• In the language itself: Kaszëbi
• ISO 639-3 standard: csb

• Classification: Indo-European → West-Slavic. See kash1274 at Glottolog for more information.

Agreement on a unified spelling system for literary Kashubian was reached in 1996 ¹⁾

“I started to learn Kashubian at school and then I decided to take the Kashubian final exam. I said to my mum: 'You have to speak Kashubian with me now'. And we started to speak Kashubian. But once my mum said to me that I spoke a different Kashubian and that it would be better for me not to hear her uneducated language. And she refused to speak Kashubian with me”.²⁾

Kashubian is a West Slavic language spoken in Northern Poland in the province of Pomerania (województwo pomorskie). Below are shown Kashubian speaker percentages in the province Województwo Pomorskie ³⁾

Area where Kashub is spoken

• The 2011 census states that 108.000 people used Kashubian at home ⁴⁾

Historically and paleo-ethnologically, the Kashubs are said to be direct descendants of the Pomeranians, a Slavic people that inhabited the Baltic coast between the Vistula and the Oder rivers, perhaps even as far westward as the Elbe, in the early Middle Ages, and who long constituted a serious threat to the Lekhits – the ancestors of what later would be the Polish nation. The modern history of Kashub began in the mid-19th century, with ideas brought by the Spring of Nations and the pan-Slavic movement ⁵⁾.

• Kashubian is covered under Part III of the Charter
• Download the latest Council of Europe report (2019) about the application of the Regional Charter for Minority Languages in Poland.

The Law on the system of educatio of 1991 gives pupils the right to maintain their national, ethnic, religious and linguistic identity. Classes in/on their mother tongue, history and culture are allowed⁶⁾.

The Decree of the Minister of National Education and Sports on conditions and methods for enabling pupils belonging to national minorities and ethnic groups to maintain their national, ethnic and linguistic identity of 2002⁷⁾.

Poland's Act on National and Ethnic Minorities and the Regional Language (2005) states that:

• Kashubian is the only regional language of Poland;
• the national government should provide Kashubian education and promotion with some financial support.
• Kashubian may be used to some extent in official communication in those municipalities, where Kashubian is a so-called auxiliary language. For more details, see the act itself.

“Because this language is important to us, we are thrilled that it is so far Poland's only regional language; it gives us many benefits but it also makes us more proud of it. Because a dialect is not the same. A regional language is something more important, something we can be proud of and it can spur us into further action”.⁸⁾

Primary schools offering Kashubian classes in 2003/2004⁹⁾.

Lower secondary schools offering Kashubian classes in 2003/2004¹⁰⁾.

• Omniglot with phrases and numbers
• Endangered Languages videos
• Kashubian words in pictures, a game
• dictionary (Kashubian-Polish)

Read more about Kashubian language education in Mercator's Regional Dossier (2004).