Lwów dialect

The Lwów dialect emerged in the 19th century and gained much popularity and recognition in the 1920s and 1930s, in part due to countrywide popularity of numerous artists and comedians using it. Among them were Marian Hemar, Szczepcio, and Tońcio Szczepcio i Tońcio also known as Szczepko i Tońko, the latter two being authors of the highly acclaimed weekly broadcast in the Polish Radio. Emanuel Szlechter, the screenwriter of many popular films, such as The Vagabonds and songwriter of Polish pre-war hits, wrote some of his songs in the Lwów dialect ("Ni ma jak Lwów" "Nothing is like Lwow", a song from The Vagabonds). The dialect is one of the two main sources of galicisms ( – words originating from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria) in standard Polish. Some words of the dialect have entered into the vocabulary of modern Polish language, and many others were adopted by other regional and social varieties of Polish, notably the . Some elements of the dialect remain in use in contemporary Ukrainian spoken in modern Lviv. In 1939, the city of Lwów was annexed by the Soviet Union and in the turbulent decade that followed the pre-war population structure of the city changed dramatically. With most of the Polish population expelled, the number of speakers of the dialect sharply declined, but the modern language of the members of Polish minority in Ukraine living in Lviv still resembles the prewar Lwów dialect. It is also cultivated by émigré circles abroad. It remained not only a part of popular culture in post-war Poland thanks to numerous artists and writers, notably Witold Szolginia, Adam Hollanek, and Jerzy Janicki, but also part of the language of many notable personalities who were born in Lwów before the war. Speakers of the Lwów dialect can be found in such cities as Wrocław and Bytom, where the majority of the expelled Polish inhabitants of Lwów settled. == Phonology ==

Vowels Among the most characteristic phonological features of the Lwów dialect were the changes in vowel quality influenced by word stress. For example: • unstressed ie, e merging into i, y: • in syllables before the stressed syllable: Standard Polish człowiekowi → Lwów dialect człuwikowi, wielbłądy → wilbłondy, kieliszkami → kiliszkami, ciekawy → cikawy, elektryczny → iliktryczny • in syllables after the stressed syllable: Standard Polish człowiek → Lwów dialect człowik, nawet → nawyt, majątek → majontyk • at the end of a word: Standard Polish ale → Lwów dialect ali, ciągle → wciągli, w Polsce → w Polscy, wasze piękne miasto → waszy pienkny miastu • unstressed o merging into u: • in syllables before the stressed syllable: Standard Polish oferma → Lwów dialect uferma, godzina → gudzina, kobita → kubita, doprowadził → dupruwadził • in syllables after the stressed syllable: Standard Polish czegoś → Lwów dialect czeguś, ogon → ogun, ściskając → ściskajunc • at the end of a word: Standard Polish jutro → Lwów dialect jutru In songs, the vowels of some words were pronounced inconsistently. Differing musical rhythms could change which syllable of a word was stressed, which is why, for example, one could hear both policaj and pulicaj ("police") in the same song. For example, Standard Polish was pronounced as . Phonological changes In the Lwów dialect, as in other dialects, there were various phonological changes including assimilation, dissimilation and consonant cluster simplification. ==References==