Kashubian was officially recognized as a regional language in Poland in 2005, but this did not put a stop to the question of whether the language, known as a dialect of Polish until then, deserves the title of an independent language. Both Kashubians and their language still provoke heated debates among researchers. In the first part of the thesis I will discuss the culture and history of Kashubia, which will explain the emergence of controversy and the beginning of the division between Poles and Kashubians, and in the second part I will present the Kashubian language in more detail. At the outset, I will focus on the sound changes that separated the West Slavic languages from other Slavic languages, and then I will explore the sound innovations that led to the separation between Kashubian and Polish. Based on these, I will observe the differences between languages in a text, presented in both Kashubian and Polish, which show that the two languages are still quite different from each other, even though they are related. While studying the material, I realized I had very little knowledge about Kashubia before I started writing. By writing my dissertation, I wanted to get to know Kashubian culture, history and language better, because in my opinion, we do not talk enough about minorities in our society. If I may have previously thought that Kashubian and Polish were almost the same language, my research showed me that this is not at all the case.
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