Mniej znana odmiana języka polskiego na białoruskim Polesiu i na Witebszczyźnie
A less known variety of Polish in Pripyat River basin and Vitebsk region

Summary/Abstract: In Belorussian Polesia in the basin of the Pripyat River as well as in Vitebsk and Mogilev regions, there are numerous villages inhabited by Polish people displaced from Mazovia and northern Little Poland. What is characteristic for this community is that they have preserved many features of the Mazovian variety of Polish, especially phonetic ones. In spite of the long-lasting and close contacts with East-Slavonic people of Polesia, and since 1939 with Russian and Belorussian languages (official languages, administration, education), features of their dialects have not been eliminated completely. The greatest changes took place in the lexis. Names for new objects and phenomena have appeared, some old names have co-existed with borrowings from Belorussian and Russian; a number old names have disappeared altogether. Apart from the lexical changes, some new borrowed syntactic constructions have emerged. Compared to the Polish language of the Northern Borderland, the Polesia variety of Polish is substantially different. In Polesia, Polish exhibits a number of Ukrainian features taken from the local East-Slavonic dialects, where the features of the Ukrainian dialect dominate. In the vicinity Vitebsk and Mogilev, it has been influenced by various dialects of Belorussian as well as standard Belorussian and Russian.

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