Pomorian North-Western dialects
The North-Western group is a dialectal group of the Pomorian language spoken mostly in the eastern part of Puck County and in Rumina, Reda and Weiherinå gminas (which are the western part of Pomorze wschodnie in Poland). It is often referred to as pamarėska uzskąda (Western Pomorian), sometimes also as pumurėlina guora/galba and is considered being a separate language by its native speakers.
History
Western dialects started diverging from Old Pomorian approximately in the VIth-VIIth century, which is a very long time for a dialect. It came from lands in between Masuria and Ziemia lubawska and slowly migrated to its current lands by the end of the XIII century. During this time Western Pomorians came into contact with slavic Pomeranians and their dialect was influenced by Slovincian and Kashubian spoken there. A partial assimilation with those peoples gave birth to Northern and South-Western dialects.
From the XIII century onwards, Western Pomorians dispersed on the rest Pomorian territory intermixing with local population. During this process Central and Southern dialectal groups began forming and thus creating a dialectal continuum from Western to Eastern groups of dialects.
Under German rule Northern dialect was heavily influenced by Low German resulting in some new features of it such as an initial stress and loss of the pitch accent. however morphology stayed quite intact preserving some archaic features not present in Pomorian standard.
The earliest writings in Pomerellian appeared in the XIVth century the most famous of which is "Gudoniskė Predihtė" ("Gdańskie kazania" in Polish). The first written phrase was from 1395: "Ate Nassye kao essi annebesseich", which is the first line of the Lord's Prayer.
Phonology
The Pomerellian phonology is very similar to the standard with main features being:
- lack of nasalization before plosives;
- preservation of k, g before front vowels in some ablaut alterations and after s;
- lack of shortening of old diphthongs *au and *ai at the end of the word;
- narrowing of au to ou;
- no palatalization before front vowels, however it depends on a speaker (usually only y can cause palatalization);
- no /c/, /ɟ/ palatalization to /t͡ɕ/, /d͡ʑ/;
Vowels
| Western dialect | Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |
| Close | y /i:/ | į /ĩ:/ | ū /u:/ | ų /ũ:/ |
| Mid | ė /ɛː~eː/ | o /ɔː~oː/ | ||
| Open-mid | e (/æ:/) | ę /æ̃:/ | ą /ɔ̃:/ | |
| Open | a (/a:/) | |||
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i~ɪ/ | u /u~ʊ/ |
| Open-mid | e /ɛ/ | |
| Open | a /ɑ/ å /ɒ/ |
Note:
- Allophones /æ:/, /a:/, /ɔ/ appear only under circumflex accent.
| ie /ie/ | uo /uo/ | ei /eɪ/ | ou /oʊ/ |
|---|
| Northern dialect | Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |
| Close | y /i:/ | į /ĩ:/ | ū /u:/ | ų /ũ:/ |
| Mid | ė /eɪ~eː/ | o /oʊ~oː/ | ||
| Open-mid | ē /æ:/ | ę /æ̃:/ | ą /ɔ̃:/ | |
| Open | ā /a:/ | |||
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i~ɪ/ | u /u~ʊ/ |
| Open-mid | e /ɛ/ | |
| Open | a /ɑ/ å /ɒ/ |
| ie /ɪe/ | ea /ɛæ/ | oa /ɔɒ/ | uo /uo/ | ei /eɪ~ɪ:/ | ou /ɔʊ~ʊ:/ |
|---|
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Palato-alveolar | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n̪ | ɲ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t̪ | c | k | |
| voiced | b | d̪ | ɟ | g | ||
| Affricate | voiceless | t̪͡s̪ | t͡sʲ~t͡ɕ 1 | |||
| voiced | d̪͡z̪ | d͡zʲ~d͡ʑ 1 | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | (f) 2 | s̪ | sʲ~ɕ 1 ʆ 3 | h | |
| voiced | z̪ | zʲ~ʑ 1 | (ɦ) 4 | |||
| Trill | r | (rʲ) 5 | ||||
| Approximant | w~ʋ 6 | j | ||||
| Lateral approximant | l | ʎ | ||||
Notes:
- 1 Depends on speaker. Affricates [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ] are considered to be a Polish influence.
- 2 Occures only in borrowings.
- 3 Pronunciation varies from [ʃ] to [ʂ] in different speakers with the latter being more common.
- 4 [ɦ] is an allophone of /h/ in the intervocal position.
- 5 Does not appear in most North-Western dialects and is usually pronounced as as a sequence [rj] or plain [r]. It is also pronounced as [r̝] by some northern speakers - a unique feature of the Northern dialect.
- 6 [w] occures after back vowels, while [ʋ] - after front ones.
Prosody
The Western dialect has a pitch-accent while Northern has lost it gaining a fixed initial stress as in German. The Western dialect has the same accent types as in the standard: the falling accent - tvírdagalså - which can be long - dìlgå (marked with an acute) - or short - cẽrtå (marked with a grave) and the rising accent - lìkugalså (marked with a circumflex or a tilde). However in some words with the rising accent in the standard there is a falling accent (tvirdagalså) while tvirdagalså certå can be retracted to a previous syllable. For example dąbù (oak) is dǻmbu in Western dialect and doambu in Northern.