NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Samogitian language

Samogitian (Samogitian: Žemaitiu ruoda, Lithuanian: Žemaičių tarmė, or Lithuanian: Žemaičių kalba) is a dialect (or independent Baltic language) of the Lithuanian language spoken mostly in Samogitia (in the west part of Lithuania). The Samogitian dialect (sometimes referred to as a language) differs from other dialects of Lithuanian in that it shows some signs of having its own prestige sub-dialect. Certain attempts have been made to standardize it. The Samogitian dialect should not be confused with the middle dialect of the Lithuanian language, that sometimes was referred to as the Samogitian language in the time from the 16th - to the 18th century. Etnographic regions of Lithuania. ... Current distribution of Human Language Families A language family is a group of related languages said to have descended from a common proto-language. ... The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects [1], including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. ... The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. ... The Baltic languages are a group of genetically-related languages spoken in the Northern Europe and belonging to the Indo-European language family. ... ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family. ... ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. ... ISO 639-3 is in process of development as an international standard for language codes. ... Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the â€œInternational Phonetic Alphabetâ€. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... Phonetics (from the Greek word Ï†Ï‰Î½Î®, phone meaning sound, voice) is the study of the sounds of human speech. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers (Lithuanians). ... Etnographic regions of Lithuania. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... (17th century - 18th century - 19th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 18th century refers to the century that lasted from 1701 through 1800. ...

History

Until the end of 19th century the modern Samogitians are mentioned only as the Western Samogitians; the last are considered by scientists to be the descendents of lithuanised (or samogitianised) Semigallians (for Southern subdialect of Samogitian) and Curonians (for Northern and Western subdialects of Samogitian). The Semigallians (Latvian ZemgaÄ¼i, also Zemgalians, Semigalls, Semigalians) are one of the Baltic tribes that lived in the southern middle part of Latvia, Zemgale. ... The Curonians (also called Kursi, Latvian KurÅ¡i) are one of the extinct Baltic tribes that later formed the Latvian nation. ...

Earliest writings in Samogitian dialect appear in 19th century (read topic about grammar).

Samogitian language under a huge influence of Curonian originated from East Baltic proto-Samogitian language which was very close to Aukstaitian dialects. The term Curonian language (Latvian: kurÅ¡u valoda; Lithuanian: kurÅ¡iÅ³ kalba) may refer to two different, but genetically related Baltic languages. ... Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers (Lithuanians). ...

In 5th century Proto-Samogitians moved from central Lithuanian lowlands (around Kaunas) into Dubysa and Jūra basins and Samogitian highlands. In new territories they pushed out or assimilated local Baltic populations which spoke in Curonian language. In further north they pushed out or assimilated indigenous people who spoke in Semigallian. Europe in 450 The 5th century is the period from 401 - 500 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era. ... Dubysa, at 131 km, is the 15th longest river in Lithuania. ... The JÅ«ra is a river in western Lithuania and a right tributary of the Nemunas. ... Baltic can refer to: The Baltic Sea Council of the Baltic Sea States - an intergovernmental organization Baltic sea countries - countries with access to the Baltic Sea The Baltic region (Balticum) Baltic States - the independent countries of Estonia Latvia Lithuania Baltic Republics - term refers to the three Baltic states under the... Semigallian is an extinct language appertaining to the Baltic languages sub-family of Indo-European languages. ...

In 13th century Samogitia became a part of Baltic lands confederation called Lietuva (Lithuania), which was formed by Mindaugas. Lithuania conquered the coast of the Baltic sea from Livonian order. The cost was populated by Curonians but became a part of Samogitia. From 13th century Samogitians settled between Curonians, in 300 years there was an intensive migration and intermarriage. Curonian had a huge cultural influence of Samogitian and Lithuanian culture so in 16th century Curonians were fully assimilated. Samogitian with its subdialects preserved many features of Curonian language, for example: Image File history File links Baltic_Tribes_c_1200. ... Image File history File links Baltic_Tribes_c_1200. ... Look up Circa on Wiktionary, the free dictionary The Latin word circa, literally meaning about, is often used to describe various dates (often birth and death dates) that are uncertain. ... Era Vulgaris redirects here. ... Mindaugas King of Lithuania Mindaugas monument in Vilnius Mindaugas (approximate English transcription [ËˆmÄ±n. ... The Baltic Sea is located in Northern Europe, from 53Â°N to 66Â°N latitude and from 20Â°E to 26Â°E longitude. ... The Livonian Brothers of the Sword (Latin Fratres militiae Christi, literally the brothers of the army of Christ), also known as the Christ Knights, Sword Brethren or The Militia of Christ of Livonia, was a military order started in 1202 by Albert von Buxhövden, bishop of Riga (or Prince... The Curonians (also called Kursi, Latvian KurÅ¡i) are one of the extinct Baltic tribes that later formed the Latvian nation. ... The Eldership of Samogitia (Lithuanian: Žemaičių seniūnija) was the western part of Lithuania Artistic picture of Žemaičių Seniūnija in 18th century. ...

and other features... Old Prussian is an extinct Baltic language, once spoken by the inhabitants of the area that later became East Prussia (now north-eastern Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia) prior to the German colonization of the area beginning in the 13th century. ... Proto-Indo-European Indo-European studies The Indo-European languages include some 443 (SIL estimate) languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. ...

Grammar

The Samogitian dialect 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. Relicts of historical neuter are almost fully extinct while in standard Lithuanian there are left some isolated forms. These forms are replaced by masculine ones in Samogitian. Samogitian stress is mobile but often retracted from the end of words, and is also characterized by pitch accent. Samogitian has broken tone like Latvian and Danish languages. Circumflex, which is in standard Lithuanian, in Samogitian is replaced by acute tone. It has five noun and three adjective declensions. Noun declensions are different from standard Lithuanian (read in next topic). There are only two verbal conjugations. All verbs have present, past, past iterative and future tenses of the indicative mood, subjunctive (or conditional) and imperative moods (both without distinction of tenses) 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 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 seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. Earliest writings in Samogitian dialect appear in 19th century. Famous Authors writing in Samogitian: This article is about inflection in linguistics. ... Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers (Lithuanians). ... In linguistics, grammatical genders, also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once. ... The word neuter can refer to: the property of being neither biologically male or female: being asexual the sterilization (castration, spaying, etc. ... In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word. ... Pitch accent is a kind of accent system employed in many languages around the world. ... Noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... In grammar, an adjective is a part of speech that modifies a noun or a pronoun, usually by describing it or making its meaning more specific. ... In linguistics, declension is a feature of inflected languages: generally, the alteration of a noun to indicate its grammatical role. ... Broadly conceived, linguistics is the study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... Present may mean: present (time): time that is neither past nor future a gift: thing given free of charge, gratis This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The past is the portion of the timeline that has already occurred; it is the opposite of the future. ... Past iterative tense is grammatical tense in Lithuanian language, which denotes complete iterative action in the past in opposition to past tense (in Lithuanian language) with meaning of non-iterative or progressive one. ... Look up Future in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... Look up conditional in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Imperative programming, as opposed to functional programming, is a sort of programming employing side-effect as central execution feature. ... For the grammatical term, see Grammatical mood. ... In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... In linguistics, grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. ... Look up Plural in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Plural is a grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the referent in the real world. ... Look up Dual in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A dual is a pair or a grouping of two. ... The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun. ... The genitive case is a grammatical case that indicates a relationship, primarily one of possession, between the noun in the genitive case and another noun. ... Dative has several meanings. ... The term accusative may be used in the following contexts: A form of morphosyntactic alignment, as found in nominative-accusative languages. ... An instrumental is, in contrast to a song, a musical composition or recording without lyrics or any other sort of vocal music; all of the music is produced by musical instruments. ... Locative is a case which indicates a location. ... The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed, found in Latin among other languages. ...

There is no written grammar books of Samogitian because it is considered as a dialect of Lithuanian language, but there were some tries to standardize its written form. Such standardizers are S. Anglickis, P. Genys, S. Čiurlionienė-Kymantaitė, B. Jurgutis, J. A. Pabrėža. Today Samogitian has a standardized writing system but it still remains spoken language and everyone writes in native speech. Simonas Daukantas was a famous Lithuanian historian, wrote several stories about the living of Lithuanians, Highland People (KalnÄ—nai), and Å½emaiÄiai. ... Motiejus ValanÄius (1801-1875), bishop of Samogitia, historian and writer. ... Lithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native speakers (Lithuanians). ...

Linguistic differences between Samogitian and Standard Lithuanian

Samogitian differs from Standard Lithuanian in phonetics, lexicon, syntax and morphology.

Phonetic differences from standart Lithuanian are varied, each Samogitian subdialect (West, North and South) has different reflections.

The main difference is between Samogitian and standart Lithuanian verb conjugation. Past iterative tense is formed differently than in Lithuanian (e.g., in Lithuanian the Past iterative tense, meaning that action used to be done in past repeatedly, is made by removing the ending of verb "ti" and adding "davo" (mirti - mirdavo, pūti - pūdavo), while in Samogitian word "Liuob" is added instead before the word). 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 (-mės) and other dialects. Samogitian preserved a lot of relicts of athematic conjugation which didn't remain in standard Lithuanian. The intonation in future tense third person is the same as in infinitive, in standart Lithuanian it shifts. The subjunctive conjugation is different from standart Lithuanian. Dual is preserved perfectly while in standart Lithuanian completely lost. Past iterative tense is grammatical tense in Lithuanian language, which denotes complete iterative action in the past in opposition to past tense (in Lithuanian language) with meaning of non-iterative or progressive one. ... Past iterative tense is grammatical tense in Lithuanian language, which denotes complete iterative action in the past in opposition to past tense (in Lithuanian language) with meaning of non-iterative or progressive one. ...

The difference between nominals is considerable too. The fifth noun declension almost became extinct, it merged with the third one. Plural and some singular cases of the fourth declension has endings of the first one (eg.: singular nominative sūnos, plural nom. sūnā, in standart Lithuanian: sg. nom. sūnus, pl. nom. sūnūs). The neuter of adjectives is extinct (it was pushed out by adverbs, except šėlt 'warm', šalt 'cold', karšt 'hot') while in standart Lithuanian it is still alive. Neuter pronouns were pushed by masculine. The second declension of adjectives is almost extinct (merged with the first one), only singular nominative case endings survived. Formation of pronominals is different from standart Lithuanian.

Samogitian also has many words and figures of speech that are altogether different from typically Lithuanian ones, e.g. kiuocis - basket (Lith. krepšys), tevs - thin (Lith. plonas), rebas - ribs (Lith. šonkauliai), a jebentas! - "can't be!" (Lith. negali būti!) and many more.

Subdialects

Samogitian is also divided into three major subdialects: Northern Samogitian (spoken in Telšiai and Kretinga regions), Western Samogitian (was spoken in the region around Klaipėda, now nearly extinct, - after 1945, many people were expelled and new ones came to this region) and Southern Samogitian (spoken in Varniai, Kelmė, Tauragė and Raseiniai regions). Historically, these are classified by their pronunciation of the Lithuanian word Duona, "bread." They are referred to as Dounininkai (from Douna), Donininkai (from Dona) and Dūnininkai (from Dūna). Location Ethnographic region Samogitia County TelÅ¡iai County Municipality TelÅ¡iai district municipality Elderate TelÅ¡iai town elderate Number of elderates Coordinates {{{coordinates}}} General information Capital of Samogitia (unofficial) TelÅ¡iai County TelÅ¡iai district municipality TelÅ¡iai town elderate TelÅ¡iai rural elderate Population (rank) 31,460 in 2001... Location Ethnographic region Samogitia County KlaipÄ—da County Municipality Kretinga district municipality Elderate Kretinga town elderate Number of elderates Coordinates General information Capital of Kretinga district municipality Kretinga town elderate Kretinga rural elderate Population (rank) 21,423 in 2001 (18th) First mentioned 1253 Granted city rights 1607 Kretinga is a... Klaipėda Region (Memel Region, Memelland) is the name of the coastland of Lithuania around Klaipėda (formerly known as Memel) and the Curonian Lagoon, on the right bank of river Nemunas. ... 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday. ... Location Ethnographic region Samogitia County TelÅ¡iai County Municipality TelÅ¡iai district municipality Elderate Number of elderates Coordinates General information Capital of Varniai rural elderate Population (rank) 1,310 in 2005 (90th) First mentioned 1314 Granted city rights 1950 Varniai is a city in western Lithuania, TelÅ¡iai County. ... KelmÄ— is a town in the central part of Lithuania. ... Location Ethnographic region Samogitia County TauragÄ— County Municipality TauragÄ— district municipality Elderate TauragÄ— town elderate Number of elderates Coordinates General information Capital of TauragÄ— County TauragÄ— district municipality TauragÄ— town elderate TauragÄ— rural elderate Population (rank) 28,504 in 2005 (14th) First mentioned 16th century Granted city rights TauragÄ— ( (help... Location Ethnographic region Samogitia County Kaunas County Municipality Raseiniai district municipality Elderate Raseiniai town elderate Number of elderates Coordinates General information Capital of Raseiniai district municipality Raseiniai town elderate Raseiniai elderate Population (rank) 12,541 in 2001 (30th) First mentioned 1253 Granted city rights 1492â€“1506 Raseiniai ( (helpÂ· info)) is...

Political situation

The Samogitian language 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 is some radio broadcast in Samogitian (in Klaipeda and Telšiai). 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. Klaipėda. ... Location Ethnographic region Samogitia County TelÅ¡iai County Municipality TelÅ¡iai district municipality Elderate TelÅ¡iai town elderate Number of elderates Coordinates {{{coordinates}}} General information Capital of Samogitia (unofficial) TelÅ¡iai County TelÅ¡iai district municipality TelÅ¡iai town elderate TelÅ¡iai rural elderate Population (rank) 31,460 in 2001...

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 name for the city at the roads leading to the city. A new system for writing Samogitian was created. Location Ethnographic region Samogitia County TelÅ¡iai County Municipality TelÅ¡iai district municipality Elderate TelÅ¡iai town elderate Number of elderates Coordinates {{{coordinates}}} General information Capital of Samogitia (unofficial) TelÅ¡iai County TelÅ¡iai district municipality TelÅ¡iai town elderate TelÅ¡iai rural elderate Population (rank) 31,460 in 2001...

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. Europe between 1929 and 1938 The Interwar period (also interbellum) is understood within Western culture to be the period between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe, specifically 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939. ... Soviet redirects here. ...

The writing system uses the same letters as 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 nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through the mouth and the nose. ... Ogonek (Polish for little tail, the diminutive of ogon; the Lithuanian equivalent is nosinÄ— which literally means nasal) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in Polish (letters Ä…, Ä™), Lithuanian (Ä…, Ä™, Ä¯, Å³), Creek, Navajo and Western Apache (Ä…, Ä…Ä…, Ä™, Ä™Ä™, Ä¯, Ä¯Ä¯, , ), Chiricahua and Mescalero (Ä…, Ä…Ä…, Ä™, Ä™Ä™, Ä¯, Ä¯Ä¯, Å³, Å³Å³), Tutchone and... In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. ... A macron, from Greek (makros) meaning large, is a diacritic Â¯ placed over a vowel originally to indicate that the vowel is long. ... A tilde. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (in Greek δίφθογγος) is a vowel combination usually involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... A font can mean: A member of a typeface family; or digital font - file format that encapsulates a typeface family in a database. ... For other uses, see Apostrophe (disambiguation). ... Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ...

Audio sample

Raseiniskiai. ... Software development stages In computer programming, development stage terminology expresses how the development of a piece of software has progressed and how much further development it may require. ...

External links

Category: East Baltic languages Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1058x1058, 477 KB) aa Wikipedia logo, version 1058px square, no text Wikipedia logo by Nohat (concept by Paullusmagnus); compare Wikipedia File links The following pages link to this file: Arabic language Talk:Anarcho-capitalism Talk:Algorithm Talk:Anno Domini Talk:The... Wikipedia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. ... The term Curonian language (Latvian: kurÅ¡u valoda; Lithuanian: kurÅ¡iÅ³ kalba) may refer to two different, but genetically related Baltic languages. ... Galindian is a poorly attested extinct language, considered to be a part of the Baltic languages group. ... It has been suggested that some sections of this article be split into a new article entitled Latgalian dialect. ... Old Prussian is an extinct Baltic language spoken by the inhabitants of the area that later became East Prussia (now in north-eastern Poland and the Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia) prior to German colonization of the area beginning in the 13th century. ... Selonian was a language appertaining to the Baltic languages group of the Indo-European languages family. ... Semigallian is an extinct language appertaining to the Baltic languages sub-family of Indo-European languages. ... Sudovian (otherwise known as Jatvingian or Yotvingian) is an extinct western Baltic language of north-eastern Europe. ...

Contents

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