Carpathian language

Carpathian
Karpātiška/Karpātiska
Pronunciation	[kar.ˈpāː.tiʂ.ka/kɑr.ˈpɑ̄ː.tis.kɑ]
Created by	–
Native to	Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland
Ethnicity	Carpathians
Native speakers	200.000 (2018–2001)
Language family	Indo-European Carpathian
Early forms	Proto-Carpathian Proto-Carpathian
Standard forms	Eastern Carpathian Western Carpathian

Carpathian, (Western: Karpātiška tāra [kar.ˈpāː.tiʂ.ka. ˈtāː.ra]; Eastern: Karpātiska tāra [kɑr.ˈpɑ̄ː.tis.kɑ. ˈtɑ̄ː.rɑ]) forms an independent branch of the Indo-European languages, closely related to Balto-Slavic languages. It is spoken in the Carpathian region of Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. Carpathian is written in the Latin alphabet, although Cyrillic had also been used during the Soviet period. The total number of Carpathian speakers worldwide is estimated between 160 and 200 thousand, including the Carpathian-speaking diaspora.

History

Classification and origins

Carpathian is classified as an independent branch of the Indo-European languages, although it shares many common features with the Balto-Slavic languages. Some linguists tentatively conclude that Carpathian was dialectally close to that subbranch and connect it to the extinct languages of the Balkans, Dacian in particular. It is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological conservatism among modern Indo-European languages. Just as the Balto-Slavic languages, Carpathian exhibits satemization (śum̃ta “hundred” from Proto-Indo-European *ḱm̥tóm), although some words developed as in the centum languages, such as gansìs “goose” from *ǵʰh₂éns (same as Slavic *gǫ̑sь).

The Carpathian region was a multilingual through its history, Carpathian vocabulary has historically been influenced by Paleo-Balkan, Slavic, Pannonian Avar and Hungarian, the latter two affected the language to a lesser extent.[42] Contact with German during the Austro-Hungarian period also resulted in a number of loanwords, particularly vocabulary related to trade and industry. There are two standardised modern literary forms, Eastern Carpathian in Ukraine and Poland and Western Carpathian in Slovakia, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible. Although Carpathians were known to history much earlier, both forms were codified in the 19th century.

Early contacts

Several linguists throughout the late 20th century noted the presence of so called "Carpathian substratum" – an unidentified, likely non-Indo-European language formerly spoken in the Carpathians. Because there are irregularities in Carpathian substrate words, they might have been borrowed from distinct, but closely related languages. In the west, the substrate languages probably had an š-type sibilant which corresponds to an s-type sibilant in the east. The speakers of the Proto-Carpathian language arrived in the region around 2500 BCE and fully assimilated the local Paleo-European population by the middle of 1st millennium BCE. The detailed reconstruction of this language (or languages) is impossible. Some of the borrowed words have cognates in all dialects of Carpathian, and semantically the substrate consists primarily of basic geographic and botanical terminology as well as toponymy, they are better preserved in dialectal vocabulary of the Carpathian Highlands. Some aspects of the Carpathian phonology, such as pleophony and consonant gemination, and grammar (absence of the passive voice, polypersonal agreement of verbs) are associated with the substrate.

The hypothesis that Carpathian is the closest living relative to the Paleo-Balkan languages originated in 1944, based on the number of proposed lexical cognates being greater than that of between Dacian and any other Indo-European subfamily. The other more recent proposal is Carpathian being a divergent Baltic language, it found the most support in Lithuania; the proposal also includes the Paleo-Balkan languages as a closely related subbranch. Noting that Dacian-speaking peoples inhabited the Carpathian region till the fifth century CE, providing a substratum of abstract, geographical and biological terms such as ramùs “peaceful” ( ← Dac. *ramus), kòpa/kàpa “mountain slope” ( ← Dac. *kapas), kérbā “swamp” ( ← Dac. *kerba), burùklā “cranberry” ( ← Dac. *brukla) or tī́ras “blank, desolate” ( ← Dac. *tiras). Other linguists have rejected the Dacian origins for many of these words and instead suggest native Carpathian etymologies, however some words, such as dìtas “bright” cannot be explained otherwise – PIE *dih₂tís “brightness” would have resulted in **dī́tas.

Shared features with Balto-Slavic

The evidence points out to a long-term proximity between Carpathian and Balto-Slavic, and the two branches share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which suggests a common ancestor. Carpathian and Balto-Slavic share many close phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic and accentological similarities, and some scholars accept the division into three branches — Carpathic, Baltic and Slavic — as the default assumption, even though such a division faces many issues.

Common sound changes include Winter's law, Hirt's law (often levelled by analogical restoration), Ruki law, merging of PIE short *o and *a into *a (which in the Western dialects later gained a labialised allophone *å, resulting in new o-phoneme), development of syllabic sonorants into diphthongoids with the initial element being a high vowel (either *i or *u).

Common grammatical feautures are the usage of the genitive case for the direct object of a negative verb, instead of the accusative case (may be a common substratum influence), the use of the ending *-mīs in the instrumental plural instead of -bhis, *-ān of the instrumental singular in ā-stem nouns.

Some examples of words shared between Carpathian and Balto-Slavic languages: “linden” — Carpathian léipā, Lithuanian líepa, Old Prussian līpa, Common Slavic *lìpa; “hand” — Carpathian rankā́, Lithuanian rankà, Old Prussian ranka, Common Slavic *rǭkà; “head” — Carpathian galwā́, Lithuanian galvà, Old Prussian galwa, Common Slavic *golvà.

Many scholars instead prefer a dialect continuum model where the late PIE northeastern dialects developed into Balto-Slavic (or even separate Baltic and Slavic), while the southwestern dialect that had migrated into the mountains developed into Carpathian. This may explain many differences between the two branches, particularly in their corresponding verbal morphology and lexicon, as well as certain archaic Carpathian features, not found in Balto-Slavic, such as consonantal reflexes of Proto-Indo-European laryngeals *h₂ and *h₃, found only in the Anatolian languages and Armenian (irregularly): Carpathian harèlis^W/harìlis^E “eagle” (from PIE *h₃érō), with some words having doublets in dialects hwḗjas/wḗjas “air” (PIE*h₂weh₁- “to blow”), meibáheti “is telling me” (*bʰéh₂ti “to speak”).

Phonology

The sound system of Carpathian resembles the neighbouring Slavic languages: Ukrainian and Slovak. Some considerable variation exists among the Western and Eastern varieties.

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ɲ
Stop	p b	t d	(t͡ʂ) (d͡ʐ)	c ɟ	k g
Fricative	(f)	s z	ʂ ʐ	ɕ ʑ		h ~ ɦ
Approximant	ʋ ~ w	l		ʎ j
Trill		r	rʲ†

Phonetic details:

• There is no complete agreement about the phonetic nature of /ɦ/. According to some linguists, it can be voiceless [h] at least word-initially, while according to others, it is always voiced [ɦ]. In dialects it may disappear completely, which is common before /w/, after /r/ or between vowels. It disappeared after /l/ even in the standard — gèlhandis → Western gelandis “acorn” (the former spelling is allowed in the Eastern variety). In some dialects combinations "hw", "rh" and "lh" may be pronounced as [ʍ], [r̥] and [l̥], for example [wɛ̀.l̥is] welhis “ghost”.
• /w/ is most commonly bilabial [β̞] in the Eastern Carpathian and labiodental [ʋ] in Western Carpathian (although bilabial or labiovelar pronunciation is possible in both varieties). If /w/ occurs after /h/, the voiceless articulation [ʍ] is also possible in some varieties.
• /r/ is sometimes realized as a single tap [ɾ], particularly in fast speech. Its palatalised counterpart [rʲ] is obsolete in most dialects, where it either became [r] or broke into [rj], the former being a more common outcome. [rʲ] is still preserved in some remote Eastern dialects and is still the recommended pronunciation — giriā [gi.ˈrʲɑ̂ː], usually pronounced [gi.ˈrɑ̂ː] instead.
• The consonants [t͡ʂ], [d͡ʐ] and [f], written "č" "dž" and "f" respectively, are not native to Carpathian. Some Western dialects, mostly those spoken in Poland and Eastern Slovakia have [t͡s] and [d͡z].