|
Lechitic Languages
The Lechitic (or Lekhitic) languages are a language subgroup consisting of Polish and several other languages and dialects that were once spoken in the area that is now Poland and eastern Germany. It is one of the branches of the larger West Slavic subgroup; the other branches of this subgroup are the Czech–Slovak languages and the Sorbian languages. Languages The Lechitic languages are: * Polish, used by approximately 38 million native speakers in Poland and several million elsewhere. Polish is considered to have several dialects, including Greater Polish, Lesser Polish and Masovian, among others; ** Silesian, used today by over 530,000 people (2011 census) in Polish Silesia and by some more in Czech Silesia. The different varieties of Silesian are often considered to be dialects of Polish and Czech, and are sometimes seen as forming a distinct language; * Pomeranian, spoken by Slavic Pomeranians, of which the only remaining variety is: ** Kashubian, used today b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 populous member state of the European Union. Warsaw is the nation's capital and largest metropolis. Other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin. Poland has a temperate transitional climate and its territory traverses the Central European Plain, extending from Baltic Sea in the north to Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains in the south. The longest Polish river is the Vistula, and Poland's highest point is Mount Rysy, situated in the Tatra mountain range of the Carpathians. The country is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. It also shares maritime boundaries with Denmark a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Czech Silesia
Czech Silesia (, also , ; cs, České Slezsko; szl, Czeski Ślōnsk; sli, Tschechisch-Schläsing; german: Tschechisch-Schlesien; pl, Śląsk Czeski) is the part of the historical region of Silesia now in the Czech Republic. Czech Silesia is, together with Bohemia and Moravia, one of the three historical Czech lands. Silesia lies in the north-east of the Czech Republic, predominantly in the Moravian-Silesian Region, with a section in the northern Olomouc Region. It is almost identical in extent with the Duchy of Upper and Lower Silesia, also known as Austrian Silesia, before 1918; between 1938 and 1945, part of the area was also known as Sudeten Silesia (german: Sudetenschlesien, sli, Sudetaschläsing, cs, Sudetské Slezsko, szl, Sudecki Ślōnsk, pl, Śląsk Sudecki). Geography Czech Silesia borders Moravia in the south, Poland (Polish Silesia) in the north (in the northwest the County of Kladsko, until 1742/48 an integral part of Bohemia) and Slovakia in the southea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th century A.D. As with most other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; scholars have reconstructed the language by applying the comparative method to all the attested Slavic languages and by taking into account other Indo-European languages. Rapid development of Slavic speech occurred during the Proto-Slavic period, coinciding with the massive expansion of the Slavic-speaking area. Dialectal differentiation occurred early on during this period, but overall linguistic unity and mutual intelligibility continued for several centuries, into the 10th century or later. During this period, many sound changes diffused across the entire area, often uniformly. This makes it inconvenient to maintain the traditional definition of a pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nasal Vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced without nasalization. Nasalized vowels are vowels under the influence of neighbouring sounds. For instance, the [] of the word ''hand'' is affected by the following nasal consonant. In most languages, vowels adjacent to nasal consonants are produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, but few speakers would notice. That is the case in English: vowels preceding nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction between nasal and oral vowels, and all vowels are considered phonemically oral. The nasality of nasal vowels, however, is a distinctive feature of certain languages. In other words, a language may contrast oral vowels and nasalized vowels ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Slavic Palatalization
The Slavic second palatalization is a Proto-Slavic sound change that manifested as a regressive palatalization of inherited Balto-Slavic velar consonants that occurred after the first and before the third Slavic palatalizations. Motivation The second palatalization of velars is a direct consequence of the monophthongization of diphthongs, or more precisely, the change *aj > ē.Mihaljević 2002:157 While *kaj, *gaj and *xaj were in accordance with the principle of so-called ''intrasyllabic synharmony'' that operated during the Common Slavic period, the resulting *kē, *gē, and *xē defied the intrasyllabic synharmony. Namely, the velars ended up in front of the front vowel ē, and this contradicted the Proto-Slavic phonotactical constraints. This anomaly was resolved by palatalizing the velars, just as during the first palatalization. However, the results of the second palatalization were different and not completely uniform across Slavic territory, indicating one of the first di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slavic Liquid Metathesis And Pleophony
The Slavic liquid metathesis refers to the phenomenon of metathesis of liquid consonants in the Common Slavic period in the South Slavic and West Slavic area. The closely related corresponding phenomenon of pleophony (also known as polnoglasie or full vocalization) occurred in parallel, in the East Slavic languages. The change acted on syllables in which the Proto-Slavic liquid consonants *''r'' and *''l'' occurred in a coda position. The result of the change is dependent upon the phonological environment and accents, and it varies in different Slavic languages. The change has been dated to the second half of the 8th century, before any Slavic languages were recorded in writing. Therefore, the change itself cannot be observed, but it can be inferred by comparing words in different Slavic languages. Evidence of the earlier state of affairs is also preserved in loanwords into and from Early Slavic as well as in cognates in other Indo-European languages, particularly Baltic lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polish Scientific Publishers PWN
Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN (''Polish Scientific Publishers PWN''; until 1991 ''Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe'' - ''National Scientific Publishers PWN'', PWN) is a Polish book publisher, founded in 1951, when it split from the Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne. Adam Bromberg, who was the enterprise's director between 1953 and 1965, made it into communist Poland's largest publishing house. The printing house is best known as a publisher of encyclopedias, dictionaries and university handbooks. It is the leading Polish provider of scientific, educational and professional literature as well as works of reference. It authored the Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN, by then the largest Polish encyclopedia, as well as its successor, the Wielka Encyklopedia PWN, which was published between 2001 and 2005. There is also an online PWN encyclopedia – Internetowa encyklopedia PWN. Initially state-owned, since 1991 it has been a private company. The company is a member of International Associ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elbe
The Elbe (; cs, Labe ; nds, Ilv or ''Elv''; Upper and dsb, Łobjo) is one of the major rivers of Central Europe. It rises in the Giant Mountains of the northern Czech Republic before traversing much of Bohemia (western half of the Czech Republic), then Germany and flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, northwest of Hamburg. Its total length is . The Elbe's major tributaries include the rivers Vltava, Saale, Havel, Mulde, Schwarze Elster, and Ohře. The Elbe river basin, comprising the Elbe and its tributaries, has a catchment area of , the twelfth largest in Europe. The basin spans four countries, however it lies almost entirely just in two of them, Germany (65.5%) and the Czech Republic (33.7%, covering about two thirds of the state's territory). Marginally, the basin stretches also to Austria (0.6%) and Poland (0.2%). The Elbe catchment area is inhabited by 24.4 million people, the biggest cities within are Berlin, Hamburg, Prague, Dresden and Leipzig. Etymolog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polabian Language
The Polabian language was a West Slavic language that was spoken by the Polabian Slavs (german: Wenden) in present-day northeastern Germany around the Elbe (''Łaba/Laba/Labe'' in Slavic) river, from which derives its name ("po Labe" – ''unto Elbe'' or '' ravelingon Elbe''). It was spoken approximately until the rise to power of Prussia in the mid-18th century – when it was superseded by Low German – in the areas of Pomoré (Mecklenburg-West Pomerania), central (Mittelmark) part of Branibor (Brandenburg) and eastern Saxony-Anhalt (Wittenberg originally part of Béla Serbia), as well as in eastern parts of Wendland ( Lower Saxony) and Dravänia (Schleswig-Holstein), Ostholstein and Lauenburg). Polabian was also relatively long (until the 16th century) spoken in and around the cities of Bukovéc (Lübeck), Starigard (Oldenburg) and Trava (Hamburg). The very poorly attested Slavic dialects of Rügen seemed to have had more in common with Polabian than with Pome ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 the German states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg, while the eastern part belongs to the West Pomeranian, Pomeranian and Kuyavian-Pomeranian voivodeships of Poland. Its historical border in the west is the Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian border ''Urstromtal'' which now constitutes the border between the Mecklenburgian and Pomeranian part of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while it is bounded by the Vistula River in the east. The easternmost part of Pomerania is alternatively known as Pomerelia, consisting of four sub-regions: Kashubia inhabited by ethnic Kashubians, Kociewie, Tuchola Forest and Chełmno Land. Pomerania has a relatively low population density, with its largest cities being Gdańsk and Szczecin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Statistical Office (Poland)
Statistics Poland (formerly known in English as the Central Statistical Office ( pl, Główny Urząd Statystyczny, popularly called GUS)) is Poland's chief government executive agency charged with collecting and publishing statistics related to the country's economy, population, and society, at the national and local levels. The president of Statistics Poland (currently Dominik Rozkrut) reports directly to the Prime Minister of Poland and is considered the equivalent of a Polish government minister. The agency was established on 13 July 1918 by Ludwik Krzywicki, one of the most notable sociologists of his time. Inactive during World War II, GUS was reorganized in March 1945 and as of 31 July 1947 was under control of the Ordinance of the Council of Ministers (along with the Organization of Official Statistics). The office is divided into several separate branches, each responsible for a different set of data. The branches include the Divisions of Coordination of Statistical Su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kashubian Language
Kashubian or Cassubian (Kashubian: ', pl, język kaszubski) is a West Slavic language belonging to the Lechitic subgroup along with Polish and Silesian.Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael, ''Language and Nationalism in Europe'', Oxford University Press, 2000, p.199, Although often classified as a language in its own right, it is sometimes viewed as a dialect of Pomeranian or as a dialect of Polish. In Poland, it has been an officially recognized ethnic-minority language since 2005. Approximately 108,000 people use mainly Kashubian at home. It is the only remnant of the Pomeranian language. It is close to standard Polish with influence from Low German and the extinct Polabian (West Slavic) and Old Prussian (West Baltic) languages. The Kashubian language exists in two different forms: vernacular dialects used in rural areas, and literary variants used in education. Origin Kashubian is assumed to have evolved from the language spoken by some tribes of Pomeranians called ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
