Pomorian Eastern dialects

The Eastern group is a dialectal group of the Pomorian language spoken in Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship, mostly in Alęšteiņa and surrounding areas. Nowadays it has approximately 500 native speakers left, but only 40 years ago this dialect was the most widely spoken with more than 7000 speakers. It is commonly reffered to as pamarėska uostroja (Eastern Pomorian), but its native speakers call it suvilkeina or suvyucyska rōka /su.ˈwɨʊ̯.t͡sɨ.skɐ. rɔː.ˈka/ from the Suvyucyja region where most Eastern Pomorians lived. The Eastern dialectal group is often considered being a separate language because of the time of divergence (about the VIIth or even the VIth century) which is more typical for a language.

History

Eastern dialects were showing some of their distinct features already in Old Pomorian. It came from lands between Sasna and Masuria and shared the northern part of this territory with sașinavi (Sasnavians in English) and galįdi (Galindians) tribes and in the north-west - with pumureiļi (Western Pomorians). During this time Eastern Pomorian was in a constant contact with Old Prussian, which influenced it and various loanwords connected to trade and fishing were borrowed.

After the end of the XIIIth century the Southern group began diverging from Eastern Pomorian but was slowly being substituted with Polish. But new Central and Southern dialectal groups began forming and thus creating a dialectal continuum between Eastern and Western groups of dialects. However like its northern neighbour Old Prussian Eastern Pomorian started dying out slowly from the XVIth century at first in the Masuria region and then elsewhere.

Orthography

Unlike other Pomorian dialects Suvilkian uses the Eastern orthography which is more similar to Prussian and Latvian ones. This orthography was created in 1952. According to a widespread opinion it was made due to political reasons (probably to deepen the difference between Eastern and Western Pomorians) than linguistic ones.

Phonology

The Suvilkian phonology is a bit different from the standard making the dialect harder to understand for other speakers. The vowel system is different for stressed and unstressed vowels, but these differences are allophonic and are mentioned only in some linguistic articles about the Pomorian phonology.

Vowels

Long vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	oral	nasal			oral	nasal
Close	ī /i:/	į /ĩ:/	ȳ /ɨ:/		ū /u:/	ų /ũ:/
Open-mid	ē /ɛː/	ę /æ̃:/			ō /ɔː/	ą /ɔ̃:/
Open			ā /a:/

Short vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i /i~ɪ/	y /ɨ~ə/	u /u~ʊ/
Open-mid	e /æ/	e (/ə/)*	o /ɔ/
Open		a /a/*

Notes:

• e is pronounced /ə/ at the end of words.
• a is pronounced /ɐ/ at the end of words if unstressed.

Diphthongs

ie /ie/	uo /uo/	ei /eɪ/	yu /ɨʊ/

Consonants

Consonants

		Labial	Dental	Palato-alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n̪	ɲ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t̪		k
	voiced	b	d̪		g
Affricate	voiceless		t̪͡s̪	t͡sʲ t͡ʃ
	voiced		d̪͡z̪	d͡zʲ d͡ʒ
Fricative	voiceless	(f) 1	s̪	sʲ ʃ		h 2
	voiced		z̪	zʲ ʒ		(ɦ) 2
Trill			r	(rʲ)3
Approximant		w~ʋ 4		j
Lateral approximant			l	ʎ

Notes:

• 1 Occures only in borrowings.
• 2 [ɦ] is an allophone of /h/ in the intervocal position.
• 3 Does not appear in some dialects where it is plain [r] instead.
• 4 [w] occures after back vowels, while [ʋ] - after front ones. Some, mostly second-language speakers pronounce it as [v] (and [f] before voiceless consonants).