Goral ethnolect

Goral, less frequently called Highlander or Highland Polish, is an ethnolect of the Lechitic group, more specifically of the Lesser Poland dialect group spoken by the Gorals. Its vocabulary was significantly influenced by many languages like Slovak, Rusyn, Hungarian, Romanian and German, being common vocabulary of the Carpathian region. Some consider Goral to be a microlanguage, alongside Silesian and to a lesser extent Masurian.

The term Goral derives from the Slavic word for mountain (góra, hora) and the noun-forming suffix denoting people -al.

The Goral ethnolect is often equated to the Podhale dialect; however, this is only one of the many Goral dialects and the term itself is from a linguistic perspective imprecise. The term itself refers not to one dialect but to several unique dialects with similar vocabulary (mostly related to pastoralism) or common isoglosses like the aoristic -k.