Samogitian dialect

Spoken in

• Indo-European languages Baltic languages Ostbaltische languages Lithuanian Samogitian

Sgs

Samogitian (also: Samogitisch, Shemaitisch, Samogitian: Žemaitiu ruoda, Lithuanian: Žemaičių Tarme ) is a dialect of the Lithuanian language which is mainly spoken in Žemaitėjė, the western part of Lithuania. There are efforts to standardize the Samogitian. The Samogitian dialect should not be confused with the middle dialect of the Lithuanian, who was sometimes referred to in the spoken from the 16th to the 18th century form as Samogitian.

History

By the end of the 19th century, the modern Samogitian be mentioned only as Westschemaiten; latter are referred to as descendants of the " litauisierten " Semgallen ( for the Southern Subdialekt ) and the treatments considered ( for the northern and western subdialects ).

The earliest writings in schemaitischen dialect emerged in the 19th century.

The Samogitian dialect which was heavily influenced by Curonian, originated from the East Baltic proto- schemaitischen dialect, which was very closely related to the aukschtaitischen dialect of the neighboring Aukschtaiten.

During the fifth century, the proto- Samogitian migrated from the lowlands of Central Lithuania near Kaunas in the basin of Dubysa and Jūra, as well as into the Samogitian highlands. They displaced or assimilated the resident, Curonian -speaking Baltic populations and further north, the indigenous, Semgallisch speaking people.

In the 13th century, Polotsk became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which had been founded by Mindaugas I.. Lithuania conquered the Baltic coast from the Livonian Order. The coast was populated by treatments, but became part of the Duchy of Polotsk. From the 13th century onwards settled Samogitians the former Curonian and mingled for the next 300 years with its population. The cures had great cultural influence on the Samogitian and Lithuanian culture, but they were finally assimilated to the 16th century. Samogitian and its subdialects preserved many features of the Curonian language such as:

• Strain of proto Baltic short i (i → ė sometimes e)
• Strain of proto Baltic short u ( u → o)
• Preservation of West Baltic diphthong ei ( ie → Samogitian standardlitauisch EI)
• No palatalization of d ', t' after č, dž ( Latvian š, ž )
• Specific lexis as Cīrulis ( " Lark " ), Pile ( " duck " ), Leitis ( " Lithuanian " ) and other
• Omission of accents
• Shortening of ending -as to -s like in Latvian and Old Prussian

And a number of other properties not listed here.

The earliest writings in schemaitischem dialect appeared in 19th century. Famous authors on Samogitian are:

• Silvestras Valiūnas with his heroic poem " Biruta ", first edition, 1829. " Biruta " became a hymn of Lithuanian immigrant students in the 19th century.
• Simona Stanevičius ( Samogitian Sėmuons Stanevičios ) with his book " SESES pasakas " (Six fables ) printed in 1829.
• Simona Daukantas ( Samogitian Sėmuons Daukonts ), the first Lithuanian historian, who wrote in Lithuanian (or its dialect). His book " Buds Senovės Lietuviu Kalnienu ir Zamaitiu " ( Customs of ancient Lithuanian highlanders and Samogitian ) 1854 printed.
• Motiejus Valančius ( Samogitian Muotiejos Valončios, also Muotiejos Valontė ) with one of his books " Palangos JuZe " (Joseph of Palanga ), printed in 1869. " Palangos JuZe " is considered the first geographical work in Lithuanian.

Grammar

The Samogitian dialect is highly fusional as well as the Standardlitauische, in which the relationship between parts of speech and their roles is expressed in a sentence by numerous flexions.

There are two genera in Schemaitischen - male and female. Relics of a historical neuter are almost fully extinct while in standard Lithuanian some isolated forms have remained. These were replaced with the masculine Schemaitischen. The Samogitian stress is mobile, but is often omitted at the end of the word and is also characterized by a pitch accent. Samogitian has a broken pitch accent like the Latvian and Danish. The rising tone of the standard Lithuanian is replaced by an acute. Samogitian nouns have five declensions, adjectives three. Nominaldeklinationen differ from standard Lithuanian (see the next section). There are only two Verbalkonjugationen. All verbs have tenses present, past, iterative past and future in the indicative, subjunctive and imperative ( the latter two with no tense distinction) and infinitive. The formation of the iterative preterite different from standard Lithuanian. There are three numbers in Schemaitischen: singular, plural and dual, which is almost extinct in standard Lithuanian. The third person of all three numbers is the same. Samogitian as the Standardlitauische has a very rich Partizipialsystem that knows its own forms for all tenses and both diatheses, and several Gerundiumsformen. Nouns and other words deklinierbare are diffracted in seven case: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative.

There are no written grammar rules in Samogitian because it is considered a dialect of Lithuanian, but there have been several attempts to standardize its written form.

Linguistic differences between Samogitian and Standardlitauisch

Samogitian differs from standard Lithuanian in phonetics, lexis, syntax and morphology.

The phonetic differences vary depending on schemaitischem Subdialekt.

• I → ė short, occasional e;
• U → short o (in some cases u);
• ė → ie;
• O → uo;
• Ie → long ė, Ei, i (y) ( West, North and South Subdialekt );
• Uo → ō, ou, ū ( West, North and South);
• Ai → ā;
• Egg, iai → ē;
• Ui → oi;
• Oi ( oj ) → uo;
• To → one ( in the southeastern part of );
• Un → on ( in the southeastern part un);
• ą → to the southeastern part, on in the middle and ō or ou in the north;
• ę → en in south-eastern part, en in the middle and õ, ō or egg in the north;
• ū → ū and in some cases un, to;
• ų in stressed endings → un and order;
• Unstressed ų → o;
• Y → ī (y), occasionally;
• I derived from the Old ī → ī;
• U derived from ancient ō ( Lithuanian uo ) → ō, ou, ū (West, North and South)
• I derived from ancient ei ( Lithuanian ie) → long ė, Ei, i (West, North and South)
• č → t and č under Lithuanian influence;
• Dž → d and dž under Lithuanian influence;
• Ia → ė (rarely i and e);
• Io → ė (rarely i and e);
• Unstressed íà → ė (rarely i and e);

The main difference is in the Verbalkonjugation. The iterative past tense is formed differently than in Lithuanian: While in standard Lithuanian the ending- ti is replaced with - davo ( mirti → mirdavo, Puti → pūdavo ), is preceded by liuob in Schemaitischen the word. The second conjugation is extinct in Schemaitischen and has united with the first. The Reflexivendung in the plural is - MUOS instead of- mies that could be expected from the standard Lithuanian ending- MES. Samogitian preserved a wealth of remnants of athematic conjugation that was not preserved in standard Lithuanian. The intonation in the third person future tense is the same as in the infinitive, in standard Lithuanian it shifts. The subjunctive diffraction differs, the dual is completely preserved.

The differences in the nouns are also striking: The fifth noun declension has almost become extinct and mingled with the third. The Pluralkasus and some Singularkasus the fourth declension have endings of the first (compare Samogitian nominative singular SunOS, nominative plural Suna, whereas Lithuanian nominative singular sūnus, nominative plural sūnūs ). The neuter of adjectives is extinct - it was replaced by adverbs, except SELT ( "warm" ), Salt ( "cold" ), karst ( "hot" ) - while it is preserved in standard Lithuanian. Neutral pronouns were replaced by masculine. The second declension of adjectives is fused to the nominative Singluar ending with the first declension. The Pronominalbildung differs from that in the standard Lithuanian.

Other morphological differences

The Samogitian has many words and expressions that completely differ from the typical Lithuanian, such as:

• Kiuocis ( "basket", Lithuanian krepšys, Latvian Kocis )
• Tevs ( "thin", Lithuanian plonas or Tevas, Latvian tievs )
• Reba ( " ribs ", Lithuanian šonkauliai, Latvian ribas )

Subdialects

Samogitian is divided into three main subdialects:

Historically, they are differentiated by their pronunciation of the Lithuanian word Duona ( "bread" ), which led to the designations Dounininkai (of Douna ) Donininkai (from Dona ) and Dūnininkai ( Duna ).

Political situation

The Samogitian dialect is rapidly declining: it is not used in the classroom, and there is only one quarterly magazine on Samogitian and no TV station. While there are Samogitian broadcasting in Klaipėda and Telšiai, but also the local press and the other Broadcasting operate the standard Lithuanian language. There is also no Samogitian literature because authors prefer the default language because of the larger audience. There are besides those who speak Samogitian, only a few who understand it well.

Emigration schemaitischsprachiger people as well as immigration nichtschemaitischsprachiger reduce ongoing contact between the speakers of this dialect, and thus the liquid of the pronunciation of the remaining speakers.

There are efforts Schemaitischen Culture Society ( Žemaičių kultūros draugija ), to stop the loss of the dialect: The city council of Telšiai presented Samogitian road signs on the way towards the city, and a new type system was created.

Writing system

An own writing system for Samogitian was held for the first time in the interwar period application, but has been neglected in the Soviet era, so only elderly people knew to write Samogitian when Lithuania regained independence. The Samogitian Cultural Society revised the system to make it more useful.

The writing system uses similar letters such as the Standardlitauische, but with the following differences:

• There are no " nasal vowels " (letters with Ogonek: ą, ę, į and ų ).
• There are in addition to ū four additional long vowels, which are shown in the Latvian with macron: ā, ē, e and o.
• Also, the long i is written with macron: ī, instead of the Lithuanian y.
• There are two additional diphthongs, which are written as digraphs: ou and egg.

As before, it was difficult to add these new characters to fonts; some older Samogitian texts use double letters instead of Makra to represent long vowels: aa instead of ā, ē ee instead and so on. Today the Samogitian Cultural Society discourages these double vowels and advises to use the Makrons. The use of double vowels will be accepted if the computer font schemaitischen characters can not represent; In this case, however, no II is I is used for a long time but a Y, as is conventional in standard Lithuanian. The apostrophe can be used to represent the palatalization, but even that i used occasionally - as in standard Lithuanian - to do so.

We developed a schemaitisches keyboard layout.

Examples

Lord's prayer

Trivia

The Lithuanian contribution to the Euro Vision Song Contest 1999 - the title " Strazdas " ( German for " throttle " ) the singer Aistė - was on Samogitian.