West Carpathian

West Carpathian language
Kārpāthirēta
Pronunciation	[/ˈkaːr.paː.ɦi.ˈreː.tɑ/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	parallel Earth
Ethnicity	Carpathian people
Native speakers	45 0000 (2012 census)
Language family	Oronaic West Carpathian language
Early forms	Proto-Oronaic Proto-Alpathian (?) Proto-Carpathian

West Carpathian (native name - kārpāthirēta) is one of the three recognized Carpathian languages spoken by the Carpathian people in Slovakia and in three small mountainous regions of Southern Poland. It has approximately 45 000 native speakers according to 2012 census in Slovakia (including speakers of dialects).

West Capathian was influenced by West Slavic languages, Polish and Slovak in particular, and also by hungarian to a lesser extend. Typologically it is between fusional and agglutinative languages and is different from surrounding Indo-European languages. It has a complex inflection system for nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence.

History

Ancient history

The Proto-Carpathian is believed to have formed near Polish-Slovak border near 2500 BCE, after its split from hypothetical Proto-Alpathian or directly from Proto-Oronaic itself with an intermediate stage as a proto-dialect. According to most linguists, the language comes from Polish lowlands in the basin of Vistula river. Current models assume two or more hypothetical Pre-Proto-Carpathian dialects evolving over the first millennium BCE. This data is supported by Ancient Roman geographers and writers, such as Ptolemy and Marinus of Tyre, who mentioned the Estri tribe, which inhabited modern day Lower Austria, and the city of Esterixus, located somewhere in modern Bezirk Lienz. There are very few language examples, which is not enough to determine, whether Estrian was an early Carpathian language. Some scholars agree that it could possibly be an ancient Alpian language or even Proto-Alpian, while those, who support Proto-Alpathian existence, claim it to be an intermediate language between Alpian and Carpathian.

Medieval period

The first attestation of West Carpathian was on the XVth century map of Eastern Europe. The words are "Kárpathiáte" (modern spelling - kārpāttāt, which means "Carpathians' land"). More written records were found also in the form of personal names and short notes. In the late XVIIth century the Bible was translated by Josef Kauffman. However, only the first few pages remain to these days, while the rest of the book is lost and it is not known, if this was a complete translation, since there were no copies of the book. Other attempts to translate any texts into West Carpathian were abandoned. All liturgical ceremonies were held in Latin

Standardization

The first comprehensive writing system for West Carpathian was created by Jan Meyer in the 1878, which was based on Czech orthograpy. He also wrote some linguistic works about West Carpathian, using his writing system to write words and sentences in Carpathian. His written language was based on westernmost dialects and he wanted to represent one sound with one letter, exept for a few digraphs, like "ch" for [x] or [h], "th" for [θ] and "dh" for [ð̞]. In the early XXth century Jan Meyer's work was revised and new writing systems were proposed, in one of which long vowels were represented with a macron above a vowel letter instead of acute.

Modern period

Up until Jan Meyer written Carpathian was used solely in religious texts, but after his works the language slowly started appearing in newspapers and literature. In 1961 Bohuslav Raudi (native name Eiki) created a new standard writing for both West and East Carpathian, based on previuos systems. He attemted to unify different dialects into a Carpathian language and his writing system became standard written West Carpathian. He also retained the "th" digraph as it was in Jan Meyer's system, despite [θ] sound was no longer present in any Carpathian dialect; and changed "dh" into plain "d", as "d" only appeared in this digraph and proper names due to absent of [d] sound. His daughters Anna and Maria Raudi created a complete West Carpathian-Slovak dictionary in 1989 together with other scholars as well as workbooks for everyone to learn their language. They also wrote dozens of articles about various Carpathian dialects.

Phonology

Vowels

There are six vowels, five of which contrast in length. They are pronounced more or less the same in every dialect of West Carpathian (except for Prešov dialects, which lack /æ/. The quality of long vowels mostly overlaps with the quality of short vowels, except long ones are pronounced as more tense, while short vowels are slightly centralized. The only exception is ā which is fronted noticeably comparing to its short counterpart. This feature of the standard language is not widespread among all the dialects, but only in Šilli. Vowel length itself is hard to notice for a non-native speaker, mostly due to abundance of long vowels.

	Front		Back
	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close	i [i]	ī [iː]	u [u]	ū [uː]
Mid	e [e]	ē [eː]	o [o]	ō [oː]
Open	ä [æ]		a [ɑ]	ā [aː]

• The mid vowels are phonetically mid [e̞, ø̞, o̞].
• The unrounded open vowel transcribed in IPA with /ɑ/ has been described as open central [ɑ̈].

West Carpathian still preserves a complete vowel harmony for ä/a, which means these sounds can not be in the same native word. As for other vowels, only residual harmony is present, which is completely different from Proto-Carpathian, in which every vowel had a contrasting counterpart. West Carpathian has a rich system of diphthongs. There are seven phonemic and eleven non-phonemic diphthongs (eighteen in total); like simple vowels, diphthongs do not have significant allophony, but they have a great variety in pronunciation in different dialects. They are treated as long vowels.

Phonemic diphthongs i u e o ä a i ie iä u ui uo ua e eä o oa

Non-phonemic diphthongs i u e o i (iu)* e ei eu eo o oi ou oe ä äi äe a ai au ao

• iu appears only in words from Prešov dialects.

Phonemic diphthongs contrast with long vowels while inflecting nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs. Non-phonemic diphthongs historically are sequences of two vowels and with an exeption of äi and ai do not contrast with anything.

Consonants

The consonant system is different from such neighbouring languages, as West Carpathian lacks voiced/voiceless contrast, typical for Slavic languages and Hungarian. Instead it has an opposition of plain vs geminated consonants, which take part in a consonant gradation similar to some Uralic languages, for instance: koatta-kōtak ("branch"-"branches"). Almost all consonants (except for ť, h, v, j and r) have phonemic geminated forms. These are independent phonemes, but can occur only medially.

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar/Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ň [ɲ]	n (ŋ)
Plosive	p	t [t̪]		ť [c]	k
Affricate			c [t͡s]	č [t͡ʃ~t͡ɕ]
Fricative	f		s	š [ʃ~ɕ]		h [h~ɦ]
Approximant	v [w]	d [ð̞]		j
Trill			r
Lateral Approximant			l	ľ [ʎ]

Consonant clusters are not allowed word-intially in native words, and only two consonants are allowed together medially and finally, except for a very small ammount of words, like in tarste "a big bag". However, this rule is omitted in recent loanwords, like transporta "transport vehicle" or elektronika "electronics".

Palatalization is a Carpathian feature shared by its neighbouring languages. All palatal consonants, except for ť,w hich contrasts with j, can be either plain or geminated, for example vaľľa-vaľā ("freedom" in nominative and accusative cases respectively). Unlike other palatal consonants ť is a strong grade (and thus is often released as [cː] instead of plain [c]) Its weak grade is j - kēťi-kēja "ball of thread" in nominative and accusative cases.

Geographic distribution

West Carpathian is spoken by about 45 thousand people, most of whom are Slovakian citizens. There are also small Carpathian minorities in Poland (less than 7000 people). The majority of the Carpathian population in Slovakia, 78% as of 2012, speak West Carpathian as their first language, while in Poland this number is significantly smaller (19%, which is approximately 2000 speakers).

Official status

West Carpathian is a minority language in Slovakia and has a status of a regional language in Žilina and Prešov regions. In some municipalities of Bytča, Čadca, Námestovo, Bardejov, Svidník, Medzilaborce and Snina districts it is co-official with Slovakian.