Most Gottscheerish speakers live in Moschnitze valley (Črmošnjiško-Poljanska dolina) between Kočevske Poljane and Črmošnjice, where some Gottscheer families collaborated with the partisan movement and therefore were allowed to stay.
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Gottscheerish shares a lot of properties with the Bavarian dialects of the German language islands of the eastern Alps, among them Cimbrian in Veneto, Sappada (Pladen) and Timau (Tischelwang) in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and Sorica (Zarz) in Upper Carniola (Slovenia).
Their dialect Gottscheerish was forbidden after World War II, so today there are only a few people left who speak it.
This name was borrowed into Gottschee German as Seele, and the modern Slovene name Željne was then re-borrowed from the German dative plural form in Seelen 'in Željne'.
The speech area historically included the former linguistic enclaves in Carniola (present-day Slovenia) around Gottschee (Gottscheerish in the Gottschee region), Sorica (Zarz) and Nemški Rovt (Deutsch Ruth).