Lesser Poland dialect

The Lesser Polish dialect (Polish: dialekt małopolski) is a cluster of regional varieties of the Polish language around the Lesser Poland historical region. The exact area is difficult to delineate due to the expansion of its features and the existence of transitional subdialects.[1]

Lesser Poland dialect
dialekt małopolski
Native to	Poland
Region	Lesser Poland Voivodeship Subcarpathian Voivodeship Holy Cross Voivodeship Lublin Voivodeship Łódź Voivodeship Silesian Voivodeship Masovian Voivodeship
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic West Slavic Lechitic Polish Lesser Poland dialect
Writing system	Latin (Polish alphabet)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
Map of the dialects of Polish, including the Lesser Poland dialect marked in yellow.

Commonly recognized subdialects of the Lesser Polish dialect include Podhale, Kraków, Lwów, Sącz, Żywiec, Kielce and some others. The southernmost Lesser Polish dialects spoken by the Gorals (Podhale, Żywiec, Orava, Spiš and many others) are collectively called the Goral dialect (Polish: gwara góralska) despite being a collection of many similar subdialects.[2]

Lesser Polish has a longstanding liturgical tradition, especially compared to the other polish dialectal regions. There are many books and poems written in the Kraków and Podhale dialects.

The common traits of the Lesser Polish dialect include:

• mazurzenie[3]
• regressive voicing of obstruents, including across word boundaries; e.g.: kot leci [kɔd ˈlɛt͡ɕi] (standard Polish: [kɔt ˈlɛt͡ɕi])[3]
• differentiated nasalisation (or lack thereof) of /ɔ̃/ and /ɛ̃/ in different parts of the area[3]
• merger of stop+fricative consonant clusters into affricates; e.g.: trzysta [ˈt͡ʂɨsta] (standard Polish: [ˈtʂɨsta] or [ˈt͡ʂʂɨsta])[3]
• frequent usage of initial syllable stress, also oxytonic stress in vocative case (as opposed to paroxytonic stress common in other varieties of Polish)[3]
• frequent usage of grammatical particle "że" in imperative mood ("weźże" vs. "weź" – take)