KASHUBES (sing. Kaszub, plur. Kaszebe)  , a Slavonic people numbering about 200,000, and living on the borders of West Prussia and Pomerania, along the Baltic coast between Danzig and Lake Garden, and inland as far as Konitz . They have no literature and no history, as they consist of peasants and fisher-men, the educated classes being mostly Germans or Poles . Their language has been held to be but a dialect of Polish, but it seems better to separate it, as in some points it is quite independent, in some it offers a resemblance to the language of the Polabs (q.v.) . This is most seen in the western dialect of the so-called Slovinci (of whom there are about 250 left) and Kabatki, whereas the eastern Kashube is more like Polish, which is encroaching upon and assimilating it . Lorentz calls the western dialect a language, and distinguishes 38 vowels . The chief points of Kashube as against Polish are that all its vowels can be nasal instead of a and e only, that it has preserved quantity and a free accent, has developed several special vowels, e. g. o, iv, u, and has preserved the original order, e.g. gard as against grod . The consonants are very like Polish .