{"id":21,"date":"2022-11-17T20:58:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T20:58:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/about\/"},"modified":"2022-11-29T00:56:27","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T00:56:27","slug":"languages","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Languages"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">The Southernmost Finnic languages and their contact varieties.<br>(Map by: Timo Rantanen, BEDLAN)<br><\/p>\n<h2>The Southernmost Finnic Languages<br><\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n<p>The Southernmost Finnic languages include all varieties of South Estonian \u2013 its dialects in Estonia as well as the three language island varieties (Lutsi, Leivu, Kraasna) spoken outside of it, both documented varieties of Livonian (Courland and Salaca) as well as Krevin Votic \u2013 a variety of Votic spoken near the city of Bauska in southern Latvia until the mid-19th century. <br><\/p>\n<p>The map above shows the location in color of the four languages at the focus of the Southernmost Finnic Prosody Project&#8217;s research: Courland Livonian, Salaca Livonian, Lutsi, and Leivu. Background information on the history and present state of these four languages follows below. <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div>Livonian speaker Valts Ern\u0161treits teaching the advanced Livonian course at the Livonian Summer University.<\/div><div>(Photo: Uldis Balodis; Piz\u0101 (Mi\u0137e\u013ctornis), Latvia, 2017)<br><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe Courland Livonians historically lived in a string of fishing villages along the northern coast of Courland (Kurzeme) in western Latvia. This area is known as <em>L\u012bv\u00f5d r\u0101nda<\/em> (the Livonian Coast).\nIn the 1950s, the Courland Livonians were forced to leave their native coast due to militarization of the area by the Soviet occupation regime. Today most Livonians live in R\u012bga, Ventspils, and Kolka.\nIn the 2020s, there are ~20 conversational (mostly L2) speakers and ~200 individuals with basic knowledge of Livonian. Some of the L2 speakers are linguists and not Livonian descendants.\nLanguage revitalization efforts are ongoing. The University of Latvia Livonian Institute is developing online language resources. Every year the Livonian children&#8217;s and youth summer school <em>Mierlinkizt<\/em> is held in Ir\u0113 (Mazirbe) on the Livonian Coast.\nThe Livonian Summer University is held regularly on the Livonian Coast for scholars interested in Livonian research and language study. The University of Tartu has supported Livonian research and offered language courses for over a century.\nProject researcher Tuuli Tuisk has studied and described different aspects of the Livonian sound system over the course of her career.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div>Vidzeme Livonian descendants \u2013 members of the Lielnori family \u2013 study their family tree.<\/div><div>(Photo: Rasma Nori\u0146a; R\u012bga, Latvia, 2012)<br><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe Salaca Livonians are descendants of the Vidzeme (Metsepole) Livonians who lived in western Vidzeme and a small adjacent coastal area of Estonia south of H\u00e4\u00e4demeeste.\nModern descendants are aware of their heritage and view it positively, but no speakers of Salaca Livonian remain.\nSalaca Livonian is the only documented part of Vidzeme Livonian. Its speakers lived near Sv\u0113tciems south of Salacgr\u012bva in Latvia.&nbsp;\nThe last known speakers lived in the 1860s, but Salaca Livonian rememberers survived and were documented until the early 20th century.\nSalaca Livonian was documented by Anders Johan Sj\u00f6gren and a description based on these materials was published by Ferdinand Johann Wiedemann in 1864.\nThe project&#8217;s principal investigator Karl Pajusalu continues work on these materials and has published a dictionary and grammar of Salaca Estonian with Eberhard Winkler (University of G\u00f6ttingen) as well as several Salaca Livonian poetry collections (as \u0136empi K\u0101rl).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLutsi descendants with project researcher Uldis Balodis at the release of the Lutsi language and culture primer. (Photo: Uldis Balodis; Ludza, Latvia, 2020)<br>\n\n\n\nLutsi is a variety of South Estonian that was spoken for at least several centuries mostly separated from other South Estonian speakers in Estonia.\nLutsi is characterized by the extended, intense contact it had with Latvian and Latgalian as well as with Russian, Polish, Belarusian, and Yiddish.\nAt the end of the 19th century, Lutsi was spoken in several dozen villages north, east, and south of the city of Ludza in southeastern Latvia.\nThe final conversational speakers lived in the villages of J\u0101ni k\u00fcl\u00e4 (Lielie Tjap\u0161i) and Kirbu k\u00fcl\u00e4 (\u0160kirp\u0101ni) south of Ludza.\nThe last fluent speaker lived until 1983, the last conversational speaker died in 2006, the last partial speaker died in 2014.&nbsp;\nIn the 2020s, several Lutsi rememberers remain. Lutsi descendants are aware of their heritage and view it positively. There are early efforts at language revitalization.\nProject researcher Uldis Balodis has focused his work on Lutsi for the last decade and published a Lutsi language and culture primer in 2020.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div>Lake Al\u016bksne in autumn, located near the historical Leivu region.<\/div><div>(Photo: Uldis Balodis; Al\u016bksne, Latvia, 2015)<br><\/div>\n\n\n\nLeivu is the earliest variety of South Estonian to have split off from the historical South Estonian language. Leivu is a more distant relation to Lutsi and V\u00f5ro and Seto in Estonia than these other varieties are to each other.\nLeivu may be the modern descendant of the undocumented language of the historical land of Atzele in modern-day northeastern Latvia.\nThe last known fluent speaker of Leivu was from Paju\u0161illa (K\u0101rklupe) village and died in 1988.\nAs with the other Southernmost Finnic varieties, which no longer have living fluent speakers, Leivu descendants are aware of their heritage.\nProject researcher Pire Teras has described the characteristics of the Leivu sound system and its unique prosodic features.\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278,"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions\/278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lutsimaa.lv\/prosody\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}