Silesian Polish

My latest newsletter from Culture.pl contains a link to several observations by Janusz R. Kowalczyk about linguistic variation within Poland. Here is his characterization of Silesian.

An excellent example of the Silesian dialect can be found in Stanisław Ligoń’s ‘Gowa. Łozmyślania filozoficzne’ (The Head: Philosophical Musings), included in his Bery i bojki śląskie (Silesian Jokes and Fairy Tales), published by Śląsk Publishers, Katowice, 1980.

Stanisław Ligoń, ‘Gowa. Łozmyślania filozoficzne’

Dzisiok wszystko na świecie mo gowa – ludzie i gadzina, gwoździe, cukier i kapusta. Gowa kapuściano różni sie jednak bardzo łod gowy ludzkiej, a to skuli tego, że kapuściano jest pożytecno! Dzisiejsze dziołchy nie majom gowy, a jeno gówki, nie przymierzając jak zapołki, szpyndliki, abo lalki. Kiej jednak zapołka bez gówki nie przido sie na nic – to u ludzi ni – jest blank na łopach. Bardzo często cłowiek bez gówki łostoł srogim cłowiekiem, bo posłem – bali, nieroz i ministrem. […] W gowie polityka abo redachtora lęgnom sie roztomaite cygaństwa i kacki. Z gowy Jowisza wyskocyła Pallas Atena. Rekrut ma w gowie wdycki siano; łotwarto gowa mo adwokat, ciężko gowa mo zwykle literat, aktór, malyrz, abo inkszy pijok; mokro gowa mo waryjot, a zmyto gowa mo wdycki mąż, zaś choro gowa majom wszyjscy, kierzy cytajom nasze gazeciska. […] Politycy i kandydaci na nowych prziszłych posłów łomiom se gowa nad nowymi cygaństwami, kierymi chcom chytać łobywateli ło ciasnych gowach.

[Today, everything in the world has a head – people and animals, nails, sugar and cabbage. However, the head of a cabbage is very different from a human head, chiefly because the cabbage head is useful! Today’s girls don’t have proper heads, just tiny ones, not unlike matches, pins or dolls. While a match without a head is good for nothing, that’s not the case with people – it’s completely the opposite. Very often, a man without a head becomes a grand persona, such as an MP – or even a minister. […] Various lies and nonsense crop up in the head of a politician or an editor. Pallas Athena jumped out of Jupiter’s head. A recruit has nothing but hay in his head; a lawyer has an open head, a writer usually a heavy one, similarly an actor, a painter or some other drunkard; a crazy one’s head is wet, while a husband always has a washed head, sick in the head are all those who read our newspapers. […] Politicians and candidates for new future MPs are breaking their heads over new deceptions with which they want to capture citizens with narrow(-minded) heads.] [These are all idiomatic expressions containing the word ‘head’]

Glossary: ​​bali (also, indeed, even), blank (quite, completely), dzisiok (today), dziołcha (girl), gadzina (animals), inkszy (other), łopach (the opposite), roztomaity (various), skuli tego (because of this, because), srogi (big, great), szpyndlik (pin), wdycki (always).

As any Polish speaker can see, the Silesian dialect (or, according to a growing group of researchers, the Silesian language) has many expressions that differ from Polish vocabulary. The beginning of the formation of the Silesian dialect dates back to the period of district division, which took place approximately 800 years ago.

Like any language, it has undergone transformations over time. It has split into many local varieties. Nowadays, there are four main Silesian dialects, in at least several dozen specific regionalisms.

Silesian is to a large degree an Old Polish language. It contains words and phrases that were used in the past throughout Poland but are now generally forgotten.

Kashubian vs. Polish

My latest newsletter from Culture.pl contains a link to several observations by Janusz R. Kowalczyk about linguistic variation within Poland. Here are some extracts from his coverage of Kashubian.

There are two official languages ​​in our country: Polish and Kashubian. In addition, we have dialects: Masovian, Lesser Poland dialect, Greater Poland dialect, Silesian, mixed ones in the east of the country and new mixed dialects in the west and north. These are divided into several dozen regionalisms; some of them occur in only a few towns, so they even more so deserve tender care.

...

In the north of Poland, students learn Kashubian in school. They can take the secondary school exit exam in this language. Official signs of the region’s institutions and local information have versions in the two languages.

Why did Kashubians specifically get the privilege of having their speech recognized as a separate language? Mainly because it is much less understandable than others. Hardworking Kashubians have created a grammar of their language, published literary works as well as textbooks and dictionaries in it.

The dialects used by the inhabitants in a given area formed over many centuries. They contain phrases characteristic of the lands from which their ancestors came. Their neighbours also undoubtedly had an influence on the shape of their speech – hence, for example, loanwords from German in Greater Poland and, accompanied by Czech, in Silesia.

The sentence ‘There is a glass of tea on the cupboard in the hall’ is ‘W antryju na byfyju stoi szolka tyju’ in Silesian and ‘W przedpokoju na kredensie stoi szklanka herbaty’ in Polish. In turn, the nursery rhyme from Greater Poland, ‘W antrejce na ryczce stały pyry w tytce, przyszła niuda, spucła pyry, a w wymborku myła giry’ (In the hall, on a stool, there were potatoes in a paper bag; a pig came, ate the potatoes and washed her feet in the bucket), in standard Polish would read, ‘W przedpokoju na stołku stały ziemniaki w papierowej torebce, przyszła świnia, zjadła ziemniaki, a w wiadrze myła nogi’.

Certain words sound different in different dialects, such as the mentioned potatoes. In Greater Poland they are ‘pyry’; among the Kashubians, ‘bulwy’; in Podhale, ‘grule’; for the inhabitants of Kresy (eastern borderlands), ‘barabole’; for the people of Kurpie and Silesia, ‘kartofle’. In turn, other foreign phrases, such as those taken from Wallachian and characteristic of the highlander dialect, ‘bryndza’ and ‘bundz’, have long become established in the colloquial language.

Time will tell whether this will also be true of the following words, which are for now properly understood only locally:

• Kashubia: apfelzyna (orange), cedelk (card), chùtkò (fast), darżëszcze (road), grónk (jug), szãtopiérz (bat);
• Podlasie (so-called speaking ‘po prostu’ [simply], ‘po swojemu’ [in your own way]): cieper (now), czyżyk (boy), klekotun (stork), mączka (sugar), poklikać (call), ślozy (tears), zieziulka (cuckoo);
• Silesia: bajtel (child), binder (tie), kusik (kiss), szmaterlok (butterfly), śtrasbanka (tram);
• Greater Poland: bejmy (money), chabas (meat), glazejki (gloves), gzik (cottage cheese), kejter (dog), szneka z glancem (yeast bun with icing);
• Lesser Poland: andrut (waffle), bańka (Christmas tree bauble), chochla (spoon), cwibak (fruit cake), miednica (large bowl), sagan (kettle), sznycel (minced cutlet), warzyć (cook).

Here is the Lord's Prayer in Kashubian, with standard Polish below.

Òjcze nasz, jaczi jes w niebie,

niech sã swiãcy Twòje miono,

niech przińdze Twòje królestwò,

niech mdze Twòja wòlô

jakno w niebie tak téż na zemi.

Chleba najégò pòwszednégò dôj nóm dzysô

i òdpùscë nóm naje winë,

jak i më òdpùszcziwómë naszim winowajcóm.

A nie dopùscë na nas pòkùszeniô,

ale nas zbawi òde złégò. Amen

Ojcze nasz, któryś jest w niebie,

święć się imię Twoje,

przyjdź królestwo Twoje,

bądź wola Twoja jako w niebie tak i na ziemi,

chleba naszego powszedniego daj nam dzisiaj,

i odpuść nam nasze winy,

jako i my odpuszczamy naszym winowajcom,

i nie wódź nas na pokuszenie,

ale nas zbaw od złego. Amen

This text written in the indigenous Kashubian language contains characters unknown in Polish: ã, é, ë, ò, ô, ù.

• ã – nasal ‘a’ (IPA: [ã], so-called ‘a’ with tilde);
• é – approximately ‘yj’ (IPA: [e], [ej], so-called ‘e’ with acute);
• ë – between ‘e’ and ‘a’ (IPA: [ə], so-called schwa);
• ò – ‘łe’ (IPA: [wɛ], so-called labialisation);
• ô – depending on the dialect, identical with ‘o’ or more inclined towards ‘e’ (IPA: [ɞ] or [ɔ], so-called ‘o’ with circumflex);
• ù – ‘łu’ (IPA: [wu]).

However, the letter ‘u’ is read like ‘u’ inclined towards ‘i’ [u/i]. There are also differences in the grammar of the two languages.

The oldest texts containing Kashubian records date back to 1402, but these are text in Polish containing Kashubianisms and not texts written entirely in Kashubian. The oldest Kashubian printed texts are considered to be the 1586 ‘Duchowne piesnie Dra Marcina Luthera i inszich naboznich męzow’ (Spiritual Songs of Dr Martin Luther and Other Pious Men) by Szimón Krofey.

RLS at Peak Productivity

From Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press, 2025), Kindle pp. 447-449:

From 1884 to 1887 Louis produced an astonishing number and range of publications. Most notable were Kidnapped and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In addition there were The Silverado Squatters, Prince Otto, A Child’s Garden of Verses, other poems collected as Underwoods, stories collected as More New Arabian Nights and as The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables, the essay collection Memories and Portraits, and a Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin (his Edinburgh mentor had died at this time, at the early age of fifty-two). Prolific as this output was, he enjoyed telling friends that he was completing other works as well, such as Herbert and Henrietta: or The Nemesis of Sentiment, Happy Homes and Hairy Faces, and A Pound of Feathers and a Pound of Lead.

This torrent of writing may seem surprising, since as Rosaline Masson noted in her biography of Louis, he had been almost constantly incapacitated by illness since sailing to America in 1879.

He had been a chronic invalid, submitting to an invalid’s life, at Monterey and San Francisco; in the Highlands—Pitlochry and Braemar; at Davos; at Stobo Manse; at Kingussie; again at Davos; in France—St. Marcel and Hyères—ever seeking for health, never finding it. And now at Bournemouth there awaited him a life of accepted invalidism spent chiefly in the sickroom, suffering constant pain and weakness, often forbidden for days or even weeks to speak aloud, and having to whisper or write on paper all he wanted to say to his wife or his friends. And yet these three years proved a very industrious and successful time in Stevenson’s life.

But it’s equally possible that if he had been more active, he would have written less.

George Eliot once wrote, “To know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul.” Louis didn’t care for Eliot’s novels—he thought they were too preachy—but he did have an enthusiastic soul, and experienced joy even at the darkest times. Although he often declared that action was more important than writing, for him writing was action.

Louis remarked that he was living in an age of transition, and that was a widely used term when traditional assumptions about art were giving way to modernism. Reacting against the dense and earnestly moralizing Victorian novels, writers were now emphasizing individuality of vision and skillfully crafted style. The author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped would never have espoused the slogan “Art for art’s sake,” but the contemporary critic William Archer was right to call him “a modern of the moderns, both in his alert self-consciousness and in the particular artistic ideal which he proposes to himself. He professes himself an artist in words.” Alan Sandison takes this statement as the keynote for his Robert Louis Stevenson and the Appearance of Modernism, showing convincingly that “his experiments, his ceaseless questing among forms, ensured that of all his contemporaries his works show the greatest and most radical diversity.”

Louis did take offense at Archer’s suggestion that he indulged too freely in “aggressive optimism.” Louis wrote to Archer to say that far from devoting his life to manly exercise, as Archer had assumed, he had been a perpetual invalid, and his art was compensation for that. “To have suffered, nay, to suffer, sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable. This is a great truth, and has to be learned in the fire. Yours very truly, Robert Louis Stevenson.” Archer quickly made amends, and they became friends.

At this time Louis fell under the spell of Dostoevsky, reading Crime and Punishment in French translation since there was no English version as yet. In a letter to Henley he exclaimed, “Dostoieffsky is of course simply immense—it is not reading a book, it is having a brain fever to read it.”

Taboos in Treasure Island

From Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press, 2025), Kindle pp. 381-383:

It’s important to note that due to Victorian conventions, much of real life had to be left out of Treasure Island. A few years later Louis composed a sailors’ song purportedly heard in a London pub:

It’s there we trap the lasses
All waiting for the crew;
It’s there we buy the trader’s rum
What bores a seaman through.

The rum got into Treasure Island, the lasses didn’t. Although one wouldn’t expect female characters to play an important role in a quest for treasure, it’s still striking that Jim’s mother is the only woman in the entire book. In later novels, Catriona above all, Louis would try hard to give women a major role, but like other writers at the time he felt seriously inhibited by obligatory prudery. Publishers made their biggest profits by selling to lending libraries, which rejected outright any novel that hinted at sex. Louis told Colvin, “This is a poison bad world for the romancer, this Anglo-Saxon world; I usually get out of it by not having any women in at all.” Even when he did create female characters later on, he took great care to avoid sexually suggestive implications.

Victorian taboos were so strict that Louis’s pirates couldn’t even swear, though he himself, as Lloyd recalled, “could swear vociferously.” While he was writing Treasure Island he complained to Henley, “Buccaneers without oaths—bricks without straw.” He solved the problem by never actually quoting what they said: “With a dreadful oath he stumbled off.” No doubt he appreciated Dickens’s solution in Great Expectations, which was to write “bless” whenever Bill Barley, an old sea dog, would have said “damn”—“Here’s old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Here’s old Bill Barley on the flat of his back, by the Lord. Lying on the flat of his back, like a drifting old dead flounder, here’s your old Bill Barley, bless your eyes. Ahoy! Bless you.”

The last of the seventeen installments of Treasure Island was published in Young Folks in January 1882, for a total payment of ₤30. For book publication Henley, as de facto agent, negotiated a contract with Cassell for ₤100; that may not sound like much, but it was a lot at the time, equivalent to ₤6,500 today. At that time Henley had an editorial position at Cassell’s, and had thrown the Young Folks installments on the chief editor’s desk with the exclamation, “There is a book for you!” Louis wrote to thank him: “Bravo, Bully Boy! Bravo! You are the Prince of Extortioners. Continue to extortion.” To his parents he described it as “a hundred pounds, all alive, oh! A hundred jingling, tingling, golden, minted quid.” Not only did he get ₤100 from Cassell, but they agreed to a royalty of ₤20 for every thousand copies after the first four thousand.

Polish Gym Terms

To help us endure the long, cold winter here, we joined what appears to be Poland's largest chain of fitness centers. Its name and motto hints at its international connections: Zdrofit: Więcej niż Fitness. The motto translates into 'More than Fitness' and the name itself is a mashup of Zdro[wie] 'health' plus fit[ness].

Much of its equipment is manufactured by Matrix Fitness, a division of Johnson Health Tech Co. Ltd., out of Taichung, Taiwan, with several subsidiaries in Cottage Grove, Wisconsin. The exercise machines are named in either Polish or English, but each comes with a list of instructions in Polish.

For instance, the LAT PULL and PECTORAL FLY machines both show diagrams with Polish labels Faza Początkowa (starting position) and Faza Końcowa (ending position). Some machines mark those positions in English. Underneath, they show human figures with the zaangażowane mięsnie 'engaged muscles' in red. (Compare mięso 'meat' with mięsień 'muscle'.)

Step-by-step instructions for Wykonanie Ćwiczenia 'performing the exercise' follow.

Our branch of the gym at the Galeria Korona shopping mall had a major plumbing disaster about a month ago, so users of the restrooms in the Szatnia Męska (men's locker room) and Szatnia Damska (women's locker room) were invited to make use of the shared łazienka i przysznic dla osób z niepełnosprawnościami 'bathroom and shower for people with not-full-efficiency-Inst' (in instrumental case).