The Dialectology Workshop

The Dialectology Workshop (DW) is an academic unit established to document the language spoken by inhabitants of rural and urban areas and to process the materials. Due to Poznań's geographic location, the DW operates primarily in Wielkopolska and its border areas. The region's history (divided during the Partitions into Prussia and Russia) makes it a linguistically interesting area (German or Russian linguistic and cultural influences, peripheral archaisms, the urban subdialect spoken in the city of Poznań). Field studies are carried out by the DW employees and in cooperation with the local communities (schools, local community centres, NGOs). As a result, a series of Wielkopolska Regional Dictionaries has been published.

Moreover, the DW stores materials collected by the first research teams. The so-called card-index compiled by A. Tomaszewski comes from the Interwar period. Regular recording of subdialects started shortly after the end of WWII (1946); the oldest recorded informant was born in 1875.