Samogitian dialect


Samogitian is an Eastern Baltic variety spoken mostly in Samogitia. It is sometimes treated as a dialect of Lithuanian, but is considered a separate language by most linguists outside Lithuania. Its recognition as a distinct language is increasing in recent years, and attempts have been made to standardize it.
The Samogitian dialect should not be confused with the interdialect of the Lithuanian language as spoken in the Duchy of Samogitia before Lithuanian became a written language, which later developed into one of the two variants of written Lithuanian used in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania based on the so-called middle dialect of the Kėdainiai region. This was called the Samogitian language; the term "Lithuanian language" then referred to the other variant, which had been based on the eastern Aukštaitian dialects centred around the capital Vilnius; Samogitian was generally used in the Samogitian Diocese while Lithuanian was generally used in the Vilna Diocese. This Samogitian language was based on western Aukštaitian dialects and is unrelated to what is today called the Samogitian dialect; it is instead the direct ancestor of the modern Lithuanian literary language.

History

The Samogitian language, heavily influenced by Curonian, originated from the East Baltic proto-Samogitian dialect which was close to Aukštaitian dialects.
During the 5th century, Proto-Samogitians migrated from the lowlands of central Lithuania, near Kaunas, into the Dubysa and Jūra basins, as well as into the Samogitian highlands. They displaced or assimilated the local, Curonian-speaking Baltic populations. Further north, they displaced or assimilated the indigenous, Semigallian speaking peoples. Assimilation of Curonians and Semigallians gave birth to the three Samogitian subdialects: "Dounininkų", "Donininkų" and "Dūnininkų."
In the 13th century, Žemaitija became a part of the Baltic confederation called Lietuva, which was formed by Mindaugas. Lithuania conquered the coast of the Baltic sea from the Livonian order. The coast was populated by Curonians, but became a part of Samogitia. From the 13th century onwards, Samogitians settled within the former Curonian lands, and intermarried with that population over the next three hundred years. The Curonians had a huge cultural influence upon Samogitian and Lithuanian culture, but they were ultimately assimilated by the 16th century. Its dying language has enormously influenced the dialect, in particular phonetics.
The earliest writings in Samogitian language appeared in the 19th century.

Phonology

Samogitian and its subdialects preserved many features of the Curonian language, for example:
as well as various other features not listed here.
The earliest writings in the Samogitian language appeared in the 19th century.

Grammar

The Samogitian language is highly inflected like standard Lithuanian, in which the relationships between parts of speech and their roles in a sentence are expressed by numerous flexions.
There are two grammatical genders in Samogitian – feminine and masculine. Relics of historical neuter are almost fully extinct while in standard Lithuanian some isolated forms remain. Those forms are replaced by masculine ones in Samogitian. Samogitian stress is mobile but often retracted at the end of words, and is also characterised by pitch accent. Samogitian has a broken tone like the Latvian and Danish languages. The circumflex of standard Lithuanian is replaced by an acute tone in Samogitian.
It has five noun and three adjective declensions. Noun declensions are different from standard Lithuanian. There are only two verb conjugations. All verbs have present, past, past iterative and future tenses of the indicative mood, subjunctive and imperative moods and infinitive. The formation of past iterative is different from standard Lithuanian. There are three numbers in Samogitian: singular, plural and dual. Dual is almost extinct in standard Lithuanian. The third person of all three numbers is common.
Samogitian as the standard Lithuanian has a very rich system of participles, which are derived from all tenses with distinct active and passive forms, and several gerund forms. Nouns and other declinable words are declined in eight cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, vocative and illative.

Literature

The earliest writings in Samogitian dialect appear in the 19th century. Famous authors writing in Samogitian:
There are no written grammar books in Samogitian because it is considered to be a dialect of Lithuanian, but there were some attempts to standardise its written form. Among those who have tried are,, Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, B. Jurgutis,.
Today, Samogitian has a standardised writing system but it still remains a spoken language, as nearly everyone writes in their native speech.

Differences from Standard Lithuanian

Samogitian differs from Standard Lithuanian in phonetics, lexicon, syntax and morphology.
Phonetic differences from standard Lithuanian are varied, and each Samogitian subdialect has different reflections.
Standard Lithuanian ~ Samogitian
The main difference between Samogitian and standard Lithuanian is verb conjugation.
The past iterative tense is formed differently from Lithuanian. The second verb conjugation is extinct in Samogitian, it merged with the first one. The plural reflexive ending is -muos instead of expected -mies which is in standard Lithuanian and other dialects. Samogitian preserved a lot of relics of athematic conjugation which did not survive in standard Lithuanian. The intonation in the future tense third person is the same as in the infinitive, in standard Lithuanian it shifts. The subjunctive conjugation is different from standard Lithuanian. Dual is preserved perfectly while in standard Lithuanian it has been completely lost.
The differences between nominals are considerable too.
The fifth noun declension has almost become extinct, it merged with the third one. The plural and some singular cases of the fourth declension have endings of the first one. The neuter of adjectives is extinct while in standard Lithuanian it is still alive. Neuter pronouns were replaced by masculine. The second declension of adjectives is almost extinct —only singular nominative case endings survived. The formation of pronominals is also different from standard Lithuanian.

Other morphological differences

Samogitian also has many words and figures of speech that are altogether different from typically Lithuanian ones, e.g., kiuocis 'basket', tevs 'thin', rebas 'ribs', a jebentas! 'can't be!'.

Subdialects

Samogitian is also divided into three major subdialects: Northern Samogitian, Western Samogitian and Southern Samogitian. Historically, these are classified by their pronunciation of the Lithuanian word Duona, "bread." They are referred to as Dounininkai, Donininkai and Dūnininkai.

Political situation

The Samogitian dialect is rapidly declining: it is not used in the local school system and there is only one quarterly magazine and no television broadcasts in Samogitian. There are some radio broadcasts in Samogitian. Local newspapers and broadcast stations use standard Lithuanian instead. There is no new literature in Samogitian either, as authors prefer standard Lithuanian for its accessibility to a larger audience. Out of those people who speak Samogitian, only a few can understand its written form well.
Migration of Samogitian speakers to other parts of the country and migration into Samogitia have reduced contact between Samogitian speakers, and therefore the level of fluency of those speakers.
There are attempts by the Samogitian Cultural Society to stem the loss of the dialect. The council of Telšiai city put marks with Samogitian names for the city at the roads leading to the city, while the council of Skuodas claim to use the language during the sessions. A new system for writing Samogitian was created.

Writing system

The first use of a unique writing system for Samogitian was in the interwar period, however it was neglected during the Soviet period, so only elderly people knew how to write in Samogitian at the time Lithuania regained independence. The Samogitian Cultural Society renewed the system to make it more usable.
The writing system uses similar letters to standard Lithuanian, but with the following differences:
As previously it was difficult to add these new characters to typesets, some older Samogitian texts use double letters instead of macrons to indicate long vowels, for example aa for ā and ee for ē; now the Samogitian Cultural Society discourages these conventions and recommends using the letters with macrons above instead. The use of double letters is accepted in cases where computer fonts do not have Samogitian letters; in such cases y is used instead of Samogitian ī, the same as in standard Lithuanian, while other long letters are written as double letters. The apostrophe might be used to denote palatalization in some cases; in others i is used for this, as in standard Lithuanian.
A Samogitian computer keyboard layout has been created.
Samogitian alphabet:

Samples