Pomorian Lake dialect

The Lake dialect, called ežerina by its native speakers, is the last fragment of Old Southern dialects survived. It was spoken in Iława County (īlavina žemia, īlava in Ežerina). Nowadays its native speakers can still be found only in two small villages: Skuteluokē (Skitławki in Polish) and Geisiava (Wielowieś, where only two speakers remain). The dialect is quite distinct from the Pomorian standard and is not mutually intelligible with it. Ežerina share more similarities with Suvilkian, from which it probably evolved. It was also heavily influenced by Polish and German and many loanwords entered the dialect from them.

History

Historically speaking, Ežerina is a part of now extinct Old Southern dialects. These dialects quickly developed underthe Polish influence and became distinct already in the early XVth century. This group developed from the Eastern branch of Pomorian but was in a constant contact with the Pumurėnė and Slavic people, once living in that territory.

The Old Southern dialectal group began dying out in the XVth and XVIth centuries with Pomorians slowly switching to German (and then to Polish) as the language of prestige. It completely died out in the XIXth century, but some people who lived in small remote villages near areas of Suvyucyja continued speaking an intermediate dialect, which is now known as Ežerina.