Kashubian or Cassubian (Kashubian: kaszëbsczi jãzëk, pòmòrsczi jãzëk, kaszëbskò-słowińskô mòwa; Polish: język kaszubski, język pomorski, język kaszubsko-słowiński) is one of the Lechitic languages, a subgroup of the Slavic languages.

Kashubian is assumed to have evolved from the language spoken by some tribes of Pomeranians called Kashubians, in the region of Pomerania, on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea between the Vistula and Oder rivers.

It is closely related to Slovincian, and both are dialects of Pomeranian. Many linguists, in Poland and elsewhere, consider it a divergent dialect of Polish, although now it is usually recognized as the closest living relative of Polish. The Polish Wikipedia article on Kashubian contains a thorough discussion of this question. Dialectal diversity is so great within Kashubian that a speaker of southern Kashubian has considerable difficulty in understanding a speaker of the northernmost dialects.

Like Polish, Kashubian includes about 5% loanwords from Low German, such as kùńszt (art), and some from High German. Other sources of loanwords include the Baltic languages, Russian and Polish. In dialects of Kashubian a schwa occurs.

Tomasz Schafernaker (born 8 January 1979) is a Polish-British metereologist and forecaster for the Met Office, who appeared on BBC Weather until 2010. He now appears on BBC South East.

Schafernaker was born in Gdańsk, People's Republic of Poland, and attended school both in his native Poland and in Britain. He was educated at the independent school St. John's College, Southsea, in Portsmouth, where he took A-levels in mathematics, physics and art, followed by the University of Reading where he gained a BSc (Hons) in meteorology.

He joined the BBC Weather Centre in 2000, working as a broadcast assistant, and became a presenter in the same year; this made him the youngest man to present the BBC Weather. He spent some time giving BBC regional forecasts across the UK, and presented on BBC World during the winter of 2003.

During 2004 and 2005 Tomasz studied at the Met Office college in Exeter and trained as a forecaster for aviation. He also worked for a time at ITV, as well as the London Weather Centre. Schafernaker rejoined the BBC in 2006.^{[citation needed]} He left the BBC in 2010 as part of a cost-cutting exercise, but continues to work for The Met Office.