Kashubian
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Kashubian language belongs to the west branch of the Slavonic languages. It is spoken by 320 000 people in the Pomeranian Province, at the Baltic Sea. Together with Polish and extinct Polabian, Slovincian (Pomeranian, very close to Kashubian) and the languages of the Slavonic tribes living in Rügen, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg, it forms the Lekhitic group (the northern subgroup of the west-Slavonic languages). Comparing it with the closest, Polish language, Kashubian is still keeping ancient Polish vocabulary, a special (double) number, or phonemes that do not exist in Polish anymore. That is why knowing it is a step towards knowing the ancient Polish language. It keeps many words that in Polish have already been replaced by other words. A simple example: the Kashubian names of months are the same as the ancient Polish month names. The usage of prepositions and conjunctions and declension is different from Polish. Kashubian, contrary to common opinion, does not contain many borrowings from German. The percentage of loanwords does not exceed five per cent. Many borrowings from German are very old and in common with Polish. Kashubian also contains some peculiar borrowings, taken from lower German dialects.
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