Halcnovian , alternatively spelled Haltsnovian, is an East Central German dialect spoken in the former village of

Hałcnów Hałcnów () is an osiedle (district) of Bielsko-Biała, Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland. It is located in the north-east part of the city. It was a separate municipality, but was merged into Bielsko-Biała in 1977. The osiedle has an area of ...

, which is now a district of

Bielsko-Biała Bielsko-Biała (; ; , ; ) is a city in southern Poland, with a population of approximately 166,765 as of December 2022, making it the List of cities and towns in Poland#Largest cities and towns by population, 22nd largest city in Poland, and an a ...

Silesian Voivodeship Silesian Voivodeship ( ) is an administrative province in southern Poland. With over 4.2 million residents and an area of 12,300 square kilometers, it is the second-most populous, and the most-densely populated and most-urbanized region of Poland ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. It was the vernacular language of Hałcnów until 1945, when ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland. Some examples of the language were recorded in the works of

Karl Olma Karl Olma (24 June 1914 – 23 February 2001), rendered Päuesch Karl in his native Halcnovian, was a writer, journalist, aphorist and poet. He is regarded as being the main writer responsible for promoting the Halcnovian dialect following World ...

, who was active as a journalist in the Halcnovian exile community in

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Recently the dialect has been researched from a linguistic standpoint by Marek Dolatowski. In 2016 researchers traced a handful of native speakers of Halcnovian still resident in Hałcnów, and recorded them in order to help preserve the language. It belongs to the dialect group of the former , which includes the

Wymysorys language Wymysorys (, ), also known as Vilamovian, Wilamowicean, or Wilmesaurisch, is a West Germanic language spoken by the Vilamovian ethnic minority in the town of Wilamowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland ( in Wymysorys), on the border between Si ...

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High German languages German dialects Languages of Poland {{Germanic-lang-stub

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