99-790: The Zamość Synagogue ( Polish : Synagoga Dawna w Zamościu ), also the Zamość Old Synagogue or the Great Synagogue of Zamość , is a former Jewish congregation and synagogue , located in Zamość , in Lublin Voivodeship , Poland . Completed in 1618 in the Renaissance style, the synagogue is a UNESCO-protected World Heritage Site of Poland . Erected during the times of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , it functioned as
198-499: 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
297-456: A couple of millions PLN ; the Foundation is taking steps in order to obtain sufficient funds for renovation works, but it is a tremendous challenge. The assigning of new functions to the building, including use as an art gallery, concert and theatre hall, has been deemed necessary to attain funds for necessary conservation works, although this has proved a controversial move. Another organisation,
396-502: A degree be considered to represent the complete reality. It mostly focused on the elements that attract attention, rather than on an "average Jew". Also, in successful America, memories of shtetl , in addition to sufferings, were colored with nostalgia and sentimentalism. Chełm figures prominently in the Jewish humor as the legendary town of fools : the Wise Men of Chelm . Kasrilevke ,
495-759: 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
594-656: 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
693-543: A fictional story set in the Ukrainian shtetl Trachimbrod ( Trochenbrod ). The 1992 children's book Something from Nothing , written and illustrated by Phoebe Gilman , is an adaptation of a traditional Jewish folk tale set in a fictional shtetl . In 1996 the Frontline programme " Shtetl " broadcast; it was about Polish Christian and Jewish relations. Harry Turtledove 's 2011 short story "Shtetl Days", begins in
792-511: 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
891-533: 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,
990-454: 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
1089-572: A nearby forest or taken to the various concentration camps . Some shtetl inhabitants were able to emigrate before and after the Holocaust, which resulted in many Ashkenazi Jewish traditions being passed on. However, the shtetl as a community of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe, as well as much of the culture specific to this way of life, was all but eradicated by the Nazis. In the later part of
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#17328800584591188-615: A place of worship for Polish Jews until World War II , when the Nazis turned the interior into a carpenters ' workshop. The structure was spared from destruction and in 1992 was listed as a World Heritage Site as part of the Old City of Zamość . Following WWII, the building fell into disrepair and was used for profane purposes. Restored from 2005, the building was repurposed as a Jewish museum . The first Jews settled in Zamość in 1588, eight years after
1287-411: A response—often with lightning speed—is a modest reproduction of the pilpul process. The May Laws introduced by Tsar Alexander III of Russia in 1882 banned Jews from rural areas and towns of fewer than ten thousand people. In the 20th century, revolutions, civil wars, industrialisation and the Holocaust destroyed traditional shtetl existence. The decline of the shtetl started from about
1386-402: 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
1485-491: 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,
1584-506: A strong sense of community. The shtetl "at its heart, it was a community of faith built upon a deeply rooted religious culture". A Jewish education was most paramount in shtetls . Men and boys could spend up to 10 hours a day dedicated to studying at a yeshiva . Discouraged from Talmudic study, women would perform the necessary tasks of a household. In addition, shtetls offered communal institutions such as synagogues, ritual baths and ritual food processors. Tzedakah (charity)
1683-486: A typical shtetl reminiscent of the works of Aleichem , Roth, et al., but soon reveals a plot twist which subverts the genre. The award-winning 2014 novel The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk features many shtetl communities across the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Many Jewish artists in Eastern Europe dedicated much of their artistic careers to depictions of the shtetl . These include Marc Chagall , Chaim Goldberg , and Mané-Katz . Their contribution
1782-405: 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
1881-463: A village is called a dorf ( Yiddish : דאָרף ). Shtetl is a diminutive of shtot with the meaning 'little town'. Despite the existence of Jewish self-administration ( kehilla / kahal ), officially there were no separate Jewish municipalities, and the shtetl was referred to as a miasteczko (or mestechko , in Russian bureaucracy), a type of settlement which originated in
1980-478: 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
2079-684: 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
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#17328800584592178-531: Is a key element of Jewish culture, both secular and religious, to this day. Tzedakah was essential for shtetl Jews, many of whom lived in poverty. Acts of philanthropy aided social institutions such as schools and orphanages. Jews viewed giving charity as an opportunity to do a good deed ( chesed ). This approach to good deeds finds its roots in Jewish religious views, summarized in Pirkei Avot by Shimon Hatzaddik 's "three pillars": On three things
2277-562: Is also sometimes called a shtetl . Brno , Czech Republic , has a significant Jewish history and Yiddish words are part of the now dying-out Hantec slang . The word " štetl " (pronounced shtetl ) refers to Brno itself. Qırmızı Qəsəbə , in Azerbaijan , thought to be the only 100% Jewish community not in Israel or the United States, has been described as a shtetl . Not only did
2376-419: 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 ,
2475-411: Is going to present the history of penetration and mutual enrichment of Polish and Jewish culture in the Zamość region. It will also introduce those Jews, who contributed to the intellectual, religious and cultural history of the region. Unfortunately the building of the Zamość synagogue is in a very bad condition and urgently requires a complex restoration. The cost of the restoration works is estimated for
2574-427: 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
2673-506: Is never clearly defined. He argued that the whole Jewish life in Eastern Europe, not only in shtetls , "was in a state of permanent crisis, both political and economic, of social uncertainty and cultural conflicts". Rosenberg outlines a number of reasons for the image of "disintegrating shtetl '" and other kinds of stereotyping. For one, it was an "anti- shtetl " propaganda of the Zionist movement. Yiddish and Hebrew literature can only to
2772-447: 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
2871-595: 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
2970-641: Is the Aron Kodesh on the Eastern wall which dates from the first half of the 17th century. The lavishly decorated stone carved frame depicts motifs of ritual vessels used at the Temple in Jerusalem and a Torah crown . The octagonal iron bimah was located at the center of the prayer hall and was a gift by Shmuel Barzel in 1787. The prayer hall also boasted a number of majestic candelabras . Today nothing remains either of
3069-512: 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 ;
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3168-518: 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
3267-430: 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
3366-401: 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
3465-579: 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
3564-733: The Bug River , which in 1939 became the border with the Soviet Union . However, most of these escapees were murdered when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. The Nazis imprisoned those remaining in a ghetto (the Zamość Ghetto ), from which they were transported to the Bełżec death camp . During the Holocaust the synagogue suffered major damage, especially to the northern parts that were destroyed by
3663-488: The Lower East Side of New York City in the early 20th century, and predominantly Hasidic communities such as Kiryas Joel and New Square today. A shtetl is defined by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern as "an East European market town in private possession of a Polish magnate , inhabited mostly but not exclusively by Jews" and from the 1790s onward and until 1915 shtetls were also "subject to Russian bureaucracy", as
3762-575: 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
3861-530: The Russian Empire had annexed the eastern part of Poland , and was administering the area where the settlement of Jews was permitted . The concept of shtetl culture describes the traditional way of life of East European Jews. In literature by authors such as Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer , shtetls are portrayed as pious communities following Orthodox Judaism , socially stable and unchanging despite outside influence or attacks. The history of
3960-483: The Torah , it is assumed that everything has deeper and secondary meanings, which must be probed. All subjects have implications and ramifications. Moreover, the person who makes a statement must have a reason, and this too must be probed. Often a comment will evoke an answer to the assumed reason behind it or to the meaning believed to lie beneath it, or to the remote consequences to which it leads. The process that produces such
4059-452: The UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites ). The Old Synagogue is a prominent example of late Polish Renaissance or Mannerist style in harmony with the general urban design. The prayer hall represents the core of the building and during the middle of the 17th century two low porches for women were added to the north and south elevations. Similar to that found in other Polish synagogues, the floor
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4158-511: 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
4257-569: The Yaacov Magid of Dubno Fund (YMDF), established in 2001, names that one of its aims is to "restore the splendid interior of the synagogue to its former glory". Angered by the way the FODZ has utilised the site in order to raise funds, they approached the UN representative of Agudath Israel of America to request intervention in protecting the holy site from "unholy purposes". In September 2009, restoration work
4356-474: 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 ,
4455-569: 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
4554-404: 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
4653-416: 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
4752-461: The 1840s. Contributing factors included poverty as a result of changes in economic climate (including industrialisation which hurt the traditional Jewish artisan and the movement of trade to the larger towns), repeated fires destroying the wooden homes, and overpopulation. Also, the anti-Semitism of the Russian Imperial administrators and the Polish landlords, as well as the resultant pogroms in
4851-399: The 1880s, made life difficult for residents of the shtetl . From the 1880s until 1915 up to 2 million Jews left Eastern Europe. At the time about three-quarters of its Jewish population lived in areas defined as shtetl s . The Holocaust resulted in the total extermination of these towns. It was not uncommon for the entire Jewish population of a shtetl to be rounded up and murdered in
4950-469: The 18th century with additions from the 19th century, and the cheder . After the Second World War it was transformed into a hotel . The 18th-century building of the former Mikveh , renovated in the 19th century, is located in the cellars at 3 Zamenhofa Street (previously ul. Żydowska - "Jewish Street"). The synagogue was one of the first properties to be officially returned to the Jewish community by
5049-481: 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
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#17328800584595148-592: The 20th century, Hasidic Jews founded new communities in the United States, such as Kiryas Joel and New Square , and they sometimes use the term " shtetl " to refer to these enclaves in Yiddish, particularly those with village structures. In Europe, the Orthodox community in Antwerp , Belgium , is widely described as the last shtetl , composed of about 12,000 people. The Gateshead , United Kingdom Orthodox community
5247-658: The Eastern fringes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and most notably on his hometown Brody . Many of Isaac Bashevis Singer 's short stories and novels are set in shtetls . Singer's mother was the daughter of the rabbi of Biłgoraj , a town in south-eastern Poland. As a child, Singer lived in Biłgoraj for periods with his family, and he wrote that life in the small town made a deep impression on him. The 2002 novel Everything Is Illuminated , by Jonathan Safran Foer , tells
5346-460: The Germans. The synagogue was vandalized and looted and then used as a carpenters ' workshop. During 1948–1950 it was rebuilt in the communist period and from 1958 until early in the 21st century the building served as a public library . A second restoration of the building was conducted during 1967-1972. Currently next to the building of the synagogue is the former office of the community, dating from
5445-578: 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
5544-458: The Jews of the shtetls speak Yiddish , a language rarely spoken by outsiders, but they also had a unique rhetorical style, rooted in traditions of Talmudic learning: In keeping with his own conception of contradictory reality, the man of the shtetl is noted both for volubility and for laconic, allusive speech. Both pictures are true, and both are characteristic of the yeshiva as well as
5643-577: The Polish government in 2000 and in 2004 the public library which used the building moved to another location. In 2009 a major reconstruction of the synagogue was underway under the auspices of the Warsaw-based Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland. A permanent exhibit will feature a "virtual tour" of the many Jewish shtetls that existed in this region before the Holocaust . In addition to being available for prayer services,
5742-671: 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 ), /
5841-410: The Zamość area. The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland website states: Together with city's authorities and local non-governmental organizations , we want to renovate the Zamość synagogue and make it a vibrant cultural centre which will serve all the people from Zamość and its environs. The synagogue will also house a Museum of Jews from Zamość and the Zamość region. The Museum
5940-515: The areas that constituted the 19th-century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire (constituting modern-day Belarus , Lithuania , Moldova , Ukraine , Poland , Latvia and Russia ), as well as in Congress Poland , Austrian Galicia , the Kingdom of Romania and the Kingdom of Hungary . In Yiddish, a larger city, like Lviv or Chernivtsi , is called a shtot ( Yiddish : שטאָט ), and
6039-572: The bimah or of the candelabra. The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ) [2] together with the local authorities, NGOs including the World Monuments Fund and the Israeli Organization of Zamość Jewry , aim to establish in the synagogue a cultural center that will provide housing and support for various local initiatives, as well as the Museum of Jews from
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#17328800584596138-485: 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
6237-687: 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
6336-423: The current brick building was erected, taking eight years to complete. The original Sephardi community ceased to exist in the 1620s when it assimilated into the fledgling Ashkenazi community, following an economic crisis caused by the accumulation of bad debts by Polish debtors. Ashkenazi Jews had begun settling in Zamość at the beginning of the 17th century having been attracted by the commercial significance of
6435-479: 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
6534-430: 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 ,
6633-520: 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 ;
6732-420: 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
6831-469: 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.
6930-462: 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
7029-408: The former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and was formally recognized in the Russian Empire as well. For clarification, the expression "Jewish miasteczko " was often used. The shtetl as a phenomenon of Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe was destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The term is sometimes used to describe largely Jewish communities in the United States, such as existed on
7128-525: The founding of the town by Chancellor Jan Zamoyski . They were Sephardim coming from the Ottoman Empire and Venice and consequently established the northernmost Sephardi community in Central and Eastern Europe . It was the Sephardim that built the first synagogue in Zamość in the 1590s as a wooden structure. In 1610, after restrictions prohibiting Jews from building synagogues from stone were rescinded,
7227-538: 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
7326-439: 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
7425-483: The market places. When the scholar converses with his intellectual peers, incomplete sentences, a hint, a gesture, may replace a whole paragraph. The listener is expected to understand the full meaning on the basis of a word or even a sound... Such a conversation, prolonged and animated, may be as incomprehensible to the uninitiated as if the excited discussants were talking in tongues. The same verbal economy may be found in domestic or business circles. Shtetls provided
7524-431: 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
7623-460: 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
7722-520: The name Tarzan . Shtetls Shtetl or shtetel is a Yiddish term for small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust . The term is used in the context of former East European Jewish societies as mandated islands within the surrounding non-Jewish populace, and thus bears certain connotations of discrimination. Shtetls (or shtetels , shtetlach , shtetelach or shtetlekh ) were mainly found in
7821-526: 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
7920-417: The oldest Eastern European shtetls began around the 13th century. Throughout this history, shtetls saw periods of relative tolerance and prosperity as well as times of extreme poverty and hardships, including pogroms in the 19th-century Russian Empire. According to Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog (1962): The attitudes and thought habits characteristic of the learning tradition are as evident in
8019-659: 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
8118-401: 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
8217-511: 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,
8316-640: The restored main prayer hall of the synagogue will be used for lectures and concerts. The other synagogue in Zamość is at 32 Gminna Street in the Nowa Osada district. It was erected in 1872 and extended during 1909–1913. In 1948 it was turned into a kindergarten. The town of Zamość was built and designed as a renaissance "citta ideale" or " ideal city " by the Italian architect Bernardo Morando for chancellor Zamoyski (the Old City quarter of Zamość has been placed on
8415-410: The roof. The synagogue was last renovated during the period 1967–1972 when the building received a new roof parapet and exterior decoration including decorative painting, the original of which was removed during the 18th century. The work followed an early seventeenth-century engraving and the appearance of other local buildings. Since that time no major works took place in the synagogue. The vaults of
8514-540: 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
8613-410: 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
8712-569: The setting of many of Sholem Aleichem 's stories, and Anatevka, the setting of the musical Fiddler on the Roof (based on other stories of Sholem Aleichem), are other notable fictional shtetls . Devorah Baron made aliyah to Ottoman Palestine in 1910, after a pogrom destroyed her shtetl near Minsk . But she continued writing about shtetl life long after she had arrived in Palestine. Many of Joseph Roth 's books are based on shtetls on
8811-500: 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
8910-530: The street and market place as the yeshiva . The popular picture of the Jew in Eastern Europe, held by Jew and Gentile alike, is true to the Talmudic tradition. The picture includes the tendency to examine, analyze and re-analyze, to seek meanings behind meanings and for implications and secondary consequences. It includes also a dependence on deductive logic as a basis for practical conclusions and actions. In life, as in
9009-494: 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
9108-403: The synagogue, both in the main hall and in the porches, are richly decorated with stucco in the so-called "Kalish-Lublin" style. Floral motifs including a stylized Tree of Life , crowns, and rosettes are also to be found. The walls used to bear very rich paintings and numerous Hebrew inscriptions. One of the only features remaining that indicates its former use as a Jewish house of prayer
9207-453: The town. The influx of Ashkenazi Jews increased in the 1640s, especially by refugees fleeing the anti-Jewish massacres perpetrated by the troops of Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the Ukrainian revolt against Polish rule. Today only 3 Jews live in Zamość. In 1939 there were over 12,000 who made up 45% of the city's population. Of these 4,000 initially managed to escape the Holocaust by crossing
9306-563: 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
9405-443: 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
9504-441: The world stands. On Torah, On service [of God], And on acts of human kindness. Material things were neither disdained nor extremely praised in the shtetl . Learning and education were the ultimate measures of worth in the eyes of the community, while money was secondary to status. As the shtetl formed an entire town and community, residents worked diverse jobs such as shoe-making , metallurgy, or tailoring of clothes. Studying
9603-588: Was begun at the hands of the FODZ. The bulk of the funding for the restoration came from the European Economic Area and Norway Grants , which was established by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to support various social and economic projects throughout Europe, as well as from the World Monuments Fund . Polish language Polish ( endonym : język polski , [ˈjɛ̃zɘk ˈpɔlskʲi] , polszczyzna [pɔlˈʂt͡ʂɘzna] or simply polski , [ˈpɔlskʲi] )
9702-518: Was considered the most valuable and hardest work of all. Learned yeshiva men who did not provide bread and relied on their wives for money were not frowned upon but praised. There is a belief found in historical and literary writings that the shtetl disintegrated before it was destroyed during World War II; however, Joshua Rosenberg of the Institute of East-European Jewish Affairs at Brandeis University argued that this alleged cultural break-up
9801-428: Was lowered in order to increase the height of the interior. This was due to restrictions preventing a synagogue being built higher than a church . During the 18th century, a modest entrance hall was added on the west side of the prayer hall. At the same time a second floor was built over the original women's prayer rooms. At some stage the exterior walls were extended upwards, with fortress style parapets , concealing
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