[2] Their native speech forms a dialect continuum between the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages and includes recently codified West Polesian, as well as many local variations and sub-dialects.

[4] Since the interbellum, the Poleshuks started developing a sense of identity, influenced by the ethnic politics of the Second Polish Republic within the Polesie Voivodeship.

[5] The voivodship had the sparsest population and among the lowest levels of prosperity, due to its adverse climatic and agricultural (soil) conditions.

A 1923 Polish statistical document said that 38.600 of 880.900 of population in Polesie Voivodeship (about 4%) were identified as Polezhuks, who self-identified their ethnicity in the census as tutejszy ("local").

The document noted that they were using East Slavic dialects, transitional between Ukrainian and Belarusian, sometimes identified as a separate Polesian language.