Językowy obraz Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego

ENThe Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a multiethnic and multinational state. Thanks to the tolerant policy of its rulers, it provided a haven for various religious and ethnic minorities persecuted by the neighbours of the Polish-Lithuanian State, which was called Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów (Republic of Two Nations) by its elites. Apart from Lithuanians, who had built the State and given it its name, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was populated by ethnic groups of Baltic provenance. The Latgalians, who spoke a Latvian dialect, inhabited Livonia, politically linked with the Commonwealth since the mid-16th century. The Prussians and Jatvingians sought refuge from the Teutonic Knights on the territory of the Grand Duchy, and traces of yet another pagan Baltic tribe have been found in the Białowieża Forest. A glossary has been discovered that contains elements of its language alongside their Polish equivalents. Within the political boundaries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the East Slavic tribes of Kriviči, Dregoviči and Radimiči gave rise to the Belarusian nation and language. After the Union of Lublin (1569), the Grand Duchy saw the spread of Polish language and culture. Local varieties soon evolved. In the 19th century, the Grand Duchy found its way into Polish literature thanks to Adam Mickiewicz. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Moslem Tartars and the Mosaic sect of Karaites came to the Grand Duchy from the Crimea. There was also an influx of Jews from the west. As a result, a local language variety was formed called “Eastern Yiddish”, which became the main vehicle of communication as well as the medium of Jewish lay literature in this part of Europe. There is evidence that Romanies had lived in the Grand Duchy since the 15th century (a charter from 1501).Russian Old Believers (mostly peasants from the region of Pskov) fled from religious persecution and began to take refuge in Lithuania in the late 17th century. Lutheran and Calvinist communities widely used a German dialect called “Baltendeutsch” in towns, especially in the western part of the State, and in Livonia. Thus the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a conglomeration of languages, ethnic groups and religions, and its most mobile and politically mature segments of society (administration, nobility, soldiers, merchants, and craftsmen) were by necessity multilingual. This led to interactions between languages (interference) and to the emergence of shared innovations, particularly in the fields of vocabulary and onomastics. Interestingly, the boundaries between particular languages and dialects coincided with the administrative divisions of the GDL. All the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy were referred to as “Lithuanians”, regardless of ethnicity, language and religion. Even today inhabitants of the Mazowsze [Mazovia] region apply these terms to Poles and Belarusians living in Podlasie. This is also true of Belarusians: those living in Polesie [Pripet Marshes] use the same denotations speaking about their compatriots from the North-Eastern part of the country. In Muscovite Ruthenia, the Belarusian and Polish inhabitants of the Grand Duchy were called Litovcy or Litwini ‘Lithuanians’, while the name Litwak signified a Jew living therein. Finally, Lithuanian Tartars were known in the Crimea as Lipka