The Samogitian language (Žemaičių kalba) is a language spoken in the Samogitia (Žemaitija) region of Lithuania. It is now usually considered a dialect of Standard Lithuanian, but intelligibility between Standard Lithuanian and Samogitian is often difficult. Samogitian and Lithuanian are members of the East Baltic subgroup of the Baltic language group, which is part of the Indo-European_language family.
History
In old texts and documents Samogitians and Lithuanians are usually mentioned separately, alongside many other Baltic peoples. With Russian annexation of Lithuania after partitioning of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, both ethnicities usually led the struggle for freedom together (sometimes alongside the Poles).
It appears that the Samogitian and Lithuanian languages have undergone periods of divergence and convergence throughout their histories. Scholars disagree regarding the chronology of these changes.
Linguistic differences with Standard Lithuanian
Samogitian differs from Standard Lithuanian in phonetics, lexicon, morphology and orthography.
Some words and verb tenses also differs in Samogtian (e.g., in Lithuanian the Past Frequent tense, meaning that action used to be done in past repeatedly, is made by removing the ending of verb and adding "davo" (miršta - mirdavo, pūva - pūdavo), while in Samogitian word "Liuob" is added instead before the word).
Samogitian also has many words and figures of speech that are alltogeather different from the rest of Lithuanian dialects. E.g. kiuocis - basket (Lith. krepsys), tevs - thin (Lith. plonas), rebas - ribs (Lith. sonkauliai, grobai), a jebentas! - "can't be!" (Lith. equiv. non existant) and many more.
Dialects
Samogitian language has three major dialects: Northern Samogitian, Western Samogitian and Southern Samogitian. Historically, the dialects were classified by their pronunciation of the Lithuanian word Duona, "bread." They are referred to as Dounininkai (from Douna), Donininkai (from Dona) and Dūnininkai (from Dūna.).
Western
The Western dialect was was spoken in the region around Klaipėda and is now extinct. After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, many people were expelled and new ones came to these regions.
Northern
Northern Samogitian has two subdialects named for cities within their respective geographic range, Telšiškiai (from Telšiai) and Kretingiškiai (from Kretinga)
Southern
Southern Samogitian has two subdialects, Varniškiai (from Varniai) and Raseiniškiai (from Raseiniai) .
Political situation
The Samogitian language is rapidly declining: It is not used in the local school system and there is no press, and no television or radio broadcasts in Samogitian. Local newspapers and broadcast stations use standard Lithuanian instead.
There is no new literature in Samogitian either, as authors prefer standard Lithuanian for its accessibility to a larger audience. Out of those people who speak Samogitian only a few can understand its written form well.
Migration of Samogitian speakers to other parts of the country and migration into Samogitia have reduced contact between Samogitian speakers, and therefore the level of fluency of those speakers.
There are attempts by the Samogitian Cultural Society to stem the loss of the language. The council of Telšiai city put marks with Samogitian name for the city at the roads leading to the city. A new system for writting Samogitian was created.
Writing system
First written Samogitian appeared in th einterwar period, hwoever it was neglected during Soviet occupation, so only old people knew how to write in Samogitian after independence. Therefore Samogitian Cultural Society renewed the system to make it more usable.
The writing system uses mostly the same letters as standard Lithuanian, but it does not have letters with ogoneks (ą, ę, į, ų) and instead has two aditional long letters, long a and long e, which are written with a dash above simple a and e, in the same way as in Latvian language. Also, in Lithuanian long "i" is "y", while in Samogitian it is "i" with dash above. As previously it was impossible to add these new characters to typesets, in some older samogitian texts instead of long letters double letters are used (such as "aa" or "ee"), but now Samogitian Cultural Society tells against such typing and recomends using the letters with dashes above them instead.
Because Samogitian langauge has no sounds for consonants "f" and "h", those are not used. There are two additional vowels in Samogitian which are not available in Lithuanian, but in past due to inability to create new symbols in typesets those were also traditionally been written using two symbols in a row, namely "ou" and "ėi". This tradition have not been changed and is still used.
There is a Samogitian keyboard layout created.
Audio sample
"Apie ubagus ir jų giesmes" is a short excerpt of a folk tale, in the Raseiniškiai subdialect.