When will you Poles give back German land and the cities which you robbed?

Reality, Pol3, not some nationalistic mythos of irredentism.

A common language without any scripture, without newspapers, television and radio? I doubt that! Lets say there were a bunch of closely related village vernaculars but surely no uniform progenitor language.

You shouldn't. It's hard to image a number of languages jumping out all of a sudden from nowhere at once. By the way, by saying "Slavic" I did not mean a language, but a language family, just like "Germanic" describes a language family. In that sense, an Obodrite name such as Mechlin is a Slavic name (as opposed to a German or Germanic name) because the Obodrite language was Slavic, just as Warszawa in Polish is a Slavic name also becuse Polish is a Slavic language. JollyRomek didn't get that and thought that a Slavic term is a term in the Slavic language while it is in fact a term in a language belonging to the Slavic family of languages.

They surely didn't!

We all just should not forget that a language that is not standardized - like all European languages exept Latin and Greek were 2,000 years ago - just had tremendously fast mutation rates. Languages could change so fast when there were given from generation to generation that you could compare it to the game "Chinese whispers" (German: "Stille Post", Polish: "Głuchy telefon"). Every person in the game that gets a word whispered is like one generation. So after only 100 years or five generations a language could be transformed to an almost incomprehensable new form.

Since the dawn of mass media and standardization most of the European languages got frozen, mostly in the form they had in the 1750s. An average German surely can master a written German text from the 1760s while the same text in the Middle High German, spoken 1360 might be very difficult to understand.

So Germanic and Slavic languages may sound very different now but this does not mean they were not much more similar 3.000 years ago. Everyone can see that Slavic and Germanic languages still have striking similarities when it comes to basic words:

Milch/milk/mleko
Wasser/water/woda
Mühle/mill/młyn
Schwester/sister/siostra
zwei/two/dwa

You could go one and go one with that list.

So why making a dichotomy between Germanic and Slavic languages instead of accepting these language groups still are relatively close related?


The last speaker with Polabian as mother language died in 1756, the last person with some limited knowledge of Polabian died in 1825, according to Wikipedia. As you noted those speakers lived in the very west of the former Polabian language area, in an area in Lower Saxony called "Wendland". Note: "Wende" is the old German word for Slav.

Of course the last forms of polabian were heavily Germanized. Just check the Polabian Lord's prayer:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polabian_language

relative to what? what is the interintelligibility of say Polish and German especially compared to Polish vs Czech? - 2 per cent? - because of German borrowings into Polish? - is this a close relationship? - Germanic and Slavic languages are very unlike each other regardless of common root

They are very different by phenotype, so they appear to be very different, but they are not so different by genotype. The last person that spoke the language that is the progentor of Slavic and Germanic languages probably is not older than 4,000 to 4,500 years. For the history of man this is no more than a blink.

Should i remind this auditorium that movement for separation of Silesia already exist? Exist and bothering Poles.

See, that west of Europe controls Poland.

You are probably right. In the long run the Sorbian language is moribund and it is unlikely it will survive the 21st century! If mocking about the language of the Grandpartents is the last stage of a language before it dies then Sorbian is only one step before that. Every speaker of Sorbian is probably more fluent in German. They all have no accents when they speak German but a German accent when they speak their mother language.

Ironically it was the shifting of the German border to the Oder-Neisse line (alongside with lignite mining in the GDR of course, that destroyed Dozens of Sorbian villages from the 1950 to 1989) that gave the last killing blow to Sorbian. Up to twelve million Germans, that had to leave their former homes in Central and Eastern Europe, were flooding into the FRG, GDR and Austria. They had to be integrated everywhere all around the country, also in the language area of the Sorbs. Since every Sorb is fluent in German they began to switch their conversation from Sorbian to German when only one Non-Sorbian speaker was around, so Sorbian gradually began to fade from public spaces.

With this I can fully agree. Few people (if any at all) in Poland do realize that. It was very well said on this Sorbian TV (7th March 2015, at the end of the program) you gave the link to in your other thread by an inhabitant of a Sorbian village who said that before the war all area was purely Sorbian and now he says he is the last one Sorb there. It so strikingly reminds the inhabitant of the Wendland west of the Elbe in the 17th century who deplored that after he dies nobody in the village would know how "dog" was named in the Polabian language. Today we have at least the means of recording to save the sound of languages which are bound to die.

Speaking more generally on the German-Polish relations, it is striking that they were usually on two levels: "front-offfice" and "back-office". In the back office there was a lot of mixing and interchanging between the two nations: people moved places, married and were good neighbours. In the "front-office", there should always be a sharp division between who is German and who is Polish. The Prussian state might have been some hope in the past for a Germano-Slavic country that could resemble Switzerland in a way. Frederick the Great issued official document for Silesia in Polish (not even a slightest mention of "the Silesian language" at that time), too, as Polish was widely spoken even in certain areas of Lower Silesia as well. Yet history took a different course. Contemporary Silesians may perhaps be a good example of an identity that tries to combine the Slavic roots and language with the German cultural inheritance.

As far as Silesia is concerned, shortly after Germany lost the First World War there existed a political project promoted by the (German) Silesian to create a state (all of Silesia were to be included in it) independent from Germany. As far as I know, the project was turned down by the British or by the French. Shade, wirklich Schade! The original Silesian culture could perhaps have been saved and people wouldn't have to be moved away behind the Oder-Neisse line after the Second World War. I say "perhaps" because no one knows what Herr Hitler would have said to that in the 1930s. Or perhaps he would have to face serious difficulty in signing the Munich treaty with Britain and France against Czechoslovakia in 1938 given that Czechoslovakia wouldn't have been surrounded from the three sides by the Third Reich which was was originally planned to thrive for the next one thousand years!

That is only your believe. There is no such thing as a "Slavic name". There are several Slavic languages out of which names derive from. There is no unified Slavic language and hence there is no such thing as "Slavic Names". You may want to approach the Sorbs in German and tell them that it is good that Cottbus also carries the Slavic name of the city. Let's see how far you get with your argument.

Ever been to Cottbus? ........ I mean, speaking of trolling.......surely you met some Sorbs?


I am not trying to raise any issue. Just pointing out that your concerns about the Sorbian language and the relationship of the Sorbs with the Germans, their rights as a minority etc. are not an issue. In fact, Germany has done literally everything it can to pre-serve their rights.

I can not remember walking through Belfast and seeing double language signs anywhere. Yet, here you are, as a Brit, raising the issue of "only" three towns in Germany carrying the German and Sorb language names. The way you wrote it seemed that it was an issue for you. Seeing that you are British, perhaps you should also raise the issue of towns and signs in Northern Ireland not carrying both languages, English and Irish Gaelic?

Or do you just raise issues whenever it is suitable for you?

What double-language signs would you expect in Belfast?


I am not a Brit, have never been and do not intend to become one in the future.


There are many more which is why I preceded those names with the phrase "for example".


Why the hell you are implying again that I am British? If there are not double signs in Northern Ireland, I agree with you: this issue should be raised and you should definitely tell those British what you think of that, Romek.

Exactly.......so why expect it in Germany or in Poland? I think that we have those is a very positive sign of accepting our past and the minorities that we live amongst. Something that not every part of Europe is capable of doing.

I think Germans and Poles are doing very well trying to reconcile their past. No issues to be raised whatsoever.

I guess we all would be surprised to find out how many dead languages our ancestors spoke in the last 3,000 years if we had the means of following that.

Is there a library of recordings of the German dialects spoken east of the Oder-Neisse line before 1945 available on-line?

There is a good book on the German East entitled: "Deutscher Osten. Vorstellungen - Mission - Erbe" (Auswahl, Einleitung und Bearbeitung: Christoph Kleßmann, 422 Seiten), but I guess it is available in Polish only (!?).

Here's an article about it in German:
sdpz.org/aktuelles/-deutscher-osten-vorstellungen-mission-erbe-unter-der-redaktion-von-christoph-klessmann-p80KsW

you must be very limited mentally pal - Slavic name = a name of origins in any Slavic language - comprende??

After having travelled and lived abroad for about 15 years and extensively travelled Eastern Europe, I would like to believe that you, "Pal", would be very surprised if you start talking to Czech people and tell them that "Bohumii" is no longer a Czech name but a Slavic name. Let us know you far you got with your quest on telling the Czech people off. Seeing that they love you Poles so much, I would even pay for the camera that you could take to tape your mission.

I guess if you click your way through youtube you are going to find some old recordings.

Here is something from Nazi German time I found. Apparently some German ethnologists went out to all areas of Germany, Austria, Danzig and the Czech Lands in years from 1935 to 1937 and recorded the German dialects they heard there.

The result was something like a jukebox called "Lautdenkmal reichsdeutscher Mundarten" (Sound Monument of Reich German Dialects). They wanted to devote their efforts to the "Führer" but to their misfortune Hitler hated dialects. He wanted to be the people he considered as German to be as uniform as possible. So he disencouraged the whole project and the "Sound Monument" was forgotten in an archive in Marburg.

It was rediscovered in the 1970s and today it is a valuable source of spoken German dialects how they were spoken just two years before the horrors of WWII began that destroyed old Europe and many of its dialects.

Here the link: uni-marburg.de/~naeser/ld00.htm

For Low Prussian dialects (spoken from Danzig/Gdansk to Memel/Klaipeda please click on:
13. Danzig / Gdansk
18. Elbing / Elbląg
24. Angerburg / Węgorzewo
26. Stallupönen / Nesterow
68. Tilsit / Sovetsk

For German Silesian dialects please click on:
48. Ober Hermsdorf/A village close to present day Nysa
4. Baberhäuser-Hirschberg / Jelenia Góra

There are many old German dialects there to discover.

Please don't bother if you speak German but nevertheless hardly understand anything. Even I have a hard time understanding them. Since all of these dialects are close to extinction the 21st century German ear for dialects has forgotten about those ones. But its a good way to grasp the sound of the dialects

Know several octagenarian Germans from the former Ost-Preussen or East Prussia, close to the former Allenstein/Olsztyn and one from the former Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad. Their accent when they speak German is truly a museum piece, including antiquated syntax, scarcely recognizable specialized vocabulary and a tongue-trilled "r" that sounds quite comical"=-

East Prussian was a beautiful dialect. It was unique among German dialects because it retained a sizable amount of Old-Prussian substrate and many loanwords from Lithuanian and Polish/Masurian, like

Alus for beer
Flins for pancake
Panewka for pan
Kujel for pig
Marjell for little girl

@Funky,

As you probably know, among Siegfried Lenz' major writings "So zaertlich war Suleycken" takes place in the former East Prussia. The Baltic influence is everywhere. Perhaps even some Germans nowadays have forgotten that Prussian was in fact a Baltic, not a Germanic or even a Slavic language:-)

Correction/Addendum:

The spelling is "Suleyken" without a "c" and is known as "Sulejki" in Polish, located in the Masurian region:-)

Due to the fact the East Prussians were atomized in 1945 and their ancestors were spread all over Germany more than about 1 percent of the Germans have surnames with Old Prussian or Lithuanian origin, like:

Kallweit (Smith), Wowereit (Squirrel), Naujoks (Newman, Nowak), Adomait (Son of Adam), Kurpjuhn (Shoemaker), Lenkuhn (Pole) and so on

Romek, "Bohumii" is neither a Slavic name, nor is it Czech (both would be synonymous in fact). "Bohumii" was a name of a Celtic tribe who lived where now the Czech Republic is hence the name of their land "Bohemia" was passed onto the land of the Czechs in the Middle Ages. So Bohumii is a purely Celtic name (with the Latin ending, however)


This is very interesting. I wonder if any linguists researched the German dialects in Silesia to find out influences of Polish in it. I know of three: "Kaluppe" formed after "chałupa" (house of a peasant), "schiskojenne" which is so strikingly Polish for anyone who knows the language ("wszystko jedno") and "Nusche" for knife ("nóż" in Polish). Surfing one day on the net, I discovered films on youtube about the German people living in Lower Silesia since the end of the WW2. In the films they spoke perfect Polish, but I wondered if they still could speak a Silesian Mundart. In one article I once found on the net, a German team of reserchers went to Wrocław to interview members of the German minority (about 2,000 of them still in Wrocław). The interviewing took place during a meeting of the German cultural association in Wrocław and the team came up to a group of men speaking in Polish between themselves. They turned to German talking to the interviewers whose last questions for them was what they think of today's Wrocław. They said they were very well accomodated to life in the city, but they would like to see Wrocław becoming a German city again. When the interviewers finally said good-bye to them and went off a little, they heard the men returning back to Polish in talking between themselves! The researchers said they were shocked by this - their wish for Wrocław to become German again against the preference for Polish in their conversation!

what is Bohumii heheh? - don't say you mastered the Czech languge - you of course never heard of the name Bogumił no? If you ask Czechs if they are Slavic they will tell you that they are proudly so - that's how much you know about Czechs

I saw people from the Upper Silesian German minority on German television several times. They all speak good, for most of the time grammatically correct German, but they all had very strong Polish dialects. But it should that before the war the Upper Silesian German dialect had a very strong interference from the Polish language, in fact they sounded like a Poles trying to immitate the Lower Silesian German dialect.

German Lower Silesian also had interferences from Polish, but to a lesser extent, for instance the complete absence of the German Umlaut "ü" - the sound between u and i that Poles and other Slavs hava a hard time to imitate. Lower Silesians always replaced the "ü" with an "i", just like most Poles do when they speak German, so "Bihne" instead of "Bühne" (stage). This sometimes lead to funny misunderstands, when German Silesians wanted to have a bag (German: Tüte) but instead they sad "tit" (German: Titte).

no they don't ALL speak good German - only those that you were shown on the TV - so called German minority in Upper Silesia is mostly ethinic Silesians who speak a Silesian dialect of Polish but were given economic privilidges (including the right to work in Germany when it was not allowed for Poles in general - e.g. since the 1989 till 2004) for claiming to be German (based on the citizenship of their parents and grandparents) - they also started to learn German then - I can speak better German than many of those who claim to be German minority in Upper Silesia

Didn't I write that - the ones I saw on TV?

oh ok - I might got carried away on an assumption

But you are right with your assumption. In the 1990s I meat several Upper Silesians with German passports that hardly spoke a word of German.

@Funky,

You mean like Klaus Wowereit, the former mayor of Berlin?

Upper Silesians in Poland (Oppeln region) claiming to be German is a kind of mystery really. And I do not want to say they are in true fact Slavic people disguising themselves as Germans. Let them be what they like to be. I remember I bought a Silesian newspaper at the Warsaw Central Station in the 1990s, the "Schlesiche Nachrichten" in German, issued in Opole/Oppeln, and the only bit I could fully understand was the column entitled something like "Let's talk in our Heimat language now" which was in a language which is supposed to be called "Silesian language" these days, but which was fully comprehensible to an inhabitant of Warsaw like myself who had never ever been to Upper Silesia until then.