Schemeitic

Schemeitic - Žemaitiu ruoda
Spoken in	Lithuania
speaker	approx. 500,000
Linguistic classification	Indo-European languages Baltic languages East Baltic languages Lithuanian Schemeitic
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sgs

Schemaitic (also: Samogitisch , Schemaitisch : Žemaitiu ruoda , Lithuanian : Žemaičių tarmė ) is a dialect of the Lithuanian language that is mainly spoken in Samogitia , the western part of Lithuania. There are efforts to standardize the schemaitical. The Schemaitic dialect should not be confused with the middle dialect of Lithuanian, which in the form spoken from the 16th to the 18th centuries was sometimes referred to as Schemaitic.

history

The Shemaites and Lithuanians in the context of the other Baltic tribes, around 1200

Until the end of the 19th century, the modern Schemaites are only mentioned as Western Schemaites; the latter are considered descendants of the "litauisierten" Semgallen (for the Southern subdialect) and the treatments considered (for the northern and western Subdialekte).

The earliest scripts in the Schemaitic dialect appeared in the 19th century.

The Schemaitic dialect, which was strongly influenced by Curonian , arose from the East Baltic proto-Schemaitic dialect, which was very closely related to the Aukschtaite dialect of the neighboring Aukschtaites .

During the fifth century the Proto-Shemaites migrated from the lowlands of Central Lithuania near Kaunas into the basins of Dubysa and Jūra , as well as into the Shemaitic highlands. They displaced or assimilated the resident, Kurish-speaking Baltic population and, further north, the indigenous, Semgallic- speaking people.

In the 13th century Samogitia was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , which by Mindaugas I. was founded. Lithuania conquered the Baltic coast from the Order of the Brothers of the Sword . The coast was populated by Kurds but became part of the Duchy of Samogitia . From the 13th century onwards, the Shemitites settled the former Curonian land and mingled with its population for the next 300 years. The Kurds had a great cultural impact on the Schemaite and Lithuanian cultures, but they were finally assimilated around the 16th century. Schemeitic and its subdialects preserved many characteristics of the Curonian language, for example:

• Lowering of the protobaltic short i ( i → ė , sometimes e )
• Lowering of the protobaltic short u ( u → o )
• Preservation of the West Baltic diphthong egg (standard Lithuanian ie → schemaitic ėi )
• no affriction from d ' , t' to č , dž ( Latvian š , ž )
• specific lexicons such as cīrulis (" lark "), pīle (" duck "), leitis ("Lithuanian") and others
• No accents
• Shortening of the ending -as to -s as in Latvian and Prussian

and several other properties not listed here.

The earliest writings in the Schemaitic dialect appeared in the 19th century. Famous authors on Schemaitisch are:

• Silvestras Valiūnas with his heroic poem “Biruta”, first printed in 1829. “Biruta” became a hymn of immigrated Lithuanian students in the 19th century.
• Simonas Stanevičius ( Schemaitisch Sėmuons Stanevičios ) with his book “Šešės pasakas” ( Six Fables ), printed in 1829.
• Simonas Daukantas ( Schemaitic Sėmuons Daukonts ), the first Lithuanian historian to write in Lithuanian (or its dialect). His book "Būds Senovės Lietuviu Kalnienu ir Zamaitiu" ( Customs of the ancient Lithuanian highland inhabitants and Shemaites ) was printed in 1854.
• Motiejus Valančius ( Schemaitisch Muotiejos Valončios , also Muotiejos Valontė ) with one of his books "Palangos Juzė" ( Joseph von Palanga ), printed in 1869. "Palangos Juzė" is considered the first geographical work in Lithuanian.

grammar

The Schemaitic dialect is highly fusional, like standard Lithuanian, in which the relationship between parts of speech and their roles in a sentence is expressed through numerous inflections .

There are two genera in Schemeitic - masculine and feminine. Relics of a historical neuter are almost completely extinct, while a few isolated forms have remained in standard Lithuanian. These have been replaced by masculine ones in schemaitic. The schemaitic accent is flexible, but is often left out at the end of the word and is also characterized by a tone accent . Schemaitic has a broken tone accent like Latvian and Danish . The rising tone of standard Lithuanian is replaced by an acute . Schemeitic nouns have five declensions , adjectives three. Nominal declarations differ from standard Lithuanian (see next section). There are only two verbal conjugations . All verbs have the tenses present tense , past tense , past tense iterative and future tense in the indicative , subjunctive and imperative (both latter without Tempus discrimination) and infinitive . The formation of the iterative past tense differs from standard Lithuanian. There are three numbers in Schemeitic: singular , plural and dual , which is almost extinct in standard Lithuanian. The third person of all three numbers is identical. Like standard Lithuanian, Schemaitic has a very rich participle system , which has its own forms for all tenses and both diatheses , and several gerund forms . Nouns and other declinable words are inflected in seven cases : nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , instrumental , locative and vocative .

There are no written grammar rules in Shemaitic as it is considered a dialect of Lithuanian, but several approaches have been taken to standardize its written form.

Linguistic differences between Schemeitic and standard Lithuanian

Schematic differs from standard Lithuanian in terms of phonetics , lexicons, syntax and morphology .

The phonetic differences vary depending on the schemaitic subdialect.

Standard Lithuanian → Schemaitic

• i → short ė, occasionally e;
• u → short o (in some cases u);
• ė → ie;
• o → uo;
• ie → long ė, ėi, ī (y) (west, north and south subdialect);
• uo → ō, ou, ū (west, north and south);
• ai → ā;
• ei, iai → ē;
• ui → oi;
• oi (oj) → uo;
• an → on (in the southeastern part an);
• un → on (in the southeastern part un);
• ą → an in the southeastern part, on in the middle part and ō or ou in the north;
• ę → en in the southeastern part, ėn in the central part and õ, ō or ėi in the north;
• ū → ū and in some cases un, um;
• ų → in accented endings un and um;
• unstressed ų → o;
• y → ī (y), occasionally in;
• i derived from the old ī → ī;
• u derived from the old ō (Lithuanian uo) → ō, ou, ū (west, north and south)
• i derived from the old ei (Lithuanian ie) → long ė, ėi, ī (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 ią → ė (rarely i and e);

The main difference is the verbal conjugation . The iterative past tense is formed differently than in Lithuanian: While in standard Lithuanian the ending -ti is replaced by -davo ( mirti → mirdavo , pūti → pūdavo ), in schemaitic the word liuob is placed in front. The second conjugation has died out in Schemeitic and has merged with the first. The plural reflective ending is -muos instead of -mies , which one might expect due to the standard Lithuanian ending -mės . Schemeitisch preserved an abundance 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 is shifted. The subjunctive inflection is different, the dual is completely preserved.

The differences between the nouns are also noticeable: the fifth noun declension has almost died out and was mixed with the third. The plural cases and some singular cases of the fourth declension have endings of the first (compare schemaitically nominative singular sūnos , nominative plural sūnā , on the other hand Lithuanian nominative singular sūnus , nominative plural sūnūs ). The neuter of adjectives has become extinct - it has been supplanted by adverbs , except šėlt ("warm"), šalt ("cold"), karšt ("hot") - while it is preserved in standard Lithuanian. Neutral pronouns have been replaced by masculine ones. The second declension of the adjectives is merged with the first declension except for the nominative singular ending. The formation of the pronominal also differs from that in standard Lithuanian.

Other morphological differences

Schemeitic has many words and expressions that are completely different from typical Lithuanian, such as:

• kiuocis ("basket", Lithuanian krepšys , Latvian ķocis )
• tevs ("thin", Lithuanian plonas or tęvas , Latvian tievs )
• rebas ("ribs", Lithuanian šonkauliai , Latvian ribas )

Subdialects

Map of the dialects of the Lithuanian language (Zinkevičius and Girdenis, 1965). Numerous subdialects of the Schemaitic dialect are shown in yellow, red and brown tones.

Scheme is divided into three main subdialects:

1. North Schematic (spoken in the Telšiai and Kretinga region )
2. Western Schemaitic (formerly spoken in the area around Klaipėda ; now almost extinct as many speakers were expelled after 1945)
3. South Schematic (spoken in the regions of Varniai , Kelmė , Tauragė and Raseiniai )

Historically, they are differentiated based on their pronunciation of the Lithuanian word Duona ("bread"), which led to the names Dounininkai (from Douna ), Donininkai (from Dona ) and Dūnininkai (from Dūna ).

Political situation

The Schemaitic dialect is declining sharply: it is not used in school lessons, and there is only a quarterly magazine on Schemaitisch and no television station. There are Schemaitic radio broadcasts in Klaipėda and Telšiai , but the local press and other radio also use standard Lithuanian. There is also no schemaitic literature because authors prefer the standard language because of the larger audience. Besides those who speak Shemaitic, there are only a few who understand it well.

Emigration of Schemaic-speaking people as well as immigration of non-Schemaic-speaking people continuously reduce the contact between the speakers of this dialect and thus the fluency of the pronunciation of the remaining speakers.

There are efforts of the Schemaitic Cultural Society ( Žemaičių Kultūros Draugija ) to stop the loss of the dialect: the Telšiai City Council put Schemaitic street signs on the roads towards the city and a new writing system was created.

Writing system

A separate writing system for Schemeitic was first used in the interwar period , but was neglected in the Soviet era, so that only older people knew how to write Schemeitic when Lithuania regained independence. The Schemeitic Cultural Society revised the system to make it more useful.

The writing system uses letters similar to standard Lithuanian, but with the following differences:

• There are no “ nasal vowels ” (letters with Ogonek : ą , ę , į and ų ).
• In addition to the ū, there are four additional long vowels , which are represented with macron as in Latvian : ā , ē , ė̄ and ō .
• The long i is also written with a macron: ī , instead of y as in Lithuanian .
• There are two additional diphthongs that are written as digraphs : ou and ėi .

As before, it was difficult to add these new letters to fonts; some older schemaitic texts use double letters instead of macra to represent long vowels: aa instead of ā , ee instead of ē, and so on. Today the Schemeitic Cultural Society advises against these double vowels and advises to use the macron. The use of diphthongs is accepted if computer fonts the Samogitian characters can not represent; in this case, however, no ii is substituted for the long ī , but a y , as is customary in standard Lithuanian. The apostrophe can be used to represent the palatalization , but the i is also used occasionally - as in standard Lithuanian - for this purpose.

A schematic keyboard layout was developed.

The Schemaitic Alphabet

Letter name	A a [ā]	Ā ā [ėlguojė ā]	B b [bė]	C c [cė]	Č č [čė]	D d [dė]	E e [ē]	Ē ē [ėlguojė ē]
Letter name	Ė ė [ė]	Ė̄ ė̄ [ėlguojė ė̄]	F f [ėf]	G g [gė, gie]	H h [hā]	I i [ī]	Ī ī [ėlguojė ī]	J j [jot]
Letter name	K k [kā]	L l [ėl]	M m [ėm]	N n [ėn]	O o [ō]	Ō ō [ėlguojė ō]	P p [pė]	R r [ėr]
Letter name	S s [ės]	Š š [ėš]	T t [tė]	U u [ū]	Ū ū [ėlguojė ū]	V v [vė]	Z z [zė, zet]	Ž ž [žė, žet].

Examples

German	Schemeitic	Lithuanian	Latvian	Latgalian
Schemeitic	žemaitiu ruoda	žemaičių tarmė	žemaišu valoda	žemaišu volūda
German	vuokītiu kalba	vokiečių kalba	vācu valoda	vācu volūda
Yes	Noie, tep	Taip	Yes	Nuj
No	No	No	Nē	N / A
Hello	Svēks	Sveikas	Sveiks	Vasals
How are you?	Kāp gīveni?	Kaip gyveni / laikaisi / einasi?	Kā tev iet?	Kai īt?
Good evening!	Lab vacar!	Labas vakaras / labvakar!	Labvakar!	Praise vokors!
welcome	Svēkė atvīkė̄i!	Sveiki atvykę	Laipni lūdzam	Vasali atguojuši
Good night!	Labanakt	Labos nakties / Labanakt!	Ar labu nakti	Lobys nakts!
Goodbye!	Sudieu, vėsa gera	Viso gero / Sudie (vu) / Viso labo!	Visu labu	Palicyt vasali
Good day!	Geruos dėinuos!	Geros dienos / Labos dienos!	Jauku dienu!	Breineigu dīnu
Good luck!	Siekmies!	Sėkmės!	Veiksmi!	Lai lūbsīs!
You're welcome	Prašau	Prašau	Lūdzu	Lyudzams
thank you	Diekou	Ačiū / Dėkui / Dėkoju	Paldies	Paļdis
Here you go)	Prašuom	Prašom	Laipni lūdzam	Laipni lyudzam
sorry	Atsėprašau	Atsiprašau / Atleiskite	Atvaino (Piedod)	Atlaid
Who?	Cheese?	Cheese?	Cheese? (Course?)	Cheese?
When?	Kumet?	Kada / Kuomet?	Kad?	Kod?
Where?	Kor?	Cure?	Cure?	Cure?
How so?	Diukuo?	Kodėl / Dėl ko?	Kādēļ? (Kāpēc?)	Dieļ kuo?
What is your name?	Kuoks tava vards?	Coke tavo vardas? / Kuo tu vardu?	Kāds ir tavs vārds? (Kā tevi sauc?)	Kai tevi sauc?
Because	Dieltuo	Todėl / Dėl to	Tādēļ (Tāpēc)	Dieļ tuo
How?	Cape?	Kaip?	Kā?	Kai?
How much?	Kėik?	Kiek?	Cik daudz?	Cik daudzi?
I do not understand.	Nesopronto	Nesuprantu	Nesaprotu	Nasaprūtu
I understand.	Sopronto	Suprantu	Saprotu	Saprūtu
Help!	Padieket!	Padėkite / Gelbėkite!	Palīgā!	Paleigā!
Where is the toilet?	Kor īr tuliets?	Kur yra tualetas?	Kur ir tualete?	Kur irā tualets?
Do you speak German?	Rokounaties vuokiškā?	(Ar) kalbate vokiškai?	Vai runājat vāciski?	Runuojit vāciski?
I don't speak schemaitisch.	Nerokounous žemaitėškā.	Žemaitiškai nekalbu	It nerunāju žemaitiski	As narunuoju žemaitiski
The Bill please	Saskaita prašīčiuo	Prašyčiau sąskaitą / Sąskaitą, prašyčiau / Sąskaitą, prašau, pateikite	Rēķinu, lūdzu!	Lyudzu, saskaitu

Our father

Tievė mūsa, katros esi dongou,

Tebūn švėnts Tava vards,

Teatein Tava karalīstė,

Tebūn Tava valė

Cape dongou, tēp ė ont žemės.

Kasdėinėnės dounas douk mums šėndėin

Ėr atleisk mums mūsa Kaltės

Kap ė mes atleidam sava Kaltininkams

Ė neleisk mūsa gundītė,

Bet Gelbiek mumis nu pėkta. Amen.

Trivia

The Lithuanian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 1999 - the title "Strazdas" (in German "the throttle") of the singer Aistė - was in Schemeitic.

Web links

Wikipedia on schema table

• Schemaitia
• Maps of the Lithuanian language with the borders of the Schemaitic dialects

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Puocātė Audruonė: Švėntas mėšės - žemaitiu kalbo. Retrieved March 21, 2012 (Samogite).