West Slavs
Subgroup of Slavic peoples / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Western Slavs?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
The West Slavs are Slavic peoples who speak the West Slavic languages.[1][2] They separated from the common Slavic group around the 7th century, and established independent polities in Central Europe by the 8th to 9th centuries.[1] The West Slavic languages diversified into their historically attested forms over the 10th to 14th centuries.[3]
This article needs additional citations for verification. (June 2022) |
Słowianie Zachodni (Polish) Západní Slované (Czech) Západní Slovania (Slovak) Zôpôdni Słowiónie (Kashubian) Pódwjacorne Słowjany (Lower Sorbian) Zapadni Słowjenjo (Upper Sorbian) | |
---|---|
Total population | |
see #Population | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Central Europe | |
Religion | |
Catholicism (Poles, Slovaks, Silesians, Kashubians, Moravians, and Sorbs and minority among Czechs) Protestantism (minority among Sorbs) Irreligion (majority among Czechs)[citation needed] | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Other Slavs |
Today, groups which speak West Slavic languages include the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sorbs.[4][5][6] From the ninth century onwards, most West Slavs converted to Roman Catholicism, thus coming under the cultural influence of the Latin Church, adopting the Latin alphabet, and tending to be more closely integrated into cultural and intellectual developments in western Europe than the East Slavs, who converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity and adopted the Cyrillic alphabet.[7][8]
Linguistically, the West Slavic group can be divided into three subgroups: Lechitic, including Polish, Kashubian, and the extinct Polabian and Pomeranian languages; Sorbian in the region of Lusatia; and Czecho–Slovak in the Czech lands.[9]