Silesian Alphabet & Letters — ã õ ŏ ô ō Copy and Paste

The standard Silesian alphabet, often called the Ślabikŏrz alphabet after the primer (ślabikŏrz, an ABC book) that taught it, has 34 letters: a ã b c ć d e f g h i j k l ł m n ń o ŏ ō ô õ p r s ś t u w y z ź ż. It is built on Polish spelling, so a Polish reader recognises most of it at once: ć ń ś ź are soft consonants, ż sounds like the s of measure, and ł sounds like English w.

Silesian writes its own endings and does not use ą, ę or ó: it has -ōm where Polish writes final -ą, and regional forms where Polish writes final -ę (including -a, -ã, -e and -ym in first-person verbs). Its marked o letters are ŏ, ō, ô and õ, in that order after o. As in Polish, q, v and x are not part of the alphabet and turn up only in foreign words and names.

Sounds that need two letters are written with the same pairs as in Polish: ch, cz, sz, rz, dz, dź and dż. The Silesian name of the language shows several of the special letters at once: ślōnskŏ gŏdka, Silesian speech.

Silesian letters with accents: what ŏ, ô, ō, ã and õ do

ŏ (o with a breve) stands in the place of an old long a, in many words where Polish has a: gŏdka (talk, speech), gŏdać (to speak). Depending on the area and the speaker it sounds like an open o, a closed o or something close to ou, and it is also the ending of feminine adjectives, as in ślōnskŏ.

ō (o with a macron) stands in the place of an old long o, where Polish writes ó: Gōrny Ślōnsk, Upper Silesia, in Polish Górny Śląsk. Some Silesians say it as u, as Polish does, others as a closed o or ou.

ô (o with a circumflex) marks word-initial o that may be labialized, preceded by a w-like [u̯] glide; the glide is optional and varies by speaker. Examples are ôn (he) and Ôpole, the city that Polish spells Opole.

ã and õ (a and o with a tilde) mark dialect-sensitive spellings. ã can be a nasal a and is one regional spelling of final Polish -ę; õ marks feminine endings such as starõ, whose sounds vary across Silesia, often as o or ou and sometimes as a nasal vowel or another local form.

Silesian vs Polish spelling: how the alphabet came about

For a long time Silesian was written in Polish spelling, in German-based spellings, or in each author's own system. In the 1930s the writer Feliks Steuer proposed one of the first spellings made for Silesian itself, and others followed. The present alphabet was agreed by Silesian writers and linguists around 2010 as a common standard, and it is the one used by the Silesian Wikipedia, which has existed since 2008, and by many Silesian books and websites today.

Beyond spelling, Silesian differs from Polish in vocabulary, much of it borrowed from German over the long centuries when Upper Silesia belonged to Prussia and Germany: gruba is a coal mine (German Grube), fajrant the end of a shift (Feierabend), żymła a bread roll (Semmel), and a familok is a brick tenement built for miners' families.

Typographically Silesian follows Polish custom: quotations open low and close high, „like this”, with chevrons « » for a quote inside a quote, and dialogue set with a dash, – or —. Prices are in Polish złoty, written 25 zł; the złoty has no Unicode sign of its own.

How to type Silesian letters

Windows: the Polish (Programmers) layout gives the letters Silesian shares with Polish: AltGrC ć, AltGrL ł, AltGrN ń, AltGrS ś, AltGrX ź, AltGrZ ż, with Shift for capitals. Three of the Silesian vowels have Alt codes on the number pad: ã Alt0227, õ Alt0245, ô Alt0244 (capitals Ã Alt0195, Õ Alt0213, Ô Alt0212). ŏ and ō have none; in Word type the hex code and press AltX: ŏ 014F, Ŏ 014E, ō 014D, Ō 014C.

Mac: on the standard US or ABC layout, OptionN then a or o gives ã and õ, and OptionI then o gives ô. For the other two switch to the ABC Extended input source: OptionA then o gives ō, and OptionB then o gives ŏ. The Polish input source adds ć ł ń ś ź ż with Option.

Phones: on many iPhone and Android keyboards, press and hold o for ô, õ and ō, and a for ã (the choices vary by keyboard and language); phone keyboards rarely offer ŏ, so copy it from this page. HTML: ã ã, õ õ, ô ô, &omacr; ō, and ŏ for ŏ (Ŏ for Ŏ).

Where the Silesian language is spoken

Silesian is spoken in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, around Katowice, Gliwice, Bytom, Rybnik and Opole, the heart of the old coal and steel country. CLDR estimates about 500,000 speakers in Poland, and in Poland's 2011 census about half a million people said they speak Silesian at home, while more than 800,000 declared a Silesian national identity. Across the border, the speech of Czech Silesia is closely related.

Whether Silesian is a language or a dialect of Polish is debated. It has had its own ISO 639-3 code, szl, since 2007, and in 2024 the Polish parliament passed a bill to recognise it as a regional language, which the President vetoed; Kashubian has that status, Silesian does not. Its closest neighbours on this site are Polish, whose letters it largely shares, Czech, and German, the source of many of its words; the Poland page collects the flag and Polish emoji.

How to use them

5 situationsClick to copy

Writing Silesian online

Posts, comments and the Silesian Wikipedia use the Ślabikŏrz letters: copy ŏ, ō, ô, ã and õ from here when your keyboard cannot type them, so that ślōnskŏ gŏdka reads as it is meant.

Place names in Silesian

Places have Silesian forms: Ôpole for Opole, Gōrny Ślōnsk for Upper Silesia. Copy the exact letters for signs, maps, menus and translations.

Learners and families

Grandchildren learning the language of their grandparents can copy whole words with their letters into flashcards and notes, and see in writing which o is which.

Barbórka and mining heritage

On 4 December, St Barbara's Day, Silesian mining towns honour miners with masses, parades and celebrations; and , the miners' crossed hammer and pick, go with the greetings.

Designers and typesetters

Check that a font draws ŏ and ō as well as the Polish letters; both are in Unicode's Latin Extended-A block and most text fonts have them, but display and decorative fonts sometimes do not.

Silesian Letters & Alphabet combos

Silesian speech, the Silesian name of the language

To speak our way, how Silesians describe speaking Silesian

Upper Silesia, with its yellow and blue colours

Thank you

I love you, the Silesian phrase printed on mugs and T-shirts

End of the shift! From German Feierabend

Beef roulade, Silesian dumplings and red cabbage, the classic Silesian Sunday dinner

Opole, written in Silesian

Worth knowing

Silesian and Polish spell their vowels differently: Silesian writes ã õ ŏ ô ō, where Polish has its own ą, ę and ó.
More people reported speaking Silesian at home in Poland's 2011 census than Kashubian, the only language Poland officially recognises as a regional language.
Everyday Silesian is full of German words that Poles elsewhere do not use: a coal mine is a gruba, a bread roll a żymła, the end of the working day fajrant.
One letter, several sounds: ō is said as u, o or ou in different parts of Upper Silesia, yet everyone writes the same word, which is what a shared alphabet was made for.

Questions people ask

How do I copy and paste Silesian letters?

Click or tap any letter on this page (ã õ ŏ ô ō, ć ł ń ś ź ż, or the capitals Ã Õ Ŏ Ô Ō Ć Ł Ń Ś Ź Ż) to copy it, then paste with CtrlV, CmdV, or a long-press and Paste on a phone.

How many letters are in the Silesian alphabet?

34 in the standard Ślabikŏrz alphabet: a ã b c ć d e f g h i j k l ł m n ń o ŏ ō ô õ p r s ś t u w y z ź ż. The pairs ch, cz, sz, rz, dz, dź and dż write single sounds but are not counted as separate letters.

What is the difference between Silesian and Polish?

In the Ślabikŏrz alphabet Silesian has its own vowels ã õ ŏ ô ō and does not use ą, ę or ó; it writes -ōm where Polish has final -ą, and regional spellings such as -a, -ã and -e (or -ym in first-person verbs) where Polish has final -ę. In speech it has its own vowels, word endings and many German loanwords such as gruba (mine) and żymła (bread roll). A Polish reader can follow much of it, but it is not simply Polish with an accent.

Is Silesian a language or a dialect?

Opinions differ. Silesian has its own ISO 639-3 code, szl, a standard alphabet and its own Wikipedia, and hundreds of thousands of speakers call it a language; Polish law does not recognise it as one, and a 2024 bill to make it a regional language was vetoed.

How to type ō and ŏ on a keyboard?

In Word type 014D (ō), 014C (Ō), 014F (ŏ) or 014E (Ŏ) and press AltX. On a Mac with the ABC Extended input source, OptionA then o gives ō and OptionB then o gives ŏ. Or copy them from this page.

What does ô mean in Silesian?

ô marks word-initial o that may be labialized by a preceding [u̯] glide, though speakers vary in whether they pronounce it: ôn (he), Ôpole. It is a letter of its own, ordered after ō.

How do you say thank you in Silesian?

Dziynkuja. Polish says dziękuję; the Silesian form has its own vowel and ends in -a.

Where it is spoken

🇵🇱Poland Emoji108 symbols