Speaker statistics and characteristics

Between the 13th and 15h centuries Middle German was used as a written language whereas the dialects were spoken by the uneducated (Jungandreas 1928: 237Jungandreas 1928 / komentarz/comment/r /
Jungandreas, Wolfgang 1928. Beiträge zur Erforschung der Besiedlung Schlesiens und zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der schlesischen Mundart. Breslau: Verlag von M. & H. Marcus.
). Silesian German dialects long remained the peasant's language. It was not until the publishing of Karl von Holtei's 1830's Schlesische Gedichte that the varieties acquired the status of a literary language. They were spoken by teachers (some of whom were Silesian poets) and by great writers, such as the Noble Prize winner Gerhard Hauptmann. It is estimated that approximately 7 million people used it at that time (cf. Menzel 1976: 17, 77Menzel 1976 / komentarz/comment/r /
Menzel, Wilhelm 1976. Mundart und Munadrtdichtung in Schlesien”, 2. Auflage, München: Delp’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung.
).
Research on linguistic competence of Lower Silesian Germans carried out by Grażyna Kryszczuk (1999: 141, 148, 154, 161Kryszczuk 1999 / komentarz/comment/r /
Kryszczuk, Grażyna 1999. Świadomość językowa i kompetencja komunikacyjna Niemców na Dolnym Śląsku. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie.
) found that amongst the elderly group, 18.5% of the respondents acquired three language in their early childhood: German, Polish and one of the Silesian dialects; nonetheless, in family context only 6.5% use the combination of standard German and Silesian dialect. 5.4% employs this combination in conversations with friends.
None of the younger respondents use Silesian German dialects.
According to the Ethnologue database (as of March 2013), the Silesian German dialects are spoken by a total of 22,900 people, 12,000 in Poland.

Other day-to-day languages and varieties

As Polish, colloquial German, Silesian German dialects and Bohemian-Moravian remained in a state of constant contact with each other in Lower Silesia, multilingualism was a natural consequence of the historical developments of this region (Kryszczuk 1999: 16Kryszczuk 1999 / komentarz/comment/r /
Kryszczuk, Grażyna 1999. Świadomość językowa i kompetencja komunikacyjna Niemców na Dolnym Śląsku. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie.
). The reason for the multilingualism of Lower Silesian Germans was the fact that they were brought up speaking one of the Silesian German dialects at home and learnt the literary German standard in schools. After WWII they were left with no other option but to learn Polish in order to maintain day-to-day relations with the Polish populace as well as conduct trade; which is why Polish soon became the majority language (cf. Kryszczuk 1999: 21Kryszczuk 1999 / komentarz/comment/r /
Kryszczuk, Grażyna 1999. Świadomość językowa i kompetencja komunikacyjna Niemców na Dolnym Śląsku. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie.
). Moreover, Germans living in Silesia knew the colloquial Silesian language influenced both by Polish and the Silesian German dialects. The Polish influence was most noticeable in word order, e.g. Kamen die Gendarmen und... (Polish: przyszli żandarmi i...; 'the gendarmes came and...'), in the usage of the reflexive pronoun where it is not required in the Standard German language, for example sich spielen (bawić się; to play) or the avoidance of the ablaut, as in Kenig (König - king). Even the obligatory teaching of the literary standard could not eliminate these dialectal features; hence, the way Silesians spoke often betrayed their origins (cf. Kryszczuk 1999:83Kryszczuk 1999 / komentarz/comment/r /
Kryszczuk, Grażyna 1999. Świadomość językowa i kompetencja komunikacyjna Niemców na Dolnym Śląsku. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie.
, Wiktorowicz 1997: 1598-1599Wiktorowicz 1997 / komentarz/comment/r /
Wiktorowicz, Józef 1997. „Polnisch-Deutsch“, w: Goebl, Hans i in.(red.) Kontaktlinguistik. Contact linguistics. Linguistique de contact. Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter. 1594-1600.
).