Nazwy naczyń stołowych i sztućców w mowie łatgalskich Polaków
Designations of tableware in the speech of Latgalian Poles

Summary/Abstract: Today, Polish is spoken not only in its base territory but also on the periphery: countries such a as Lithuania, Belarus and Latvia, which used to be united under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The features of the language existing in separation from its standard variety during the last centuries have changed, and now it contains a considerable number of features present in everyday contact languages used in the territories in question. According to the population census of 2011, Latgale (one of the four historical regions of Latvia) was inhabited by 20 808 Poles (7%). The dialect used by the local Poles is described as the Northern-Peripheral Polish. It contains a number of distinctive features, mostly derived from Russian or Latvian. The article presents lexical material collected during interviews with 81 Poles living in Latgale (former Polish Inflanty), born between 1922 and 1999. The informants were shown pictures of ten pieces of tableware (a plate, a wine-glass, a fork, a jug, a glass, a cup with saucer, a spoon, a knife, a bowl, a salt-shaker) and asked to give their names in the local variety of Polish. The research showed that almost a half of the elicited names corresponded to those in standard Polish, but the rest were their phonetic variants, lexical and structural borrowings from Russian, descriptive and diminutive forms, archaisms or nonce words. In general, the material demonstrates phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactic features of the Northern-Peripheral Polish.

• Details
• Contents