Does anyone here know about the Livonian Dialect of the Latvian language? Lībiskais dialekts? (not to be confused with the Livonian language)

4 comments

1. >Is it true it is almost a simplified version of Latvian with only one verb form?

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   Nope. It doesn’t have prescriptive grammar corpus, so that may give that impression, I guess.

   It actually has more verb forms than regular Latvian due to rudimentary usage of second infinitive stem (yeah, finnougric influence there).

   While it’s true that in Livonian dialects distinction between forms identifying count and gender are often lost, you still have the same 30 verb forms (6 tenses and 5 moods) to deal with, some of them using two different infinitive stems, depending on context.

   And, honestly, if you listened to how the dialect is actually being spoken – it’s hard to tell whether it truly has JUST neutral gender (and every time speaker slips into masculine/feminine forms they’re not quite speaking in dialect anymore), or it actually has 3 genders – masculine, feminine and neutral, with latter being more prevalent. Because people who actually speak the dialect still occasionally use masculine/feminine when it’s contextually necessary. Note that this is more pronounced for nouns and pronouns than for verbs, as verbs aren’t strongly gendered in Latvian to begin with. (Yeah, livonian dialect is the only form of Latvian that can handle gender neutral pronouns – Viņš/Viņa/Viš’.)

   When looking for information, make sure to also check the other side of the border, Tartu has done some research.

   But you can also hear some examples here – [https://valoda.lv/valsts-valoda/dialekti/](https://valoda.lv/valsts-valoda/dialekti/)

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   Source: grew up in an area that speaks mild form of the dialect with relatives speaking stronger one and learned some Estonian later in life, what made me interested in grammar. No academic background though.

2. The episode touches this topic briefly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21MdjzKzFgg

3. I can’t comment on details but libian and latvian languages are very different. Only some words are common, like “puika” (boy). Other phrases are like from different languages, latvians greet with “sveiki” but libians have “tērtiņš iņēn”

4. It is not simplified Latvian, it is Latvian with Livonian [substratum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratum_(linguistics)#Substratum), meaning that it has been heavily influenced by another language and it’s features. Coincidentaly English also has mostly lost inflections and genders, but it doesn’t make it a very simple language.

   If you want language examples in the wild, look up Tāmnieku and Ventiņ(u)