Lechitic

Lechitic is the westernmost branch of the West Slavic tongues, once spoken between the Vistula and the Elbe; its name recalls the legendary forefather Lech and the old name Lechia for Poland. It includes Polish, Silesian, the Pomeranian group of Kashubian and extinct Slovincian, and Polabian.

Polish began to separate from its relatives around the 900s as the Piast state took shape, and the baptism of Mieszko I in 966 brought the Latin alphabet. The earliest known Polish sentence was set down by a Cistercian in the Book of Henrykow around 1280, and the first printed Polish book followed in 1513.

German eastward settlement and Low German wore down Polabian, whose last native speaker died in 1756 and whose chief monument is the Vocabularium Venedicum compiled between 1679 and 1719. Kashubian kept a Pomeranian speech alive on the Baltic coast, while Polish grew into a kingdom's standard language.