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What’s with this “Wren” thing?
The oldest extant version of the fable
we
are presenting here appeared in 1913 in the first volume of a two-volume anthology
of Low
Saxon folktales (Plattdeutsche
Volksmärchen “Low German Folktales”)
collected by Wilhelm Wisser (1843–1935). Read
more ...
Polish
Once
one of the most important, thriving Hanseatic port
cities on the
Baltic Sea Coast,
Gdańsk
(Danzig), now a
major Polish city and the birth place of the
Solidarity
(Solidarność)
movement, was a place in which
Polish,
Kashubian, Low Saxon and German rubbed shoulders on
a
regular basis.
Language
information: Polish is the official national language of Poland. Sizeable Polish-speaking
minorities are found in neighboring countries, especially in Belarus, Ukraine
and Lithuania (9% nationwide, ca. 25% in the capital Vilnius). Other noticeable
Polish-speaking communities are located in Argentina, Australia, Austria,
Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, New Zealand, Romania, Russia,
Slovakia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States
of America, and lately a particularly fast growing community in the Irish
Republic.
Polish is the most
significant language of the Lechitic branch of Western Slavonic, the others being
Kashubian (Eastern Pomeranian), Slovincian (Central Pomeranian, extinct), Western
Pomeranian (of the German Baltic Sea coast, extinct) and Polabian (of other parts
of Northern Germany along the Elbe Rive, extinct). Polish has following dialect
groups in Poland: Greater Polish (wielkopolski),
Lesser Polish (małopolski), Mazovian (mazowiecki) and Silesian (śląski). Many people include Kashubian (Polish kaszubski, Kashubian kaszëbsczi, pòmòrsczi) as a Polish dialect groups, but a Kashubian reassertion movement claims separate
language status (the last remnant of Pomeranian), and this is now supported by
the European minority language charter. Furthermore not a part of Polish but
an East Slovenian language is Ruthenian (Rusyn) of the Carpathian mountains (and
neighboring countries).
Due to Poland’s
numerous occupations and neighbor relations, and also due to Poland’s vibrant domestic and internation cultural activities, many languages have influenced
Polish, most significantly German, French, Latin, Czech, Old Belarusian and Russian,
lately also English.
Genealogy: Indo-European >Slavic > West > Lechitic
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