Kradian dialect

Kradian dialect
Bąlaćka Балачка
Pronunciation	ba-lach-ka
Region	West Miersa
Native speakers	779 (2020)
Language family	Indo-European Marolevic Central Marolevic Miersan Southwestern Miersan Kradian dialect
Writing system	Miersan alphabet, Pavatrian alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mkr

The Kradian dialect (Miersan: Gwara kradziańa, Soravian: Крадари діалект, Kradary dialekt), commonly known as Balachka (Miersan: Bąlaćka, Soravian: Балачка, Balachka) is a Miersan-Soravian mixed language spoken in and around Krada, West Miersa.

Developed after the War of the Miersan Succession in 1638, and the establishment of Krada as the capital of the Miersan Governate, the Kradian dialect was initially developed by Miersans trying to communicate with Soravian officials. However, in the nineteenth century, its use spread to all social classes, particularly in informal situations, not only in Krada but also throughout much of the rest of the southern regions of the governate. However, as a spoken language, it exhibited diglossia, as speakers wrote in both standard Soravian and Miersan, leading to few works of literature produced by their own speakers in the dialect.

It continued to be extensively used in the city and its surrounding environs until after the independence of West Miersa: with many Soravians returning to Soravia, and the new government instituting educational policies to promote the use of standard Miersan over regional dialects, combined with changing social attitudes, the Kradian dialect began experiencing language death, as speakers stopped speaking it and transmitting the language to their children. As of 2020, only 779 native speakers of the dialect remain, all of whom are elderly, although a transitional dialect between the traditional Kradian dialect and standard Miersan continues to exist.

Etymology

The term most commonly used by linguists and foreigners, Kradian dialect, refers to the city of Krada, where the Kradian dialect was the most widespread. Although similar mixed languages existed in Żobrodź and Sechia, among other regions where Miersans and Soravian had close contact, the variety spoken in Krada was notable for both its size, and because of the high number of Soravians living in the city, in a region with relatively few Soravians.

The term balachka derives from the Soravian term, balakaty (балакати), meaning "to chat," suggesting that this term was first used by Soravian migrants to Krada to describe how Miersans would try to speak to them. While it was initially seen as derogatory, the term eventually became embraced by the speakers of the Kradian dialect, and is today used by speakers and locals alike to refer to the Kradian language, alongside other forms of Soravian-Miersan mixed languages.

History

Linguists believe that the Kradian dialect emerged no earlier than the end of the War of the Miersan Succession and the partition of Miersa between Soravia in the west and Gaullica in the east, as the city of Krada became the seat of the newly-established Miersan Governate. With an influx of Soravian officials, Krada would attract migration from across the southern regions of the governate, leading to the development of a mixed language, as many Soravians would not bother to learn Miersan, while the Miersans had to learn Soravian vocabulary to get them to understand each other.

The first recorded mention of the Kradian dialect was in 1786, when Yehor Honcharov, a government official, described a "strange tongue spoken among the poor [in Krada], where they attempt to speak like us, but insist on using their native grammar." Another reference, from 1796, describes a couplet written in dialect, making it the first written record in the Kradian dialect.

During the nineteenth century, the Kradian dialect continued developing: with some Soravians learning Miersan, they began contributing to the dialect, although in their case, they used many Soravian words in their Miersan, which helped further cement the Kradian dialect as a mixed language between Soravian and Miersan.

By 1844, Yevhen Ponomarenko, a linguist at the University of Krada, published a paper on the Kradian dialect, describing not only its phonology and grammar, but also how widespread the dialect was, with Ponomarenko saying that "regardless of ethnicity or social class, most Kradians will, at some point during their day, use Soravian words in a Miersan grammar," and concluding that the Kradian dialect, while structurally of "southwestern Miersan origin," was lexically "of Soravian origin," with the result that he called the dialect a "form of surzhyk."

This opened a wave of research into the Kradian dialect, inspiring Matthias Klaproth at the University of Żobrodź to write an extensive paper in 1858, which focused not just on the Kradian dialect, but on other varieties of surzhyk spoken throughout the Miersan Governate, and comparing them to both Miersan and Soravian to determine which language they are a dialect of: using his data, Klaproth concluded that the Kradian dialect was a dialect of Miersan.

Despite the extensive research, the Kradian dialect remained stigmatized, especially as the education system in Soravia started to become more universal and promote the teaching of the standard varieties of Soravian and Miersan as opposed to the dialects that had been spoken up until that point. Nationalists on both sides decried the Kradian dialect as being impure, leading to people beginning to abandon the variety in favour of standard Soravian or standard Miersan, depending on their political alignments. However, even into the twentieth century, the Kradian dialect still remained common, particularly among the poor who were "born in the city," as opposed to those who have migrated from the countryside to Krada.

In the Great War, after Krada fell to Gaullican forces, the use of the Kradian dialect was banned, as it was feared that the variety would be used to transmit information secretly to the Soravia forces. Although after the end of the Great War, the Kradian dialect was legally permitted to be spoken once more, with the division of Miersa into West Miersa and East Miersa as a result of the Godfredson Plan, the Kradian dialect began to decline, as much of the Soravian community left Krada for Soravia, leading to a sudden erosion in the importance of Soravian in the day-to-day life.

While as late as the 1940s, the Kradian dialect was still widely spoken in the city, with at least three-quarters speaking the dialect, by the 1950s, the Kradian dialect began to die out, as young people were reluctant to transmit the dialect to their children, as it was perceived by many people to be a sign of backwardness. This trend accelerated in the coming decades, and by 2000, the Kradian dialect was only spoken by less than 2,000 people, virtually all of whom were elderly. While many dialect words remain in the modern Kradian varieties of Miersan and Soravian, it is mostly used as slang and in informal situations.

Phonology

The phonology in the Kradian dialect is largely similar to the phonology used in the southwestern dialects of the Miersan, as the Kradian dialect was generally spoken by Miersans to Soravians, and not vice-versa. This means that the Kradian dialect has evidence of Żobrodzation, a voiceless-to-voicing shift, a nasalization of the -enka suffix, merging of the stop-fricative consonant clusters into affricates, initial syllable stresses and oxytonic stress on the vocative case, as well as the reduction of the rz sound to a simple r sound.

For example, in Soravian, the word for three hundred is try tysyachi (три тисячі), and in standard Miersan, it is trzysta, but in the Kradian dialect, it is czysti (чисті). Likewise, in Soravian, the word for dress is suknya (сукня), and in standard Miersan, it is sukienka, but in the Kradian dialect, it is suknieńka (сукніенька).

Orthography

A "Be quiet" sign in Miersan, Soravian, and Kradian dialect at a retirement home, 2019

As the Kradian dialect is traditionally spoken and not written, there has never been a standard orthography used by all speakers of the Kradian dialect, given that when writing, most would prefer to write either in standard Soravian or standard Miersan. A study from 2003 by Oleg Dzikowski and Marin Chudzinski showed that of the 2,681 known works (mostly diaries and journals) written in the Kradian dialect, only 894 used Pavatrian, with the remainder using a Solarian alphabet.

Traditionally, linguists either use the Pavatrian Ponomarenko orthography, or the Miersan Klaproth orthography to write in the dialect, depending on which script they are intending to use for their papers. While in recent decades, some efforts have been made to write works, predominantly in the Klaproth orthography, for people to read in the Kradian dialect, in an effort to revitalize the dialect, these efforts have lacked official support, and are rarely used, with only seven books being published in the Klaproth orthography of the Kradian dialect between 1996 and 2011. In contrast, the Ponomarenko orthography is only widely used by linguists from countries using the Pavatrian script.

Grammar

The grammar of the Kradian dialect is largely based off the grammar of the southwestern dialects of the Miersan. Thus, the dominant word order in the Kradian dialect is Subject–verb–object (SVO), although certain phrases borrowed wholesale from Soravian will preserve their original forms.

Like both Miersan and Soravian, Kradian exhibits a T-V distinction (tu, ту, wy, ви), with the seven cases used in both languages (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative), and also uses three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). As well, like both Miersan and Soravian, the Kradian dialect has singular and plural numbers.

However, unlike Soravian, but like Miersan, subject markers are frequently dropped, even in words of Soravian origin (i.e. praczuju tu or прачую ту for I work here, compared to Soravian ya pratsyuyu tut or я працюю тут, or Miersan pracuję tu). It also follows Miersan rules for declensions, even on words of Soravian origin.

Vocabulary

According to Yevhen Ponomarenko and Matthias Klaproth's papers from 1844 and 1858, 60% of the vocabulary in the Kradian dialect came from Soravian, while 35% came from Miersan, particularly from the southwestern dialects, with the remainder coming from other languages, most prominently Witterite. However, in a 2003 paper by Kryspyn Mileski, the traditional Kradian dialect as currently spoken had 55% of its vocabulary come from Soravian, and 40% Miersan, with 5% coming from other languages.

Most words in the Kradian dialect have a synonym in the other language: for the phrase my friend, in the Kradian dialect, one could use either moj druh (мой друг), from the Soravian miy druh (мій друг), or moj pryjatiel (мой приятієл), from the Miersan mój przyjaciel, depending on the situation and context.