Call for Silesian to be granted official regional language status

photo - sxc.hu

The Council, which brings together eleven organisations from the Lower and Upper Silesian provinces, has requested that Poland's national parliament (Sejm) support the initiative.

“Our support is to show that members think that the law is very important for the preservation of the Silesian language for future generations,” Piotr Dlugosz, chairman of the Upper Silesia province has told Polish Radio.

It is thought that around 65 MPs in the national parliament support the move,

In 2008, the local government in Silesia held a conference, "Silesian — Still a Dialect or Already a Language?" - as part of its campaign to give what some consider a dialect the status of a regional language, on par with Catalan, Gaelic or Walloon.

In the 2011 census, Silesian, a Slavonic language with string Germanic influences, claimed 509,00 native speakers. (pg)