Is Poland Germanic or Slavic?

Well I think that Poland and Polish language is a bit Germanic. About 1/4 Germanic.

No, its Slavic, the wars and borders have changed a lot over the years so there has been some cross breeding with Germanic people.

Can Western Poles call them selves German?

No; it's Slavonic. Though it has some words of German origin.


Only if they actually are German. A lot of people moved after the war to North Western Poland from places much further East . There is a German minority in Silesia and parts of Wielkopolska.

Would you say Gorzow Wielkopolski is in Silesia?

It's in Wielkopolska.

Actually it's not research please

Indeed, Lubuskie, though historically Wielkopolska as the name suggests.

But definitely not Silesia. And very few Germans there.

If you knew, why did you ask?

1/4 is barely enough to mention.

They can call themselves Susan if it makes them happy, doesn't mean that they actually are Susan (in fact it's very unlikely that they would be a Susan, given that Poles can't call their kids 'Susan'). Personally, having lived in western Poland for a year and still going there now and again (due to the Mrs being from there), I've never met a Pole there who called himself German. I did meet a few Poles who also had German passports due to their grandparents being German, but those Poles called themselves Poles, not German.


I think an honest answer to that question might well involve the word "fol-de-rol".

Quite. And in any case it doesn't make any sense to say that a language is 1/4 something.

Poles can`t be Germanics. Its impossible, when we know that all Germanics came from Slavic sperm.

Is German spoken in Gorzów Wielkopolski?

Maybe by visitors or expats. Why do you ask?

I'd be very surprised if we didn't find that the majority of the German spoken in Gorzow Wielkopolski was actually spoken in language lessons in schools.


fol-d....

There are around 4000 German words in Polish that are of German origin, still that doesn't make Polish language Germanic, it's Slavic.

Is East low German native to Poland?

theguythatstart

No. It's native to Lower Saxony (Luebeck, Bremen and Hamburg), and spread with Saxon settlers and the Hansa to East Prussia and Pomerania. It's now extinct in Poland, although related dialects of Plattdeutsch are still spoken in the northern part of the former DDR. It contributed a modest number of words to the Polish vocabualry, chiefly in areas dealing with sailing, trade, city administration and technology. By the way, it's closely related to English more than it is to German, and not at all related to Polish except distantly as a fellow Indo-European language.

Is there any dialect of German native to Poland?

No. All Geman dialects originated in areas than are now in German speaking countries.

Any Germanic languages native to Poland?

There's Wymysorys which robably evolved among Dutch and Scotttish settlers. It was only ever spoken by a few people and is now all but extinct.

Why are you asking?

theguythatstart

None. All Germanic languages originated in northernmost Germany, Denmark and southern Sweden, and spread out from there.

I am from Gorzów Wielkopolski in Poland do I have German in me?

Only you can answer that. What's with the one line questions that you know the answer to already.

Instead of Gorzow, perhaps you're from Trollhagen.

Chances are you have a lot more Ukrainian or Lithuanian in you. The local population is mostly descendants of Poles relocated to Gorzów after the war from the Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, as well as what is now eastern Poland. Few Germans remained after the war. Very few.

From memory a fair few of the 1945/6 settlers in Gorzow were from what's now Belarus.

In the entire voivodstwo (which borders Germany) there were only 500 Germans in the last 2011 census, and that includes people who moved after EU entry.

A bigger question is why someone from Gorzow would be asking people on an English language forum if they think he's part German.

Correct, genetic analysis has shown that people in northwestern Poland have an unusually high frequency of the I1 Y-DNA haplogroup which is common in Germanic territories such as northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and other areas. This data clearly shows the Germanic heritage of some Poles. Western Poland in general also has a relatively high frequency of the R1b haplogroup which can suggest additional Celtic/Germanic ancestry.

As far as the language goes, Polish is obviously a Slavic language but it does share some words with the German language. For example, the word kino which means theater in both Polish and German.

That doesn't make someone German or mean they 'have German in them'.

I suspect most people would be a bit surprised if they did a DNA test.