Kociewie is an ethnocultural region in the eastern part of
Tuchola Forest
The Tuchola Forest, also known as Tuchola Pinewoods or Tuchola Conifer Woods, (the latter a literal translation of pl, Bory Tucholskie; csb, Tëchòlsczé Bòrë; german: Tuchler or Tucheler Heide) is a large forest complex near the town of Tuch ...
, in northern
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
,
Pomerania
Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...
, south of
Gdańsk
Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...
. Its cultural capital is
Starogard Gdański, the biggest town is
Tczew, while other major towns include
Świecie,
Pelplin, and
Skórcz
Skórcz (german: Skurz, 1942-45: Großwollental) is a town in Starogard County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland, with 3,609 inhabitants (2017). It is located in the ethnocultural region of Kociewie in the historic region of Pomerania ...
. The region has about 250,000 inhabitants. It has well-developed industry and
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...
.
Kociewians
The Kociewians are a
Polish[ ] ethnographical group. Most of the Kociewiacy are
Roman Catholic
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
* Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...
s. They live next to a far more prominent ethnic group in the area, the
Kashubians. In the 2011 census, 3065 individuals declared themselves as Kociewiacy, an increase since the census of 2002, when nobody identified as such.
Kocievian dialect, unlike Kashubian, is mostly
intelligible with mainstream
Polish language
Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In ad ...
. Despite geographic proximity, these two dialects are very dissimilar, with Kocievian being much closer to
Kuyavia
Kuyavia ( pl, Kujawy; german: Kujawien; la, Cuiavia), also referred to as Cuyavia, is a historical region in north-central Poland, situated on the left bank of Vistula, as well as east from Noteć River and Lake Gopło. It is divided into three ...
n, to the point of some scholars calling it a variant of that dialect.
The
IETF language tag
An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code or tag that is used to identify human languages in the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the s ...
s have assigned the variant to the Kociewie dialect of Polish.
Genetics
In a 2013 study,
Y-DNA haplogroups among the
Polish population indigenous to Kociewie (n=158) were reported as follows:
56.3%
R1a, 17.7%
R1b
Haplogroup R1b (R-M343), previously known as Hg1 and Eu18, is a human Y-chromosome haplogroup.
It is the most frequently occurring paternal lineage in Western Europe, as well as some parts of Russia (e.g. the Bashkirs) and pockets of Central ...
, 8.2%
I1, 7.6%
I2, 3.8%
E1b1b, 1.9%
N1, 1.9%
J and 2% of other haplogroups.
See also
*
Kashubia
*
Kashubians
References
Geography of West Pomeranian Voivodeship
{{Pomeranian-geo-stub