| Topczykały | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
  Topczykały | |
| Coordinates: 52°42′N23°16′E / 52.700°N 23.267°E | |
| Country |  |
| Voivodeship | Podlaskie |
| County | Bielsk |
| Gmina | Orla |
Topczykały [tɔpt͡ʂɨˈkawɨ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Orla, within Bielsk County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland. [1] It lies approximately 5 kilometres (3 mi) west of Orla, 9 km (6 mi) south-east of Bielsk Podlaski, and 47 km (29 mi) south of the regional capital Białystok.
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 Orla is a rural gmina in Bielsk County, Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is located in north-eastern Poland.
Bielsk County is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Podlaskie Voivodeship, north-eastern Poland. It came into being on 1 January 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998. Its administrative seat and largest town is Bielsk Podlaski, which lies 39 kilometres (24 mi) south of the regional capital Białystok. The only other town in the county is Brańsk, lying 25 km (16 mi) west of Bielsk Podlaski.
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.
