How does Vilamovian/Wymysorys Germanic language spoken in Poland sounds like to you?

[Roy]

It's an endangered minority language spoken in the small town Wilamowice, on the border between Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland, near Bielsko-Biała. It belongs to a group of East Central German dialects.

[rothaer]

It's an endangered minority language spoken in the small town Wilamowice, on the border between Upper Silesia and Lesser Poland, near Bielsko-Biała. It belongs to a group of East Central German dialects.

In the first video it's hard to hear, because the people can hardly talk the language themselves and also the sequences are too short to get into along which principials this language differs from standard German. I admit it's hard to understand anything.

The second video is better. There are a few Polish words and the German is pretty weird. Imo there is also a Dutch influence in this potpurri.

One has to know that there were a lot of different Germans with different dialects colonisating Silesia in the Middle Ages. Some villages may have been mostly Flemisch, others Fraconian, others Thuringian, others Hessian, others Saxon etc. It will have been a total dialectal mess before the (German) Silesian dialect emerged as a kind of compromise and vice versa contact among the Germans. Now, this somewhat remote and isolated Wilmesau and neighboring villages did not take part in that linguistic equalizing, so they onbviously did an own one in a very small area. The outcome of the mixing of two or three or four old-German dialects is actually somewhat arbitrary, because it is left open what you take from what dialect. If you would at 1330 AD would have partitioned and isolated the German speaking Silesia into 20 pioeces you would likely have got 20 different dialects, even in the cases, where you just had two old-German dialects mixing. As I said, it's arbitrary what's picked from what dialect.

Eventually you also have the possibility - like in genetics - that you will get an isolate drifting in some directioen and thus get a bigger distance to all parent dialects.

My personal opinion: It's to my German ears a not good sounding linguistic mess with - and this is the most unatrractive point - an fuzzy pronounciation. Like if there would just speak old people that lack teeth. I'm actually afraid that this is the case and the younger that are getting it taught do imitate what they hear, but what they hear is caused by the old people lacking teeth and not beinga able anymore to pronounce clearly.

It can be valuable for local historians to find out from where exactly the settlers came. But from a lingusitic point of view imo it's a pidgin-like arbitrary mess that I can not really find nice. It's kind of a failure.

Nevertheless an interesting appearance.

[Voskos]

Sounds like normal German spoken with a Balkan Slavic accent.

[Roy]

In the first video it's hard to hear, because the people can hardly talk the language themselves and also the sequences are too short to get into along which principials this language differs from standard German. I admit it's hard to understand anything.

The second video is better. There are a few Polish words and the German is pretty weird. Imo there is also a Dutch influence in this potpurri.

One has to know that there were a lot of different Germans with different dialects colonisating Silesia in the Middle Ages. Some villages may have been mostly Flemisch, others Fraconian, others Thuringian, others Hessian, others Saxon etc. It will have been a total dialectal mess before the (German) Silesian dialect emerged as a kind of compromise and vice versa contact among the Germans. Now, this somewhat remote and isolated Wilmesau and neighboring villages did not take part in that linguistic equalizing, so they onbviously did an own one in a very small area. The outcome of the mixing of two or three or four old-German dialects is actually somewhat arbitrary, because it is left open what you take from what dialect. If you would at 1330 AD would have partitioned and isolated the German speaking Silesia into 20 pioeces you would likely have got 20 different dialects, even in the cases, where you just had two old-German dialects mixing. As I said, it's arbitrary what's picked from what dialect.

Eventually you also have the possibility - like in genetics - that you will get an isolate drifting in some directioen and thus get a bigger distance to all parent dialects.

My personal opinion: It's to my German ears a not good sounding linguistic mess with - and this is the most unatrractive point - an fuzzy pronounciation. Like if there would just speak old people that lack teeth. I'm actually afraid that this is the case and the younger that are getting it taught do imitate what they hear, but what they hear is caused by the old people lacking teeth and not beinga able anymore to pronounce clearly.

It can be valuable for local historians to find out from where exactly the settlers came. But from a lingusitic point of view imo it's a pidgin-like arbitrary mess that I can not really find nice. It's kind of a failure.

Nevertheless an interesting appearance.

Lol, that observation about imitating ''lacking teeth'' pronunciation was funny, and also sadly true. To me it kinda reminds me more Low German than standard (High) German despite its classification with a certain Polish twist to it (like Ł where there would be L instead). Maybe that Plattdeutsch impression though is caused by it: as some creolisation could have resulted from a communication of settlers speaking various, quite divergent dialects.

In origin, Wymysorys is traced to derive from 12th century Middle High German, with a strong influence from Polish, and presumably also some influence from Low German, Dutch, Old English and perhaps Frisian.[4][7][8] The inhabitants of Wilamowice are thought to be descendants of German, Flemish and Scottish settlers who arrived in Poland during the 13th century.[9] Many of the inhabitants claim that they are descended from the people of Flanders, Friesland, and Holland, with others claiming to be descended from the Anglo-Saxons

[rothaer]

Lol, that observation about imitating ''lacking teeth'' pronunciation was funny, and also sadly true. To me it kinda reminds me more Low German than standard (High) German despite its classification with a certain Polish twist to it (like Ł where there would be L instead). Maybe that Plattdeutsch impression though is caused by it: as some creolisation could have resulted from a communication of settlers speaking various, quite divergent dialects.

It may sound unexpected, but actually the knowledge of German language and German dialects from the 13th century and earlier is pretty poor and fuzzy. This is connected to that Germans unfortunately often did not use German but Latin in the majority of documents. The extensive usage of Latin instead of German by Germans in texts went on till the 18th century, I'd say. It's even uncertain (and thus possible) that the Yiddish language from 11th century was simply the common German language from the middle Rhine area (I guess so).

Also, at that time the High German sound shift was going on and moving geographically, so you had a "Low German" language farther south than today. As for the exact emergence of the (German) Silesian and Upper Saxon dialect also German linguists just can do some rough statements. In Uppest Lusatia (Zittauer Zipfel) you have a number of villages where the (German) dialect is completely odd and does contain an "American" pronounced R. When I first spoke to these folks (that I actually do hail from somewhat) I thought the individuals in question were from the USA and spoke with a heavy American accent. Crazy.

Maybe you once saw on a German dialectal map that there is in East Prussia north of Masuria a bigger enclave with Silesian-like High German in the middle of the Low German. Nobody knows how that came. Some speculate Silesians may have gone to there and others speculate that a mixture of people like German settlers in Silesia went to there and it's just a parallel development.

If we consider all this lack of confident knowledge it's maybe more understandable that we in case of Wilmesau can just shrag our shoulders.

The imagination of any Old English proper settlers seems pretty unlikely to me, because they could have much easier settled in the north (Pomerania, Pomerelia, East Prussia).