The Kociewiacy are a small Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 ethnic group. They live in Pomerania

Pomerania

Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...

 south of Gdansk

Gdansk

Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...

. The region they inhabit is called Kociewie

Kociewie

Kociewie is an ethnocultural region in the eastern part of Tuchola Forest, in northern Poland, Pomerania, south of Gdańsk. Its cultural capital is Starogard Gdański, and the biggest town is Tczew. The region has about 250,000 inhabitants. It has well-developed industry and agriculture.Populated...

 and has well-developed industry and agriculture. The capital city of Kociewie

Kociewie

Kociewie is an ethnocultural region in the eastern part of Tuchola Forest, in northern Poland, Pomerania, south of Gdańsk. Its cultural capital is Starogard Gdański, and the biggest town is Tczew. The region has about 250,000 inhabitants. It has well-developed industry and agriculture.Populated...

 is Starogard Gdański

Starogard Gdanski

Starogard Gdański is a town in Eastern Pomerania in northwestern Poland with 48,328 inhabitants...

, while their biggest city is Tczew

Tczew

Tczew is a town on the Vistula River in Eastern Pomerania, Kociewie, northern Poland with 60,279 inhabitants . It is an important railway junction with a classification yard dating to the Prussian Eastern Railway...

. Most of the Kociewiacy are Roman Catholics.

They live next to a far more prominent ethnic group in the area, the Kashubians

Kashubians

Kashubians/Kaszubians , also called Kashubs, Kashubes, Kaszubians, Kassubians or Cassubians, are a West Slavic ethnic group in Pomerelia, north-central Poland. Their settlement area is referred to as Kashubia ....

.

Kocievian dialect, unlike Kashubian, is mostly intelligible with mainstream Polish language

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

. Despite geographic proximity, these two dialects are very dissimilar, with Kocievian being much closer to Kuyavia

Kuyavia

Kujawy , is a historical and ethnographic region in the north-central Poland, situated in the basin of the middle Vistula and upper Noteć Rivers, with its capital in Włocławek.-Etymology:The origin of the name Kujawy was seen differently in history...

n, to the point of some scholars calling it a variant of that dialect.