Westrobothnian

The Vikings are known for their ships and most likely visited the Bothnian Bay thousands of years ago as some archeological findings indicate, but there is no clear evidence of Norsemen or Germanic settlement along the river valleys in the area. The first Germanic settlers were probably a combination of farmers, hunters and fishermen, arriving in southern Westrobothnia around 900 AD and northern parts around 1100 AD, in the late stages of the Viking Age.

Different theories exist as of how exactly Westrobothnia came to be settled by Germanic speakers, as in e.g. Umeå, Luleå and Piteå, but they were probably using small boats to move along the coast and up along river valleys, generation after generation settling river by river. Most of the coast seems to have been uninhabited during the Viking age but some settlements of unknown origin existed during the Iron Age. There are no Sami loan words in the Westrobothnian coastal dialects, except for in the dialects spoken in the much later settlements in Lapland, such as Malå and Arjeplog dialects. Most likely Sami people did not have a notable presence in the coastal areas of historical Westrobothnia although they did visit the coast occasionally with their cattle, moving down the river valleys in the summer. Some settlements were close to the coast such as Koler in Piteå Municipality and most likely Kåddis outside Umeå but the majority of all names of villages and lakes are of North Germanic origin.

Early Westrobothnian settlements typically end with -böle or -mark and most of them are from the pre-Christian era, the villages with the ending -mark are derived from a male name; for example, Tvare for Tväråmark in Umeå municipality or Arne for Arnemark outside Piteå. The highest density of villages ending with -mark is found between Umeå and Skellefteå.

The Germanic settlers spoke a north dialectal development of proto-Norse, related to, but not equal to the Old Norse spoken by Vikings many hundred kilometers down the Scandinavian coast. Old Norse is rather well preserved in runestones and later also in a Bible translation. But few runic inscriptions have been found north of Svealand, and none at all in what is now the administrative areas Västerbotten and Norrbotten apart from the runic inscriptions found in Burträsk where minor runic inscriptions was found in the early 20th century. This suggests that the farming settlers finally reaching Westrobothnia had little contact with southern Scandinavia during the Viking age, and most probably already by then had developed different lingual features, some of which are still preserved in some Westrobothnian dialects, particularly in the dialects spoken in Skellefteå and Bureå.

The citizens of the area around Umeå and Skellefteå were initially referred to as speakers of the Old Norse dialect Helsingemål during the early Viking age.

During the 14th century, the Hanseatic League started dominating trade in the Baltic sea, mostly speaking Middle Low German. Trade routes might have gone as far up north as to the Bothnian bay, and that might have influenced the languages in the region since some similarities exist between Westrobothnian and both German and Dutch in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. After the Consolidation of Sweden, this uprising power started to take control of trade along the coast, and exploit what was named lappmarken (the Sami lands), by using birkarls (trade men).

Christianity also came to the relatively non-organized and free Germanic settlers, who by then might have been practising variants of Norse mythology. A monastery was built in Bureå in the early 15th century, and with the arrival of Christianity, priests began registering all family relationships in the villages, and since this new era there is a better knowledge of the local history, also from preserved documents and maps used for taxation.

Colonisation escalated under the Swedish Empire, and while Österland received independence in the Treaty of Fredrikshamn 1809, Swedish colonialism still remains in terminology like Norrland.

The Swedish school came to Westrobothnia in the 1850s, with the goal of teaching everyone to read, write, speak and understand standard Swedish with its grammar. This was, at first, a rather peaceful form of language education, but escalated under the early 1930s into a system where students were forbidden to speak all forms of local languages in the classrooms throughout Sweden. Similar laws existed in Scotland, where speakers of Scottish Gaelic were forbidden to use their language in schools as a result of the Education (Scotland) Act 1872, and in Wales after the Treachery of the Blue Books in 1847. In Westrobothnia, parents were informed that "the Swedish standard language was the future", and that "children can only learn one language properly", and therefore local languages "will handicap them in a future society based solely on standard Swedish". These ideas have been proven well and truly wrong by later research into the field of multilingualism, but they had a huge influence on many relatively small societies like Umeå and Skellefteå where those living in Umeå today could be accused of speaking a dialect which is far more influenced by Standard Swedish than by the far purer Skellefteå dialect. The Westrobothnian dialect spoken in Skellefteå has maintained a lot of influence of Westrobothnian language in terms of pronunciation and certain words, but among the younger generation very few people know how to properly speak the Westrobothnian language or even understand it. The language still remains severely threatened with extinction.

The nickname bondska is derived from the word bonde, meaning peasant, and causes many misconceptions about the languages. The nickname might have been somewhat accurate hundreds of years ago since most people lived of agriculture at that time, but most speakers in the late 19th and early 20th century were not just peasants but ordinary working-class people. The language initially started disappearing in the cities and therefore came to be even more associated with rural areas. Many people believe that Westrobothnian is a language that uneducated peasants made up since they couldn't learn proper Swedish when it is actually the native language of the entire region and standard Swedish is in fact a language that was imposed by the school system and the authorities. State language policies caused the language to be seen as even more rural and backward, thus starting a downward spiral. The language has more speakers around and in the industrial cities of Piteå and Skellefteå, especially in the former, and a far weaker position in and around the regional capitals Umeå and Luleå. It is still being considered an incorrect dialect of Swedish by many.

There are notable differences between the dialects since they have never been standardized but the lexical similarity and grammar is without a doubt far more similar than if one of them is compared to standard Swedish. A standardization of the different dialects would make it more attractive to learn and raise the awareness of them as the endangered native tongues that they indeed are.

There are no official signs with Westrobothnian names; Westrobothnian places like Uum, Schélett, Peeit, Leeul and Kôlis are written in cartographic Swedish as Umeå, Skellefteå, Piteå, Luleå and Kalix.

There are still more or less certain borders between lects, such as the Westrobothnian complete loss of a final vowel in some long-stem words such as in /²fjʉːk/[8] 'blow around, snow lightly' versus the Angermannian and Iemtian mostly preserved vowel in /²fyːkʰə/.[8] Another example is a vowel-balance split, such as the rounded vowel in Westrobothnian /²tʰɑːɽɐ/~/²tʰɒːɽɐ/~/²tʰoːɽɐ/ versus the unrounded Angermannian and Iemtian vowel /²tʰäʰːɽɐ/~/²tʰæːɽɐ/ 'to speak'. The softening of intermediary consonants before front vowels is also different in /²tʰɞjːe/~/²tʰɛjːɪ/~/²tʰäjːɪ/~/tʰui̯/ and /²tʰeːɣe/~/²tʰɛɣːɪ/ ’taken.’ Generally, Westrobothnian did not partake is the western vowel-assimilations of the type viku → vuku, hita → hata, lesa → lasa, sofa → sovo, etc., but rather retained the vowels of viku, hita, *lisa,[9] *sufa, with some seeming quality change only due to secondary lengthening; e.g. /lɪsɐ̃/ → /²lɪːsɐ/.

Intermediary examples can be found in Nordmaling, where bånut, bånat 'pregnant', is bånet, which is also the (northern) Angermannian form.

Westrobothnian always apocopes long-stem words, never short-stem words, while Ostrobothnian can have apocope in any word. Another difference is that Westrobothnian regularly differentiates feminine definite forms, depending on whether the word ends in a vowel or a consonant, while Ostrobothnian inflection can be more generalised. Westrobothnian has short-stem nouns viku, viko def. -n ’week,’ sögu, sögo, def. -n ’saw, story,’ long-stem skir def. -a ’magpie,’ kvissel def. kvissla ’blister,’ while Ostrobothnian has corresponding vik(å), def. -on, sag, def. -on, skjår, skjorå, def. -on, kvisel, def. kvislon.

Westrobothnian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Adjectives mostly decline in neuter, adding -t or changing -i(n) for -e, although the variation in -in versus -i may represent the older masculine and feminine forms. Adjectives not ending in -i(n) sometimes have masculine declension, as in st(å)orer stöɽing(j)en “a big boy”, alternating with n st(å)or( n )stöɽing. Some words more commonly express -er than others. More common than -er is -e, which is used in all genders: häile ättermeda(je)n (masculine) “all afternoon”; st(å)ore f(å)ola (feminine) “a great lot”; häile hvärve (neuter) “the whole set of clothes”. The -e can also express emphasis: he var st(å)ore h(e)use “there was such a large house there”/“it was really a big house”.

The articles used are äin (n) for masculine words, äi(n) ([i]n) for feminine, äitt (i) for neuter, and in plural (äin)a for all genders. In a construction like “a big house”, the article is doubled: i st(å)ort i h(e)us; but is lacking in “the big house”, where adjective and noun merge: st(å)orh(e)use. Pronouns are also declined: ann hvorn dag “every other day”, annar hvor bjerk “every other birch”, anne hvort h(e)us “every other house”.

All nouns have an indefinite and a definite singular and plural form, and definite dative singular and plural forms. The declinations are slightly different depending on original syllable length.

In addition to the patterns below, long monosyllabic masculine words ending in a vowel, like snjö “snow”, also have the dative ending -(r)no(m), and feminine words of the same type may have that dative form in plural. These type of words are also often unchanged in the indefinite plural. Another quirk is that monosyllabic masculine and feminine nouns that are rarely or not at all used in plural have grave accent in the dative rather than acute, e.g.; mjɒ́ɽka “the milk”, but mjɒ̀ɽken “the milk (dat.)”, and krɒ́ppen “the body”, but krɒ̀ppo(m) “the body (dat.)”; this does not affect the neuter dative form as it always has the grave accent. Rarely indefinite dative forms are found, and only in the singular (unless one instead sees the def. and indef. dat. pl. forms as identical in form): mö̀rn’ “morning”. In these examples, the sign ’ in final position marks where grave accent within a single syllable forms circumflex accent due to apocope of long syllable, and the combination rn represents /ɳ/ and kj /t͡ɕ/.

The definite noun form is used in a broader sense than in other Scandinavian languages, which is typical in all dialects spoken in northern Scandinavia.[10] Most typically, wordings like “made of wood” or “I like bread” would have “wood” and “bread” in their definite forms in Westrobothnian, while Danish, Swedish and Norwegian would use the indefinite forms.

Westrobothnian has around three to five cases, depending on definition.

Nominative and accusative usually take the same form, except in pronouns where there are doublets such as vor and vånn “our, masc.”, m(y)in and m(y)i “my/mine, fem.”, männ and määnn “my/mine, masc.”

Dative is separated from the accusative and nominative case, in that it differs from the two others, which are identical. Whenever a dative is used, the dative suffix -åm or -o(m) is added to masculine nouns, to some -(r)nåm or -no(m), whereas the suffix -(e)n is added to feminine nouns, and -e(r)n (rarely -[r]n) to neuters. In all cases, the plural ending is identical to masculine singular, although the accent may still differentiate masculine singular and plural; e.g. stǽino(m) “stone” stæ̀ino(m) “stones”; this is less common for words that mostly are only used in singular; e.g. krɒ̀ppo(m) “body/bodies”; and some forms retain grave accent by having other distinctions: sk(å)òjo(m) “the forest” vs. sk(å)ògo(m) “the forests”. Some plurals also display -nåm/-no(m). For the pronouns männ “mine”, dänn “thine”, sänn “himself/herself/itself”, the respective dative forms are m-/d-/s- -i(r)no(m), -ännar, -i(r)ne, and plural all cases -i(r)no(m). Examples in masculine singular: nom./acc. vájen mä́nn “my road”, dat. (opp)a vàjom mìrnom “(up)on my road”. Note that -i- becomes -öy- and -äi- in the northernmost dialects, where also -o is used for -om, so e.g. mi(r)nom is möyno or mäino.

A traditional genitive case is mostly unused, but rather the dative has taken over most roles of the genitive, while genitive forms serve other purposes, such as forming compounds or derivations, or have specified meanings; e.g. års “year’s,” indef. gen. sg. of år “year,” is used to form compounds, such as för-års-korn “two years old grain,” while the def. gen. sg. årsens is used as a separate word meaning “that of this year,” usually meaning the harvest of the past year. An example of doublet forms is vatn “water,” which uses the form vötu for regular compounds; e.g. vötumonn “mouthful of water,” while the form vass is used to form nouns denoting residents of placenames ending in -vatn(e), such as Mjövassa “inhabitants of Mjövatne (a village.) Some traditional use of genitive does occur; e.g. grannars gåln “the neighbour’s estate.”

Vocative is by nature typically restricted to nouns referring to living beings; e.g. stinta “girl!”, stinte “girls!”, pajk(e) “boy!”, pajkar “boys!”, fåre “sheep!”, Erke “Eric!”, Janke “John!”, måmme “mom!”, fare “father!”. Typically a suffix along with duosyllabic accent is used for all vocative forms. Rarely other words take vocative form; e.g. kärä “[my] dear,” = “please!”

Verbs are conjugated in singular and plural in present, past, and imperative, usually also past subjunctive and sometimes present subjunctive, and the prefix o- is used with perfect participles to denote that something has not happened yet, e.g. h(e)u hav ofyri “she hasn't left yet”, literally “she has un-gone”. No suffix marks the present tense except for the words få/fa “receive, give” gå/ga “walk, go” and stå/sta “stand”, which display -r in singular.

A common pattern is that the present and imperative singular is a monosyllabically accented or shorter version of the infinitive, and that the plural present is identical to the infinitive, e.g.; kåma “come” has singular present and imperative kåm, plural present kåma. The imperative plural tends to appear as the root form or supine form plus -e(r)n, e.g.; supine kömi “(has) come” + -en = köm(j)e(r)n! “(you) come!”. Likewise, sl(j)ɒ “beat, mow” has supine slæije and plural imperative slæije(r)n “(you) beat, mow!”. Since the infinitive is already monosyllabic with monosyllabic accent, the present singular and imperative are unchanged. Weak verbs like l(j)ès “lock” (Old Norse læsa) has singular present and imperative l(j)és, plural present l(j)ès, plural imperative l(j)èse(r)n.

Some strong paradigms such as fara, fer, for, fyri[11] are preserved, though often there is a generalisation of the singular present or infinitive and plural present, thus fara, far, or fera, fer. Due to vowel-balance, even with a generalised paradigm there can be a vowel difference between /²fɑːrɐ/ and /fæːr/.[11] This also leads to pseudo-strong conjugation of formally weak verbs such as /²hɑːʋɐ/, /hæːʋ/, pret. /²hædː/, sup. /hædː/[11] ’to have.’

Adjectives and adverbs can be joined with nouns, e.g. fleenonga – the crying children and liislpajtjen – the little boy.

The pleonastic article is widespread among languages in the area, as far north as Troms.[12] A pleonastic article, marking the opposite of the vocative, is put before people's names, pets' names, and words denoting the immediate family. The masculine form is n, and the feminine form is a. For example; “father is home” is n far jär hæ̀im’. In dative, n becomes om or o, e.g. ɒt om Jɒ̀nk’ “to John”.