Literature of the Polish Tatars
Abstract
The literature of Polish Tatars reflects their complicated history. A specific trait of the PolishLithuanianBelarusian Tatar population is their use of Arabic script for the notation of their Slavic language as early as the 15th century. Originally Mongol, but Turkic speakers, they gave up their native language while retaining the TurkoArabic script which they adapted to the language of the people to whom they paid allegiance. They lived, however, in the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, and thus they had the choice of at least three languages: Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian. Lithuanian was not used, so they used either Polish or Belarusian. The languages belong to different groups of Slavic family: Polish is a West Slavic language (together with Czech and Sorbian), while Belarusian is an East Slavic language belonging to the same group as Russian and Ukrainian. Polish Tatars lived on the borderline between Polish, Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian language spheres, and their speech was influenced by these languages, which led to a number of sociolinguistic phenomena, such as diglossia and pluriglossia, or, perhaps, bilingualism and multilingualism.
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Citation
Danecki Janusz, Literature of the Polish Tatars, w: Muslims
in Poland
and Eastern Europe. Widening the European Discourse on Islam, Górak-Sosnowska Katarzyna (ed.), Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw 2011, pp. 40-52