Bill to recognise Silesian as regional language submitted to Polish parliament

A bill to officially recognise Silesian – which is spoken in the historical area of Silesia in southwest Poland – as a regional language has been submitted by the main political group in Poland’s ruling coalition.

In the most recent national census, around 460,000 people in Poland said they use Silesian as their main language at home. That is far more than the 87,600 who speak Kashubian, a language native to northern Poland that is the country’s only recognised regional language.

However, there has long been a debate about whether Silesian constitutes a separate language or is rather a dialect of Polish. Linguists often describe it as an “ethnolect”, meaning a variety of language associated with a certain ethnic group.

Many Silesian activists have long campaigned for Silesian to be recognised as a regional language. That would allow it to be taught in schools and used in local administration in municipalities where at least 20% of the population declared in the last census that they speak Silesian.

On Thursday, Civic Coalition (KO), the group led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, submitted a bill to parliament that would given Silesian such recognition. Doing so was one of the 100 policies KO promised before October’s elections to implement if it came to power.

The creators of the bill argue that there has been a significant development of Silesian in recent years, that the language has been codified, and that its literary form is being developed, including through the publication of Silesian translations of The Hobbit and The Little Prince, among others.

Books in Silesian (Kamil Czaiński/Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Although bills proposing to recognise Silesian as a regional language have been submitted several times since 2007, the local community has higher hopes that this time the efforts will prove successful, according to local news website Ślązag.

That optimism is supported by the fact that the state budget for 2024, recently adopted by the government and approved by parliament, includes 2 million zloty (€457,000) for the preparation of programmes to teach the Silesian language.

Monika Rosa, a KO MP from the town of Czeladź in Silesia who has long been pushing for recognition of the regional language, said that if the bill is adopted it will be possible to teach Silesian in schools from as early as 2025.

“Silesians are one of the largest unrecognised minorities in Poland. This is why we are so keen to see the Silesian language finally recognised as a regional language alongside Kashubian,” said Rosa while presenting the bill, quoted by broadcaster Eska.

However, KO’s proposal was also met with some criticism. Paweł Zarychta, a professor at the German Philology Institute of Kraków’s Jagiellonian University, tweeted a quote by Jan Miodek, a famous Polish linguist.

“Please do not ask me for proof that Silesian is a separate language, do not demand its codification, because this is nonsense, naivety combined with fanaticism,” Miodek is reported once to have said.cam

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Main image credit: Kancelaria Premiera / flickr.com (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.