| Baczyńscy | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
| Country |  |
| Voivodeship | Podlaskie |
| County | Hajnówka |
| Gmina | Narewka |
Baczyńscy [baˈt͡ʂɨɲst͡sɨ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Narewka, within Hajnówka County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland, close to the border with Belarus. [1]
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town, with a population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Though villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighborhoods. Villages are normally permanent, with fixed dwellings; however, transient villages can occur. Further, the dwellings of a village are fairly close to one another, not scattered broadly over the landscape, as a dispersed settlement.
Gmina Narewka is a rural gmina in Hajnówka County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland, on the border with Belarus. Its seat is the village of Narewka, which lies approximately 18 kilometres (11 mi) north-east of Hajnówka and 51 km (32 mi) south-east of the regional capital Białystok.
Hajnówka County is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Podlaskie Voivodeship, north-eastern Poland, on the border with Belarus. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998. Its administrative seat and largest town is Hajnówka, which lies 51 kilometres (32 mi) south-east of the regional capital Białystok. The only other town in the county is Kleszczele, lying 25 km (16 mi) south-west of Hajnówka.
It is in one of five Polish/Belarusian bilingual Gmina in Podlaskie Voivodeship regulated by the Act of 6 January 2005 on National and Ethnic Minorities and on the Regional Languages, which permits certain gminas with significant linguistic minorities to introduce a second, auxiliary language to be used in official contexts alongside Polish. [2]
Belarusian is an official language of Belarus, along with Russian, and is also spoken in Russia, Poland and Ukraine. Before Belarus gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the language was only known in English as Byelorussian or Belorussian, transliterating the Russian name, белорусский язык Belorusskiy yazyk, or alternatively as White Ruthenian or White Russian. Following independence, it has acquired the additional name Belarusian.
The bilingual status of gminas (municipalities) in Poland is regulated by the Act of 6 January 2005 on National and Ethnic Minorities and on the Regional Languages, which permits certain gminas with significant linguistic minorities to introduce a second, auxiliary language to be used in official contexts alongside Polish. So far 44 gminas have done this:
Polish is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to being an official language of Poland, it is also used by Polish minorities in other countries. There are over 50 million Polish language speakers around the world and it is one of the official languages of the European Union.
