Although traditional linguistic divisions continue to be cited, especially in Polish sources, the current linguistic consensus tends to consider
Kashubian a separate language, or at least as a distinct lect that cannot be grouped at the same level as the four major modern Polish dialects. Prior to
World War II, Kashubian speakers were mainly surrounded by
German speakers, with only a narrow border to the south with Polish speakers. Kashubian contains a number of features not found in other Polish dialects, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs. the six of standard Polish), evolution of the Proto-Slavic
TorT group to
TarT (a feature not found in any other Slavic language) and (in the northern dialects) phonemic word stress, an archaic feature preserved from
Common Slavic times and not found anywhere else among the
West Slavic languages. The two
Kresy dialects are spoken in
Kresy, the former eastern Polish territories annexed by the
Soviet Union in 1945 and currently absorbed into
Lithuania,
Belarus and
Ukraine. Both dialect groups have been in decline since
World War II as a result of
expulsions of millions of Poles from Kresy. Poles living in
Lithuania (particularly in the
Vilnius region), in
Belarus (particularly in the northwest), and in northeast Poland continue to speak the Northern Kresy dialect, which sounds (in Polish described as
zaciąganie z ruska) as if speaking with a Ruthenian drawl, and is quite distinctive. The majority of Poles expelled from Kresy were settled in newly annexed regions in northern and western Poland, and thereby their manner of speech evolved into so-called
new mixed dialects. However, among the declining older generation there are still traces of Kresy dialect with its characteristic Ukrainian or
Rusyn sounds, especially in the use of the
East Slavic velarised L where standard Polish has it already vocalised () and of elongated vowels. ==List of dialects==