Modern sources on Slavic languages normally describe the Polish language as consisting of four major dialect groups, each primarily associated with a particular geographical region, and often further subdivided into subdialectal groups. They are:
The regional differences correspond mainly to old ethnic or tribal divisions from around a thousand years ago. As a result of 19th century measures taken by occupying powers, of expulsions plus other displacements of Poles during and after World War II, as well as language policy in the People's Republic of Poland, supplemented by broadcast media, the Polish language has become more homogenised than ever before in the second half of the 20th century. Traditional spoken Polish includes three more distinct dialect groups, adding to a total of eight. The remaining dialects have been put at risk of extinction due to historic geopolitical population movements. They are:
Southern Kresy, spoken in isolated pockets in Ukraine
The distinctive Podhale dialect that occurs in the mountainous area bordering the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Gorals highlanders have a distinct culture and dialect. It exhibits some cultural influences from Vlach shepherds who migrated from Wallachia in the 14th-17th centuries. The language of the coextensive Eastern Slavic people, the Lemkos, which demonstrates significant lexical and grammatical commonality with the Góralski dialect and Ukrainian, bears no significant Vlach or other Romanian influences. Some urban Poles find this very distinct dialect difficult to understand.
Dialect and language distinctions
Although traditional linguistic divisions continue to be cited, especially in Polish sources, the current linguistic consensus tends to consider Kashubian a separate language, or at least as a distinct Slavic lect that cannot be grouped at the same level as the four major modern Polish dialects. Prior to World War II, Kashubian speakers were mainly surrounded by German speakers, with only a narrow border to the south with Polish speakers. Kashubian contains a number of features not found in other Polish dialects, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels, evolution of the Proto-Slavic TorT group to TarT and phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the West Slavic languages. The two Kresy dialects are spoken in Kresy, the former eastern Polish territories annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945 and currently absorbed into Lithuania, Belarus and the Ukraine. Both dialect groups have been in decline since World War II as a result of Soviet expulsions of millions of Poles from Kresy. Poles living in Lithuania, in Belarus, and in northeast Poland continue to speak the Northern Kresy dialect, which sounds as if speaking with a Russian drawl, and is quite distinctive. The majority of Poles expelled from Kresy were settled in newly annexed regions in northern and western Poland, and thereby their manner of speech evolved into so-called new mixed dialects. However, among the declining older generation there are still traces of Kresy dialect with its characteristic Ukrainian or Rusyn sounds, especially in the use of the Russian "L" where standard Polish uses "Ł" and of elongated vowels.
Silesian
Many linguistic sources relating to the Slavic languages describe Silesian as a dialect of Polish. However, many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating the recognition of Silesian as a distinct language. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over 0.5 million people declared Silesian as their native tongue. Many sociolinguistic sources Language organizations such as SIL International and various linguistic resources such as Ethnologue, and Poland's Ministry of Administration and Digitization, recognize Silesian as a distinct language. In 2007, Silesian was assigned its language codeszl within the ISO 639-3 standard.
Derived from the language of the Vistulans, is the most numerous dialectal group in modern Poland. It includes the following sub-groups
Silesian "dialect"
Silesian, derived from the language of the Slavic tribe called, Ślężanie, in modern times spoken in the regions of Upper Silesia. The United States Immigration Commission in its "Dictionary of races or peoples" published in 1911 counted Silesian as one of the dialects of Polish. Those who regard Silesian as a separate language tend to include the Lach dialects of the Czech Republic as part of this language. However, the standard linguistic sources on Slavic languages normally describe them as dialects of the Czech language,or sometimes as transitional Polish–Czech dialects.
A number of dialects are not easily classifiable according to the above scheme. Among the most notable of them:
The , spoken in Poznań and to some extent in the whole region of the former Prussian annexation, with characteristic high tone melody and notable influence of the German language.
Some city dwellers, especially among the less affluent, had their own distinctive dialects — for example the Warsaw dialect, still spoken by some of the people in the Praga district on the eastern bank of the Vistula. However, these city dialects are mostly extinct due to assimilation with standard Polish.
There are several sociolects with distinct pools of thematic vocabulary, e.g. Polish high school students.
Many Poles living in emigrant communities, for example in the USA or Europe, whose families left Poland around World War II, retain a number of features of Polish idiom and accent as spoken in the first half of the 20th century that now come across as archaic to contemporary visitors from Poland.
There are also several circumstantial dialects preserved, of which the best known is grypsera, a language spoken by long-time prison convicts.
