#wymysorys

Can Mail Art Save a Language?

Wymysorys is a language with less than 100 speakers and classified as critically endangered by UNESCO. The language is spoken in Wilamowice where a group of locals are working to preserve it.  Wilamowice is a town with about 3,000 people in Southern Poland.  

Wymysorys belongs to the Germanic Language Family. But it is not German.  It is believed its origins come from Western Europe when a mix of Flemish and German speaking settlers moved east during the 13thCentury. Wymysorys’s speakers are ethnically and culturally Polish. For centuries the speakers did not identify themselves as Germans. After World War II they were allowed to remain in Poland but the use of Wymysorys was officially discouraged.

It is the first language for only about 30 people - residents of the town Wilamowice. Although it formed in the mid-thirteenth century, today it is threatened with extinction. Researchers from the University of Warsaw started a project to save Wymysorys from oblivion.

Researchers from the "Artes Liberales" program of the University of Warsaw started work on a three-year project to save Wymysorys from oblivion. "This is one of the most endangered ethnolects in Europe. It is the first spoken language of about 30 people living in Wilamowice in the south of Poland. Today, every third child in Wilamowice learns the native language during extracurricular classes in school" - informs the University of Warsaw.