1. I am grateful to the directors of the schools who allowed me to conduct the survey: Mateusz Czuprzyna of Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Osuchiewskiego, one of two high schools located in Cieszyn; Bogdan Kisza of the Polish high school in Český Těšín; and Petr Šářec and Jiří Petrovský of the Czech high school in Český Těšín. Malgorzata Szelong and Ondřej Šefčík provided assistance with the editing of Polish and Czech translations of the original English language questionnaire. Additional aid was provided by Krzysztof Szelong and Krzysztof Nowak.Google Scholar

2. Poland was awarded the ancient city with the town square, while Czechoslovakia received the newer suburbs, railway, and train station, all located across the Olza River. Czechoslovakia renamed the city Český Těšín “Czech Teschen.” By adding the adjective Český to the name, Czechoslovakia emphasized Czech political control, while it also revealed the Czechs' uneasiness concerning their claims to the city. The ancient city and the region are most often referred to in English by the German name Teschen. The region of Teschen Silesia is called Šląsk Cieszyński or Ziemia Cieszyńska in Polish and Těšínsko in Czech.Google Scholar

3. Hannan, Kevin, Borders of Language and Identity in Teschen Silesia (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 159–169.Google Scholar

4. Polish linguists regard this as a Polish dialect. Most Czech linguists in recent decades have designated it a “mixed Polish–Czech dialect.”Google Scholar

5. Hannan, Borders of Language and Identity in Teschen Silesia , pp. 89–109 Google Scholar

6. On the language of ethnic Polish students in Zaolzie, see Irena Bogoczová, Jazyková komunikace mládeže na dvojjazyčném území českého Těšínska (Ostrava: Ostravská Univerzita, 1993).Google Scholar

7. There is one Slovak school in Zaolzie comprising grades one through nine.Google Scholar

8. Under Czechoslovak rule, Hungarians and East Slavs (Rusyns and Ukrainians) in Slovakia enjoyed more extensive language privileges than Poles in Zaolzie. In Slovakia signs identifying town and village names are still posted in Slovak and the minority language, Hungarian or East Slavic, while under Czechoslovak and Czech rule, Poles in Zaolzie have never been granted this privilege. In Zaolzie bilingual signs have been restricted to storefronts.Google Scholar

9. Slovaks in Zaolzie have little motivation for learning Polish.Google Scholar

10. On the Šlonzak movement, see Tadeusz Siwek, “Narodowość śląska w byłej Czechosłowacji,” in Kultura ludowa na pograniczu (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Šląskiego, 1995), pp. 46–53. In other parts of Silesia which were a part of the Moravian diocese of Olomouc, the masculine ethnonym Moravec was encountered up until the Second World War. The Moravci rejected a Czech identity, insisting that their language and identity were Moravian. Only since the middle of the twentieth century has this population claimed a Czech identity.Google Scholar

11. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, disputes arose in Zaolzie as Catholic priests in some parishes attempted to replace the “Moravian” language of hymns and prayers with standard Polish. Oblivious to the linguistic evidence of the features of their traditional dialect shared with Polish, parishioners in some Catholic parishes in Zaolzie pointed to their prayerbooks as proof that they spoke Moravian and they resisted all attempts to introduce Polish.Google Scholar

12. On ethnic boundaries in Zaolzie, see Tadeusz Siwek, Česko-polská etnická hranice (Ostrava: Ostravská Univerzita, 1996).Google Scholar

13. The population in Zaolzie claiming Polish ethnicity has declined from 59,005 in 1950 to 43,479 in 1991. See Stanislaw Zahradnik, Struktura narodowościowa Zaolzia na podstawie spisów ludności (Těšínec: Drukarnia HT, 1991), p. 12.Google Scholar

14. Polish-language questionaires were distributed in the two Polish-language schools in Cieszyn and Český Těšín and Czech questionaires were distributed in the Czech school in Český Těšín. The questionnaires were anonymous. Information on age, sex, place of birth and residence, nationality, religion, and nationality and occupation of parents was requested of each respondent. The age of respondents ranged from to 16 to 19. Approximately one quarter of the students surveyed in the two schools in Český Těšín were from families in which the parents are not of the same ethnicity, while only two students from the Cieszyn school reported that one of their parents was not ethnically Polish.Google Scholar

15. The responses of the the following numbers of students born outside of Teschen Silesia were not included: 13 (of a total number of 114 surveyed) from the Czech school, one (of a total of 132) from the Polish school in CT, and 24 (of a total of 189) from the Polish school in Cieszyn.Google Scholar

16. Czech sociolinguists describe the situation in Bohemia as “diglossia,” which may be defined as the use of two varieties, one typically more prestigious, of the same or different languages. According to this description, the two different varieties spoken in Bohemia are obecná čeština and a spoken variety of literary Czech. The latter is encountered only in the most formal of social circumstances. The varieties of Czech spoken in Moravia and Silesia are not so easily differentiated as a diglossia, however, but rather comprise a continuum ranging from a spoken variety of literary Czech to social and territorial dialects.Google Scholar

17. Those ethnic Poles who think po našymu possess no corresponding written language. While the transitional character of the traditional spoken language has been widely acknowledged, even by political activists who in the first half of the twentieth century sought to cultivate a distinct Silesian ethnic identity, there has never been serious interest in creating a new literary language based upon the traditional Teschen dialect. Even those who advocated a political separatism employed the standard literary languages. Written forms of Teschen dialect based upon literary Polish, and less often, literary Czech have been restricted primarily to ethnographic publications.Google Scholar

18. According to the stereotype held by some Poles, Czechs are lacking in courage, submissive, and irreligious. For some Czechs, Poles are stereotyped as aggressive, unorganized, and lacking in perseverance. On ethnic stereotypes in Teschen Silesia, see J. Urban, “Stereotyp i autostereotyp młodziezty z Cieszyna i okolic,” in Poczucie tożtsamosci narodowej młodziezty. Studium z pogranicza polsko-czeskiego (Cieszyn: Uniwersytet Sląski, 1994), pp. 85–95.Google Scholar

19. See Anna Szczypka-Rusz, “Język i kultura—istotne składniki tożtsamości kulturowej młodzieżty pogranicza,” in Poczucie toztsamości narodowej młodzieżty. Studium z pogranicza polsko-czeskiego (Cieszyn: Uniwersytet Śląski, 1994), pp. 29–40.Google Scholar

20. The total population of Zaolzie numbered 368,355 in 1991. The official Czechoslovak census of 1991 reported that, in addition to the population claiming Czech or Polish ethnicicty, 10,858 individuals in Zaolzie identified their nationality as Silesian and 16,992 identified their nationality as Moravian. The Slovak minority in Zaolzie numbered 26,629. See Zahradnik, Struktura narodowościowa Zaolzia na podstawie spisów ludności , p. 12.Google Scholar