site is known of being full of extremistic views... D_T_G (PL) 13:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Sample of the Silesian language

This sample is classsified as Polish (Silesian) which shows its undecided status. http://www.language-museum.com/p/polish-silesian.htm

Struggle for the Silesian nation recognition

Dear Friends,

Silesians in Poland make up a community of more than one million people. Nonetheless, founder-members of a minority movement, the Union of Population of Silesian Nationality, had to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights after the Polish Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that a Silesian nation does not exist. One of the biggest national minorities in Central Europe must now wait for a verdict of the European Court, which will rule whether Poland is obliged to recognise our nationality.

Although the Republic of Poland ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Silesians are officially regarded only as an ethnic group within the Polish nation. According to sociological research, about 15-20% of Upper Silesian people regard themselves Silesian, and as a nation separate from Poles, Czechs or Germans, but are refused official recognition by the State authorities. Moreover, those people are considered “separatists without national awareness”, in official propaganda.

Most likely the European Court will rule on our case in this spring or summer. We believe that the verdict will coincide with principles set out in the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, of which implementation by national/European structures we consider much more important to minorities than merely its ratification.

We kindly ask you to inform members of your association, party, your compatriots, governments of your region/nation and state, about our struggles and the situation of Silesians. Your assistance will be a great honour to us.

Yours sincerely,

Foreign Department of the Silesian Autonomy Movement www.raslaska.org

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FOR RIGHTS OF SILESIAN NATION !

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS STRASBURG MAY 17th, 2001

Silesians in Poland make up a community of more than one million people. Nonetheless, founder-members of a minority movement, the Union of Population of Silesian Nationality, had to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights after the Polish Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that a Silesian nation does not exist. One of the biggest national minorities in Central Europe must now wait for a verdict of the European Court, which will rule whether Poland is obliged to recognise our nationality. Although the Republic of Poland ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, Silesians are officially regarded only as an ethnic group within the Polish nation. According to sociological research, about 15-20% of Upper Silesian people regard themselves Silesian, and as a nation separate from Poles, Czechs or Germans, but are refused official recognition by the State authorities. Moreover, those people are considered “separatists without national awareness”, in official propaganda.

ABOUT SILESIA

Silesia is a Central European country partitioned between three states: Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. It consists of two historical regions: Lower and Upper Silesia. Its area is 44.992sq.km (Lower Silesia - 26.592 sq.km. Upper Silesia - 18.400 sq.km).It borders Saxony and Brandenburg (Germany), Wielkopolska and Małopolska (Poland), Moravia and Bohemia (the Czech Republic) and Slovakia. The capital and the largest city of Silesia is Wrocław (Breslau). Silesia`s other major cities include Legnica, Goerlitz, Opole (historical capital of Upper Silesia), Katowice, Gliwice and Opava. At present three artificial regions exist in Silesia, which respect neither regional traditions nor historical boundaries.

POPULATION OF SILESIA About 8 million people. Nowadays ethnic Poles, descendants of Polish new settlers who moved to Lower Silesia after 1945, constitute more than 95% of Lower Silesian population. The situation is different in Upper Silesia, where about 40% of the inhabitants are ethnic Silesians. The Upper Silesian population consists of ca. 25% of people of Silesian nationality (about 1 000 000 people), 10% of Germans and about 65% of Poles. Moravians and Czechs also live in the Czech part of Upper Silesia.

ABOUT SILESIANS

Under the communist regime/1945-1989/ the Silesian were either forced to leave their motherland or become Polish. According to historical research more than 90% of Lower Silesians /of German nationality/ and about 50% of the Upper Silesian population had to leave their homes and move to Germany. The rebirth of the Silesian nationhood and autonomism took place in late 1980's due to democratic changes in Poland and in the Central Europe. Nowadays the Silesian Autonomy Movement, the Upper Silesians' Association and the Silesian Academic Association are very active movements advocating autonomy for Silesia.

OUR GOALS Our main purpose is to protect our own identity. We will vigorously oppose all attempts of assimilation against our will. At the same time, remaining faithful to Silesian tradition of openness, we declare our readiness to cooperate with all national and ethnic groups living in Silesia in order to develop this land in every respect. Together with regionalist and minority groups, we will promote the model of a society diversified nationally, culturally and linguistically. A society whose keystone is common rights and civic liberties. We want to see a state that acts as a guarantor of these rights and not as a bureaucratic machine strangling the freedom of the individual. We proclaim categorical war on all forms of collectivism and centralism. By signing the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Rights of Minorities, Poland indubitably moved in the right direction. However, we believe that modernising Polish society will require developing new approaches to issues of honouring and guaranteeing national and minority rights. This becomes a stronger imperative with the European unification process.

Since we believe in justice we hope that the European Court of Human Rights will not deprive our nation of a right to be recognised as such.

http://www.republikasilesia.com/RAS/index.html

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I don't necessarily agree with all the above quotations, but I think they will explain much.

1. The Upper Silesian population consists of ca. 25% of people of Silesian nationality (about 1 000 000 people) (...) -> where did you find such a statistics? I fought that only 173 000 Silesians declared Silesians nationality, I'm native Silesian, and I don't feel a part of Silesia nation, I'm not lonely with such declaration, and it doesn't change anything, I was, am, and always will be Silesian :) 2. We will vigorously oppose all attempts of assimilation against our will. and I will oppose all attempts of intruding Upper Silesian identity to Cieszyn Silesians, it's our choice, our freedom of the individual... Regards, D_T_G (PL) 13:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Vandalising activities of some editors

I have nothing against the Lower Silesian language page, but I am very confused and angry that someone tries to destroy my work, destroy the history of my work, and tries to destroy backup copies of the materials I find valuable and informative. It is understandable that every editor has the right to make his/her contributions but the activies of renaming, redirecting that result in erasing the consecutive versions of the document can be named no other that VANDALISM

CC, 19:15, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Redirected articles still have a history and old versions are still available. Redirecting and moving articles is not vandalism. Your activity of creating additional articles to avoid discussing the issue makes it very difficult to proceed. You appear to be unwilling to work with other people to figure out what should be in the article (or articles) and calling people vandals is not helpful either. If you want to make "backup copies" because you don't understand how to use the history mechanism, do it in your own User namespace, not in the main article namespace. Daniel Quinlan 21:02, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help. As I am quite new to this project may I ask a simple question: where are stored the historical versions of the Silesian language, Silesian ethnolect pages I made yesterday, and where are my contributions to the Talk pages of the respective articles. cc, 21:21, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

First, I'm as neutral a person as you're going to find: I have a long-standing interest in languages and I'm not Polish, German, Silesian, or Czech. The stored copies are exactly where you left them. Go to Silesian ethnolect: click on it, you'll be redirected. Click on the page title again and you'll get the redirect page, then click on history and you can look at old versions. However, if you restore the material or create a new page without discussion and agreement from othere, and I will almost certainly revert your changes. Please help us figure out a consensus here. If you want to work on your ethnolect page in the meantime, please do it under your User page. Thanks Daniel Quinlan 21:36, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

I created it for you. Your last version of Silesian ethnolect is located at User:cc/Silesian. The page is not close to NPOV, though, so I doubt it would be accepted at Silesian. And please nobody create any new pages until we all agree. Just use Silesian for now. There are too many pages already. And cc, if you want to delete it, go to WP:PSPTBD. Daniel Quinlan 21:45, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

National Census of Poland 2002

?? comment Nationality, not Language nor Ethnicity

my comment: language is one element of nationality and etnicity

According to 2002 national census, Poland had 38 million 230 thousand inhabitants.

The largest national minorities are (declared nationality): * Silesian 173,200

• German 152,900
• Belarusians 48,700
• Ukrainians 31,000
• Romowie 12,900
• Russians 6,100
• Łemkowie 5,900
• Lithuanians 5,800
• Kashubians 5,100
• Slovaks 2,000
• Jews 1,100
• Aremnians 1,100
• Czechs 800
• Tatars 500
• Karaims 50
• other 24 350

Declarations of the first language used at home (data only for the Silesian Voivodship:

• 48,200 German,

* 40,200 Silesian

Constitution of Poland guarantees the rights of the national and ethnic minorities, but there are no clear difinitions of the two.

For example the Silesians demand the national minority status, and the Polish government is denying this status, arguing that only those groups that have their own states are called nations (like Germans, Belarusians, Ukrainians) and the Silesians can only receive the ethnic minority status.

Another problem are the Kashubians - some 200,000 people in Pomerania. The official standing of the Kashubian-Pomeranian Union is that the Kashubians are a separate ethnic group, part of the Polish nation. Because in the last census there was only qustion for nationality, and no question for ethnicty, the authorities asked the Kashubians to declare the Polish nationality. Some of the activists asked to declare Kashubian nationality and 5100 of them have done so.

In my opinion the situation of the Silesians is similar, but not the same. Some of the Silesians feel that they are of Silesian ethnicity part of the Polish nation, others feel they are of Silesian ethnicity part of the German nation, while there's a significant group feeling that they are just a nation of Silesians.

The problem will be resolved in the next national census if there are two questions for nationality and ethnicity. But ceirtanly some of the Silesians nationals speaking Silesian langauge remain. cc 19:20, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

That's true, I would even add that many Silesians feel Czechs at Czech Silesia (more or less 10 000 of Czech Republic's citiziens declared their nationality as Silesian, most of them where Czech-speakers from Opava Silesia, (not Silesian-spekers - quite interesting, isn't it? Actually they even don't speak Lašsky...), many of native Silesians from Czech Republic at Czech's part of Cieszyn Silesia (see: Zaolzie) feel Poles, and some feel Poles and Czechs in the same time, very insignifican't amount of Czech Cieszyn Silesians declared Silesian nationality, although there it is fully voluntary, I know quite a lot native Silesians from there who find themselves a Polish patriotics, nice chaos, isn't it? :) Cheers :) D_T_G (PL) 13:28, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

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German-Silesian and Polish-Silesian dialects

In my view we have to distinguish the "german-silesian dialect" that nearly died off during expulsory after WWII (my grandparents spoke it until they died) and the "polish-silesian dialect" which seems to be a polish dialect and is spoken in Silesia today. As far as I read, this polish-silesian dialect is called language by silesian autonomy movements, while linguists say, it is just a polish dialect. I would recommend, that there should be just an entry "'silesian dialect'" in which it is said, that there are existing both polish and german dialects namend "silesian" which are not related, but have the same name by accident (perhaps with links to german-silesian dialect and polish-silesian dialect). Since I don't know about the polish-silesian dialect I don't know if it is a language or a dialect of polish. In case of the german-silesian dialect I know, that it is just a dialect of german and splitted into lower and upper silesian. upper silesian was much more influenced by polish words, but was a german dialect, too, and understandable for me (I told you that I had relatives from "german" Silesia). If in Poland the polish-silesian dialect is splitted into upper and lower silesian, I don't know. Obviously today in the polish dialect (or language?) is no distinction. Perhaps someone from Poland can tell us that. 82.82.117.221 20:51, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

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Anotherway Focus here. It is that I have polish-silesian grandmother and a anglo-german (thecombination..) - silesian Father with keltic-jewic background.. they lived in UpperSilezia. It is not as black and white as each of the 2 above discribed.. By timeline from 2400 years ago Silesia had keltic 'city'names and tribes, after Rome invaded ab.2000 yearsago jews (mixedform renamed(as first!) jiddic) came andpartly melted partly stayed in groups there. These2 later with intermix at spots with (few) gypsies, remained main core of a Shlunski, later germanic and slavonic influence pushed or forced the kelticlanguage of this once 'nation'(f.ex.under King Barbarossa)and intermixed-nationality of Kelts-Jews-'Lombards'(mix)-Jor's(Bohemean kelts). France(Napoleon),England(after defeat of Napoleon), Sweden, and many tribes, crossed or stayed or intermarriaged here. In Polish periods re-polish-ize, in german time re-german-ized, in French time a try to introduce even French.. Due the isles multitude of languages that changed at areas aswell at times in more than suggested groups. In Fact theRuler takes the color; now polish is stronger present in both Silesias, but before 1937 it was not, in fact aswell in North Lower as in South Upper Silesialands you have distinguishes ar byond the 2 named 'inrealities'; friendly explained; in fact the river neisze-odra was a north to south line, the farther off to west the more german and the farther east the more polish was spoken in the mid it was more to it score,kelticand jiddic in a preereed polish or germanic, czech,moravic, gipsy or mostly jiddish-jewic colour and mixes,but often a combination o mostly all, in centerwest a French enclave around Gracze and around Nowy Chapel..(New Chappel) an english {of former Wellington soldiers marrying polish, jews and french..), many words are between jewish,keticand polish and slavic; 'nowy' nears old-netherlan-dish (I avoid 'dutch'[from 'ditch'land; all area from Kent UK unto S. Danmark,Benelux and Germany; Lowland, a very general wordo land and its of course 'ordinary' people,as.. adverbium)]}. But 'neue'(new), and slavic 'nowe/y'(new), were in mediaval times like english sometimes written similar in almostall these tongues; 'novy' oldnetherl.= n(i)y[v]e; [yv>w]'y+v'=w in mediavaltime. OldSilesian textsread partly as old jiddic and oldgerman too. Influence of all groups were more equallier shared but now while many jews, really keltojiddic (core-)silesian (w.mixed polish-german) and germans and germo- and slavo- silesian are/were chased out in diferent ways, new tongues formed and more-polish-ized it became. Origanally thus Keltic, later jew-keltic, later lombardic-, aswell slavo aswell germanic -at Farmers level-,french,swedish, danish, hungarian .. andenglish came in -too!-,in their still existing regions french and english still is to distinguish,although deormed to more polishized silesian.

Upper Silesia had unto aswell 1/4 -roughly- slavic aswell 1/4 germanic as well 1/4-1/3 core-shluenski -as being kelt&jiddic-in generally, In Lower Northwest Silesia, Sorbic(=mixslavic)+Sachsen-inluence isup to 40-55%, in NE Sorbicisup to half, in SW+S Bohemian(Jor-kelto-germanic mix with czech,mohrav & slowak later-intermix) with isles of polish and german and shluenski (mixed to both sides but in core keltswith jiddic intermix).. And more.. By this 'more near polish' or 'more near german' generalizing or in overall or whole region or -part is not just. Also Time and if including or excluding the hidden 'other' (more) groups, depends.

A Mozaic a' Pur! Etnologic this or 2000 years mostly(2/3) keltojiddic people with in such long time a (grown,like each other) language unto 1937,is a nationality, and as mix of more recognized languages in a level of above 30% of both slavic as german as jiddish (many polish,german, otherlingual words fixed to and from jewish word-roots or -parts) we do not speak any more of merged dialects but of merged laanguages-language! (Dutch +international language andetnity view!) So the roots aren't of the neighbouring -in past 'oppressors'- but of their own. Adding of Pre-silesian (keltojiddic(w.lombardic)), Meso-Shilinger (Mezo-Silesian; with slavic and german influence) here adding W.more german), centrali(more merged, co-melted) or E.(more polish) of Neisza-Odra, in North more Sorbic (gothic=SEswedic) inluence or more South more polish or Bavarian or Franconian[aswell german aswell latter-french gallo(=kelto)-(germ.mix-)frankmix) inluence instead of Saxon(Sachsen)].

Linguistic I was taken to more partso Silesia, where are more to jewish/jiddish, moretopolish, more to germanor just Shluenski spoken; the real (core/alt/ur)shluenski ispartly a mix but mostly a melt, like French came out of romanlatin and northgerman and keltic-gallic as a melt/merged product; 'Nous allons, gay,..' from hebrew 'anu'('anagnu')=we, all..=latin for 'to go/move on', 'gay' in french = glad (a german derrived word); '-ons' from old '-uns'/ -urs(ours)= ours!, greek(britons from once greek Troy in West of UK,romans in its South, germans from East upto Mid, dutch in Kent (SW) and South-Norwegian(=Anglons) with Mid-Saxon(Middannish) and Up'saxon(SW Swedes) were overnumbering to the restant(remaining), the juton danes in Midcentral of UK, formed the actual english,a mix of all these backgrounds.

For some hebrew is an arab, or visa versa,and jiddic a german language, if only seen by similarities,with an flair of partiality influenced and by sololateral multiview hindred spectra; Fact is that both hebrew aswell arab comes from 1 same pre-tongue(language), abrahamic (a'rhamic[a'ramic,shorterform], not to confuse with ara'mic..), howeverscript came from Libanon were C'[k]ittim (=Cyprus; Kittim=greeksubtribe) people called them Phoenicieri according to one of the made-god's of their folk, and script as well quadrat form were as trade scripts by many other nationalities likeilistine=palestin (Genesis10, Cham-- subson Cashluch his subson Filistin(arabname)=Philestin(oldhebrewname)=Palestine(english + old-roman)), Libanese(Kittim-phoeniciers), jews, ishmaelite- and other arabs.., humoristicly. Mohammed introduced the graphicline-script, which is not originalarabic scripstyle, theolder; which was phoenician, oldsyraic, old egyptian and carthagenic scripts, tongue where ishmaelite (other than clasic arabian); near moabite dialect, in core Midwest and SW Jordan. Like we have not our own old-frisian like runic or gothic scripts, anymore but a lend from Rome script who lend it from Greek, before etruskic alphabet. Latium derived rom aswell etrusk, german,israeli and greek; old greek differs from new greek.

All occupiers used term 'Silesia' and made them "one of them".Like UK is 1 People by Nation;nationalpeople: But in fact they are all regionally very different to etnicity and linguistic is another story and if more than 25-30% mixed to another language it isalanguage,i same rate and over to another dialect, it can be viewed as a new or other dialect than its neigbouring. More factors come to it.

The actual 'propaganda' is like those of past, where it, makes from a distinguished people's group, that is proven to be a people internationally, for example in the 1930s by 'etnicconditional'laws, one out of them; like Napoleon, Ceasar, Stalin and the mustache, they called all in their empire the citizen of their 'main-set people'... After 1977 Poland and Russia insisted of further resetting all names to polish in Silesia,like in Czechoslovakyia to their tongue, in fact the real silesian,the majority,rejected aswell thebraunkirts aswell by them as alied later were punished twice,only of similarities or familyship to german or jiddish, not respected ithey were goodhearted,while good and bad was+is in each land and folk. Forceing a culture down like here, likein Baskland or once dutch now re-Frenchized Flanders, isalso 'occupation', aswell itwas by Germany aswell it is by Poland, Czech.Rep. etc.; Silesia is split in 5or6, 7/9th of population led to Israel, USA and Germany.

Another reason; 1945-1948 over 1 million has been brutally murdered. many also of inocent somejews and local-polish. Stalin has its Agenda. Many Poles,especially those from Ex-East-Poland (nowWhite Russia and FarWestUkraine) where put on trains and sent in Silesia to become new people there in placeo the millionsogermans and keltojiddicsilesians, many romthemalso fled but 1/9th.. stayed! This decolored thedialects too, to Post20th CenturySilisia(n).

Dispite Dolf made majority of Camps just Here, it was cause due just stress-His, Idea; British Army Investigation Service found out that 87%-97%(rural to landarea) was antibraun (and antired); like a sticker ix-on they were marked twice; aswell natzis aswell reds persecuted, most in pogromstyle, both. So historically they were not embrased by both of the neighbours PolandandGermany who both later said aswell that silesians were theirs aswell ignored if from one of the 2 other. This too, makes them a people, driven out from the rejec-tions. Many want to be'political' or'cultural' correct, or own.. instead of putting Truth and Character - and -more- independence / sovereinity or Silesia higher.

It is an area of Change, 'blood-and-tears' on all sides, but also of a beautiful harmony and hapiness mosaic, of the same involved peoples. I talking on this pitily one need that whole palet to show the why and depths... of a thing like dialect or language.. As Test: Scottish is that a dialect or language..,Frysian, Dutch,.. ??! Why? Scottish isnot English however there is a scottish-english variant besides Scottishown language! Most Words, more as 30% aredierent from the only partly familiar tongue. In Silesia more co-silesiadialects are used besides the kelticandjiddish based silesian/shluenski words -many alabets created!- withslavic,german,other andcombinational (over)fixing! Another example of transcedencialgoing to a new word out of german and polish and jiddic [and keltic]; the silesian has of both. Sial'kowice (pol.)= Shalkow-itz(silezian/jid.)= Schalkendor (german).

Actual "silesian" is of all folk in the now-(re)polish(d) province of 'Silesia', most from 1946-Eastpoland immigrantso what now is White Russia and Poland. Etnic of those -the most- who before 1946 never lived in Silesia are now only geographical-silesian. Like a chinese-briton in London. All Siles.cities has also a silesian-shlu(e)nski name. Note that also here (in Holland about 5-8 peoples! unit-ed,uniFied once!) the history make-d the languages due longroad 'own'development factors (special intense ones). [Waerner from Holland, my parents were jew. anglogerman- and polish- kelto-jiddic / Core-'Silezian'].

=================

We have that now. Silesian is about the Slavic (nearest to Polish) dialect/language and Lower Silesian is about the Germanic (nearest to German) dialect/language. We can rename them later. Right now, I think we should focus on the content of the pages. Daniel Quinlan 21:50, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Also, could you replace some of your long cut-and-pastes with links to external articles? They make the discussion page too long! Daniel Quinlan 21:50, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Revised article

I revised the article about the Slavic dialect/language at Silesian, adding information from the old ethnolect page. Please comment on Talk:Silesian instead of here. Daniel Quinlan 22:25, Nov 4, 2003 (UTC)

Lower Silesian language? It's a dialect.

Lower Silesian language (a "germanic dialect" spoken in former german Silesian and parts of Saxony) is not a language. It's just a german dialect. Therefore it should be called Lower Silesian, since ("polish") Silesian is not called Silesian language. Guillermo

Page was stolen

This page was stolen. The first 3 original edits by User:CC in Lower Silesian were made under the name of Silesian language

My intention was to write and article (from neutral point of view, mentioning various facts and theories) about the Silesian language spoken by the Silesian people living in the region of Silesia. A couple of editors who didn't like the content first tried to delete the page, and when this attempt failed, they have erased the content and replaced it with a stub about the Lower Silesian dialect of German. Next the page the page was moved to another location: Lower Silesian. All other Silesian pages and their Talk pages have been redirected to this new Lower Silesian page. Despite my desparate attempts to restore the original content under (Silesian language or Silesian ethnolect) all these pages were erased without any discussion redirected to this new German dialect page (and this happened several times).

After this manipulation was done it may look like that it was me who makes most of trouble. If you look at the history of the Lower Silesian the first impression is that a Polish nationalist is erasing imformation about a Germanic dialect, and there's no information that the first 3 edits were made in a very different page under another name (Silesian language).

As it seems to me that the Silesian language page and its history was stolen by the LowerSilesianGermans and the history of my edits have been viciously manipulated, I demand that:

• the history of my edits of the Silesian language return to the right place
• my name is not listed on the Lower Silesian edit history

The only way to to this is:

• Lower Silesian page contents should be stored in a safe place
• Silesian language page (redirect now) should be deleted temporarily
• Lower Silesian page should be moved to its original location: Silesian langauge
• new Silesian language page should be constructed by compiling the previous submissions from a couple of editors
• new Lower Silesian page should be constructed from scratch using the saved content

cc, 23:25, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

Um, no. Pages get moved around in Wikipedia. Don't take it personally. Please focus on the current articles, Silesian and Lower Silesian. Also, Steve is claiming that there are 4 Silesian dialects in total (two Slavic and two Germanic), but I have seen no other sources for that, so two pages seems correct to me. I'd appreciate your opinion on that. Daniel Quinlan 23:49, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

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Four Silesian ethnolects or tongues

In my opinion there are 4 ethnnolects or tongues that are called Silesian:

• Silesian language, a Western Slavonic language spoken by the Silesian people, in half way between Polish and Czech languages, with some German influences;
• Upper Silesian dialect of Polish language spoken by the Polish people living in Upper Silesia, in half way between Polish standard and the Silesian language;
• Lower Silesian dialect of Polish language belonging to the so called new mixed dialects spoken by the Polish people in Lower Silesia;
• Lower Silesian dialect of German language mostly extinct, but possibly spoken by the German minority in Polish Silesia

I don't know if there is/was also an Upper Silesian dialect of German.

My suggestion is:
Silesian language about the Silesian language
Lower Silesian (of German language) about Lower Silesian of German
Lower Silesian (of Polish language) about Lower Silesian of Polish
Upper Silesian (of Polish language) about Upper Silesian of Polish

Silesian - disambiguation page
Lower Silesian - disambiguation page
Upper Silesian - disambiguation page

cc, 23:50, Nov 6, 2003 (UTC)

---

Please see the books on various Silesian languages: http://www.herder.uni-marburg.de/cgi-bin/acwww25/regsrch.pl?wert=jezyk+slaski+*&recnums=52073:61422:73836:82391:83931:83937:88237:88539:91801:92090:93702&index=4&db=bibl_p

Please note that the Marburg University has no doubt about the existence of the term Silesian language

---

Could you show any grammar examples, that it is german dialect? Look for pl:gwara śląska on pl wiki (this is another dialect, but with examples and small dictionary on pl Wiktionary). I live on Silesia region and don't know what it is Silesian German. Przykuta 08:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC) Nevermind, my mistake. Przykuta 18:31, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

---

Yes, there is a German dialect group specific to Upper Silesia (and one specific to Lower Silesia).

Furthermore, what you guys don't seem to be aware of is that there is another Slavic language used in Lower Silesia: Upper Sorbian. (It is also used in Germany's state of Saxony.)

Today I added the Upper Sorbian version of the Lord's Prayer to the Silesian, Polish and Czech ones. This was unceremoniously reversed as "irrelevant" or "non-factual" or something like that. If you had taken a look at it you would have noticed that the Silesian and Upper Sorbian versions shared features that the Polish and Czech versions didn't have. Aside from that, the two languages are used in close proximity from each other while Polish and Czech have only been administrative languages in the area.

Sassisch (talk) 04:14, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Name

According to [1], this is "Lower Silesian". Unless other sources are provided, I suggest moving this to Lower Silesian or Lower Silesian language.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  20:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

A cursory glance suggests to me that SZL is the current Silesian language (West Slavic language / Polish dialect), while SLI is Silesian German. Ethnologue has an article for SLI at [2], but there is not yet one for SZL. Rather, "Upper Silesian" is listed as a dialect of Polish (POL). Olessi 00:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Passed link is old data [3], ISO confirmed language. This service is embarrassment, they contain data from Wikipedia - the same mistakes (example [4]). On this service to be to base can not. I am for transfer to Lower Silesian language. LUCPOL 09:47, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Which article are you in favor of moving to Lower Silesian language, this current Silesian language (SZL) or Silesian German (SLI)? I presume you mean Silesian German, but it is better for you to be specific. Olessi 16:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Silesian German (SLI) moving to Lower Silesian language. LUCPOL 17:40, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Sources

This article doesn't quote any academic article stating there exists Silesian language. It's not the place for you comments about me or any language - your should quote serious sources.Xx236 08:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I have found one article http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?04PLAAAA0020438, however it says probably (I know only the summary) that the Silesian language doesn't exist yet, it would be eventually created by synthesis of Polish and German dialects.Xx236 08:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Yet there are no academical sources in article, but the sources of official organizations of languages are already - of Library of Congress and international organization ISO. This will suffice. Not academical sources officially recognise language, but international organizations. LUCPOL 12:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Still - no academic source confirming the existence of Silesian language. Xx236 08:27, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

10,878 people in Czech Republic declared Silesian nationality

So we have two Silesian nations. Do they speak the same language?Xx236 09:44, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Czech Republic doesn't reckognize Silesian nation, it was discussed in detail on Polish wiki along with sources. However I have seen calls for "Silesian patriots to work on Wikipedia" to users on RAŚ forum site, so most Silesia related articles could be a bit biased if they listened and are active.--Molobo (talk) 23:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

The Wikinews article has it wrong

The Library of Congress is about the ISO 639-2 and an ISO 639-3 code has been granted. Given that szl is according to the request mainly a spoken language, it is even unlikely for it to get a 639-2 code. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 07:04, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

I undid the redirect that User:Pudelek made [5] because the proper thing to do is to move the page. Otherwise, the article history "starts over" so to speak. Apparantly, this can't be done without an administrator now. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I have fixed the issue (I hope).--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 00:03, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:07, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Numbers

The number of people who identified themselves as Silesians by nationality in the Polish census was 173, 000 and not 0,2 mln. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.106.128.119 (talk) 14:16, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Be written "~0,2 mln" (about 0,2 mln), not exactly "0,2 mln"
2. "173,000" this is "~0,2 mln" (about 0,2 mln)
3. Silesia not only lies in Poland.
4. "173,000" is data only from Poland.

LUCPOL (talk) 14:25, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Then:

1. Quote the sources which state the number of Silesian speakers in the Czech Rep. Because for Poland 173 000 is not "about 0,2 mln", and why should we use an approximate number if the Polish census gives a definite number.

2. From what the article says there are about 10 000 people in Czech Rep who identify themselves as Silesians, so it still does not add up to 0,2 million.

3. First and foremost - if you want to keep 0,2 million then change the sentence which refers specifically to the Polish census of 2002 and in the form below is simply a blatant lie:

"According to the last official census in Poland (2002), 60,000 people declared Silesian as their first language (native language), and about 0,2 million people declared Silesian nationality. " —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.106.128.119 (talk) 09:29, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Reverts

My revert was not based on a different opinion. I will be happy to believe that what the article claims is the concensus; however, your preferred version, LUCPOL, names only one source (for a relatively minor statement). The LACK of concensus is also referred to in the Dialect vs. language section. Please name your sources; otherwise, I will have to revert to the Britannica-sourced version again. —Daniel Šebesta {chat | contribs} 15:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

This page on Britannica is not current source. Silesian language was recognized in July 2007, this side from Britannica be not actualized for several years. Now (present day), main argument for dialect is opinion polish linguists (not all, because part supported already language). LUCPOL (talk) 16:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

As I said, I will be happy to believe all that—once you are able to cite some verifiable sources. I don't have any preference in this dispute; I just wish to have a chance to verify what the article claims. If no newer sources exist or if you or other supporters of the current article version are not able to cite them, we have to make do with the out-of-date (as you claim) Britannica article. —Daniel Šebesta {chat | contribs} 16:24, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Ahhh. I see that you are not informed in situation completely. In article exist large template {sources}. This is there, to all users helped to seek current sources. Writing current sources to article not should alter form of article. The present version of article is the consensus. Written here arguments for language and dialect. We should only add sources to whole text. LUCPOL (talk) 16:39, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I added sources to article (together 20). LUCPOL (talk) 20:11, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! —Daniel Šebesta {chat | contribs} 21:56, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Sources for number of speakers

The source for "Total speakers: > 1 250 000" is Omniglot, which is not reliable. It's a personal site. Its maintainer does a good at documenting a lot of different alphabets, but unfortunately he's better in quantity of languages than in quality of fact-checking.

Another - totally unsourced - claim is "the total number of Silesian speakers exceeds two million", which is a bit of contradiction with the "> 1 250 000" claim.

The claim "According to the last official census in Czech Republic, 10,878 people in declared Silesian nationality" doesn't seem outrageously wrong, but it also must be sourced or deleted.

I couldn't find any data about number of speakers at Ethnologue.

On a personal note - i totally support the development of regional languages, and i have absolutely nothing against the Silesian language or the people who built the new Wikipedia in it, but data in this encyclopedia must cite reliable sources. No sources = no data. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 13:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I contacted Simon Ager of Omniglot and he says that the source fo rhis numbers is Wikipedia. I am removing this data, because such a circular reference is not the right way to work.

Feel free to restore the information with a reliable source. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Polish census

I tried to find the exact source for this claim:

"In the 2002 Polish census 173,200 Silesians declared that they belong to the Silesian nation, and 60,000 of them declared that at home and with family speak in the Silesian language"

I downloaded the PDF, but couldn't find where it is. Can anyone please point me to the page that says it? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 10:15, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

The census is unreliable. Some of the Polish speakers declared themselves as Silesian speakers and vice versa. I've been to Opole many times, but never heard any Silesian being spoken. Although I happened to hear a lot of German being spoken around there. Shannon1488 (talk) 16:27, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

From the Palestine Post, the former name of The Jerusalem Post, with combined jew and arab indep. aswel dep. non- and gov. influence (but still reliable by freechecking by its -most- 'censor freekept' Editors), this; i have a jubileum book on through-the-years front-pages until 1930's: 'Census held in Silesia', British and French involvment (own checkers); their ciffers were different to Polish and German official figures, but unofficial were often (like british-abroad and unfiltered/uncoloured) here, the better ones. Not a little part of history is often by suggestion and unchecked, many believe on base(basement) of 'I can/will not miss that!' as cultural richness. If you hear that some says in Kentucky USA they say 'worr' instead of 'wire', you could say not to believe for you not know or not cheked: "If i see no chinese or scottish.. in my life, they do not exist?". Sometimes there are no checks or there are disagrees (also State Propaganda for Reason); it can be truth or truth is halfway or quite different. In a pole the Question and -style and possible threat (stalin example) depends the answer, one can influence an answer. By traveling in Poland's Area of Silesia I know there are more than 5 Tongues, but many dare or will not want speak on street to avoid quarrels with nationalists(I experienced live). There are International Rules to type a tongue(nutral) as dialect(part of one or mix of languages with 'own' soundfalls and words; 15-30% distinguish words aswell sounds). Above 40% different and -mixed words make a language. Time and Number of People requested (or excluded, for (no)reasons..) deform ciffers too.

A Short Pole after a Anti- or Pro- Campaign plays on feelings of fear or love, a singular count is less reliable as multious or more (often at least 2), 500 (in which area, -skipped?) requested or 50.000 requested gives different ciffers! Independent polish and international interval checks (same pole) gave differences. Nationalists and communists still have in Poland and had in Germany deforming influences, ciffer-change remarks were persecuted. Counting Holocaust victims was done up to 35%, by corrupting flesh and desease outbreakchance, the Red Cross used with german, polish, ur-silesian(keltic), british and jew.help a photo-squaresurfacecomparation-technic, so in short a counted group was projected on remaining at a Photo of the whole heaps by a counted partialheap (fractory-math); The count stopped at about 3 million, by high-acuracy -controlled by tests on a little surface- math formule, the number is brought to 6-7 million jews (Internat.RedCross - source).

Questions that can rule out more meanings in answers are: By blood for more than 1 or 2 centuries in Silesia, cultural a- or active, speaking of shluenski or shlonzk too?, -not names!-, immigrated 1874-1928, 1928-1944, or 1945-1961, 1961-..? Living more than 10 years makes a newsilesian, more than 80 years an older and more than 120 years an old/original inhabitant, bloodlines to kelt/jiddic leads to factual original/ ur(orig.)silesian. -- Are your parents of non- or import poles/germans/czech/.., or jewic or gypsy minority ? Are/were they of old-shlunski(kelto-jiddic)/ shl"asinger(germ.siles.; also in Up.Sil.!(real facts 50-50 almost, many 3-lingual; polish-german-shlunski!) / shlonzk(westslawon.)/ polish (Westslawic) / german / jiddish (i'national w. jewish&german in most mix & de-formed (60% of) words)/ czech-polish-jiddish-jor&germanmix SE region ? Are you dispite/thank to this pro polish, pro german, pro indep. Silesia or a combination? Are your kids married to one or more nationals; Poland, CFR, SFR or Germany 'nonsilesian' -determinated sorts see above- or regional innersilesian of same own identity or also one of the others ? These questions, if not manipulated by state-PR (=propaganda) or persecutions/pressure/chantage, notified by internationals, it is good. Besides Silesia, Podolia-Wolhynia, Gothic(semi-swedicized) Masuren-Pomeria(Gotheria) North and Galicia for example are also important language and peoples regions.

In Israel (i speak a little jew. and arab) more than 1 israeli tongue and grammar(some inofficial) is spoken, i cannot denie before I visit: So in Silesia's Corners Like in arab dialects and lànguages! The 'First' Daniel knows a lot but like not few he (respected as person) took easy over the extreme-polish-idea, .. Like internationaly Dantzig(Gdansk-Gdynia) region was reset to polish sentiment to Gdanks after 1978, before Breslaw and Danzig in english were -by also good reasons- -aswell standards- kept. Also UK and USA saw the 1937 border as official, even impartial, while also former EastPoland(bigger) as polish seeing, now WhiteRussia and Ukrajna. Danzig was Guw Danskrig (Region of Danmark) as Hansatown (a in former time by Danmark ungov. leaded freecities aliance), most were once danish, but like meazels or spots polish farmers and german hired folk and spiritualleaders mixed in, from (..)1921-1939 it was not german & not polish but by France checked free-indep.state/nation, partly in Germ. adm.deputies (too into polish Cemly/2ndHous).. So in 1939 only an island with germanname (Wester-..) and polishpostoffice -begot by pressure once-,due its weapons in basement and prewar resistance, the attack was by german kz-prisoners in polish dress as forced-actors, on both sides a theater act of unfair play. (sure)90% spoke a dialect most to german unto 1937, before it was danish, the outskirts 50%(a guess!) were polish. On both sides former danish were.

While Inhabitant Silesians of before 1939 will divide Silesia in about 7 regions with many sub ones for languages know that international ciffers of dec.1937 shows the river oder as an invisiblelanguageline-visible border; the farther East more polish (than 1/3 of silesians) in dialects in the words (lexographia) is spoken -then, those days- and the more west german 40%, in center many speak eachother tongue and in main one of the many mix tongues; jiddish(jewish&keltic origin born as core in central Silesia, more german or polish(northslaw.) or slawonic or gypsy or sorbic(westslaw.; in North). All are called silesian by international linguists(!1937) as regional name, with a degree or percentage/lang.name figuring which language it most nears. Czech, Morav.(Ostrow/Ostrau/Ostrava), Slovak, anglo-, french-(center) influenced-, polish, german, shlonzk(westslaw.), schlaeshing(germ.nider&upper variants! visiting & determinating will only learn, polish nationalistic gov. erase the international growing view of own identity, like some nat'list-germans did too once).. many dialects. A Swiss or a Dutch or Britton or Israeli or Arab.. Many dialects and languages and where twisted(disagreefight:) nutralum Tongues is used. More West East than N.-S. had been the divisioning, not sharp but as usual, slowly overgoing to other tongue colorit(-colours). Hibrid is 'Silesian' in base. New-Silesian or Slawo-silesingk is actual westslavon, different from polish as northslavon; alike Scottish or scot-gaelic from English or ultraorthodox from other jews or arabs, like Iraqi speak different than Marocan arabs, and Frisian or Lowersaxon Dutch different from High dutch (as languages! not dialects!:) according more than 40% of words(alone) different!, in the personal streettalk. Like immigrants in West Europe, Old silesian (divised in dif.languages aswell subregional dialects) can choose 2 options, an apatical racial 'out with unwanted'(whoever) or -i prefer next:- peacealcoexistence by harmony and swiss-cantonal-style recognition. Luxemburg and Swiss flowed in peace most centuries by mozaic while others like Belgium or Qu'ebec did not; difference-reason: In Switzerl. f.example equal validated are eachothers views and tongues most can speak eachothers fluently.

Like 'Dutch'=Lowlander or Ditch(in oldengl.+oldnetherl. also with out water, trenchland with waters or fruitible lowland) had another meaning in 17th century; from Kent to Vienna and Denmark lived in a "Dutch"land; by the way, not 1 Holland state but a united of many existed, dutch was not meaning 'netherlaendish'(nederlands) as today: Silesian/Shilinger/etc. means in before 1937 something different, aswell before 1961.. It can be confusing just to say Silesia or American; Mexican, Canadian, USA or Argentinan ? old, intermezzo 1937-1961 or new meaning? Many keep what they've learned, some fisher hardnecky keep saying milibar instead of -after 1980s- hektopascal.., fahrenheit in stead of more mondial celcius or scientific kelvin.., Gut/Guw Danskrige, or Dantzig instead of Danzig or Gdansk.

Of course in Bible -for the (non)believers [a spirit is not evoluted]- israelian changed filistin=palestine towns and visa versa, but exceptions.. Towns were a highviolence-worship existed were banned by death and fire "on God's Words", but some not.. Measured was the harmonic and peacefull wilingueness 'of locals to Israel and its God' those days, so Jebusites and few Palestine kept also alive, other tribes Shaul failed to bann and begot a right by saving by Lord. Generalisation holybooks here denied: "each dies+miss due personal transgressions, if unregretting -per person- upto .. generation.." Silesia was split during the centuries and lost territory to many neighbours. Dutch now are Hollandmen, but 'Pennsylvania dutch'(by miswriting centuries ago) is just newenglandamerican of german origin..

Between 17-19th Century Men in Kent, NorthFrance Flanders and 1815-1830 folk in Belgium were named dutch. Confusionalnames or theories are by mood by times uptaken to Standards, one should carefully disconfusionate by co-words explaining more, like new and old Silesian(geogr.name) of morepolish or more german or -also!- mixed or jiddic, sinti/roma/jor(bohemian), etc. - tongues.

--(New/Old) Silesian Languages & (sub)Dialects (and a lexographic scient.defination i can give+gave partly) is a consensus solution on title with more redirect links on the 7 main regions. Forgotten interbellum-war facts: "Katowitz/Katowice region was kidnaped by Russian-Polish troups in 1921-1922" (cutting it off)from Silesia. Tesschen/Czyn/.. was farlongago bohemian-moravian with saxon and polish influence and -rule temp. later, many polish jews polishized region in many ways, but like in Belgium the language-line/border changed, identity deformed, reformed,..

-- Russian were once possesed by Great Polish Empire (with beauty and good flair) but its rule exchanged for the elite a semi-turkicdialect into a slavic oldpolanic-polish tongue, which as easternslavonic develloped separate, although the blood and script were resp. are non-slavic (in Bible oldhebrew; Togarma is slavonic, with brother Ashknaz is Alto-Germanic (whole)westeurope, and brother Riphat keltic and orig.gypsy(via egypt, bohemia and greece), with Gomer as father (Genesis 10) but Magog=Russia (Bas[h]an; Russia in oldtimes lied in N.Jordania) -oldhebr./oldarab-. In Turkey arab alfabeth like in Persia was given, but theire race or tongue is not! French is a derriviation of old-franconian(=alt-sigambruare) like dutch is, in France mixed with 45% latin and 20% almost gaelic to a new language. So this depends too.

--Sharing that a rate or facts are twisted wit a reference site, is healthy for honest opinion. It is hard for pro polish or pro germans, like pro or contra indep.(fr.Irel./UK) Ulster, arabs or jews, etc. to pull off their influenced(conditionated) coloured glasses from eyes and see in a new angle, unmixed with (false= egocentric) favoured/filled-in opinions. 'Silesian' as only that polish dialect supports at least the pro polish lobby that wish to call it all Polish, like the ultra extreme use of a word of -pole as pre or affix, as if affraid to loose a place or to protect fearfully.. But.. to only point on a prewar german majority violates also the perspective which was like a rainbow with lot of "Swiss" segments. Majority or officialness is not my measure alone.. otherwise 'the reich' of mr mustache is to justify due its 'majority' (figures twisted) and 'reich officialness'.. also. Impartial ground is worth as gold. In a country of blinds OneEye may rule as King, a dutch saying tells..

Add Versions not 'far away' "moved off" but in one or two tabs; so view A and B and a nutral C opion and a Sientific D tab (with both twisted and indep. figures aswell). (Polish+German+Anglo- Silesian(as keltjiddic originalbranch member/roots/visitor of Silesia and dutchnational). Waerner from Netherlands. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.208.30.39 (talk) 00:55, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Picture

I have two comments to shown picture (Languages_of_CE_Europe.PNG):

1. The picture looks like the border of Czech republic are unocupied. This looks like Sudetenland (before WWII ocupied by German speaking people). Here would be some Czech dialect.
2. On this picture is shown Ostrava and its region in G1 (Silesian). There is spoken by one of dialects of Czech.

This looks like POV (for Silesian language). Zagothal (talk) 13:25, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

How many together-named language "twigs" are on different "branches" such as this?

Lower Silesian is a Germanic language and Upper Silesian is a Slavic language, it seems uncommon that two language branches would titled the same, so lumped together, when they are in fact different language families entirely. Is this unique among English language classification of other languages; two being classed together by name that are actually apart in terms of overall language relation? 4.255.55.201 (talk) 18:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The names are purely geographical, so it's not that surprising that they belong to different language groups. (Mind the terminology: they do belong to the same family, namely Indo-European.) For another example, Scots and Scottish Gaelic, both of which are often called just "Scottish", also belong to different IE subfamilies. — Emil J. 18:24, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Another one: Macedonian and Ancient Macedonian. — Emil J. 18:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I remember how Edith Stein described how in her youth she was proud to be able to communicate both in the Polish and German dialects of the Silesian language. Stan J. Klimas (talk) 23:23, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Phonology?

Can somebody please add a phonology section, there's four different writing-systems described, without a mention of how they're pronounced. Also, please clarify the problems of using Polish orthography, the example is confusing, is polish 'ź' not the same as Silesian 'ź'? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.127.77.254 (talk) 17:00, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

tadzikowy muster

In tadzikowy muster we can find dz', dzi, drz placed on digraph row, they never can be digraphs because they has got three caracters, and they contain respective digraphs ("z'", "zi", "rz"). I think they are trigraphs. Pasqual (ca) · CUT 16:24, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Dubious speakers number

User:LUCPOL changed previous information on speakers in infobox from 'no data/~56000 based on census in Poland' to 1250000 and gave reference to nonverifiable source. This is a major change and should be referenced with proper verifiable and reachable resources. User:LUCPOL also wrote in references his own opinion on census in Poland not giving any reference to support his opinion. This is clearly WP:REDFLAG situation and therefore these changes made by User:LUCPOL should be reverted.--83.242.88.168 (talk) 09:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

I've been to the so called Silesian language area many many times. Trust me.... hardly anyone speak the language currently. You will hear more German than Silesian spoken around that area. Shannon1488 (talk) 19:19, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Silesian is (not) a dialect of Polish

I have bad news for the authors of this article. Silesian is a dialect of Polish language not a separate language. Only some of Silesian nationalists consider it to be a language on its own, whereas linguists state that it is a dialect and what is more not the most distinct one (Mazovian differs more from literary language). I will provide relevant sources to this article and please, note, that Silesian German has also an ISO code and that cannot be an argument for separateness of an ethnolect. --LingVista87 (talk) 19:03, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Silesian-Polish war continues? For long months (to november 2010) was peace and Poles - LingVista87 came. Again Silesian-Polish war. Again, again, again Poles. You do not have to look for sources for "dialect of Polish", there are many such "Polish" sources (many of the communist period, the rest based on them). Polish sources in this matter is very biased and very incompetent. As always with the occupiers. Formerly Germany occupied Silesia, now Poland. Waiting for non-polish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! sources and non-polish users. Stop Polish nationalism, propaganda and compulsory polonization. Need to combat the polish plague. LUCPOL (talk) 19:38, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

But there are NO ACADEMIC/SERIOUS SOURCES that would state that Silesian is a language. Understand it! You know very well that I am the creator of this artificial consensus "etnolekt śląski" on Polish Wiki, which now I regret because it didn't change anything, ie. "Silesian" hatred to other Poles. Kazimierz Nitsch, who created Polish dialectology lived before the communist period, he even couldn't have a chance to learn what it is. Noone used this as an argument, this is one of many Silesian lies. Silesian-Polish war? Huh? Silesian are Poles (not all, I know), SILESIA IS IN POLAND! You will not change it. --LingVista87 (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

1. Polish and (unfortunately for me) Silesian and German sources about Silesian language is very biased and very incompetent. Poles, Silesians and Germans are a party in a case. Only count source neutral (American, English, Spanish or other).
2. "Silesian-Polish war? Huh?" - can see that you're a new user, there was a war from 2007.
3. "Silesian are Poles" - can see that you're a dunce, only part Silesians considered to be Poles, rest is Silesian (separate nation), Germans and Czech. PS. Now, mostly Silesians live in Germany (3-5 million, however in Poland - only 0.8 to 2 million).
4. "SILESIA IS IN POLAND! You will not change it." - can see that you're from cave or moon, Silesia lies in Poland, Germany and Czech Republic. Not only Poland but you as poles try to use propaganda and lies. LUCPOL (talk) 20:37, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

In Germany? Oh, boy! That's an amazing discovery! --LingVista87 (talk) 21:02, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

It's true, actually. See Upper Lusatia, which is historically a part of Silesia, and nowadays part of Germany. -- megA (talk) 23:18, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I think that best would be change according to article on plwiki (arguments for/opposite to Silesian is separate language). Best regards from Ostrava Zagothal (talk) 07:52, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

You arw rong. Original Silesia borderd on the Bobr river and is entirely within modern Poland with some bits in Moravia (Czech Rep). Lusatia was a separate region for 1000 years. Parts of it were artificially annexed by Silesia during Prussian reign in 1815. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.129.242.29 (talk) 11:16, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

"Hoc est in polonico"

Read the latin source. Medieval author of this phrase cysterian monk Peter from Henryków monaster noted "Hoc est in polonico" ("In Polish").

"Bogwali uxor stabat, ad molam molendo. Cui vir suus idem Bogwalus, compassus dixit: Sine, ut ego etiam molam. Hoc est in polonico: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai." - Book of Henryków Liber fundationis claustri Sancte Marie Virginis in Henrichow 1270

I add also source - digital orginal latin text. Here is the link - http://digital.fides.org.pl/publication/834 . All was removed by author LUCPOL (talk) . The Book of Henryków (1270) is the earliest document to include a sentence written in Old Polish language. Pernambuko, (talk) 12:14, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Precise data, some sources etc there are in article Book of Henryków. In the article Silesian language to be only additional data ("wzmianka") about Book of Henryków. LUCPOL (talk) 17:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

User LUCPOL is a staunch pro-German nationalist from Silesia. He was expelled from the Polish Wiki for his continuous violations of the code of conduct and aggressive demenour. So don't worry Pernambuko - the fellow has a clear nationalist agenda and polonophobic bias. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.141.191.66 (talk) 11:32, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Orthographies

Silesian Wikipedia has a link to this, is that an orthography some szl-Wikipedians made up one day and are now proposing for szl-Wikipedia articles? If it is anything more established than that, perhaps this (English) article should mention it. It might help to explain the presence of no less than six different kinds of o on that page – namely, o ô õ ō ŏ ǒ (ǒ possibly being a typo for ŏ). I don't even know which orthography/orthographies that proposal is written in, so what I also don't know is if all those os come from the proposed orthography or from several different systems not currently covered at en-Wikipedia, such as Grzegorz Wieczorek's system. Haven't seen all six kinds of o together in mainspace, though – for example, this article contains only plain o. --84.46.58.102 (talk) 22:18, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

"The same thing is with the diphthong uo ([wɔ]). According to the Polish orthography it must be transcribed unetymologically as ło"

I don't recognize such a rule. It can be transcribed as "uo" and it will be totally correct. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.184.227.140 (talk) 17:24, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Tomasz Kamusella a linguist?

Tomasz Kamusella is an interdisciplinary expert, which doesn't mean he is an expert in trdaqitional linguistics. The Polish article calls him a "Sociolinguist". Xx236 (talk) 13:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

POV - a group of dialects

The alleged language is in reality a group of dialects. Let the Silesian people decide, which one of them is the language. The article doesn't quote Jan Miodek, a linguist from Silesia. The language has only 5 000 words and some Silesian people speak standard Polish using Silesian phones, what Miodek calls Masztalski-language (masztalszczyzna). Masztalski is a fictional Silesian miner. (Many Poles tell allegedly Silesian, Goral or even Czech jokes.) The alleged Silesian Bible is a 100 pages long selection of Bible stories, not a theological translation. Xx236 (talk) 13:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

The fact that Sorbian languages is becoming extinct also does not mean that it is not a language of its own.

How many Sorbian words exist? Do the Sorbs demand an authonomic land and Bundestag seats?Xx236 (talk) 13:05, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Funny, that the same can be heard from Hungarian nationalists about Slovak language. Cimmerian praetor (talk) 13:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Slovak language has quite a big vocabulary and Hungarian isn't Indo-European, so the situation is totally different. Do you mean that Slovaks used to use Hungarian vocabulary (a creole language) the way some Silesian activists use German vocabulary? Now rather Hungarian minority in Slovakia has problems rather than the Slovak one in Hungary.Xx236 (talk) 06:36, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

The article selectively quotes listed sources choosing opinions supporting the "language" option and ignoring the Contra ones.Xx236 (talk) 09:55, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I have the opposite feeling, that the article is very much biased towards "dialect" sources.

It's not the matter of feeling but of facts. The quoted texts include both Pro and Against opinions, but only Pro are quoted. If you have your sources you can quote them but selecting 50% of the text is POV. Presenting a politically active "sociolinguist" as an academic liguist is also a manipulation. I'm also the same kind of a "socio-something" like Kamusella is.Xx236 (talk) 13:02, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

• [6]Xx236 (talk) 13:13, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion mixes up Silesian nationality and language.

As far as I know Polish Silesians in Czech Republic speak their dialect but claim to be Polish. The Silesian language project exist in Poland and has separatistic political roots.Xx236 (talk) 14:05, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

You are wrong. There are people who claim Polish nationality as well as those who claim Silesian nationality within the Czech Silesia. The Polish nationality is mostly claimed by people living in Zaolzie, which is only a fraction of Czech Silesia. Elsewhere in the Czech Silesia, mostly only recent (past 20 years) Polish immigrants claim Polish nationality.

One of the reasons of strong Polish nationalistic feelings from Poles in Zaolzie is rich cultural and educational life they enjoy here, which is purely connected with Polish nationality and suppresses any mention of Silesian. That is also the problem in Poland, that Silesians are not free to declare their nationality, nor to start their own political parties.

Last but not least I would like to remind you the interwar situation. First the Polish government was claiming, that the locals are Poles, but when the Polish army invaded area together with Nazis in 1938, the locals were considered not trustworthy enough to be given full citizenship rights (connected especially with the right to run municipal policies by themselves).

Greetings from a Silesian from Zaolzie! Cimmerian praetor (talk) 11:22, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Poor discriminated "Silesians" in Poland... They have exactly the same rights as I have but they want more and I'm against discriminating of me by "Silesians".

No, they don't. Poles may register "Polish national party", Silesians cannot register "Silesian national party" (at least not in Poland, they may do so in the Czech Republic). Cimmerian praetor (talk) 13:16, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Do the bad Poles have any serious "Polish national party"? The last one LPR was a mixture of nationalism and Roman catholicism, now zero seats in Sejm or Europarlamaent. The only enemy of "Silesians" are themselves, read their texts. But as I have written - the politics isn't exactly the same what linguistics is. Let Silesians write good books or screenplays to create the language.Xx236 (talk) 06:49, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

What is this [7], page 9, "Dzień dobry, ludkowie złoci"? If it's Silesian, it's too much Polish. It's not standard Polish. It's not Czech.Xx236 (talk) 12:57, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

The Silesian Wikipedia contains only 1973 short articles.Xx236 (talk) 14:08, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Óndra Łysohorsky wrote in Lach dialects, so he did't help to create a common Silesian language, did he?Xx236 (talk) 09:51, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm amused by the opening salvo, "The alleged language is in reality a group of dialects". All languages with more than a few hundred speakers are in reality a group of dialects. Polish is a group of dialects. German is a group of dialects. English is a group of dialects. Silesian's being a group of dialects doesn't mean it isn't a language. It's completely unclear to me by what evidence this article is asserted to be non-NPOV. Angr (talk) 14:17, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm amused by your critics of one my phrase out of the context "Let the Silesian people decide, which one of them [ie. the dialects] is the language". Now there are several dialects (or languages), not one. The most prominent linguist from Silesia Professor Jan Miodek doesn't support "Silesian language" political movement [8]. The "language" is being used as a political tool by the RAŚ movement. Wouldn't be better to write books and create a dictionary of the language? Xx236 (talk) 09:44, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

There are 60 000 Kashubian words and 5 000 Silesian ones.Xx236 (talk) 10:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

a project of a new law

There are hundreds of them, generally not mentioned here, so the information should be removed.Xx236 (talk) 09:37, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Archaism in example text

Czech version is very archaic. For example compare:

• jenž (in example), který (in modern Czech), kery (in Silesian)
• na nebesích (in example), v nebi (in modern Czech), w niebie (in Polish)
• zbav nás od zlého (in example), zbav nás zlého (in modern Czech), zbow nos uode złygo (in Silesian)
• odpouštíme naším (in example), odpouštíme svým (in modern Czech), odpuszczamy naszym (in Polish)
• Tvé (in example), Tvoje (in modern Czech), Twoje (in Silesian)
• Chléb (in example), Chleba (in modern Czech), Chleba (in Polish)

This is not example of (modern) Czech.

--217.194.163.78 (talk) 07:01, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

cs:OtčenášXx236 (talk) 14:43, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Lord's Prayer

• What is the source of the Silesian version?
• According to Jan Miodek Silesian people have been always using standard Polish language in Catholic church.Xx236 (talk) 08:29, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Controversial editions of headline

I decided to edited this articled becasue previous version wasn't neutral. Some editions of Franek.K weren't objecitve. But he undid this revision. I don't want to start "undo war". Language status is still disputed. Now we can read in this article that "Sometimes is mistakenly considered a dialect of the Polish language" with adnotation to sources (these sources only show one point of view.). And in article we have paragraph about "dialect vs language", so now article is nonsense. We can't remove paragraph about discusion between language and dialect because this dispute is still alive. This is reason I decided to resotre old headline where we could read about controversial status. Wikipedia has to be neutral and present both side of discusion, not discredit one side. Also "with the strong influence of Germanic languages" is opinion without sources. Germanic languages had influence to Silesian language/ethnolect. German language had some influence to syntax, but not really to flexion.

EDCBA (talk) 10:41, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

A strong German influence is in the Stadard-Polish language as well. If you like it or not. ^^ --141.83.42.10 (talk) 10:46, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

What I want to and what the facts are, are two different things. Silesian is not recognized as a regional language. Silesian has no counsil and is not regulate or even standardize. That's also why there are many writing systems. ISO 639-3 means, that it is a macrolanguage, till it has no ISO 639-2 code. By the way, it is kind of funny, that someone write that Encyclopædia Britannica and other lexicons make mistakes in this case, while just wikipedia say the truth. If we want to become Silesian a unique language, than we have to write the things how they are and not looking at it through rose-coloured glasses and think it is everything okay. The other things I changed: It is disputed if there was a Balto-Slavic protolanguage, so I added this information. Silesian is located in the south of Poland and a small part in the north of Czech Republic, but it has nothing to do with languages in Germany (except emigrants). TV Silesia is unfortunately in standard-Polish language, even the website use only the Polish language. --141.83.42.10 (talk) 16:17, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

"Silesian is not recognized as a regional language" - yes, but in the article says nothing about the regional language. "ISO 639-3 means, that it is a macrolanguage, till it has no ISO 639-2 code" - why are you writing? It does not matter. In the article says nothing about the ISO 639-2 code. "Encyclopædia Britannica and other lexicons make mistakes in this case" - article about Silesian in Encyclopædia Britannica has not been changed for 20 years, this is outdated data. " I changed: It is disputed if there was a Balto-Slavic protolanguage" - Polish language also, Balto-Slavic is disputed - see in Ethnologue [9]. If you want to mark as disputed, the first mark in Polish language. "it has nothing to do with languages in Germany (except emigrants)" - yes, Silesian emigrants. See other articles on Wikipedia, in this categories we consider also the languages ​​of immigrants. "TV Silesia is unfortunately in standard-Polish language, even the website use only the Polish language" - yes, maintly in Polish language, but some TV programs are in Silesian. Also read text above examples in the article: "The Silesian language has recently seen an increased use in culture, for example:" - not written it is entirely in Silesian. Franek K. (talk) 16:37, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

May I remember you, that you made the first change without discussion? So you could stop fighting and begin to discuss. There are a lot of emigrants in Germany. But is Polish a "language of Germany"? Or Russian? Or Serbo-Croatian? English maybe? I don't think so. That Polish is disputed is already in brackets, but Balto-Slavic not. Encyclopædia Britannica is up-to-date. Where to you have a source that it is old? You can go to the Encyclopædia Britannica website and look that the last change in the article "Polish language" was in 2011. TV Silesia: Nethertheless, if there is written, that it is mainly in Polish, than everyone will know more. This is an information, which you can't erase without any reason, but if you are biased.--141.83.42.10 (talk) 17:07, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

On a light note: It was always funny to me how an uncle from Prague when visiting our family in Cieszyn Silesia understood nothing that was being told at the family table in po naszymu. Sometimes, he just could not take it any more and would erupt demanding us to "start fucking speaking any comprehensible language". We would speak for two or three minutes in correct Czech, but inevitably slipping back to Silesian, leading to his depression. And I had similar accounts with people from Polish North (not to mention Opava Silesian, which is incomprehensible to Poles). I know very few people who would go as far as describing dialect of their own language something they don't understand.

The fact that there is no unified Silesian, nor high literature etc. in the language, does not necessarily mean that it is a mere dialect. Look at the sheer number of languages in Africa and/or India, Amazonia, etc., in many of which next to nothing was written, and yet that is not an issue. Unfortunately Silesians found themselves divided in strongly nationalistic (Polish, Czech, German) environment after 1740s which simply prevented (re-)establishment of the language on the level the Czech, Polish and most notably Slovak, which was until 1850s on the same level as Silesian is today.Cimmerian praetor (talk) 18:13, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The current headline is the most noncommitted. Neither the version of the IP (with sentences like "sadly still considered as a dialect") nor of Franek K. (deleted the two meanings and calling it a mistake, that it is considered as a dialect) is impartial. This header is short and has all informations you need. The details everyone can read in the part Dialect vs language.--Plk (talk) 14:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

New data with the sources exist from the month in the article, can not be removed (ask the administrators). There must be a consensus for delete data and sources. This changes - reverts will be marked as vandalism and automatically withdrawn. However, I'm going in the direction of consent. I changed the intro on: "Silesian or Upper Silesian (Silesian: ślůnsko godka, Czech: slezský jazyk, Polish: język śląski) is one of the Slavic languages[3], with the strong influence of Germanic languages or dialect of the Polish language[4][5] (apart from the Lach dialects, which are usually regarded as a branch of the Czech language)". This is compromise, describes two points of view. The rest of the changes after discussion. Franek K. (talk) 14:44, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Sure, the new data have to be there, that was my mistake. But they don't have to be written 3 times. Two times is more than enough (infobox+text). The other changes are without sourses or are just deleting informations (e. g. britannica).--Plk (talk) 17:53, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

1) Census data come from the Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, not only from Poland. 2) Gerd Hentschel in the second book describes the Silesian as a language, also he exactly explained at the end of the book. 3) I leave data from the Britannica, removal it was a mistake. 4) take back a your change in the intro - delete data and sources. If you have an other opinion - first discuss, do not remove the data and sources. This edition is vandalism. Franek K. (talk) 16:53, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I have, and I already said why. I didn't delete any data or sources, but the number once in the distribution and once in the infobox is more than enough. There is no need for a third time and it wasn't that before. So the short intro had all important information and there is no need to change it. The other thing is the number of the Silesians, there can be just one reason why deleted the information, I puted in, and wrote a wrong number again: to smother a fact and to manipulate. So please be careful with such things. And about Hentschel's second book: you changed the information to a completely different assertion, than before. Without qoutes or sites. I am sorry, but I doubt that you read it. I will go this week to a library and I hope, I will find this book to see what's the truth. But till now, there can only be the version before you changed it. And after all this discussion, I checked the given sources, and removed all dead links. I also removed Norman Davis from the list, because in his book was not a word about Silesian dialect/language. I changed the topic Recognition in Use and some facts, because neither a Silesian Wikipedia edition is a recognition nor a statement of some politicians or a conference in Katowice (btw. what was the result of this conference?) is. And I changed the order, because now there is a good line of the topics: topic sentence → speakers → dialects/writing/grammar/example → information about the controversials. I removed the part "History", because all the informations were based on a private website which even doesn't exist anymore. --Plk (talk) 11:38, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

1) Please, do not lie. You "I didn't delete any data or sources"? Where is text about ISO code? 2) the number of the Silesians come from the censuses from Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, not only from Poland. Your number is wrong. 3) About Hentschel - I was verified source, source marked Silesian as language. I analyzed - Who entered this fraud. Please see: [10]. Previously, exist text also about the language. 4) I restore section "History", must to discuss and must be consensus before the removal whole section with the sources. 5) You may think that information about number of speakers in intro is not necessary but others users may have a different opinion. If you want to delete the text then ask other users - especially if they are reverts. However, removal data with the sources is vandalism. Please start discussed before make changes. I mean, if they were not controversial and there are already some time - ok, but this is new controversial changes and this is new edit war, so Wikipedia:CYCLE: edition, revert = discussion. Franek K. (talk) 15:17, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Okay, so I try to explain step by step. 1. The information about ISO is already in the text and in the infobox, there is now need to write it three times. The same is with the speakers. 2. You meen the "more than 0.9 million people"? There is just one source after this sentens, and it's from the census from 2011. And you removed the information, that more than half of them feel Polish aswell. What the reason to delete it? You don't like this fact? 3. For now we can leave this version. But I will have a look to this book. Then I can qoute his words and give the page reference, it doesn't matter for me whether he things in the one way or in the other. 4. Did you read what I wrote? There are no sources. The only source came from a private site from a private person and this site even doesn't exist. So there is no source for the whole part. 5. And again, there is no need to write things again and again. The number is in the text and in the infobox. I didn't remove anything. The information are still there. So what's your problem? And what's wrong this the new order? This should be a topic about Silesian, shouldn't it? So isn't the information about the speakers and about the speech itself more important than the controversials and so on? I am waiting for a reaction and if you are not able to discuss nor to understand, I find myself constrained to call an admin. Because the only edit war is made by you. Or should I show you again the previous version before you started to change it by your own?--Plk (talk) 16:38, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

1) This information is about code "szl", not only ISO, usage by other, from SIL International to Linguist List or Ministry of Administration and Digitization. Also, most articles has repeated data, for example Polish language has three information about language family - West Slavic/Slavic. This is just one example. Your edition is trolling. 2) Again: the number of the Silesians come from the censuses from Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, not only from Poland. Your edition is POV, focused solely on data from Polish. Current edition focused on data from three countries as one short text. 4) I think with that we can get along. Could change text on neutral mention "The Book of Henryków (1270) is the earliest document to include a sentence written in the Silesia" instead "The Book of Henryków (1270) is the earliest document to include a sentence written in the Silesian language". OK? Franek K. (talk) 17:37, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

1. It is an official ISO 639-3 code. Why shouldn't other pages use it? It is not a noteworthy that pages uses ISO codes. It doesn't exist in other articles neither. And you example: "Polish (język polski, polszczyzna) is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages" (first) and the infobox (second). There is not a third time the same information. 2. Ofcourse I write there only the number of the Polish census. Because there is just this source. But I already wrote it, and told you, and you still don't understand it. Do you have any sources from Czech Republic or Slovakia? They should be from (more or less) the same time, otherwise it would be a manipulation of statistics. But ofcourse if there are sources, they can be written in addition as informations. But till now there are no sources but only your bold claim. And that's why it's cannot be there. 4. And what has this information to do with the history of the Silesian speech? 5. You say all the time you want to discuss and don't want an edit war, so you should stop with it! Because you started with all these strange changes. So if you want any changes, start to talk. I am definitely for compromises and solutions. But till now you had not a lot sustainable reason. So please, this is the last time I try to discuss, if you want any changes, than write it here and stop fighting for your version and reverting again and again.--Plk (talk) 09:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

1) partly delete and transferring rest of content from the intro to the section - this is only my good will because it is your private opinion and do not need to use your private opinion. 2) Adding rest of sources. 4) This is the "ancestor" of the Silesian language (if you believe that the Silesian is a separate language) or Silesian as dialect of the Polish language (if you believe that the Silesian is a dialect of Polish and the Book of Henryków is Polish). This text is neutral. 5) Sorry. This version exist from the month - according to standards of Wikipedia, this is stable version. You anew change the content and your version be withdrawn. This subject to Wikipedia:CYCLE: edition, revert = discussion. I know, you do not like it but you have no choice. Do you want your changes - first discuss. Revert will be marked as vandalism and automatically withdrawn and this time the I notify administrator. In this case, rights of Wikipedia exist by my side. Franek K. (talk) 17:16, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

So let's start from the beginning. You came and started with changes. And you still didn't explain them. You should now start with it. 1st change: Even if in the familytree already stand that Polish is disputed, you try make it small. Do you think that's neutral? 2nd change: You changed the whole first sentence without any reason. What is the reason? 3rd change: You changed the subtopic Dialects of Silesian ethnolect to Dialects of Silesian and you did'nt explained it, either. Personaly I think this change is okay, but I want just point out, that you did changes without any discussions and call me a troll and other not nice suppositions. And according to you point 5. It doesn't matter that your version is a day, a week or a month old, you didn't explained anything and you are systematically reverting and fighting not for the persistent of a well established version but for your own version. And that's what is called edit war. But I don't want to discuss about this.--Plk (talk) 09:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

The other thing is, you didn't say anything to my changes, which I already explained. I thought you want to discuss? 1b) So what's now about the order? What is more important/interessting in this article? What is the article about? About the Silesian speech or about the dispute of it? I think (and I already wrote it here) the first informations should be about the speakers, the second about the speech and the last part should be the dispute. And btw. the part about the speech should be bigger, if you look at other language articles. Now it looks like it wouldn't be important enough how the speech is, but that there is a dispute. 2b) The subtopic History says nothing about the history of the speech. It is an information e.g. for the topic Silesia, but it doesn't help here no one. 3b) Great, that you find the sources for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but now there is still the problem, that it's still not nearly 0.9 million but more than 0.8 million or more than 829 thousand (817 thousand from Poland + 12 thousand from Czech Republic) EXPLANATION: I think you know how rounding works. more than 850 thousand=nearly 0.9 million, less than 850 thousand=more than 0.8 million. Slovakia has still no exactly results from the census 2011 [11] and the source you gave is 20 years old and count Moravian and Silesian together. Czech Republic and Poland are both from the same year, so you can sum them. 4b) And the Polish source has on page 106 the information, that in addition to the Silesian nationality 423 thousand people declared Polish nationality aswell. That's (even with the people from Czech Republic) more than half of all of them. You deleted this information. I am sorry, but there are just two possibilities why you deleted it: either you didn't read the sources well, or you don't like this fact. I hope you try to be neutral here and you just didn't read the sources well. 5b) About Gerd Hentschel: I will have the book at this or the next weekend (btw. there is a mistake, the books name is Deutschlands Osten - Polens Westen: Vergleichende Studien zur geschichtlichen Landeskunde from Matthias Weber, where Gerd Hentschel has a chapter (subtopic) which is called Das Schlesische — eine neue (oder auch nicht neue) slavische Sprache . So it's a scientific work from Gerd Hentschel, but not his book).--Plk (talk) 09:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

2b) It may be another name for the section, for example "The curio" or other. You have a new suggestion about section name? 3b) Yes, data from the census in Slovakia come from 2001, details data from 2011 are not ready, yet (also details about Silesian language from the Polish census). I propose: "between 0.8 and 0.9 million". This is full true, neutral and should satisfy both sides. 4b) If it comes to your "people declared Polish nationality aswell", this is POV. Silesians also declared German nationality aswell and also Czech and Moravian nationality (in Czech Republic). So, you must to show the rest of the data, not only Silesian and Poland nationality, also Silesian and German nationality, Silesian and Czech nationality, Silesian and Moravian nationality, Silesian and Slovak nationality. This is too much data for article about language. This article is about Silesian language, may be short mention, not details about Silesian nationality. Franek K. (talk) 15:52, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Could you please react to all my points first (especially 1st, 2nd and 1b)? I remember you, that you wanted to discuss. I try it all the time. After that I will answer you. (And 5b) I will have the book this weekend, but I don't know if I will have time and the possibility to be online till monday).--Plk (talk) 08:27, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

1st: "Even if in the familytree already stand that Polish is disputed, you try make it small. Do you think that's neutral?" - yes, absolutely yes. This is a disputed, therefore, has been reduced size. It can not be written in normal size font if it is disputed. There is another option - remove Polish from familytree, however, there may be some problems with the neutrality. 2nd: "You changed the whole first sentence without any reason. What is the reason?" - I completely rebuilt intro and added new information. Why is improving articles in Wikipedia? To be better, that was my target. Also, read Wikipedia:BOLD. 3rd: "You changed the subtopic Dialects of Silesian ethnolect to Dialects of Silesian and you did'nt explained it" - first: why user as "red link" changed the subtopic Dialects of Silesian to Dialects of Silesian ethnolect? I did just the opposite. Second: why ethnolect? Silesian is simply and neutral name. May relate to the language or dialect. The term "ethnolect" is not neutral. 5: "It doesn't matter that your version is a day, a week or a month old" - No, you wrong. Version lasting month is stable version, have other rights in the edit-wars and rules of Wikipedia. Changes after the stable version - if they are controversial - must to be discussed, see Wikipedia:CYCLE or ask the administrator. Franek K. (talk) 13:37, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

As an uninvolved outsider (who intends to stay that way) and an admin, I will point out that the statment above "Version lasting month is stable version, have other rights in the edit-wars and rules of Wikipedia." is patently false and not in line with Wikipedia policy. Toddst1 (talk) 14:54, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

What exactly is patently false: "Version lasting month is stable version" or "stable version have other rights in the edit-wars and rules of Wikipedia"? Franek K. (talk) 14:58, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Both are false. Just because something lasts for a month, does not qualify it for Wikipedia:Stable versions and the concept of Stable versions are obsolete. When we had the concept of a stable version, they did not " have other rights in the edit-wars and rules of Wikipedia." The concept of stable version was thrown away. Wikipedia is dynamic and intended to stay that way. Toddst1 (talk) 16:57, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, but exist new methods avoidance conflict, for example Wikipedia:CYCLE. Franek K. (talk) 17:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

You have gone far beyond WP:BRD and are doing a lousy job of WP:DR. Toddst1 (talk) 21:04, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I had problems with my Internet provider. Anyway, I have this book and some other information. I will rework this article after my work and exams. Maybe in two weeks. At the moment there are a lot of false assertion (especially that one about Gerd Hentschel).--Plk (talk) 19:01, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

"Dispute" about language vs. dialect

In this "dispute" about whether Silesian is a language, is the disputed notion the question of whether Silesian evolved independently from Polish within the Lechtitic group, or is there actually no linguistic basis to the dispute at all?

If it is known that Silesian did evolve from Old Polish (something the article is very vague on), it is correct to say Silesian is a dialect of Polish, however this does not disqualify it from being a language. - filelakeshoe 13:40, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

You write illogical. If Silesian did evolve from Old Polish, this not a dialect of Polish because Polish language concerns present language. Present Polish language and Silesian language has only one common thing: relationship with Old Polish. But, Silesian evolved in a different direction than present Polish language, Silesian has different vocabulary, alphabet, tone/sounds and accent and also relationship with Czech language ang German language. Franek K. (talk) 14:40, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I would say "Polish language" in this context concerns the language in whatever century. But this is besides the point, it seems pretty clear to me that Silesian is a language, but this article is vague on describing this "dispute". Often such "disputes" about whether something is "a language or just a dialect" are politically fueled and meaningless from a linguistic perspective. This article should focus more on describing the facts, e.g. Silesian evolved from Old Polish as spoken in the nth century, which features have been retained and influenced to change in comparison with Polish, and what these linguists actually say which support their opinions about whether Silesian is or is not a language. - filelakeshoe 16:33, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Rewrite intro as neutral (NPOV). Please keep it this way.

Hello. I am a linguist with strong contributions to numerous languages across Wikipedia. I am neither Silesian, (non-Silesian) Polish, nor German, have no known ancestors from any of these places, and have no particular linguistic or political connections to any of these places.

I do know that the issue of the existence or non-existence of minority languages is in general extremely fraught, and particularly so in Europe due to the widespread assumption that language = nationality, and hence the political and linguistic privileges to be gained from recognition of minority-language status. Hence it comes as no surprise to see that many Silesians believe passionately that their speech is a separate language, and many non-Silesian Poles believe the opposite equally strongly, and plenty of people are quite willing to marshal all sorts of supposedly objective linguistic evidence in their favor.

The reality is that from a linguistic standpoint, the *only* thing that can be said linguistically about the issue of Silesian language vs. dialect is that this issue is a political question, not a linguistic question. Cf. the famous quote "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy". This is particularly true because of the evident existence of a dialect continuum between Polish and Czech that passes through Silesian and Lech, making it objectively impossible to state where one "language" ends and another one begins.

In linguistic literature, an unclear/disputed speech form like Silesian is normally termed a lect or variety. The term "lect" is less ambiguous vs. the numerous non-technical meanings of "variety"; hence I've used this term in this page.

I have rewritten the intro to preserve strict neutrality. Please do *NOT* change this. This goes doubly so if you are Silesian or Polish, or for one reason or another have strong feelings about this issue.

Benwing (talk) 06:25, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the rewrite, I had the same concerns about this giving too much weight to local "linguists'" POVs. I would just add though that intelligibility within the Czech-Polish continuum you describe is quite low. The midpoint (at least, as still spoken before Silesian started massively converging with Czech and Polish, or moving towards standard Moravian Czech and Polish, depending on which way you look at it) is likely to be barely intelligible to people in Bohemia or Warsaw. Would you call something you barely understand a dialect of your own language? That would be my "linguistic" basis for calling Silesian a language. - filelakeshoe 11:30, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Could this claim be verified: "but, in a later scientific work - in his book Das Schlesische — eine neue (oder auch nicht neue) slavische Sprache (Silesian — a new (or not new) Slavic language?) he concludes that it's a language."? Volunteer Marek 22:24, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Davies

Regarding this [12]. This sentence and claim is not really supported by the source and it clearly violates NPOV.

Ok, first we have "International linguists and other scholars... also support the status of Silesian as a Slavic language". Well, no. What you have here is two authors who *maybe* have an opinion on the matter. That does not show that "International linguists and other scholars" do this - phrasing it that way implies some kind of consensus in the literature which simply doesn't exist. In fact, the current standard linguistic practice - as carried out by "international linguists" and "other scholars" - is to treat Silesian as a dialect. At best what you've got here is two exemptions to a general rule.

But it's not even that. I don't know about Reinhold Olesch, so I'm not going to comment on him. But it's simply misleading to say that "Davies supports the status of Silesian as a Slavic language". Has he written a book in support of this? A column? An article? Anything? No. All you got here is a book which is about the general history of Europe, from prehistoric times to the present, which in the appendix has a diagram of linguistic "slavic groups" and "ural groups", which happens to list "Silesian" under a heading "slavic languages". That's very very weak support even or the notion that Davies has an opinion on the subject, much less that he "supports the status of Silesian as a Slavic language". That's pure OR on your part.

Btw, that chart is sourced to A. Nawrocki, so if you track that source down you might have something there.

Basically, you need to find better sources - and if the claim is true, that shouldn't be hard - or the material needs to be removed as misrepresenting the source.Volunteer Marek 19:49, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, also, in that same diagram Davies has "Goralski" under the same column. Does that mean that Davies supports the status of Goralski as a Slavic language"? I seriously doubt it, since that one is pretty much uncontroversially a dialect (and there's nothing wrong with that).Volunteer Marek 19:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

You do not believe words by Mr. Davies, it's only your problem. Norman Davies is a respected historian and his sources are reliable. Franek K. (talk) 19:59, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

There are no "words by Mr. Davies", there's a diagram in a book which you are interpreting to your liking, then adding a good heap of misrepresentation on top of even that. Please address the issue.Volunteer Marek 20:02, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

"Dialect vs language" section - doesn't tell the reader anything useful

Rather than just listing who or what decides to call this variety a language or "just a dialect of Polish", we need to focus on WHY they say such things. Linguistics is a science, and scientists need to back their opinions up with evidence, and I'm worried that we're reporting sources which simply gloss over this question without giving any reasons (like Britannica, or the Davies book mentioned above). The reason I returned the sentence about Stanisław Rospond, though I can't verify it, is because it is the only part of that entire section which has any quantifiable information in it. Rather than saying "these 10 people say it's Polish, and these 10 people say it's a separate language", we need to report: from which parent language and in which century it began to diversify, and how intelligible it is with other West Slavic varieties. Without such information, "I think X is just a dialect/a separate language" is a completely meaningless sentence, just like "I think an asteroid killed the dinosaurs, just because". - filelakeshoe (t / c) 08:45, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

That's all well and good, but the technical details are going to only be of interest to linguists, who are less likely to be reading Wikipedia and more likely to be reading the primary sources and making their own evaluations. There is valid detail for both sides of the question, but the paragraph as it stands is overloaded with references to "separatists" with very, very few references to "lumpers". I'm sure that is not the actual case, but this section appears to have been originally written by a separatist without a lot of motivation for including the other point of view. I've added some linguistic references in English (which are uniformly oriented to assigning Silesian a dialect status), but I don't command the Polish linguistic literature. That's why I deleted (and have now edited) the comment in the first place--it was misplaced and sounded more like, "These Polish scholars say it's a dialect, however, they are wrong because of what this Polish guy wrote about Old Polish." That's not NPOV writing. --Taivo (talk) 11:00, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Article Title

Since the status of the Silesian speech as a language or a dialect is uncertain (and indeed linguists tend to view it as a dialect) shouldn't the title of this article be changed to Silesian speech rather than either "language" or "dialect." Otherwise, it appears to be endorsing a particular POV.Faustian (talk) 15:22, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. BTW: Only people connected with RAS consider the Silesian Dialect as a language... --Sobiepan (talk) 19:27, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Maybe the name is not ideal (the same problem with Kashubian language), but please stop the personal attacks and slanders. Not only members of the RAS have such an opinion. Also, please stop pushing Polish nationalism in Wikipedia. Franek K. (talk) 21:40, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

No its not the same... And you know it... The article should be moved to Silesian dialect or Silesian (Polish dialect). Im pushing German nationalism...: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlesisch_%28polnischer_Dialekt%29

It's the same. By the way, your examples of names are wrong and not neutral. And yes, you pushing Polish nationalism, most many of your editions shows it. Franek K. (talk) 22:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry, you are offending me. A discussion with you is useless.--Sobiepan (talk) 22:48, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, I think "Silesian dialects" would be a better title (cf. Moravian dialects), since there are many Silesian dialects, some closer to Polish and a couple closer to Czech. A group of mutually intelligible dialects is often called a language, but I'm open to any meaningful information from linguistic sources on why this isn't the case for Silesian. Currently the article is devoid of any. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 09:32, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this could be also a good name. I will request a move and propose it.--Sobiepan (talk) 10:13, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested move2

Silesian language → Silesian dialects - As per suggestion of filelakeshoe [13].

• Please see also the discussion on Talk:Slavic_languages#status_of_Silesian
• Polish [14] and German [15] articles
• Some references (in Polish): http://www.gwarypolskie.uw.edu.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=9&Itemid=19, [16] and [17]--Sobiepan (talk) 10:13, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
• Bibliography: http://www.gwarypolskie.uw.edu.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1003&Itemid=119&dia=4 --Sobiepan (talk) 10:48, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

See also Dialects of Polish: [18] and Dialects of Polish--Sobiepan (talk) 11:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Most linguists writing in English, such as Alexander M. Schenker,(Alexander M. Schenker, "Proto-Slavonic," The Slavonic Languages (1993, Routledge), pages 60-121.) Robert A. Rothstein, (Robert A. Rothstein, "Polish," The Slavonic Languages (1993, Routledge), pages 686-758.) and Roland Sussex and Paul Cubberley (Roland Sussex & Paul Cubberley, The Slavic Languages (2006, Cambridge University Press) in their respective surveys of Slavic languages, list Silesian as a dialect of Polish, as does Encyclopædia Britannica.[19]

--Sobiepan (talk) 11:42, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

---

That is incorrect. The Slavic Languages does not list Silesian as anything, except for Texas Silesian (Polish?) and Lach (Czech). — kwami (talk) 22:16, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Texas Silesian is a dialect of Polish Silesians (one of the variations of the Silesian dialect)--Sobiepan (talk) 12:29, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Most? Around three old (before given the ISO 639-3 code) works in English (which are based on the Polish works)? This is not "most". Franek K. (talk) 12:20, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - bad and not neutral name, there is still controversy about Silesian language status. Better neutral name, for example - simply "Silesian" or Silesian (linguistics) or Silesian (West Slavic). Accordance with the fundamental principle of Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia must to be neutral. If there is a dispute between (Silesian) dialect/s and language, we need to use a neutral name of "Silesian" (without any not neutral terms of dialect/s or language). Sobiepan, also, two your examples: German and Polish Wikipedia is nothing, most of Wikipedia versions use term of language in name or use neutral name of "Silesian". Also, suggestion of filelakeshoe is only the initial suggestion, Silesian has a more stronger status than Moravian (including ISO code). Franek K. (talk) 10:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Please see the discussion (last year) on: Talk:Slavic_languages#status_of_Silesian user Franek K. was involved.--Sobiepan (talk) 11:06, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

result of this discussion is introduced neutral paragraph to Wikipedia: "The standard linguistic sources about the Slavic languages describe Silesian as a dialect of Polish.[2][3] However, many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for national and international recognition of a Silesian language.[4] Also, the standard linguistic organisations describe Silesian as a language.[5][6][7] Ongoing debate over the granting for the Silesian of the status of a regional language in Poland[8][9]". Sobiepan, you must learn to be neutral. Again: if there is a dispute between (Silesian) dialect/s and language, we need to use a neutral name of "Silesian" (without any not neutral terms of dialect/s or language). Please stop pushing not neutral term of dialect/s. Franek K. (talk) 11:11, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment. "Silesian (linguistics)" would be a very bad title: It is not a topic within the science of linguistics, akin to, say, phonetics. That said, the title "Silesian dialects" begs the question '(Dialects) of what?', unless the topic would be 'dialects of Silesian' (which it wouldn't). "Silesian" would have been nice if it weren't rightly a disambiguation page. --JorisvS (talk) 11:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

  Comment. You are right in the case of Silesian (linguistics). You said ""Silesian" would have been nice if it weren't rightly a disambiguation page" - this is not problem, move Silesian to Silesian (disambiguation) (what is interesting, currently Silesian (disambiguation) is redirect to Silesian) and Silesian page will be available for Silesian language. Franek K. (talk) 11:51, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

  For that to be possible, this article's topic must be established to be the primary topic, which would seem rather dubious. --JorisvS (talk) 12:20, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

  "Dialects of what?" is the very focus of the dispute, so the varying points of view can be given in the article, that's not a problem. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 12:37, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

  It still suggests that these are a group of dialects that are part of some language. It specifically does not mean there is a possibility that this group could be considered a separate language. --JorisvS (talk) 13:54, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment. I'd support Silesian dialect, per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common name): Google Books search shows "Silesian dialect" beats "Silesian language" more than 10:1. I cannot support plural dialects, per JorisvS. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:20, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

  The whole problem is that "Silesian dialect" represents just one POV. --JorisvS (talk) 14:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

  • The same can be said about the "Silesian language", right? So if given a number of POVed choices, we chose the most common one. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:54, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• What about moving this to Upper Silesian? This article already mentions it as an alternative name (which is opposed to the Germanic Lower Silesian). That page is currently a dab page, but this article's topic clearly represents the primary topic. And most importantly, it avoids the terms "language" and "dialect". --JorisvS (talk) 14:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

  That I could support. I'm not convinced that "group of dialects" and "language" are mutually exclusive, all languages are groups of dialects (with armies and navies), and there's always a possibility any divergent group of dialects can be considered a separate language. Using google books to determine the common name isn't a good idea, because searching for "Silesian dialect" will also pick up individual dialects described as "a Silesian dialect" which few would claim to be a language by themselves. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 15:02, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@Sobiepan: It is bad practice to display images like that on the talk page. Also note that your map includes even Kashubian as a "dialect" of Polish. --JorisvS (talk) 19:53, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Because Kashubian is considered both. See: Dialects of Polish--Sobiepan (talk) 11:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Please dont edit or change my comments. See: Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Editing_comments--Sobiepan (talk) 11:43, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

JorisvS is right. Editing_comments is one but you have no right to destroy the layout of page, too large graphics and separating lines are unacceptable. Size of your graphics have been reduced (graphics are not removed), separating lines can not exist because it is written posts directly to that text. If you ever restore large graphics and separating lines, I will inform administrator. Franek K. (talk) 12:04, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment Per E17, Silesian, Kashubian, and Polish (and presumably extinct Polabian) are Lechitic languages, and the Silesian language is distinct from the Upper Silesian dialect of Polish. Silesian is also recognized as a regional language by the Polish govt. The DK World Atlas counts Silesian as a distinct ethnicity. See also refs for the various lects called "Silesian" and the distinction between Silesian and Upper Silesian given in #Four Silesian ethnolects or tongues above. (There's also Silesian Czech, or Lach, and supposedly Germanic Lower Silesian is also called Upper Silesian, or at least Upper Schlesisch.)
  I oppose both "dialect", as being hopelessly ambiguous, and "dialects", as being a different topic (there are Silesian dialects of German, which are not the topic of this article, though Czech Silesian is, though AIFCT no-one, not even E17, considers that to be part of the Silesian language). Assuming E17 is correct that Silesian is distinct from Polish and German Upper Silesian, I'd oppose moving to that name too.
  CUP The Slavic Languages is of little help: they only speak of Czech Silesian and Texas Silesian. However, the West Slavic languages they cover are Polish, Sorbian, Kashubian, Polabian, Czech, and Slovak, suggesting they do not consider Silesian to be a separate language. They say that they consider Kashubian to be a variety of Polish, and an intermediate case, as it "lacks most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood", but even so, that appears to be a greater distinction than any form of Slavic Silesian. The Slavonic Languages treats both Silesian and Kashubian and dialects of Polish (also Silesian Czech), though they note that Kashubian is "often" considered a separate language outside of Poland.
  The apparent distinction in Ethn. may simply be the recognition of Silesian as a separate language, combining the Silesian dialects of both Polish and Czech, but not realizing that they were the same thing. Since Ethn. is not a RS, we really do need a good source that the Silesian 'language' is distinct from the Upper Silesian dialect of Polish, and from the Lach/Silesian dialect of Czech. Without that, we're not going to be able to make an informed decision on the name for this article.
  I've notified WP:LANG that feedback would be useful. — kwami (talk) 21:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
• Comment: I will be watching over this page for behavioral violations; please remember to WP:AGF and such. Since this move request came from a situation where two people were about to be blocked to begin with, if any contributors commit significant violations of major policies such as NPA, I will be likely to block. I would also encourage people to avoid all capitalized posts - it's seen as shouting - although that's more a pet peeve than an outright rule violation. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:46, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
• I'm all for maintaining the status quo. To be frank, I feel slightly disgusted by the fact that this most unpleasant discussion seems to have blown over from Polish WP now. It is not even about the content of the article, just about one word in the title, and the whole difference is merely about politics, not about linguistics. There are no objective criteria for distinguishing dialects from languages: it's quite possible that two languages, despite being nearly identical, are recognised as two separate languages, while regional variations, in spite of being not or hardly understandable to each other's speakers, are not. In other words, the question how different Silesian and standard Polish really are, is of limited importance. What matters is that Silesian has an ISO code and that it is officially recognised as a regional language in Poland. Frankly, I don't understand the attitude of those who have such a tremendous problem with that; it's not like the existence of a somewhat separate Sіlesian language undermines the greatness of the Polish nation in any way. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 01:41, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Comment: English Wikipedia is pretty consistent in following linguistic consensus regarding artificial linguistic separatism in the case of obviously "nearly identical" languages, as you say, i.e. that they aren't distinct languages. I don't have the stomach to fight these battles, but thankfully there are others that keep the discussion of the Serbo-Croatian, Hindi-Urdu, Romanian, Catalan, etc. languages consist with linguistic consensus that these are single languages and that e.g. Serbian vs. Croatian vs. Bosnian are standardized registers of the same Serbo-Croatian language, not distinct languages, regardless of what many Serbians, Croatians and Bosnians say. Benwing (talk) 07:15, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
• Moderate support. From what I can tell, the Silesian referred to in this article is a dialect of Polish, not a separate language, by the standard reliable sources. I've looked at this somewhat and none of the main linguistic sources (the RS's, not Ethnologue) describe Silesian as a separate language. Kwami above notes in more detail what the linguistic sources say. I do seem to remember Sussex and Cubberley including Silesian among the list of dialects, although I may simply have noted the fact that they note Kashubian as a separate language but don't do so for Silesian. In any case, it's pretty Silesian is clearly not as distinct as Kashubian and not in the same category as Kashubian, where there is some dispute as to whether it is distinct enough to quality as a separate language. The best that can be said is that there is a political movement that is trying to make Silesian a separate language because of the fact that some (perhaps the majority, perhaps not) of the Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity, and there's a stubborn belief in Europe that all proper ethnicities have distinct languages. IMO this is much the same thinking that causes Croatians, Serbians and Bosnians, plus Romanians, Moldovans and Transnistrians, etc. etc., to insist they speak separate languages. The Polish view is unfortunately of the same character, in trying to deny a separate Silesian ethnicity and still equating ethnicity with language. If we accept that ethnicity and language are not the same, I think it becomes less controversial that Silesian is a Polish dialect. In any case, the term "Silesian language" is less accurate per the linguistic sources than "Silesian dialect". I looked into why Ethnologue describes Silesian as a separate language and it seems to reflect simply a request by a pro-Silesian-language group to have Silesian included as a separate language in ISO 639-3, nothing more than that. No linguistic sources were cited in this request. This is one of the reasons Ethnologue is not a reliable source, and I am rather skeptical of the claim that there is such a thing as an Upper Silesian dialect of Polish that's distinct from the putative Silesian language. Benwing (talk) 07:07, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
• Comment: Another possible title would be Silesian (Polish lect); this avoids the language vs. dialect issue and also avoids possible confusion over Czech or German Silesian. Benwing (talk) 07:07, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Except that this article includes Czech Silesian.

Agreed that the presence of an ISO code means nothing.

RSources disagree as to whether Kashubian is a "language", but none seem to consider Silesian to be a language.

"Silesian dialect" would seem to be more appropriate apart from the fact that it could refer to Germanic Lower Silesian. Not sure "Upper" vs "Lower" is unambiguous either, however. "Silesian Polish" would be the way to go if it were simply a Polish dialect (that the formula for many of our dialect articles), but then you've got "Silesian Czech" just across the border. Since Silesian (Lach) is one of 3 primary Czech dialects, this could be critical to naming: Is Silesian Czech part of the Silesian "language" or not?

— kwami (talk) 07:16, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we should rewrite the section of this article that claims that Lach is a "dialect" of a Silesian "language". This isn't per the RS's, which disagree in describing Silesian (Lach) as either a Czech dialect or a "transitional dialect" between Polish and Czech, but recognize no such unitary Silesian language nor recognize Lach and Polish Silesian as belonging to the same language. Also, I never saw a linguistic source that said that Polish Silesian was a similar transitional dialect. So evidently the Lach-Czech distance is more than Silesian-Polish. (BTW, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Silesian isn't even the most distinctive Polish dialect (excluding Kashubian that is); some of the dialects in modern Ukraine may well have been more distinct -- although they may or may not still exist.)

This is all rather complicated. I think this article should cover Silesian, the Polish dialect, and nothing else; there's enough to say, esp. about the political issues, and we already have a separate article on the Lach dialects that does appear to comport with the RS's and disagrees with this article. Benwing (talk) 07:46, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I should add, this is of course rather complicated because of the problem of dialect chains. 100 years ago I think there would have been a genuine dialect chain straight from Polish to Czech but I rather suspect nowadays there's somewhat of a division at the border because of the pull of the standard languages and the influence of the media, which justifies keeping Polish Silesian and Lach separate. Benwing (talk) 07:49, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

The Cieszyn Silesian dialect still stands more or less on the border, because it's picked up more elements of Czech in the last few decades. If anyone can find these two sources by Kevin Hannan: "Borders of Language and Identity in Cieszyn Silesia" and "The Lachian Language of Ondra Lysohorsky" we'd have some decent source material on the development of the dialect continuum, including how the Lach dialect was more or less levelled into Moravian Czech. I've looked extensively in the past but only managed to find a short preview of the latter source online. In any case I'm still sure Lach as it was spoken (and written) a century ago is relevant to this topic, but shouldn't be presented as a dialect of Silesian/Polish. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 08:50, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, the reason I proposed putting this in the plural was because there are multiple Silesian dialects spoken in Poland. The reason the attempt to standardise Silesian as a language hasr run into so many problems with writing systems is that they've tried to write it in such a way that suits all of the dialects - and even then, aside from on Silesian Wikipedia I've only ever seen it written using Czech and/or Polish orthography (e.g. [20] ) - filelakeshoe (t / c) 08:58, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

The sources I've seen have Silesian as one of 4 or (if you count Kashubian) 5 dialects of Polish, so "dialect" sg. would be appropriate. Of course, dialects are often composed of further dialects, but that doesn't make them plural unless there's no unity to them, and per my sources there is. But "Silesian dialect" is ambiguous. If we exclude Silesian Czech from the article, as Benwing proposes (and per Ethnologue), then Silesian Polish would be a good name, analogous to Najdi Arabic, Wood Frisian, and Wu Chinese. It was once there, but was moved in 2008. — kwami (talk) 10:04, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support - we follow the designation found in most reliable sources, not the minority.Volunteer Marek (talk) 09:02, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Do not forget one thing, this discussion has been advertised on WikiProject Poland, people from Poland (i.e. user Sobiepan, Volunteer Marek...) have already established opinion - "dialect". Point of view of Polish in this case is not neutral. For the uninitiated, Poland fighting with Silesian language, culture, nationality, identity and separatism. I think all users come from WikiProject Poland support not neutral "dialect". Maybe notify users of the Silesian Wikipedia, let's Silesians say its opinion? It is unfair for people who use the language, why people from Poland, have to decide about Silesian. Franek K. (talk) 10:46, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Through WP:AA, this discussion should be advertised in the news feeds for all WikiProjects included at the top of this article. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 14:17, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Whether or not something is a language or dialect, case concerns linguists, sociolinguists, linguistic organizations, people who use the language, politicians. Between them there is no consensus for status language or dialect. We all agree with the fact that the case of Silesian is complicated. Accordance with the core content policies of Wikipedia: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia must to be neutral. Wikipedia can not show only one side. Change the name of the article on "dialect" violates the fundamental principle of Wikipedia. Wikipedia must to be neutral, we can not use the name of a dialect or language. We have to look for another name, without words "dialect" and "language". Franek K. (talk) 10:46, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• The odd thing is that Polish Wikipedia calls it an "ethnolect", which seems to imply that ethnically the Silesians are a separate entity, but linguistically they are not. In other words, Silesians are not Poles, but they do speak Polish. This is the dubious compromise that was cooked up between those in favour and those against recognising Silesian as a language. Like I said, there are no objective criteria distinguishing languages and dialects, and both linguists and other sources disagree. The mistake we all make, I think, is that we take the concept of language as a starting point and only from there we start thinking about dialects. In fact it would be a lot more logical to do the opposite: to take dialects as a starting point and see how they can be grouped into languages. Until quite recently, the generally accepted solution was quite a simple one: a language belongs to a state, and all the rest – give or take a few exceptions – are dialects. To such a degree that the language variety used at one side of the border was considered a dialect of language A, while the variety used at the other side was a dialect of language B, notwithstanding the fact that both varieties were nearly identical. Nowadays we think differently.
  The situation in Central and Eastern Europe, Poland being no exception, is that of a vast linguistic continuum. All we can say for sure is that Silesian (including Lach etc.) is (part of) a group of transitional dialects between standard Polish and standard Czech. Any choice we make regarding languages that are not state languages is arbitrary almost by definition. There are no objective linguistic criteria, so all we can do is resorting to non-linguistic criteria, such as there are: does the language have a written tradition? Does it have a standardised orthography? Does it have its own dialects? Is there any form of official recognition as a language? Does it have an ISO code?
  Another thing is that we cannot set the discussion about Silesian from similar cases, like Limburgish, Scots, Walloon, Galician etc. No mistake, if those four examples are to be considered languages, then there is no reason at all for denying Silesian the same "privilege", if only for the sake of consistency. The difference is merely in the heat of the reactions of representatives of the dominant language. Here in the Netherlands, the question whether Limburgish is a language separate from Dutch, a regional language within or without Dutch or simply a group of Dutch dialects is pretty much a non-issue, whereas in Poland the very existence of the concept of a Silesian language apparently causes many people to feel deeply hurt in their national pride. As a result, the discussion is a highly political one. Just compare pl:Dyskusja:Etnolekt śląski to similar talk pages about similar languages on their respective Wikipedias to get an impression. I would say: take a good look at the first paragraphs of Scots language and ask yourself the question if the title of the article is really so offensive. If not, it could perhaps serve us as a model for Silesian. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 10:59, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Except that linguists who note Kashubian might be considered distinct don't even mention Silesian, or only mention it as a Polish dialect. — kwami (talk) 11:17, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, IJzeren Jan, one can easily quantify % of cognates and lexical distance. One can identify isoglosses and see if there are bundles of them within the continuum. One can compare the grammars and see how much they match (granted, quantifying this is less straightforward than for the vocabulary). One can also quantify (mutual) intelligibility, though one must be careful to avoid several pitfalls. At that point the decision of what to call a language and what a dialect becomes already far less arbitrary.

In the case of Croatian and Serbian, the number of cognates is >99%, the lexical distance is negligible, and the grammars match up 100%. --JorisvS (talk) 12:52, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh sure, nobody is denying that, but note that I didn't mention Kashubian in the first place. Kashubian's recognition as a language separate from Polish is much older than in the case of Scots, Limburgish or Luxemburgish. Although even today there are still lots of people in Poland, including linguists, who keep insisting that Kashubian is a Polish dialect as well. Every opinion has its own merits, and ultimately it is pretty much a matter of definition. And when it comes to definitions, let's face it, a lot has changed over the last 40 years. Since I was a child (blessed or cursed with a vivid interest in linguistics) the number of Romance languages has increased from about seven to over thirty. Same thing goes for the Germanic languages, too. And this is not because dozens of languages have suddenly popped up out of nowhere, but simply because our perception of a language has changed. Then how can you expect that the number of Slavic languages must have remained constant in the same period of time? That's my point: you cannot seriously argue that Scots, Limburgish, Galician and Sicilian are separate languages while similtaneously insisting that Silesian isn't. You honestly can't. The situation is pretty much the same, and the only difference is the amount of noise made by its opponents, which can hardly be taken for a serious argument.

One reason why Kashubian and Silesian are pretty much in the same boat is the fact that their influence on the Polish standard language has been minimal. The Polish literary language has come about as a mix of primarily the dialects of Wielkopolska and Małopolska, to a letter degree also of Mazovian dialects. Kashubian and Silesian dialects were excluded from the process and followed their own, separate, historical development, although obviously both have been heavily influenced by the standard language.

Now, I am certainly not saying that the opinion of linguists doesn't matter. But as long as there are no objective criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, whatever choices they make remains an arbitrary one. That's why we have to accept certain non-linguistic criteria as well. After all, is it very possible for a language to be a language without being vastly different from another language. Other criteria are, for example:

• In how far do speakers of the language/dialect use the dominant standard language as their written language?
• Does the language/dialect in question have its own literary tradition?
• Does it have a written standard?
• Does it have its own dialects?
• Does it have an official status somewhere (in a state or subnational entity)?

Another thing is the question: it is impossible to be a language and a (group of) dialect(s) of another language at the same time? After all, all the examples quoted above have elements of both. Today, we do not merely distinguish between languages and dialects anymore, we also have macrolanguages, microlanguages, diasystems, multicentered languages, umbrella languages and so on. Silesian is precisely what it says: a regional language. Just like a person can be a Pole and a Silesian at the same time, why cannot this person speak Polish and Silesian at the same time? If we could accept that, it would be a major step towards a solution. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 13:38, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Sobiepan: do not reinsert a page breaking graphic. Thanks, Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:54, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support. It is about time to move the article name and its content to the form reflecting the majority of reliable sources. I'd support also the move to Silesian dialect but Silesian dialects is fine as well, as there are several varieties of Silesian depending on the region within Silesia. - Darwinek (talk) 19:39, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Target name

It looks like most of us are coming to the conclusion that the article should be moved, but aren't so sure where it should be moved to. Here are some of the possibilities:

• "Silesian dialects" – but that could be understood to include Silesian German or Czech
• "Upper Silesian" – could be understood to include Czech (or is that a good thing?), and there's German Upper Silesian as well
• "Silesian dialect" – but there are multiple dialects with this name
• "Silesian Polish", "Silesian Polish dialect", or "Polish Silesian dialects" – assuming the article is restricted to Polish Silesian

Any preferences? — kwami (talk) 21:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

• Between linguists, sociolinguists, linguistic organizations, people who use the language, politicians there is no consensus for status language or dialect. We all agree with the fact that the case of Silesian is complicated. This is fact. Accordance with the core content policies of Wikipedia: Neutral point of view, Wikipedia must to be neutral and can not show only one side. Change the name of the article on "dialect" violates the fundamental principle of Wikipedia and can not be changed. So, "Upper Silesian" or simply "Silesian" in this situation is only neutral names, the name does not refer to a dialect or language. Franek K. (talk) 22:00, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

No. You're completely misreading the relevant policies. NPOV means that the title of the articles reflects the mainstream opinion. Having the article titled according to the mainstream opinion rather than a minority fringe opinion is NOT a violation of NPOV. It is NPOV. You're flipping the cat on its tail. Volunteer Marek (talk) 02:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Support Silesian dialect as first choice, with a "for other uses..." link at the top of the page which would take a reader to the appropriate disambiguation page. "silesian dialects" would be a distant second, followed by "Silesian Polish" and ... well, I haven't seen "Upper Silesian" used that much in sources though I'm sure the term exists. Volunteer Marek (talk) 02:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
• Comment Sorry, but I'm not impressed at all by the arguments given for "dialect". In fact, there's only one argument I keep hearing, namely that a majority of linguists don't consider Silesian a separate language. You won't make that argument stronger by repeating it fifty times. This is not a vote. Besides, I also notice that practically all those who advocate the dialect option appear to be Poles, which does not exactly enhance the objectivity of the discussion. At last, I have given several arguments for maintaining the status quo, and I find it slightly disappointing that nobody even cares to address them. Yet, you simply cannot ignore the fact that Silesian is recognised by Polish law as a "regional language", nor can you ignore the fact that Silesian is not an isolated case. The discussion about Silesian is utterly pointless without taking Scots, Limburgish etc. into account. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 03:13, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

  Actually, IJzeren Jan, I did address your arguments. I didn't come up with a definite solution, though, because the necessary research is (probably) not done. --JorisvS (talk) 09:46, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• If the title Silesian language is really so extremely offending, then I move that the article be renamed Silesian (regional language) – because that's precisely what it is, and it's something nobody can deny. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 03:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't know I was Polish. @Benwing, did you realize you were Polish? — kwami (talk) 04:11, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: I'm the person who more-or-less got this RM started by not blocking Franek and Sobie for editwarring and encouraging them to start this instead, and I expect that I'll probably be the closer here too unless another uninvolved admin volunteers. In making arguments one way or the other, I would highly encourage people to post policy-based rationales that draw off of what is found in reliable sources (preferably by linking or otherwise naming those sources, instead of just stating that they exist.) Best, Kevin Gorman (talk) 03:28, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
• Question: Are Upper and Lower Silesian mutually intelligible? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:23, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Lower Silesian is a Germanic dialect, so no. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 08:11, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
    • Ah, apologies. I've just noted that the issue is discussed earlier in the talk page. Given that it's a split dialect - as can be found in many, many regions of the world - what is the problem? There's plenty of room for dealing with both Upper and Lower in the one article. It would also serve as deterrent for excessive POV pushes. This smacks of building up to another excuse for an article split on the flimsiest of pretexts (a favourite tactic deployed by some nationalist/interest groups in Wikipedia). It doesn't wash with me. Wikipedia has ample articles 'split' as the result of gaming the system by ingenuously invoking policies and guidelines. Dependent on which version a reader lands on from their search, they come out with completely different understandings of the subject. It's a dialect and does not warrant two articles. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:42, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
      • Not sure what you mean here. Upper Silesian (which is West Slavic) and Lower Silesian (which is Germanic) are completely unrelated, apart from a few loanwords going either way. The only other thing they have in common is that they were spoken in the same territory. They definitely should not be merged into one article - that would be like merging Irish language with Hiberno-English. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 09:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • @Kevin Gorman:: The reliable linguistic sources are the ones mentioned by Sobiepan at the top. Although he clearly has a strong POV towards one side, he does correctly cite the primary RS's that I know of: Sussex and Cubberley "The Slavic Languages" (Cambridge University Press) and Comrie and Grenville (eds) "The Slavonic Languages" (Routledge). The latter is an anthology of various articles on various languages by various authors, who are consistent in not recognizing a separate Silesian language distinct from Polish (Sobiepan notes the primarily relevant articles). There's also a Britannica article that apparently describes Silesian as a Polish dialect. This is a RS but a tertiary one, and perhaps shouldn't be given as much weight. Ethnologue and ISO 639-3 have "Silesian language" as an entry but they aren't reliable linguistic sources. Ethnologue's listing is taken from ISO 639-3, and ISO 639-3 has a Silesian language entry because the entry was submitted by a pro-Silesian-language organization. In general, both Ethnologue and ISO 639-3 reflect political considerations as much as linguistic ones. As a good example of this, Ethnologue also has an entry for the "Croatian language" and "Serbian language", with the note that it was "formerly/previously considered part of the Serbo-Croat language". This reflects the Croatian and Serbian political POV, whereas the universal linguistic consensus is that the two are separate standardized registers of the same language (sometimes termed Serbo-Croatian, sometimes given a name like "Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian" or similar, because the term "Serbo-Croatian" currently has negative political connotations within Serbia and Croatia because it implies a political POV that is no longer in vogue). ISO 639-3 has the same separate entries for the same reasons. Benwing (talk) 17:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
    • @Kevin Gorman:, @Benwing:....but Croatian language and Serbian language has names of language, despite the fact that one language - Serbo-Croatian. Besides, some sources are less reliable, some sources more reliable but sources exist. For you Benwing, linguists sources are better than linguistic organizations, for me and (I think) for most peoples in the world, linguistic organizations are more reliable and official than few books by linguists. This does not change the fact, that Wikipedia should use few types of sources and show all options, not only one because it break the rule of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. There is a proposal to change the name to neutral: Upper Silesian (idea by JorisvS) and simply Silesian (my idea), but few users will try to push not neutral version, which will create many conflicts in the future. So, Benwing do not waste time, let vote on neutral name or start new conflict between the two sides which never end. Franek K. (talk) 21:59, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
      • Presumably we have titles such as Croatian language and Moldovan language because that's what the whole world knows them as. I don't think that's always a good basis for naming articles when the "common name" is inaccurate. This topic seems too obscure to determine a common name so our title should be descriptive. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 08:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• My preference would be for Upper Silesian or Silesian Polish, focusing the article on the dialects spoken in Poland, and keeping the lede as it is. That just seems more NPOV than prescribing it as a dialect when it is more a group of dialects or a variety. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 10:04, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

• IJzeren Jan wrote: "I also notice that practically all those who advocate the dialect option appear to be Poles, which does not exactly enhance the objectivity of the discussion" - exactly. About this I wrote earlier. This discussion has been advertised on WikiProject Poland, users from Poland (i.e. user Sobiepan, Volunteer Marek... and other) have already established opinion - "dialect". Polish point of view in this case is very not neutral. For people who do not know what's going on: Poland fighting with Silesian language, culture, nationality, identity and separatism. Poland on Silesia region imposes Polish culture, language, identity; polonization in a very perfidious form. Polish books about history, linguistic, ethnic groups (etc) are full of deceptions; many users from Belarus, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Germany is not able to communicate with users from Poland because Poles base their knowledge on propaganda. Look historical articles about Polish and neighboring countries, very many edit-wars between Polish users and others. I read the Polish school books of history, so extreme POV I never have not seen. According to Polish books, Silesia is eternally Polish land, Poland to Silesia is mother country, in Silesia living only Poles. It does not matter that from 7th to 9/10th century existed free Silesian tribes, later attached to Moravia, Bohemia, from 10 to 13th century in Poland, from 1332 - independent, later in Czech, Germany, Austria to ....20th century, in Poland only from 1920 to 1939/45 as autonomous province and rest (70%) of Silesia still in Germany. Only from 1945, main part of Silesia lies in Poland, rest in Czech Republic and Germany as Silesian-Lusatian land. History of Silesia (counting the Silesian Slavic tribes, after Silings era) has ~1300 years, total history of Silesia much more. Silesia in Poland was 300-400 years. For most of its history Silesia had nothing to do with Poland but Poles do not know it. This knowledge is perfectly camouflaged. This is just one example of Polish propaganda. I know, I'm Pole and I was also a victim but I opened my eyes I started reading historical books from other countries. A few years ago was a project to develop a common European history book but Poland was against, understandable. In the case of language, the majority of contemporary Polish books about Silesian language based on works from communists era (1945-1989). Current Polish linguists write the same propaganda which formerly. There are about three books in English but they are based on the rich Polish bibliography about Silesian. What should do? Burn all old books about Polish language who writes about Silesian and write a new, without basing on the old propaganda. At the moment, the book about Polish language who writes about Silesian are worth as much as toilet paper. Franek K. (talk) 10:53, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Franek, unfortunately, both you and IJzeren Jan (talk · contribs) are quite wrong here. Neither kwami nor I are Polish -- in fact, I'm not even European, and I don't think kwami is either. We both contribute to linguistics articles of all sorts. Also, filelakeshoe (talk · contribs) may be Czech (by his talk page), Iryna Harpy (talk · contribs) may be Australian, etc. Benwing (talk) 18:11, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
    • I'm neither Czech nor Polish for the record. And it doesn't really matter where we're from. What matters are the sources - ideally sources which are written by Polish nationalists or Silesian separatists or which are less focused on the topic should be given less weight, but I don't know how many that leaves us with. - filelakeshoe (t / c) 18:33, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
      • I (and IJzeren Jan) showed only that every Pole from WP:Poland will vote for dialect. First, second, third, fourth.... it does not make sense. Iryna Harpy did not vote, I hope will vote neutral, not a "dialect". Benwing and filelakeshoe, you are not members of the WP:Poland, I did not write about you. Franek K. (talk) 21:36, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
        • For the record, I am not accusing any of you (Kwami and Benwing) of being Polish, all I am saying is that the reactions of both Poles and Silesians in this thread are kind of predictable. Flies are likely to argue that spiders should become vegetarians, and spiders are likely to disagree with that point of view. From that point of view it won't help the discussion if more people from eiter side come here to make the same statement. This is not a vote, this is about arguments. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 00:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
• Fortunately, case concerns linguists, sociolinguists, linguistic organizations, people who use the language, politicians. Between them there is no consensus for status language or dialect. Franek K. (talk) 10:58, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • This isn't true. Wikipedia follows reliable sources, and in the case of languages prefers linguistic sources, not political ones. This has clear precedent in the handling of other disputed language/dialect issues. Benwing (talk) 18:14, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
    • This isn't true. Maybe Wikipedia prefers linguistic sources (maybe), this does not mean to exclude other for example eg. linguistic organizations or politicians. Franek K. (talk) 22:15, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose: I, Silesian can say that silesian language have to many differences with polish, german or czech language. Own words and construction of sentences. This plain language is on languages list ISO 639-3 and him recognizes SIL International. With the Kashubian language is the same situation and aren`t any dispute. Krol111 (talk) 16:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment - um.... this user registered in June of 2013, made a single edit to their user page and then... didn't make *any* edits what so ever until this discussion [21]. Fishy as hell. I hope no one's being naughty here and opening up that sock drawer or calling up the meat puppets. Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:51, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to see that this user is an administrator on the Silesian Wikipedia. Nothing fishy about that. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 00:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• Somewhat prefer Silesian Polish: I don't object to something with the word "dialect" in it but this name will hopefully avoid as much conflict as possible, and as kwami notes it has precedents in names like Wu Chinese, which were specifically named to avoid the language/dialect issue. (In that case, the positions are reversed: linguistically, Wu Chinese is pretty clearly a separate language, but the political POV claims all Chinese varieties are a single language despite lack of mutual intelligibility.) We already have an article on the Lach dialects, and the stuff in this article that groups Lach and Polish Silesian speech varieties is not per linguistic sources. Benwing (talk) 18:11, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
  • "Silesian Polish" - this extreme not neutral name. "Silesian dialects" is more neutral than "Silesian Polish". But, both is not neutral and will create many conflicts in the future. Benwing, only neutral name, the name which not suggesting status because status of Silesian is disputed. Between linguists, sociolinguists, linguistic organizations, people who use the language, politicians is no consensus for status of Silesian. Franek K. (talk) 21:26, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Comment: or "Silesian (Polish dialect)", like on the German edition.--Sobiepan (talk) 14:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment: Perhaps we should reflect how Silesians named it? And they named it "ślůnsko godka" - exactly the same way as "polsko godka" (Polish language), "ynglicko/angelsko godka" (English language), "italsko godka" (Italian language), and other languages. And yes, we know the word "djalekt" (dialect). Polish and German sources are mostly biased for political reasons. The article which we are disputed about sources and proves that name for article is controversial matter. I hope you move it (or not), acoording to Wikipedia rules. But please, don't use "Silesian Polish", this is, in my opinion, as great POV as possible. Lajsikonik (talk) 10:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

• So much for neutral. Ever considered WP:Neutral? Self-designations are not neutral. Compare hrvatski jezik, which isn't a language, not even a dialect; just a standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian. --JorisvS (talk) 12:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

  No, it is not neutral. It's sugesting that Silesian is part of Polish, and this is not proved (and in my opinion not true). Lajsikonik (talk) 14:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)