Poland was a frontier country during the 1100s, 1200s, 1300s and into the 1400s. People poured into Poland from all over Europe. Especially before 1492, Poland was the great frontier where people could go and get rich. Merchants criss crossed the territories. And after the Union with Lithuania, the territory was immense. So it is all together believable that Flemish merchants might have started this community. I was just recently reading a good history of Poland and I posted my notes, and some excerpts, here:
Translated trying to use approximating modern Flemish-Dutch words ("slaap-voerde af" isn't really an existing word, but its meaning should be obvious).
ny ołys ej gułd, wos zih fynklt, glanct oba łiöeht?
Niet alles is geld, wat zo fonkelt, glanst vol{?} licht
All that glitters is not gold
Fylón yr wełt an ganc ałłán
Verloren in de wereld en gans alleen
Lost in the world and quite alone
ząs ych óm mjer óf hóhym śtán;
zat ik aan zee op een hoge steen
I sat down by the sea on a high stone.
der mond kąm raus hyndróm gybjég,
de maan kwam van ginder om de berg
the moon came up behind the mountain
szłyfyt myjch áj, wi s kynt yr wig.
slaap-voerde mij af, als een kind in de wieg
he puts me to sleep like a child in a cradle
From the listed words only two have immediately obvious Polish connotations (dźjada (grandpa), and dziadek is grandpa in Polish; śpjelik (sparrow), where śpiewać is "to sing"). Most words have German-ish sound to them, somewhat similar to Silesian subdialect of Polish (though Silesia was occupied by Germany, which is the reason for its influence). The spelling is mostly Polish-like, perhaps from older centuries though; except for some umlauts which clearly originate in German and similar.
Native dutch from the eastern part that has lived in the southern part too, now in Munich and knows (and speaks) quite a lot of dialects. This sounds like someone from Luxemburg would be better at understanding. It's a mixture of dutch spoken in Limburg (soft tones, not the "hard" r and g pronounciation that is typical for the western parts of the Netherlands) but also not that modern vlaams melody. I could understand it roundabout a sgood as when I hear someone speaking Afrikaans.
If it's any help, I speak pretty good dutch, some german, and some czech (which is similar to polish) and can only understand about 1/4 of this. Any native dutch speakers can feel free to chime in, but I don't think speaking dutch is a major advantage in understanding this.
I speak (Austrian) German and it sounds a lot more like a German dialect than Dutch to me (there are so many of them, though, this is not really saying an awful lot). Like the Dutch speakers who've chimed in, I don't understand much of it but can pick out enough words to tell where the other, incomprehensible words are.
The first fragment with the old woman sounds a bit more like Dutch or Low Saxon but with heavy German influence. The second clip with the young man sounds very much like a German dialect to me (Dutch native). Understanding either of them completely would take a lot of effort.
Theres plenty of linguistic oddities across Europe. On the opposite side of this (Slavs in Germany as opposed to Germans in Slavic countries) there's the Sorbs. Other isolated languages/peoples include the Cimbrians (German dialect in Italy), Istriot and Istriot-Romanian (Romance language in Croatia), Italiot-Greek, Arbëresh (Albanian dialects in Italy), Gagauz (Turkic dialect in Moldova), etc.
I’ve personally listened to Tymoteusz Król giving a seminar lecture on Wilamowian. Lots of historical background in there. This guy is a heck of a geek, of the rarely-encountered kind.
It seems to me that Europeans will use any excuse under the sun to fork language, branch and create a new dialect. If one Austrian village has brown goats, and the other white, or if there is a lake between them, or maybe a mountain, or if maybe there's an apocryphal tale of a farmers daughter going off to live with a shoe-makers son, across a few days of travel - well then, its time for a new dialect ...
And I honestly think its not productive, in the sense that dialects are intentionally propagated in a fashion as to cause one "in-group" to have its detractors. It really seems to me that the forces driving us to create new, unintelligible dialects, are the same forces which allow us to justify heinous crimes against others - just at a different scale. Speaking in such a way as to differentiate oneself from others, I believe, is a root cause of so much of humanities stress.
But the quandary is, I also believe we should not let these odd languages die. As an Australian, I find it a terrible shame that we've lost 70,000 years of this factor, in the genocides against the Australian aborigines. But, on the other hand, I think Europeans have taken the tribalism just a little too far. Its a contradiction that I haven't quite resolved, although I've come close: perhaps the solution is to continue to encourage the creation of dialects, as long as there are tools such as the Internet around to assist with overcoming the confusion that results when two dialects clash...
These forks (for the most part) occurred organically, not just in order to sound different. After the fact they became a matter of pride, culture and nationalism, but originally they were not. People just spoke in the way that felt the most convenient and pleasing to them, at the time there was no widespread long distance communication and the vast majority of the population never left a relatively small radius around where they were born. Languages diverged because there was no external force unifying them (like, say, the roman empire). Eventually due to the lack of contact languages drift apart and become mutually unintelligible.
Imagine a world where there's no TV, radio or internet and you could only travel by horse and most people use the language mainly in its spoken form (if they can even read at all). How long do you think the Australian language would remain unified in these conditions? One generation? Three? Ten?
That's a very ignorant opinion. History shows that it's the opposite - there's a strong correlation between some of the worst atrocities the human kind has committed, and the drive to unify languages. From overseas colonies, to German and Russian occupations of Central Europe and Asia (read up on forced Germanisation and Russification).
Well, from here in Central Europe, all those dialects and minor languages seem to be on the verge of extinction these days - not just a language with 25 speakers: Upper and Lower Sorbian are circling the drain, with tens of thousands of speakers each. The interest in such languages is waning. This is even evidenced by the article: "People are staging a play in a language that's not on the Red List" is non-news.
We still speak Spanish in South America but the difference between Chile and Mexico or Venezuela is still felt strongly and can cause funny or embarrassing confusion.
We don't try to split the language into several, that is simply something that happens and surprises you when traveling.
[+] [-] lkrubner|7 years ago|reply
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/poland-was-shockingly...
[+] [-] deltron3030|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benrath_line
Seems related, those isoglosses stretch from Belgium to Poland.
[+] [-] ed_balls|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anvandare|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deltron3030|7 years ago|reply
verloren in der Welt, ganz allein
saß ich an der See, auf einem hohen Stein
der Mond kam hinter dem Berg hervor
wog mich in den Schlaf, wie ein Kind in der Wiege
[+] [-] Y_Y|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akrasuski1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jagger11|7 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/lfg3jHV1TzE?t=246 https://youtu.be/9bfgEgFKccw?t=3
[+] [-] jwildeboer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardfeynman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pvg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cies|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gpvos|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singularity2001|7 years ago|reply
2nd video: "Das sind die Sproech" "Da kann ich gehn, da kann ich meditieren, da kann ich alles machen" almost plain German. at 0:44 - 1:00
and many other German snippets
[+] [-] RikNieu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twelvechairs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emodendroket|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _emacsomancer_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmjaa|7 years ago|reply
And I honestly think its not productive, in the sense that dialects are intentionally propagated in a fashion as to cause one "in-group" to have its detractors. It really seems to me that the forces driving us to create new, unintelligible dialects, are the same forces which allow us to justify heinous crimes against others - just at a different scale. Speaking in such a way as to differentiate oneself from others, I believe, is a root cause of so much of humanities stress.
But the quandary is, I also believe we should not let these odd languages die. As an Australian, I find it a terrible shame that we've lost 70,000 years of this factor, in the genocides against the Australian aborigines. But, on the other hand, I think Europeans have taken the tribalism just a little too far. Its a contradiction that I haven't quite resolved, although I've come close: perhaps the solution is to continue to encourage the creation of dialects, as long as there are tools such as the Internet around to assist with overcoming the confusion that results when two dialects clash...
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
Imagine a world where there's no TV, radio or internet and you could only travel by horse and most people use the language mainly in its spoken form (if they can even read at all). How long do you think the Australian language would remain unified in these conditions? One generation? Three? Ten?
[+] [-] polipoxy123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Piskvorrr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shorel|7 years ago|reply
We don't try to split the language into several, that is simply something that happens and surprises you when traveling.