The Romani, also spelled Romany or Rromani and colloquially known as the Roma, are an ethnic group of Indo-Aryan origin who traditionally lived a nomadic, itinerant lifestyle. Linguistic and genetic evidence suggests that the Romani originated in the Indian subcontinent, in particular the region of present-day state of Rajasthan. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed by historians to have occurred c. 1000 CE. Their name is from the Sanskrit word डोम which means a member of the Dom caste of travelling musicians and dancers. The Roma population moved west into the Ghaznavid Empire and later into the Byzantine Empire. The Roma are thought to have arrived in Europe around the 13th to 14th century. Although they are widely dispersed, their most concentrated populations are believed to be in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.
Demographic features of the population of the Czech Republic include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, and religious affiliations.
Spiš is a region in north-eastern Slovakia, with a very small area in south-eastern Poland. Spiš is an informal designation of the territory, but it is also the name of one of the 21 official tourism regions of Slovakia. The region is not an administrative division in its own right, but between the late 11th century and 1920 it was an administrative county of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Transcarpathia is a historical region on the border between Central and Eastern Europe, mostly located in western Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast, with smaller parts in eastern Slovakia and the Lemko Region in Poland.
Zakarpattia Oblast, also referred to as simply Zakarpattia or Transcarpathia in English, is an oblast in west Ukraine, mostly coterminous with the historical region of Carpathian Ruthenia. Its administrative centre is the city of Uzhhorod. Other major cities within the oblast include Mukachevo, Khust, Berehove, and Chop, the last of which is home to railroad transport infrastructure.
The West Slavic languages are a subdivision of the Slavic language group. They include Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian. The languages have traditionally been spoken across a mostly continuous region encompassing the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, the westernmost regions of Ukraine and Belarus, and a bit of eastern Lithuania. In addition, there are several language islands such as the Sorbian areas in Lusatia in Germany, and Slovak areas in Hungary and elsewhere.
Cieszyn Silesia, Těšín Silesia or Teschen Silesia is a historical region in south-eastern Silesia, centered on the towns of Cieszyn and Český Těšín and bisected by the Olza River. Since 1920 it has been divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic. It covers an area of about 2,280 square kilometres (880 sq mi) and has about 810,000 inhabitants, of which 1,002 square kilometres (387 sq mi) (44%) is in Poland, while 1,280 square kilometres (494 sq mi) (56%) is in the Czech Republic.
Carpathian Germans are a group of ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. The term was coined by the historian Raimund Friederich Kaindl (1866–1930), originally generally referring to the German-speaking population of the area around the Carpathian Mountains: the Cisleithanian (Austrian) crown lands of Galicia and Bukovina, as well as the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and the northwestern (Maramuresch) region of Romania. Since the First World War, only the Germans of Slovakia and those of Carpathian Ruthenia in Ukraine have commonly been called Carpathian Germans.
Border conflicts between Poland and Czechoslovakia began in 1918 between the Second Polish Republic and First Czechoslovak Republic, both freshly created states. The conflicts centered on the disputed areas of Cieszyn Silesia, Orava Territory and Spiš. After World War II they broadened to include areas around the cities of Kłodzko and Racibórz, which until 1945 had belonged to Germany. The conflicts became critical in 1919 and were finally settled in 1958 in a treaty between the Polish People's Republic and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.
The Cieszyn Silesian dialect or Teschen Silesian dialect is one of the Silesian dialects. It has its roots mainly in Old Polish and also has strong influences from Czech and German and, to a lesser extent, from Vlach and Slovak. It is spoken in Cieszyn Silesia, a region on both sides of the Polish-Czech border. It remains mostly a spoken language. The dialect is better preserved today than traditional dialects of many other West Slavic regions.
The Gorals, also known as the Highlanders and historically also as Vlachs, are an ethnographic subgroup primarily found in their traditional area of southern Poland, northern Slovakia, and in the region of Cieszyn Silesia in the Czech Republic, where they are known as the Silesian Gorals. There is also a significant Goral diaspora in the area of Bukovina in western Ukraine and in northern Romania, as well as in Chicago, the seat of the Polish Highlanders Alliance of North America.
Bohemian Romani or Bohemian Romany was a dialect of Romani formerly spoken by the Romani people of Bohemia, the western part of today's Czech Republic. It became extinct after World War II, due to the genocide of most of its speakers in extermination camps by Nazi Germany.
Polish dialects are regional vernacular varieties of the Polish language, and often show developments starting from an earlier stage of the language, often Old Polish or Middle Polish, namely the development of the so-called "pitched" or "slanted" vowels.
Slavic microlanguages are literary linguistic varieties that exist alongside the better-known Slavic languages of historically prominent nations. The term "literary microlanguages" was coined by Aleksandr Dulichenko in late 1970s; it subsequently became a standard term in Slavistics.
After centuries of relative ethnic diversity, the population of modern Poland has become nearly completely ethnically homogeneous Polish as a result of altered borders and the Nazi German and Soviet or Polish Communist population transfers, expulsions and deportations during and after World War II. Ethnic minorities remain in Poland, however, including some newly arrived or increased in number. Ethnic groups include Germans, Ukrainians and Belarusians.
Polska Roma are the largest and one of the oldest ethnolinguistic groups of Romani people living in Poland. Many Polska Roma also reside in Germany, North America, Switzerland, Great Britain and Sweden.some can also be found in Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia. The term "Polska Roma" is both an ethnonym of the group and a term used in the scholary literature. As such, it differs from the terms "Roma in Poland,"which more broadly refers to the entire Roma population in Poland. Therefore, the term '' Polska Roma'' or ''Polish Roma'' (Gypsie) is used exclusively for this particular group, while the term ''Roma in Poland'' is applied to all Roma groups living in Poland, the broader Roma population in Poland.
The languages of Poland include Polish – the language of the indigenous population – and those of immigrants and their descendants. Polish is the only official language recognized by the country's constitution and the majority of the country's population speak it as a native language or use it for home communication. Deaf communities in Poland use Polish Sign Language, which belongs to the German family of Sign Languages.
Carpathian Romani, also known as Central Romani or Romungro Romani, is a group of dialects of the Romani language spoken from southern Poland to Hungary, and from eastern Austria to Ukraine.
The Romani people in Poland, also known as the Roma, qualify as an ethnic minority group in Poland of Indo-Aryan origins. The Council of Europe regards the endonym "Roma" more appropriate when referencing the people, and "Romani" when referencing cultural characteristics. The term Cyganie is considered an exonym in Poland.
Goral, rarely called Highlander or Highland Polish, is an ethnolect of the Lechitic group, more specifically of the Lesser Poland dialect group spoken by the Gorals. Its vocabulary was significantly influenced by many languages like Slovak, Rusyn, Hungarian, Romanian and German, being common vocabulary of the Carpathian region. Some consider Goral to be a microlanguage, alongside Silesian and to a lesser extent Masurian.
