Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History, Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Petrozavodsk, Russian Federation, novak@krc.karelia.ru
ABSTRACT
Introduction: the article presents a description of the vocal and consonant systems of one of the earliest written monument of the Livvi supradialect of the Karelian language – the “Translation of some prayers and the shorter catechism in the Olonets language” published in St. Petersburg in 1804, which has not been subjected to linguistic analysis before. Based on the identified members of the comparative phenomena of the Karelian language, a dialectal localization of the language of translation was carried out.
Objective: to identify historical changesin the phonological system of the language of a written monument.
Research materials: translations of the “Lord’s Prayer”, “Creed”, “Hail Mary”, and “Shorter Catechism” into Livvi Karelian; materials on the phonology of Livvik dialects of mid-XX century from the database of Karelian dialects Murreh.
Results and novelty of the research: in the article, for the first time, the script and spelling of the “Translation of some prayers and the shorter catechism in the Olonets language” are analyzed, and the dialect basis of the source language is localized. The study demonstrated that the written monument renders quite consistently the phonological system of the early XIX century Livvi Karelian supradialect. The script accurately conveys the structure of the Livvi consonantism. The translators had some difficulties with rendering the Karelian vocalism. In locating the dialectal basis preference was
given to the Olonets dialect group (town of Olonets and nearby communities).
Key words: dialectology, written language history, Karelian, Livvi Karelian, written heritage, translation work
Acknowledgments: the author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers and to Junior Researcher at the Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History of the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences D. Yu. Balandin for his help with typesetting the manuscript. The article was prepared under state assignment to the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, research theme FMEN-2025-0001.
For citation: Novak I. P. Phonological system of the Livvi Karelian written heritage piece dated 1804 // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2025; 15 (2/61): 286–298.