Livonian Institute

The Yuki language, including Huchnom and Coast Yuki, was spoken in Mendocino County until relatively recently (the last speaker died in 1983). This grammar is based primarily on spoken narratives recorded by Alfred Kroeber between 1901-1911. While Yuki was extensively documented over the course of the twentieth century, there is relatively little in the way of actual published works on the language. Balodis discusses the language within the historical and cultural context of the people who spoke it.

Lutsi Estonian is a variety of South Estonian historically spoken in the pre-World War II rural parishes of Pilda, Nirza, Brigi, and Mērdzene near the city of Ludza in Latgale (eastern Latvia). Lutsi developed independently from other South Estonian dialects for at least several centuries and, as a result, differs in several respects from the South Estonian presently spoken in the Võru and Setu regions of Estonia and adjacent areas in Russia. Since early 2013, I have been documenting the remaining language and culture knowledge among present-day Lutsi descendants and revisiting the villages documented by Oskar Kallas in 1894 as having Estonian (Lutsi) speaking inhabitants. The goal of this research is to write a Lutsi language primer with which Lutsi descendants as well as other interested individuals can reacquaint themselves with one of the historic languages of Latgale. This article presents the Lutsi practical orthography I have designed. I begin by introducing the Lutsi people, their language, and the history of its documentation. In discussing the Lutsi language I address the particular issues involved in writing Lutsi and present Livonian as a model for writing a Finnic language for a primarily Latvian-speaking population. I then present the current form of the Lutsi practical orthography at the end of this article.

Broken tone appears in the Finnic varieties once spoken in the territory of Latvia. The acoustic characteristics of broken tone have been analysed in Livonian. Some examples of broken tone have been recently described in Leivu South Estonian. Here examples of words pronounced with broken tone in both Leivu and Lutsi South Estonian are analysed. Leivu and Lutsi were spoken in eastern Latvia. Analysed words have been taken from sound recordings made in the 1960s and 1970s. Acoustic analysis shows that broken tone appears mainly in these South Estonian dialects as a trace of historical h between vowels of the 1st and 2nd syllables. Synchronically, it is a quality of long vowels found primarily in stressed syllables. The correlates of broken tone are an abrupt dip in intensity, fall in fundamental frequency, and also laryngealization. In the article we will describe acoustic characteristics of broken tone in Leivu and Lutsi data more thoroughly.

Livonian is unique among the Finnic languages in possessing a two-way tonal contrast in primary stressed syllables. Observed already in the earliest linguistic descriptions of Livonian, this two-way contrast between stressed syllables with stød (also called broken tone) and plain tone closely resembles the tonal system of Latvian with which Livonian has been in close long-term contact. This paper describes a pilot study, which used six measurements of spectral tilt (h1-h2, h1-F1, h1-F2, h1+h2/2-F1, h1-F3, F2-F3) to determine whether Livonian stød was associated with any non-modal phonation, specifically creaky voice. Spectral tilt is the degree to which intensity decreases as frequency increases (Gordon and Ladefoged 2001). Earlier researchers (e.g., Vihman 1971) have noted that stød vowels tend to be laryngealised, therefore, creaky voice is a likely candidate for non-modal phonation associated with stød. The method in this study is based on that used by Esposito (2004) in her similar study of Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec. The study used data from archival recordings of Pētõr Damberg, a speaker of the East Dialect of Courland Livonian from the village of Sīkrõg, and focused on measurement of CVV syllables containing either [ǭ] or [ō] (IPA: [o̞ː] and [oː]).

Finnic jää ‘ice’ is usually regarded as an inherent Finno-Ugric
word and its original form is reconstructed as *jäŋe (Kallio 1997)
or *jäŋi (Aikio 2002, Zhivlov 2015). There are also similar ‘ice’-
words in some Indo-European languages (see Kroonen 2013: 273).
Petri Kallio (1997: 127) has mentioned this word as a possible Finno-
Ugric borrowing in Celto-Germanic (*ie̯ǵ- ‘ice’; Kallio referring
to personal communication with Jorma Koivulehto). The similarity
between Finno-Ugric and Indo-European ice-words has been a matter
of discussion for a long time. Some scholars have treated them
as Indo-European loanwords in Finno-Ugric languages (e.g. Agostini
1999: 108), others as Finno-Ugric borrowings in (Western)
Indo-European languages (e.g. Mikhailova 2007: 10). Greenberg
(2002: 99) has connected PIE *yeg- ‘ice’ with similar words in Uralic
and also (Proto-)Altaic; Kümmel (2012: 305) has even presented
a common root *jæɠ for PIU (i.e., Proto-Indo-Uralic). However, if
we look more specifically at the Finno-Ugric and Indo-European languages,
we can better observe correspondences between some western
Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages, especially between
(Celto-)Germanic and Finnic. Among Finnic languages, Southern
Finnic ‘ice’-words in particular deserve more careful study.

The Lutsi Estonians (Lutsis) are a historically South Estonian­-speaking minority that has inhabited a network of more than 50 villages in the historical rural parishes of Pilda, Nirza, Brigi, and Mērdzene surrounding the city of Ludza, in the Lat­gale region of eastern Latvia, for at least three to four centuries. Between 2013 and 2016, I received funding from the Kone Foun­dation to document the present state of the Lutsis and to write a Lutsi language primer for Latvian speakers. The first part of this paper gives an overview of previous work on Lutsi followed by a description of the present state of the population of Lutsi descend­ants as I found it during the period of my Kone-­funded research. The second part of this paper describes the Lutsi language primer, beginner’s  grammar  reference,  and  dictionary,  which  were  the other main products of this research and discusses plans for their future use. The first extensive documentation of the Lutsis, their culture, and language was undertaken by researcher Oskar Kallas in 1893. Relatively substantial subsequent documentation of Lut­si was carried out over subsequent decades as the Lutsi population continued  to  be  assimilated  primarily  into  the  Latvian  speakers  of their home region. The last fluent speaker died in 2006 and the  last  known  passive  partial  speaker  died  in  2014.  Presently,  some fragmentary knowledge of Lutsi survives among descend­ants; however, the Lutsi Estonians today have shifted entirely to using Latvian, and less frequently also Russian, as their primary language.contact and change.

An introduction to the Lutsi (Ludza Estonian) language, which includes a grammatical sketch of Lutsi, example sentences, examples of connected speech, a Latvian-Lutsi-Latgalian topical dictionary (~600 words), descriptions of the history of the Lutsi speech community and the last villages where Lutsi was spoken in daily life in the 20th century, archival and new photos of these communities, transcriptions of the last fragments of Lutsi still remembered by descendants in 2020. This book is written in Latvian and uses the new standardized orthography developed by the author for writing all of the Lutsi text in the book. Lutsi is one of the language island varieties of South Estonian, which was spoken and developed independently for at least three centuries in several dozen villages around Ludza in eastern Latvia (Latgale). Publishers: University of Latvia Livonian Institute and the Ludza City Main Library.

This article describes the language of the last speakers of Lutsi as well as their family background and the sources of their language knowledge, in order to show the paths by which Lutsi language knowledge-even if only of a fragmentary sorthas survived up to the present day. The language knowledge of these last speakers is described using observations taken from the field notes and memories of other researchers as well as from my own encounters with them. This information is placed in a historical and regional context by providing a detailed overview of the historical extent of the Lutsi community, theories about Lutsi origins and how this connects with the memory of Lutsi families and observed language variation within the Lutsi speech area, changes in Lutsi speaker numbers and language use, and the history of Lutsi documentation and the observations of the researchers who documented them.

The South Estonian language islands – Leivu, Lutsi, Kraasna – are three historically South Estonian-speaking exclaves located not only beyond the borders of Estonia, but also geographically separated from the main body of South Estonian speakers for at least several centuries. Two of these communities – Leivu and Lutsi – were located in present-day Latvia. The third community – Kraasna – was located near the northernmost Lutsi communities-only about 35 kilometres distant across the present-day Latvian border in Russia. This article acts as an introduction to the studies in this volume by describing the history and current state of the communities at its focus. It gives an overview of the location of the language island communities, their origins, linguistic status, and self-identity as well as provides a survey of their research history dating from its beginnings in the late 19th century to the present.

Historically, several South Estonian-speaking communities are known to have existed in northern and eastern Latvia. Among the most well-known are the two South Estonian language islands located in Latvia — the Lutsis of the Ludza region and the Leivus near Ilzene. South Estonian speakers have also historically inhabited areas near the Estonian-Latvian border such the regions surrounding Rūjiena (Ruhja) and Veclaicene (Vana-Laitsna). Furthermore, as Vaba (2021) observes, there are also traces of Estonian influence visible in placenames in Madona municipality. This article examines additional areas primarily in present-day Rēzekne, Varakļāni, and Preiļi municipalities for possible traces of historical Estonian or South Estonian habitation. This is done, on one hand, by studying the location of placenames derived from certain surnames said to have an Estonian connection (Ikaunieks, Poikāns/Poika, Puisāns) and, on the other hand, by examining the online version of the 1772 Rēzekne Eldership Revision List to determine whether there is any Estonian habitation recorded at that time in this region.