Kachoube

The Language kachoube or cachoube ( kaszëbsczi jãzek / kaszëbskô mòwa ) belongs to the Slavic group of the family of the Indo-European Langues. The word cachoube comes from kassub which indicates a coat that the Cachoubes carried.

Belonging to the north-Western branch of the Slavic languages, it is the only language poméranienne still really spoken, the others (the Polabe, the Slovince or old man-poméranien, languages of the Slavic tribes of Poméranie Western, on both sides of the Oder) being dead languages. The cachoube has him also failed to disappear because of the successive policies of assimilation, especially under the Communist regime of post-war period.

In the Drum , the German writer Günter Grass describes how the mother and the uncle of the protagonist Oskar Matzerath must practice their language in a quasi-secret way.

The cachoube is spoken in north about the Poland in part of the province of Poméranie (“ground of the seaside”), in the west of the agglomeration of Gdańsk. The use of the cachoube is relatively more frequent in the cantons of Gdańsk ( Gduńsk ), Gdynia ( Gdiniô ), Wejherowo ( Wejrowò ), Puck ( Pùck ), Lębork ( Lãbòrg ), Bytów ( Bëtowò ), Kartuzy ( Kartùzë ), Koœcierzyna ( Kòscérzna ) and Chojnice ( Chòjnice ).

Cachoubes do not have the statute of national minority or ethnic, but that of linguistic group, undoubtedly because the forever politically existed Cachoubie, not even as an autonomous region. There is between: 250000 and: 300000 people who speak or include/understand the cachoube; approximately: 60000 speak it in residence, generally in rural areas. But the number of people who belong to cultural mobility cachoube is more important, roughly a half-million inhabitants. The local governments can only use the cachoube since 2005, as language complementary to the official language.

The cachoube approaches old Polish: it kept of it many words like number of its Phonème S. On the other hand, contrary to a current opinion, the cachoube integrated only hardly 5% of German words in its vocabulary, much of loans being old and common to Polish.

If there exist many local dialects of the cachoube (almost each canton has its dialect), it is possible to distinguish the cachoube from north and the cachoube of the south.

The Littérature cachoube (the written cachoube) is close to Polish because of loans of vocabulary and with a similar syntax. The cachoube is written since the 15th century in Latin writing, according to the Polish model.

On the other hand, the spoken cachoube differs very clearly from Polish because of important dissimilarities exist in the alphabet, the use of the prepositions, the vocabulary and the formation of the words, the variations. The rules of stressing are very different from those of Polish, of the fact in particular of the fall of the vowels in the not accentuated syllables. The phonetic dissonances are such as Polish does not include/understand from the start the cachoube, which appears difficult to him, whereas it includes/understands more easily of other Slavic languages such as the Slovak one or Czech.

The cachoube is taught in about fifty elementary schools and ten colleges, on the whole approximately 6000 pupils follow the language teaching. Since 2005 the cachoube is an optional subject of the baccalaureat.

Friedrich Lorentz (1870 - 1937) of the Mecklembourg carried out important research on the language, publishing several works on the orthography and grammar as well as a dictionary of cachoube-poméranien. The Polish linguist of Cracow, Stefan Ramult (1859 - 1913), also published a work on this topic.

Alphabet kachoube

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • (csb) kaszubia.com
  • (csb) Cassubia Slavica
  • European Site on the language cachoube
  • Our Cachoubie (in Polish)

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