Talk:Silesian German

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:21, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Changes introduced by LMB

The following changes were introduced by LMB (talk):

• removed the "stub" template, because there is not much more to add
• removed all the German "oh my God what they have done to us" whining, for it is very rarely objective (=not a good source of information. Sorry to German colleagues, but you have to realize that your country's propaganda is very good)
• the dialect, if spoken today, would be spoken in Upper, not Lower Silesia. There are very few remaining Germans in Lower Silesia.
• "There are still unresolved feelings on the sides of both Poles and Germans...." - unrelated, removed.
• "The German Silesian dialect is not recognized by the Polish State in any way" - correct, because the High German is. The village names, wherever are in double Polish-German version, use Hochdeutsch spelling. Sentence therefore removed, for it is manipulative. And most of all, not on topic.
• "nordostböhmische Dialektgruppe" etc. is not in English, therefore violating Wikipedia's principles (i.e. only proper names can be used in original - for languages we use exonymes, that is French, not Français). Sentence commented out, awaiting translation by a linguistic specialist (that is not me)

The problem with Upper/Lower Silesia here (one of your points) is how you understand those terms. If we assume the historical division, then yes, the German minority lives mostly in the western part of Upper Silesia (or Middle Silesia I guess). But their numbers in what is currently referred to as Upper Silesia in Poland (i.e. strictly the Upper Silesian voivodeship)are small. Generally the easiest way to avoid confusion is I think to skip the upper/lower division and just say the German minority is located in Opole region / Opole voivodeship as this is the case ( over 90% German minority in Poland live there). But if we want to use the older terms then yes, it would be Upper Silesia. (see: article on German minority in Poland) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.196.118.133 (talk) 13:07, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Language/dialect

The German wiki on this topic states Silesian German is a dialect of German. Is there a linguistic consensus about this? Are there linguists who argue for the labelling of Silesian German as a separate language? The article currently uses "dialect/language". (By the way, I removed one sentence which was uncited for over a year, about German being banned in Poland after 1945 - I think I did hear a mention of this law once, but as far as I know even if the ban existed, it was not enforced. Either way, citation is definitely necessary for such claims and there was none).--109.196.118.133 (talk) 12:47, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The differences between what should be considered a language and what a dialect lies outside the scope of linguistics. The division is mostly political and/or cultural, since linguistic differences are mostly a matter of degree and dialects form continua rather than clear-cut divisions. Therefore, the term variety is preferable whenever we don't need to be specific, whereas the word dialect can be seen as a set of features characteristic for a given territory, which makes it possible for dialects to overlap. Consider the case of Czech and Slovak: they are usually labelled languages, but, in fact, they are close and mutually intelligible enough to consider them dialects of the same language. A linguist would see Czech and Slovak merely as varieties that are part of the Czechoslovak dialect continuum. And that's what we see if we look closer: the nearer to the Slovak border you get, the more similar the Czech varieties (such as Valacchian) are to the dialects in Western Slovakia. Mutual intelligibility, unfortunately, isn't a reliable criterion in distinguishing dialects from languages, since it also exists as a scale or continuum and can be easily influenced by the speakers personal experience (young people from Central Bohemia have difficulties understanding Slovak, but Slovaks don't usually have the same problem understanding Czech; moreover, once a Czech speaker has acquired some experience with Slovak speakers, their comprehension dramatically increases). That mutual intelligibility is not reliable can be shown in the following way: imagine a continuum of five dialects forming a territorial continuum, i.e. D1 > D2 > D3 > D4 > D5. Now, D1 understands D2 well, but D3 a much less so. D2 understands D1 and D3 well, but D4 less so. D3 understands the neighbouring D2 and D4 well, but D1 and D5 less. It may well happen that D1 and D5 may not understand each other at all, even though they are part of the same continuum. So where does the border between a dialect and a language lie? Is it D2/D3 or D3/D4? Is it D1 and the rest? You see, that's why the dialect/language dichotomy is not linguistic in nature. ;-) --P^ětušek 08:51, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Suggested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus. Note that Lower Silesian is a dab, and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC was not addressed. --BDD (talk) 23:49, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Silesian German → ? – The name should be either "move" or "rename" to Lower Silesian or Silesian (Germanic), let's discuss which is better. --Relisted. Hot Stop talk-contribs 18:56, 8 March 2014 (UTC) Franek K. (talk) 10:22, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• Though less problematic than "Silesian Polish" would be for Upper Silesian, "Lower Silesian" is a good alternative, because it is a common alt. name and there is then no need to add any disambiguation tags in parentheses. --JorisvS (talk) 10:46, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• Fine where it is. "Lower Silesian" would also be okay. "Silesian (Germanic)" is almost meanningless. — kwami (talk) 14:18, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

• No to superfluous parenthesis, natural disambiguators to be preferred. No opinion on "Lower Silesian". ^walk victor falk ^talk 15:48, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose as it is a German dialect, not a language of its own. Bandy boy (talk) 11:58, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Actually, neither title implies language vs. dialect. Linguistically, Low German and High German are very much distinct languages, and so are Wu Chinese and Mandarin Chinese, but American English and Australian English are not. --JorisvS (talk) 20:21, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

nordostböhmische Dialektgruppe

The nordostböhmische Dialektgruppe belongs to Silesian, too.

Alois Kreller: Wortgeographie des Schönhengster Landes. Kraus, Nendeln 1939, 1979 Kraus, vol. 3, p. 3

Ludwig Erich Schmitt (ed.): Germanische Dialektologie. Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968

Kreller:

• What do the two years mean? Turns out: Original year and reprint. However, for the original source "Kraus" und "Nendeln" don't fit.
  • Rudolf M. Rohrer Verlag, Brünn/Leipzig, 1939
  • reprint: Kraus Reprint, Nendeln/Liechtenstein, 1979
• Why "vol. 3"? It's a single work. Arbeiten zur sprachlichen Volksforschung in den Sudetenländer, Heft 3 is Lautgeographie der Schönhengster Mundarten by Irmfried Benesch (1938), which Kreller intended to continue. Keller however is Heft 6 of the series (according to Dialektologie: Ein Handbuch zur deutschen und allgemeinen Dialektforschung, series: HSK 1.2, 1983, p. 909).
• Based on Google Books' snippets (1939, 1979), the terms nordostböhmisch/-e/-en/-er, Dialekt, Dialektgruppe (and hence also nordostböhmische Dialektgruppe) do not appear in the work. Google instead finds the term Mundart in it.

Schmidt: He has (omitting some groups):

• ostmitteldeutscher Dialektraum
  • thüringischer Dialektverband
  • obersäschsischer Dialektverband
  • lausitzisch-neumärkischer Dialektverband
  • schlesischer Dialektverband
    • gebirgsschlesische Dialektgruppe
    • südostschlesische Dialektgruppe
    • mittelschlesische Dialektgruppe
    • westschlesische Dialektgruppe
    • neiderländische Dialektgruppe
  • böhmischer Dialektverband
    • ostegerländische Dialektgruppe
    • nordwestböhmische Dialektgruppe
    • nordböhmische Dialektgruppe
    • nordostböhmische Dialektgruppe
  • nordmährischer Dialektverband
    • oppaländische Dialektgruppe
    • kuhländische Dialektgruppe
    • zentralnordmährische Dialektgruppe
  • hochpreußischer Dialektverband
    • breslauische Dialektgruppe
    • oberländische Dialektgruppe

He has the term, but by his grouping it's not part of Silesian. So if he is used as source, then at the very least there should be a note to state this competing view. --Naramaru (talk) 23:56, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Phonetic transcription

Could somebody, please, add IPA transcriptions, please? Those non-standard symbols are quite confusing even to general linguists who do not specialize in German dialectology. Thanks! P^ětušek 08:32, 30 April 2023 (UTC)