Piła ( Polish: [ˈpiwa] ; German : Schneidemühl ) is a city in northwestern Poland and the capital of Piła County , situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship . Its population as of 2021 was 71,846, making it the third-largest city in the voivodeship after Poznań and Kalisz and the largest city in the northern part of Greater Poland . The city is located on the Gwda river and is famous for its green areas, parks and dense forests nearby. It is an important road and railway hub, located at the intersection of two main lines: Poznań – Szczecin and Bydgoszcz – Krzyż Wielkopolski .
118-629: Piła is a Polish word meaning " saw ". This was a typical name denoting a village of woodcutters belonging to a local noble. The German name Schneidemühl means " sawmill ". Piła traces its origins to an old fishing village. Following the German colonist movement of the 13th century, and particularly after the end of the first Mongol invasion of Poland of 1241, many German colonizers came to this densely wooded area of Poland. General immigration of German settlers diminished, however, when Poland, under King Casimir IV Jagiellon (1447–1492), finally defeated
236-485: A Verwaltungsgliederung, or administrative reform, merged the three territorially unconnected parts of the Frontier March of Posen-West Prussia province into the respective neighbouring Prussian provinces of Brandenburg , Silesia and Pomerania — placing the bulk of former Posen-West Prussia with the districts of Deutsch Krone , Flatow , Netzekreis , Schlochau and Schneidemühl into Pomerania. Schneidemühl remained
354-499: A / (spelled a ), / ɔ / (spelled o ) and / u / (spelled u and ó as separate letters). The nasal vowels are / ɛ w̃ / (spelled ę ) and / ɔ w̃ / (spelled ą ). Unlike Czech or Slovak, Polish does not retain phonemic vowel length — the letter ó , which formerly represented lengthened /ɔː/ in older forms of the language, is now vestigial and instead corresponds to /u/. The Polish consonant system shows more complexity: its characteristic features include
472-644: A body of self-rule encompassing those three disconnected parts of the former Province of Posen and the westernmost parts of the Province of West Prussia , which were not ceded to Poland and of the Posen-West Prussian Schneidemühl Region , a body of central government supervision comprising the same provincial area. In 1925, with the sudden influx of the Optanten , inhabitants of areas annexed by Poland who opted not to become Polish citizens and left for
590-759: A dialect of Polish. Many Silesians consider themselves a separate ethnicity and have been advocating for the recognition of Silesian as a regional language in Poland . The law recognizing it as such was passed by the Sejm and Senate in April 2024, but has been vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in late May of 2024. According to the last official census in Poland in 2011, over half a million people declared Silesian as their native language. Many sociolinguists (e.g. Tomasz Kamusella , Agnieszka Pianka, Alfred F. Majewicz, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz ) assume that extralinguistic criteria decide whether
708-656: A few culturally and linguistically related tribes from the basins of the Vistula and Oder before eventually accepting baptism in 966. With Western Christianity , Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet , which made it possible to write down Polish, which until then had existed only as a spoken language . The closest relatives of Polish are the Elbe and Baltic Sea Lechitic dialects ( Polabian and Pomeranian varieties). All of them, except Kashubian , are extinct. The precursor to modern Polish
826-476: A free noble or a ministerialis , but either way, he administered the castle as a vassal . A ministerialis , was wholly subordinate to a lord and was under his control. Ministeriales replaced free nobles as castellans of Hohensalzburg under Conrad I of Abensberg ’s tenure as Archbishop of Salzburg from 1106 to 1147, beginning with Henry of Seekirchen in the 1130s. In the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary
944-556: A governmental administrative district consisting of a wide strip of land both sides of the river Noteć (Netze), stretching from it source north of Września (Wreschen) to the border of the Neumark. Frederick II initiated new German Protestant colonization in opposition to Polish Catholics. In the year 1781, another huge fire occurred, which devastated half the town. Although Prussian authorities had brought in chimney sweeps and regulations that spelled out fire emergency tasks, hardly anyone in
1062-466: A landmark decision. This was an important achievement for Piła since it gave the burghers not only status, but also the rights to self-administration and its own judiciary. The administration of the town's affairs was now in the hands of three legislative bodies, elected from among the burghers. They were the council with the mayor, jury court and the elders of the guilds. Only the position of the Wójt remained in
1180-511: A large number of branches in all of these areas) offers services available in Polish at all of their cash machines in addition to English and Spanish . According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England and Wales who consider Polish to be their "main" language. In Canada , there is a significant Polish Canadian population : There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to
1298-533: A lect is an independent language or a dialect: speakers of the speech variety or/and political decisions, and this is dynamic (i.e. it changes over time). Also, research organizations such as SIL International and resources for the academic field of linguistics such as Ethnologue , Linguist List and others, for example the Ministry of Administration and Digitization recognized the Silesian language. In July 2007,
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#17328517433091416-454: A nasal consonant, rather than a nasal vowel. For example, ą in dąb ("oak") is pronounced [ɔm] , and ę in tęcza ("rainbow") is pronounced [ɛn] (the nasal assimilates to the following consonant). When followed by l or ł (for example przyjęli , przyjęły ), ę is pronounced as just e . When ę is at the end of the word it is often pronounced as just [ɛ] . Depending on
1534-458: A new layout was to be drastic for Christian burghers; to the developing Jewish community it was most consequential and of particular detriment. Constance also decided on a distinct segregation of Jews and Christians. The Jewish community was to resettle in a ghetto , what was to become a virtual town within a town. The new site, from thereon often referred to as Judenstadt , the Jews' town. To demarcate
1652-705: A period of decline in the early 1930s. High unemployment and the ineffectiveness of local administration led to rising support for the NSDAP . With the onset of the Nazi period and the beginning of the Gestapo 's harassment of political and racial undesirables, the climate for Schneidemühl's shrinking Jewish community (which had reached over 1,000 members during the mid-19th century) changed irreversibly — institutionalized antisemitism had arrived in Schneidemühl. In March and September 1938,
1770-402: A reversed diacritic hook called an ogonek . Polish is a synthetic and fusional language which has seven grammatical cases . It has fixed penultimate stress and an abundance of palatal consonants . Contemporary Polish developed in the 1700s as the successor to the medieval Old Polish (10th–16th centuries) and Middle Polish (16th–18th centuries). Among the major languages, it
1888-491: A single word. This applies in particular to many combinations of preposition plus a personal pronoun, such as do niej ('to her'), na nas ('on us'), prze ze mnie ('because of me'), all stressed on the bolded syllable. The Polish alphabet derives from the Latin script but includes certain additional letters formed using diacritics . The Polish alphabet was one of three major forms of Latin-based orthography developed for Western and some South Slavic languages,
2006-405: A verse by Jan Brzechwa ) is W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie [fʂt͡ʂɛbʐɛˈʂɨɲɛ ˈxʂɔw̃ʂt͡ʂ ˈbʐmi fˈtʂt͡ɕiɲɛ] ('In Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reed'). Unlike languages such as Czech, Polish does not have syllabic consonants – the nucleus of a syllable is always a vowel. The consonant /j/ is restricted to positions adjacent to a vowel. It also cannot precede
2124-478: A vowel when it precedes another vowel (it represents /j/ , palatalization of the preceding consonant, or both depending on analysis). Also the letters u and i sometimes represent only semivowels when they follow another vowel, as in autor /ˈawtɔr/ ('author'), mostly in loanwords (so not in native nauka /naˈu.ka/ 'science, the act of learning', for example, nor in nativized Mateusz /maˈte.uʂ/ 'Matthew'). Some loanwords , particularly from
2242-648: Is " Cfb ". (Marine West Coast Climate). Members of Parliament ( Sejm ) elected from Piła constituency: Members of Polish Senate elected from Piła constituency: Piła is twinned with: On 1 March 2022, Piła suspended its partnership with the Russian city of Kronsdadt as a reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine . Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )
2360-684: Is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group within the Indo-European language family written in the Latin script . It is primarily spoken in Poland and serves as the official language of the country, as well as the language of the Polish diaspora around the world. In 2024, there were over 39.7 million Polish native speakers. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union . Polish
2478-481: Is a term denoting a district administered by a castellan. Castellanies appeared during the Middle Ages and in most current states are now replaced by a more modern type of county subdivision. The word is derived from castle and literally means the extent of land and jurisdiction attached to a given castle. There are equivalent, often cognate, terms in other languages. Examples of French châtelainies include
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#17328517433092596-419: Is also spoken as a second language in eastern Germany , northern Czech Republic and Slovakia , western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in southeast Lithuania and Latvia . Because of the emigration from Poland during different time periods, most notably after World War II , millions of Polish speakers can also be found in countries such as Canada , Argentina , Brazil , Israel , Australia ,
2714-690: Is mention of a sawmill and of the name of the current wojewoda (governor) Paul. Evidence also exists of a letter from 1456 by the Brandenburg Friedrich II Hohenzollern who had bought the Neumark region from the Teutonic Order in 1455. The letter is addressed to bishop Andrzej of Poznań and to Łukasz Górka, the local Starosta , the royal constable of Wielkopolska . The elector complained that in prevailing peace times some burghers of Snydemole and Piła were making raids on his lands. This accusation may tend to give additional credence to
2832-427: Is most closely related to Slovak and Czech but differs in terms of pronunciation and general grammar. Additionally, Polish was profoundly influenced by Latin and other Romance languages like Italian and French as well as Germanic languages (most notably German ), which contributed to a large number of loanwords and similar grammatical structures. Extensive usage of nonstandard dialects has also shaped
2950-447: Is possible to say ko goście zoba czy li? – here kogo retains its usual stress (first syllable) in spite of the attachment of the clitic. Reanalysis of the endings as inflections when attached to verbs causes the different colloquial stress patterns. These stress patterns are considered part of a "usable" norm of standard Polish - in contrast to the "model" ("high") norm. Some common word combinations are stressed as if they were
3068-595: Is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics , and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals. The traditional 32-letter Polish alphabet has nine additions ( ą , ć , ę , ł , ń , ó , ś , ź , ż ) to the letters of the basic 26-letter Latin alphabet , while removing three (x, q, v). Those three letters are at times included in an extended 35-letter alphabet. The traditional set comprises 23 consonants and 9 written vowels , including two nasal vowels ( ę , ą ) defined by
3186-512: Is the Old Polish language . Ultimately, Polish descends from the unattested Proto-Slavic language. The Book of Henryków (Polish: Księga henrykowska , Latin : Liber fundationis claustri Sanctae Mariae Virginis in Heinrichau ), contains the earliest known sentence written in the Polish language: Day, ut ia pobrusa, a ti poziwai (in modern orthography: Daj, uć ja pobrusza, a ti pocziwaj ;
3304-518: Is the most widely-used minority language in Lithuania's Vilnius County , by 26% of the population, according to the 2001 census results, as Vilnius was part of Poland from 1922 until 1939. Polish is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. In Ukraine, it is most common in the western parts of Lviv and Volyn Oblasts , while in West Belarus it is used by the significant Polish minority, especially in
3422-430: The kropka (superior dot) over the letter ż , and the ogonek ("little tail") under the letters ą, ę . The letters q, v, x are used only in foreign words and names. Polish orthography is largely phonemic —there is a consistent correspondence between letters (or digraphs and trigraphs ) and phonemes (for exceptions see below). The letters of the alphabet and their normal phonemic values are listed in
3540-401: The ś in święty ("holy") all represent the sound / ɕ / . The exceptions to the above rule are certain loanwords from Latin, Italian, French, Russian or English—where s before i is pronounced as s , e.g. sinus , sinologia , do re mi fa sol la si do , Saint-Simon i saint-simoniści , Sierioża , Siergiej , Singapur , singiel . In other loanwords
3658-579: The Brest and Grodno regions and in areas along the Lithuanian border. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries. In the United States , Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. According to the 2000 United States Census , 667,414 Americans of age five years and over reported Polish as
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3776-719: The Congress of Vienna of 1815, Prussia regained the town once again. Under the Prussian administrative reforms of 1816–18, the town became part of the Kolmar District within the Bromberg Region of the Grand Duchy of Posen . On 1 January 1818 Kreis Kolmar was established, with its seat in Piła / Schneidemühl, which in 1821 was moved to Chodzież . One of the main escape routes for insurgents of
3894-532: The Diocese of Koszalin–Kołobrzeg and Diocese of Gorzów . In August 1980, employees of local factories joined the nationwide anti-communist strikes, which led to the foundation of the Solidarity organization, which played a central role in the end of communist rule in Poland. In 1975 Piła became the capital of the newly established Piła Voivodeship (province), which started a period of fast development of industry in
4012-606: The English Channel . The Constable of the Tower of London and those castellans subordinate to the dukes of Normandy were responsible for their administration. Vivian Lipman posits four reasons for this: the castles provided defence, they were centres of administration, their dungeons were used as prisons, and castellans could turn to the Jewish community to borrow money as usury was forbidden to Catholics. A castellany , or castellania,
4130-693: The First Partition of Poland was accomplished. Piła became part of the Kingdom of Prussia and was officially renamed Schneidemühl . After Frederick II of Prussia signed the Ownership Protocol of his Polish lands on 13 September 1772, he created out of the northern parts of Greater Poland and Kuyavia the Département Westpreussen . Part of that area was later also known as the Netzedistrikt ,
4248-771: The Fliegertruppe air service of the German Army throughout the war — it later undertook license production of Fokker's famous Fokker D.VII fighter during the last year of World War I. During the First World War, the Germans operated a prisoner-of-war camp in the city, initially taking mainly Russian POWs (including Poles and Latvians conscripted into the Russian Army) but later including prisoners from most Allied nations including Britain and Australia. A telling account of life in
4366-556: The French Revolution . During the 19th and 20th centuries, châtelain was used to describe the owner of a castle or manor house, in many cases a figure of authority in his parish, akin to the English squire . In Germany the castellan was known as a Burgmann , or sometimes Hauptmann ("captain"), who reported to the lord of the castle, or Burgherr , also often known as the burgrave ( Burggraf ). The burgmann may have been either
4484-524: The Glowno prisoner camp outside of Poznań and held there in detention under inhuman conditions. Over the following two years they were taken to various labour camps, hospices, hospitals in Pomerania, Bielefeld and Berlin. Those who had not committed suicide or had perished during that period were deported to concentration camps, the last in 1943. During World War II a camp for civil prisoners-of-war named "Albatros"
4602-669: The Lodz Voivodeship , and Wojnicz now in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship or Otmuchów in Silesia . In France, castellans (known in French as châtelains ) who governed castellanies without a resident count , acquired considerable powers such that the position became hereditary. By the tenth century, the fragmentation of power had become so widespread that in Mâcon , for instance, where
4720-746: The Officers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem . Anselm was the first such castellan, c. 1110. A castellan was established in Valletta on the island of Malta. In the Kingdom of Poland and later the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , castellans ( Polish : Kasztelan ) were the lowest rung of the territorial administration of the country and deferred to voivodes (with the exception of the Burgrave of Kraków (Polish Burgrabia krakowski ) who had precedence over
4838-575: The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth 's influence gave Polish the status of lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe . The process of standardization began in the 14th century and solidified in the 16th century during the Middle Polish era. Standard Polish was based on various dialectal features, with the Greater Poland dialect group serving as the base. After World War II , Standard Polish became
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4956-491: The Teutonic Order in 1466. A Slavic settlement of woodcutters in the fishing village Piła may have existed before any of the later villages and surrounding towns of the area were established. Thus, in the 14th century Piła grew to some extent because of its position on the Gwda a mere 11 kilometres (7 miles) from where it joins the river Notec. Yet, the settlement developed less than others that were on such major water routes as
5074-511: The United Kingdom and the United States . Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. At the time, it was a collection of dialect groups with some mutual features, but much regional variation was present. Mieszko I , ruler of the Polans tribe from the Greater Poland region, united
5192-611: The Voivode of Kraków ). Castellans were in charge of a subdivision of a voivodeship called the castellany (Polish Kasztelania ) until the 15th-century. From then on castellanies, depending on their size, either became provinces , or in the case of smaller domains were replaced by powiats and the castellan role became honorific and was replaced in situ by a Starosta . Castellans in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth were of senatorial rank and were often appointed from
5310-474: The classical languages , have the stress on the antepenultimate (third-from-last) syllable. For example, fizyka ( /ˈfizɨka/ ) ('physics') is stressed on the first syllable. This may lead to a rare phenomenon of minimal pairs differing only in stress placement, for example muzyka /ˈmuzɨka/ 'music' vs. muzyka /muˈzɨka/ – genitive singular of muzyk 'musician'. When additional syllables are added to such words through inflection or suffixation ,
5428-569: The flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50) , as well as the expulsion of Ukrainians and Operation Vistula , the 1947 migration of Ukrainian minorities in the Recovered Territories in the west of the country, contributed to the country's linguistic homogeneity. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak Polish somewhat differently, although the differences between modern-day vernacular varieties and standard Polish ( język ogólnopolski ) appear relatively slight. Most of
5546-404: The standard language ; considerable colloquialisms and expressions were directly borrowed from German or Yiddish and subsequently adopted into the vernacular of Polish which is in everyday use. Historically, Polish was a lingua franca , important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe . In addition to being the official language of Poland, Polish
5664-479: The "ban" – that is, to hear court cases and collect fines, taxes from residents, and muster local men for the defence of the area or the realm. There are similarities with a lord of the manor . Castellans had the power to administer all local justice, including sentencing and punishments up to and including the death penalty, as when, in 1111, the Salzburg castellan caught the minister fomenting armed rebellion and had
5782-416: The 16th century, which is also regarded as the " Golden Age of Polish literature". The orthography was modified in the 19th century and in 1936. Tomasz Kamusella notes that "Polish is the oldest, non-ecclesiastical, written Slavic language with a continuous tradition of literacy and official use, which has lasted unbroken from the 16th century to this day." Polish evolved into the main sociolect of
5900-481: The 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto (91,810 speakers) and Montreal . The geographical distribution of the Polish language was greatly affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II and Polish population transfers (1944–46) . Poles settled in the " Recovered Territories " in the west and north, which had previously been mostly German -speaking. Some Poles remained in
6018-462: The 9th century, as fortifications improved and kings had difficulty making their subordinates pay their taxes or send the military aid they demanded, castellans grew in power, holding their fiefdoms without much concern for their overlord's demands. This changed as kings grew in power and as the Holy Roman Emperors replaced recalcitrant vassals with rival ministerial appointments. Usually
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#17328517433096136-578: The Henryków monastery, noted that "Hoc est in polonico" ("This is in Polish"). The earliest treatise on Polish orthography was written by Jakub Parkosz [ pl ] around 1470. The first printed book in Polish appeared in either 1508 or 1513, while the oldest Polish newspaper was established in 1661. Starting in the 1520s, large numbers of books in the Polish language were published, contributing to increased homogeneity of grammar and orthography. The writing system achieved its overall form in
6254-495: The Kingdom of Poland. It is known that ten years later the burghers of the town were accused and penalized for tax evasion that had been occurring over a period of five years. However, King Sigismund I the Old —during whose reign immigration of numerous Jews from the Iberian peninsula , Bohemia and German states was encouraged—bestowed municipal rights upon the town of Piła on 4 March 1513,
6372-699: The Küddow into a raging river, when many people were forced to use rowboats to navigate the streets. On 1 April 1914 Schneidemühl was disentangled from the Kolmar District and became an independent city (or urban district; Stadtkreis) within the Bromberg Region. In the months before the outbreak of World War I , in April 1914 the Albatros Flugzeugwerke established the so-called Ostdeutsche Albatros-Werke (East German Albatros Works, abbreviated "O.A.W.") in Schneidemühl for construction of military aircraft for
6490-463: The Prussian and Imperial German government replaced its Polish identity with a German one. By the end of the 19th century the city had become one of the most important railway centers of the region and one of the biggest towns in the Province of Posen . It was turned into a Prussian military garrison town. Schneidemühl was revisited by a catastrophe, known as the Brunnenunglück , or the 'calamity of
6608-671: The Silesian language was recognized by ISO , and was attributed an ISO code of szl. Some additional characteristic but less widespread regional dialects include: Polish linguistics has been characterized by a strong strive towards promoting prescriptive ideas of language intervention and usage uniformity, along with normatively-oriented notions of language "correctness" (unusual by Western standards). Polish has six oral vowels (seven oral vowels in written form), which are all monophthongs , and two nasal vowels . The oral vowels are / i / (spelled i ), / ɨ / (spelled y and also transcribed as /ɘ/ or /ɪ/), / ɛ / (spelled e ), /
6726-479: The archives of the town before 1834—then that period could well be regarded as the time when the village of Piła/Snydemole was elevated to the status of town. The recurring double naming Piła-Snydemole may be because two originally separate localities took their name from the water-powered sawmill that had been part of the town's raison d'être from the beginning. Documented references to Snydemole and Piła are reportedly found in parish church sources of 1449, where there
6844-501: The area as one of the most important cities of the region. It remained a voivodeship capital until the administrative reform of 1999. It is known for its green areas and parks, as well as for its speedway club Polonia Piła who race at the Stadion Polonii Piła . Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows, and there is adequate rainfall year-round. The Köppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate
6962-485: The cases mentioned above, the letter i if followed by another vowel in the same word usually represents / j / , yet a palatalization of the previous consonant is always assumed. The reverse case, where the consonant remains unpalatalized but is followed by a palatalized consonant, is written by using j instead of i : for example, zjeść , "to eat up". The letters ą and ę , when followed by plosives and affricates, represent an oral vowel followed by
7080-490: The castellan of Uxelles annexed first Briançon , then Sennecey-le-Grand and finally l'Épervière. In other areas, castellans did not manage to rise to noble status and remained the local officer of a noble. During the Ancien Régime , castellans were heads of local royal administration, and their power was further delegated to their lieutenants. All remaining lordships and local royal administrators were suppressed during
7198-563: The castellan was called "várnagy", and in the Latin chronicles he appeared as "castellanus". The lord of the castle had very similar functions to those in German lands. In Hungary the King initially designated castellans from among his court for the administration of castles and estates. Later designation of castellans devolved to the most powerful noblemen. At one time there was a castellan nominated from among
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#17328517433097316-505: The castellanies of Ivry-la-Bataille , Nonancourt , Pacy-sur-Eure , Vernon and Gaillon , all in Normandy, which under in the treaty of Issoudun of 1195, after a war with King Richard I of England , were acquired for the French crown by Philip Augustus . Examples of castellanies in Poland include: Łęczyca and Sieradz (both duchies at one time), Spycimierz , Rozprza , Wolbórz now in
7434-427: The castellany was the basic unit of governance, there was no effective administrative level above it, so that the counts of Mâcon were largely ignored by their subordinate castellans from about 980 to 1030. In the 12th century châtelains had become "lords" in their own right and were able to expand their territories to include weaker castellanies. Thus the castellan of Beaujeu was able to take over lands in Lyons , or
7552-405: The city was destroyed and almost 90% of the historic city centre was in ruins. As a result of the border changes agreed at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, the city became again part of Poland, although with a Soviet-installed communist regime, which stayed in power until the Fall of Communism in the 1980s. The city's historic Polish name Piła was restored. The remaining local German population
7670-418: The corresponding sentence in modern Polish: Daj, niech ja pomielę, a ty odpoczywaj or Pozwól, że ja będę mełł, a ty odpocznij ; and in English: Come, let me grind, and you take a rest ), written around 1280. The book is exhibited in the Archdiocesal Museum in Wrocław, and as of 2015 has been added to UNESCO 's " Memory of the World " list. The medieval recorder of this phrase, the Cistercian monk Peter of
7788-492: The death of her brother, Roger. Similarly, Agnes became the castellan of Harlech Castle upon the death of her husband John de Bonvillars in 1287. The title of "governor" is retained in the English prison system , as a remnant of the medieval idea of the castellan as head of the local prison. During the Migration Period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (third to sixth century), foreign tribes entered Western Europe, causing strife. The answer to recurrent invasion
7906-479: The disappearance of yers . Polish can have word-initial and word-medial clusters of up to four consonants, whereas word-final clusters can have up to five consonants. Examples of such clusters can be found in words such as bezwzględny [bɛzˈvzɡlɛndnɨ] ('absolute' or 'heartless', 'ruthless'), źdźbło [ˈʑd͡ʑbwɔ] ('blade of grass'), wstrząs [ˈfstʂɔw̃s] ('shock'), and krnąbrność [ˈkrnɔmbrnɔɕt͡ɕ] ('disobedience'). A popular Polish tongue-twister (from
8024-430: The distinction between regular penultimate and exceptional antepenultimate stress. Another class of exceptions is verbs with the conditional endings -by, -bym, -byśmy , etc. These endings are not counted in determining the position of the stress; for example, zro biłbym ('I would do') is stressed on the first syllable, and zro bi libyśmy ('we would do') on the second. According to prescriptive authorities ,
8142-410: The duties of a castellan consisted of military responsibility for the castle's garrison , maintaining defences and protecting the castle's lands, combined with the legal administration of local lands and workers including the castle's domestic staff. The responsibility applied even where there was no resident castellan at the castle, or if he was frequently absent. A castellan could exercise the power of
8260-399: The earlier claim that Queen Jadwiga in the 1380s was indeed the founder of the town of Piła. Until 1480 Piła was a town owned by the nobility, belonging to Maciej Opaliński who later presented his holdings to King Casimir IV Jagiellon , at which time Piła became a royal town . Administratively it was located in the Poznań County in the Poznań Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of
8378-415: The eastern parts of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth wrote Polish in the Arabic alphabet. The Cyrillic script is used to a certain extent today by Polish speakers in Western Belarus , especially for religious texts. The diacritics used in the Polish alphabet are the kreska (graphically similar to the acute accent ) over the letters ć, ń, ó, ś, ź and through the letter in ł ;
8496-420: The end of words (where devoicing occurs) and in certain consonant clusters (where assimilation occurs). For details, see Voicing and devoicing in the article on Polish phonology. Most Polish words are paroxytones (that is, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable of a polysyllabic word), although there are exceptions. Polish permits complex consonant clusters, which historically often arose from
8614-469: The entire country. Polish has traditionally been described as consisting of three to five main regional dialects: Silesian and Kashubian , spoken in Upper Silesia and Pomerania respectively, are thought of as either Polish dialects or distinct languages , depending on the criteria used. Kashubian contains a number of features not found elsewhere in Poland, e.g. nine distinct oral vowels (vs.
8732-465: The following 150 years, numerous privileges and charters were re-issued by the Polish crown, mainly as a result of loss by fire. By 1591 a statute allowing apprenticeships in various trades was obtained. In 1593 King Sigismund III Vasa confirmed old privileges of Piła. When the widowed Sigismund III Vasa married princess Constance , an Austrian archduchess from the House of Habsburg , in 1605, he presented
8850-462: The following table. The following digraphs and trigraphs are used: Voiced consonant letters frequently come to represent voiceless sounds (as shown in the tables); this occurs at the end of words and in certain clusters, due to the neutralization mentioned in the Phonology section above. Occasionally also voiceless consonant letters can represent voiced sounds in clusters. The spelling rule for
8968-462: The freestanding structure of Schneidemühl's 100-year-old synagogue became a prime target for the Nazis who set fire to it. In 1939, in the city and the region, the Germans carried out mass arrests of Polish activists, who then were imprisoned in a temporary camp in the city before deportation to Nazi concentration camps , some were even tortured. In October 1939, a German camp for Sinti and Romani people
9086-423: The frequent changes of ownership of the town, as Piła was 'purchased' in 1518 by Hieronymus von Bnin; the document outlining the deed and ownership during his lifetime was given to him by King Sigismund I in 1525. Following the demise of Bnin, the town became the property of the dynasty of the mighty Gorka family. This family, secretly leaning toward Protestantism and in power until the 17th century, included some of
9204-512: The hands of the crown or its deputy, the Starosta. The sovereign, however, remained the ultimate judge, warlord and owner of the land. Being free from the arbitrariness of a Castellan or of Wojewoda (governor of the province)—Piła's town folk took advantage of the town's privileges by owning property, carrying on any trade and enjoying the right to hold much needed market fairs . Economic circumstances or personal feuds may have been responsible for
9322-398: The headquarters of the government region , reduced by the districts ceded to Brandenburg and Silesia, but enlarged by four previously Brandenburgian and Pomeranian districts and renamed as Frontier March of Posen-West Prussia Region [ de ] ( Regierungsbezirk Grenzmark Posen-Westpreußen ) for reasons of tradition, as of 1 October 1938. During the pogrom of 9/10 November 1938
9440-538: The language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of people who speak languages other than English , 0.25% of the US population, and 6% of the Polish-American population. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census (over 50%) were found in three states: Illinois (185,749), New York (111,740), and New Jersey (74,663). Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services (which has
9558-457: The largely German and Protestant burghers of Piła, accusing them of collusion with the Swedes. During the consecutive Great Northern and Seven Years' Wars similar havoc was visited upon the remaining inhabitants. To add to the plight, it was discovered that the plague had been carried in. With the signing of the definitive treaty to divide Poland between Prussia , Austria and Russia in 1772,
9676-537: The latter encompassing the Starosty Ujscie-Piła, the area between the rivers Gwda, Notec and Drage. Stara Piła, the old Piła, a town that never had walls, was slow to grow. By the middle of the 16th century, many German Protestant craftsmen and traders, driven out of Bohemia by religious persecution during the Reformation , settled in numerous towns in the region. Some may have settled in Piła too, yet in 1563
9794-439: The letter y . The predominant stress pattern in Polish is penultimate stress – in a word of more than one syllable, the next-to-last syllable is stressed. Alternating preceding syllables carry secondary stress, e.g. in a four-syllable word, where the primary stress is on the third syllable, there will be secondary stress on the first. Each vowel represents one syllable, although the letter i normally does not represent
9912-611: The local prison. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles , and after much protest by the German majority of its population, Schneidemühl was not included in the Polish Second Republic . After the Greater Poland Uprising, the new Polish-German border ran five kilometres (3.1 miles) south of the city. On 21 July 1922 Schneidemühl became the administrative centre of the new Frontier March of Posen-West Prussia Province ,
10030-431: The middle aged and young speak vernaculars close to standard Polish, while the traditional dialects are preserved among older people in rural areas. First-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty recognizing the regional and social differences. The modern standard dialect , often termed as "correct Polish", is spoken or at least understood throughout
10148-469: The most German of areas where seventeen Protestant villages existed, be handed over to the Roman Catholic clergy, hounding many a German Protestant burgher in the process. After one of the town's frequent fires in 1619, the queen—in a benevolent gesture and as her 'present' to the burghers of Piła—appropriated funds from the large estate to have the old burnt-out wooden Catholic Church rebuilt. Alas, given
10266-460: The most widely spoken variant of Polish across the country, and most dialects stopped being the form of Polish spoken in villages. Poland is one of the most linguistically homogeneous European countries; nearly 97% of Poland's citizens declare Polish as their first language . Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in areas which were once administered or occupied by Poland, notably in neighboring Lithuania , Belarus , and Ukraine . Polish
10384-423: The name Tarzan . Castellan Philosophers Works A castellan , or constable , was the governor of a castle in medieval Europe . Its surrounding territory was referred to as the castellany. The word stems from castellanus . A castellan was almost always male, but could occasionally be female, as when, in 1194, Beatrice of Bourbourg inherited her father's castellany of Bourbourg upon
10502-409: The newly created ghetto, the decree called for a sizable trench to be dug to surround the Jewish quarters where feasible; otherwise a tall wooden fence had to serve to close in the area completely. A new church arose in 1628. Unlike most other buildings in town, the choir room section of this edifice was to remain intact in its original form until 1945. New houses were constructed of brick and stone and
10620-496: The nobility, but not exclusively so. In Portugal, a castellan was known as an Alcaide . Later, the role of the alcaide became an honorary title awarded by the King of Portugal to certain nobles. As the honorary holder of the office of alcaide did not often live near the castle, a delegate started to be appointed to effectively govern it in his place. An honorary holder of the office became known as alcaide-mor (major alcaide ) and
10738-529: The nobles in Poland–Lithuania in the 15th century. The history of Polish as a language of state governance begins in the 16th century in the Kingdom of Poland . Over the later centuries, Polish served as the official language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , Congress Poland , the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , and as the administrative language in the Russian Empire 's Western Krai . The growth of
10856-399: The offender blinded, "as one would a serf". Later the castellan came to serve as the representative of the people of his castellany. So happened in the case of the castellan of Bruges , when the burghers stood up for more privileges and liberties from the counts of Flanders . A particular responsibility in western Europe concerned jurisdiction over the resident Jewish communities bordering
10974-659: The others being Czech orthography and Croatian orthography , the last of these being a 19th-century invention trying to make a compromise between the first two. Kashubian uses a Polish-based system, Slovak uses a Czech-based system, and Slovene follows the Croatian one; the Sorbian languages blend the Polish and the Czech ones. Historically, Poland's once diverse and multi-ethnic population utilized many forms of scripture to write Polish. For instance, Lipka Tatars and Muslims inhabiting
11092-401: The palatal sounds / ɕ / , / ʑ / , / tɕ / , / dʑ / and / ɲ / is as follows: before the vowel i the plain letters s, z, c, dz, n are used; before other vowels the combinations si, zi, ci, dzi, ni are used; when not followed by a vowel the diacritic forms ś, ź, ć, dź, ń are used. For example, the s in siwy ("grey-haired"), the si in siarka ("sulfur") and
11210-595: The port of Gdynia by sea to Sweden . The local Home Army also maintained contact with Polish POWs held in the Oflag II-C camp. The city became part of the Pomeranian Wall line of fortifications. In 1945 the town was declared a fortress by Adolf Hitler . During the East Pomeranian offensive it was captured by the joint Polish and Red Army forces after two weeks of heavy fighting on 14 February 1945. 75% of
11328-511: The previously Polish-ruled territories in the east that were annexed by the USSR , resulting in the present-day Polish-speaking communities in Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, although many Poles were expelled from those areas to areas within Poland's new borders. To the east of Poland, the most significant Polish minority lives in a long strip along either side of the Lithuania - Belarus border. Meanwhile,
11446-406: The random, close proximity of houses to one another, town fires occurred with such regularity in numerous communities during that period that in 1626 another devastating fire broke out in Piła. This time the entire town was laid to ashes, including the newly built church. Constance subsequently charged her secretary Samuel Targowski on 15 July 1626 to survey what was left of the town. His proposal for
11564-602: The reduced German Reich. Schneidemühl's population swelled by about 10,000 to 37,518, creating considerable publicity in Germany. In 1930 Schneidemühl replaced Tütz ( Tuczno ) as seat of the Catholic jurisdiction, which was promoted from Apostolic administration to Territorial Prelature of Schneidemühl within the Eastern German Ecclesiastical Province . The city experienced a short period of growth followed by
11682-460: The rivers Warta or Vistula. Piła's simple layout of unpaved streets and primitive clay and timber houses gave little protection to its inhabitants and was still far from becoming a commercially interesting locale. If one were to credit a Privilegium ( charter ) of the early 1380s as evidence, a document associated with the building of a church in Piła and ascribed to the very young Polish Queen Jadwiga of Poland —a copied document that still existed in
11800-540: The same applies to the first and second person plural past tense endings -śmy, -ście , although this rule is often ignored in colloquial speech (so zro bi liśmy 'we did' should be prescriptively stressed on the second syllable, although in practice it is commonly stressed on the third as zrobi li śmy ). These irregular stress patterns are explained by the fact that these endings are detachable clitics rather than true verbal inflections: for example, instead of ko go zoba czy liście? ('whom did you see?') it
11918-410: The series of affricate and palatal consonants that resulted from four Proto-Slavic palatalizations and two further palatalizations that took place in Polish. The full set of consonants, together with their most common spellings, can be presented as follows (although other phonological analyses exist): Neutralization occurs between voiced – voiceless consonant pairs in certain environments, at
12036-500: The six of standard Polish) 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 . However, it was described by some linguists as lacking most of the linguistic and social determinants of language-hood. Many linguistic sources categorize Silesian as a regional language separate from Polish, while some consider Silesian to be
12154-478: The small town had no more than 750 inhabitants. They are known to have lived in 153 houses, primitively built, primarily with timber and clay, covered with straw and grouped mainly around the Old Market. When King Stephen Báthory of Poland confirmed two of the town's privileges on 3 September 1576, the burghers were granted the right to hold their weekly market on a Monday (instead of Thursday), an important feat. Over
12272-494: The stress normally becomes regular. For example, uniwersytet ( /uɲiˈvɛrsɨtɛt/ , 'university') has irregular stress on the third (or antepenultimate) syllable, but the genitive uniwersytetu ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛtu/ ) and derived adjective uniwersytecki ( /uɲivɛrsɨˈtɛt͡skʲi/ ) have regular stress on the penultimate syllables. Loanwords generally become nativized to have penultimate stress. In psycholinguistic experiments, speakers of Polish have been demonstrated to be sensitive to
12390-552: The town during that period survives in the form of the diary of Piete Kuhr , then a young girl whose grandmother worked at the Red Cross canteen at the railway station. After World War I, in 1918, Poland regained independence, and the Greater Poland Uprising broke out, which aim was to reintegrate the region with Poland. Local Poles were persecuted for their pro-Polish stance by the Germans, who also held Polish insurgents in
12508-408: The town of Piła, together with the lands of the domain of Ujście, as a wedding gift to his new bride. She became responsible for changing Piła in several ways over the next few decades. Acting in concert with the tenets of the prevailing Catholic Counter Reformation , the queen first attended to what seemed closest to her heart. She saw to it that numerous Protestant churches in the region of Wałcz ,
12626-456: The town was prepared for a major conflagration. 44 houses, 37 stables and 17 barns burned down. In 1793 Piła was recaptured for a short period by a Polish army led by Colonel Wyganowski. Following Prussia's defeat in the battle of Jena and Greater Poland uprising (1806) , and after signing the Peace of Tilsit of 7 July 1807, Piła became part of the semi-independent Polish Duchy of Warsaw . After
12744-559: The town was reconstructed in plain Renaissance style. Polish Kings confirmed old privileges of Piła again in 1633 and 1650, and granted new privileges in 1660, 1670 and 1688, which were then confirmed in 1716. On 24 July 1655, during the Deluge , Swedish troops captured the predominantly Lutheran town and destroyed most of its buildings and infrastructure. During October 1656, a Polish troupe of Stefan Czarniecki 's army sought retribution upon
12862-516: The town's suburb Berliner Vorstadt. In the summer of 1834 the city was again struck by a fire that destroyed a large part of the city centre and the city archives. The city was rebuilt shortly afterwards. In 1851 the city was connected to Berlin and Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) by the Prussian Eastern Railway . An architectural artifact which remains from the railway development period is a historical roundhouse . The Germanisation policy of
12980-512: The unsuccessful Polish November Uprising from partitioned Poland to the Great Emigration led through the city. The Polish language was restricted from offices and education and the city saw a significant influx of German settlers. By 1834 Schneidemühl had barely recovered from the worst outbreak of cholera of 1831, an epidemic that affected the town's burghers to such an extent that a special Protestant cholera cemetery had to be laid out in
13098-563: The vowel i is changed to y , e.g. Syria , Sybir , synchronizacja , Syrakuzy . The following table shows the correspondence between the sounds and spelling: Digraphs and trigraphs are used: Similar principles apply to / kʲ / , / ɡʲ / , / xʲ / and /lʲ/ , except that these can only occur before vowels, so the spellings are k, g, (c)h, l before i , and ki, gi, (c)hi, li otherwise. Most Polish speakers, however, do not consider palatalization of k, g, (c)h or l as creating new sounds. Except in
13216-469: The wealthiest landowners and most influential nobles of Poland and was known to be benevolent to their town's folk. In 1548 Piła obtained a privilege that banned any foreign potter from the town's markets, and in 1561 a fishing privilege was obtained. Piła was part of the Poznań Voivodeship , the region divided into the four starostwa (land holdings) of Poznań , Kościan , Wschowa and Wałcz ,
13334-484: The well' that made national headlines. The drilling of an artesian well in August 1892 went horribly wrong and led to unexpected widespread flooding of many of the streets laid out in 1834, causing numerous houses to simply collapse and leaving more than eighty families without shelter. The worst was that this disaster came only a few years on the heels of unexpected flooding caused by the spring thaw of March 1888 that had turned
13452-443: The word, the phoneme / x / can be spelt h or ch , the phoneme / ʐ / can be spelt ż or rz , and / u / can be spelt u or ó . In several cases it determines the meaning, for example: może ("maybe") and morze ("sea"). In occasional words, letters that normally form a digraph are pronounced separately. For example, rz represents /rz/ , not / ʐ / , in words like zamarzać ("freeze") and in
13570-632: Was expelled by Polish and Soviet troops from 1945 to 1948 in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement , while Polish expelees from former eastern Poland annexed by the Soviet Union and settlers from areas of central Poland, which were destroyed during the war, were resettled in the city. The historical city centre was only partially restored. In 1972 the Territorial Prelature of Piła was suppressed, its territory being reassigned to establish
13688-526: Was established. Poles expelled from Gmina Dziemiany in Gdańsk Pomerania were used as forced labour in the local aviation industry. Also seven forced labour subcamps of the Stalag II-B prisoner-of-war camp and a forced labour camp, which was subordinate to the local prison, were operated in the city. Several British POWs escaped, and then the Polish resistance facilitated their further escape through
13806-420: Was established. The city's 300-year-old Jewish community was destroyed when on 21 March 1940, on the order of Gauleiter Schwede-Coburg, the last remaining Jews, together with more than 500 Jews of the surrounding area within an 80 km (50 mi) radius, were arrested and held prisoner in various locations in the city. A large number of them were subsequently taken to the forced labour camp Radinkendorf and
13924-403: Was to create fortified areas which evolved into castles . Some military leaders gained control of several areas, each with a castle. The problem lay in exerting control and authority in each area when a leader could only be in one place at a time. To overcome this, they appointed castellans as their trusted vassals to manage a castle in exchange for obligations to the landlord, often a noble. In
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