Multilingualism in Masurian Old Believers

Masurian Old Believers who were born by the end of the 1950s speak three languages. The phenomenon of multilingualism really concerns the generation which personally experienced the political changes in this region. Over the course of one discussion carried in German interviewees can shift seamlessly into Polish or Russian. In a molenna, minutes before the service starts, they usually talk in Polish, sometimes in Russian. Then, they pray in Old Church Slavonic. After the prayers end they may switch to a Russian dialect which the Masurian Old Believers call ‘the Wojnowo speech’. They insert German words into utterances in the Russian dialect or they switch into German or Polish. The phenomenon of such multiple language competence may be surprising for people brought up in a monolingual environment. Many factors contribute to the choice of a language, the most important of which is communication – Old Believers choose the language that their interlocutor understands.
Researchers have been asking questions about the function and importance of the languages used by Old Believers. One such question was related to which language, Polish or Russian, was the primary and which the secondary language for the Old Believers living in north-eastern Poland. Michał Głuszkowski (2011: 78 ffGłuszkowski 2011 / komentarz/comment/r /
Głuszkowski, Michał 2011. Socjologiczne i psychologiczne uwarunkowania dwujęzyczności staroobrzędowców regionu suwalsko-augustowskiego. Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika.

) remarks that the language used may have different functions and, therefore, it is necessary to include the notion of ‘basic code’ in the classification, as well as the notions of primary and secondary languages. Different factors, such as age, education, social role, line of work, frequency of contact with fellow believers, and living in a non-Old Believer environment, can influence both language competence and usage. Therefore, whether Polish or Russian is the primary or secondary language or basic code for the Old Believers living in north-eastern Poland, depends on those factors. It is impossible to determine which language is which in the context of the whole group, because it is a personal matter. In different situations, places, and discussions on different subjects, every language user may use both languages or either, may have different level of competence in either of them, and different emotional attitudes towards either language (for more on this subject see Głuszkowski 2011: 87 ffGłuszkowski 2011 / komentarz/comment/r /
Głuszkowski, Michał 2011. Socjologiczne i psychologiczne uwarunkowania dwujęzyczności staroobrzędowców regionu suwalsko-augustowskiego. Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika.

). The situation in Masuria is even more complicated, since the Old Believers there also speak German. They learnt Russian from their parents and grandparents at home. They learnt German in a similarly natural way, interacting with children and youth from outside the Old Believer settlements, in school, and in some cases from their parents. German was the official language in Masuria until 1945. It was, therefore, spoken in the street, used among neighbours, in shops and offices, in the marketplace, at work, and – depending on the family – at home. Shortly after the war, after Polish had been established as the official language of Poland in 1945, German was still spoken in private conversations – despite the ban. Russian was used in the family and in the Old Believer environment. Polish was used more and more. Children did not learn German naturally as often as before, since Polish had taken its place. Gradually, the children of the Masurian Old Believers began to grow up in a Polish environment, which is still true nowadays. The phenomenon of multilingualism in the Masurian Old Believers concerns, therefore, only a section of the population: people who learnt German in their childhood when it was still the prevalent language, who use a Russian dialect in faith-related contexts, and who use Polish in contact with their non-Old Believer environment.

German spoken by the Masurian Old Believers

The Old Believers who were born by the end of the 1950s in Masuria speak fluent, vivid and natural German. They joke and express their feelings in that language, they report and comment on events, and they can speak about any topic. Many dialectal influences can be recognised in their language, as well as older language features, typical of earlier stages of German. (For more on the historical changes of German and related dialectal features in different German-speaking regions, see e.g. Aleksander Szulc, History of the German Language, 1991Szulc 1991 / komentarz/comment/r /
Szulc, Aleksander 1991. Historia języka niemieckiego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
).
A characteristic element of the German spoken by the Masurian Old Believers are, among others, some features of the Middle and Low German dialects. (For more on the dialects of German, see e.g. Göttert 2011Göttert 2011 / komentarz/comment/r /
Göttert, Karl-Heinz 2011. Alles auβer Hochdeutsch: Ein Streifzug durch unsere Dialekte. Berlin: Ullstein Buchverlage.
). The influence of the Low German dialect can be seen in phonetics, grammar, and lexicon.
The phonetic influence can be seen in the pronunciation of certain sounds, e.g. instead of the standard German diphthong [ai] , Masurian Old Believers say [ei], e.g. [keine], [meine], [beide] (Eng. ‘neither’, ‘my’, ‘both’). Instead of the standard <ü> [Y], e.g. in „Mütze” (Eng. ‘cap’), they say [i], e.g. [mitse]; [hine] instead of Hühner (Eng. ‘hens’), and [kiche] instead of „Küche” (Eng. ‘kitchen’) . The standard German <ӧ> is in Low German dialects and in the speech od Masurian Old Believers realised as [e], e.g. „schӧn” (Eng. ‘beautiful’) is realised as schejn . Another feature of the German spoken by Masurian Old Believers is a coronal ‘r’, which in standard German is a pharyngeal consonant. Another typical feature of the Eastern Prussian pronunciation is a broad ‘e’.
An important grammatical feature of the German spoken by Masurian Old Believers is the Middle and Low German feature of using one form of word for both the Dative and the Accusative case. This feature has been exemplified by the single form of the personal pronoun for both those cases , which can also be observed in the speech of Masurian Old Believers. For example in the sentence “Ich wollte ihm fragen” (Eng. ‘I wanted to ask to him’), Dative was used, while in standard German the verb ‘fragen’ (‘to ask’) is followed by Accusative. In standard German, that sentence should be “Ich wollte ihn fragen” (‘I wanted to ask him’).
The influence of Middle and Low German dialects is more frequently seen in the usage of nouns, such as in the following utterances by Masurian Old Believers, where the prepositions ‘mit’, ‘von’, and ‘zu’ were followed by a noun in Dative, while in standard German they are followed by Accusative:

ein Fach mit die breiten Pullovern (Standard: mit den breiten Pullovern)

(Eng.: a shelf with the broad sweaters)

Da wimmelt doch alles von Leute. (Standard: von Leuten)

(Eng.: It is teeming with people in there)

Vielleicht mӧchten Sie mit mir fahren (…) zu Ihre Kusine. (Standard: zu Ihrer Kusine)

(Eng.: Perhaps you could go with me (…) to your cousin.)

Earlier language forms can also be recognised in the German spoken by Masurian Old Believers, ones that are no longer used in the standard today. A very interesting and really frequent phenomenon is the use of the conditional form of the modal verb 'mӧgen’ (Eng.: like) as an auxiliary verb in conditional constructions – instead of the standard German 'würde’. Such use could be noticed in the last of the examples above. The same can be seen in the following sentence:

Wenn sie das machen mechten, mechten sie ´ne Strafe bekommen.
Standard: Wenn das machen würden, würden sie eine Strafe bekommen.
(Eng.: If they did this, they would receive a punishment.)

Another influence of Low German dialects on the grammar of the German spoken by Masurian Old Believers can be seen in the way in which possession is expressed. These constructions use the Genitive case int he literary standard. Old Believers use phrases like:

Irene ihre Freundin (Eng. 'Irene her friend')

In standard German that construction would use Genitive: Irenes Freundin (Eng. ‘Irene’s friend’), or the preposition von: Die Freundin von Irene (Eng. ‘the friend of Irene’). Constructions consisting of a noun in Nominative or Dative, a possessive pronoun, and a noun denoting the object of possession have also been described by Grażyna Łopuszańska-Kryszczuk as present in the extinct Gdansk vernacular, Danziger Missingsch (Łopuszańska-Kryszczuk 2013: 106Łopuszańska-Kryszczuk 2013 / komentarz/comment/r /
Łopuszańska-Kryszczuk, Grażyna 2013. Danziger Umgangssprache. Peter Lang Verlag.
).

Language contact

Masurian Old Believers speak three languages, which they have learnt in a natural way. Those languages are in constant contact, which entails mutual influences and the interpenetration of language structures, phrases, words, and grammatical constructions between Polish, Russian, and German. Such phenomenon is called language interference (Weinreich 1977: 23 ffWeinreich 1977 / komentarz/comment/r /
Weinreich, Uriel 1977. Sprachen in Kontakt, Ergebnisse und Probleme einer Zweisprachigkeitsforschung. München: Verlag C.H. Beck.
). During language contact many phenomena can be observed, such as code-switching, language borrowings, and grammatical, lexical, and even phonetic interference.

Code-switching

Masurian Old Believers, living in contact with three languages, may insert Polish words in conversations carried in German, Russian words in conversations carried in Polish, or switch from German into Polish or Russian without any difficulty. Such code-switching may have different reasons, and even different aims. Sometimes if the speaker wants to draw the listener’s attention to some particular thing, he or she may need a change of code in order to express his or her thoughts more precisely or to make a joke. Code-switching may be related to the topic of discussion or to the language competence of the speaker or the listener. Masurian Old Believers often switch between languages fluently and without any apparent reaction from their interlocutors, or any indication that a different language is being spoken. People who take part in such conversations typically know all three languages that may be used and understand the meaning of what is being said without any trouble. In the sentence below, mostly in German, a Masurian Old Believer suddenly switches into Polish in order to jokingly tease his interlocutor:

Warum sprichst ime Deutsch zu mir und nie rozumiem.(…)
(Eng. Why do you keep speaking German to me and I don’t understand . (...))

The rest of the conversation was carried in Polish, which means it was an instance of code-switching as opposed to an insertion of a single phrase in Polish. Code-switching or inserting single words from other languages may also serve a humorous purpose, as can be seen in the example below, where the host, speaking mostly in German, offered her guests some tea, which is a traditional drink for Old Believers. The insertion of a Russian diminutive made the listeners smile and warmed the atmosphere:

Na ja, und was? Was soll ich euch machen, czajk oder was?
(Eng.: Now then, what? What shall I make you, chayku or what?)

Masurian Old Believers may also construct sentences which are a sort of hybrids, including elements in different languages. It is difficult to determine whether such sentences are instances of code-switching or insertion words in one language into a sentence constructed in another. In the example below, which is not a part of a longer conversation, the speaker refers to a two-year-old child asking for gummy bears . The child speaks unclearly in German, and the speaker makes a guess at the meaning and answers:

Aaa! Gummibärchen chocz’et…
(Eng.: Aaah! [He] wants gummy bears…)

The sentence consists of elements in German and Russian.

Word insertion

Masurian Old Believers, while talking in German, tend to insert single words, phrases consisting of several elements, or even whole sentences in Polish or the Old Believer dialect of Russian. This phenomenon cannot always be considered borrowing, since it is often spontaneous. It can have different reasons and even different aims. Sometimes the speaker may want to emphasise the meaning of his or her utterance and the quoted word may serve as a rhetorical device, like in the examples below:

Aber sie sind auch solche nielubiany, wie man hier so sagt, ne.

(Eng.: But they are so unloved, as they say here, no..)

Du magst keine buraki.

(Eng.: You don’t like beetroot.)

In the examples above, the inserted words are additionally emphasised by the means of intonation. Sometimes Old Believers insert words from a different language in order to ensure that their listeners understand them correctly. It is especially true in the case of key words, that are crucial to the context, but may seem more complicated to the speaker and therefore unknown to his or her listener. Such is the case in the conversation below, concerning the cost of stay in a social welfare institution. A Masurian Old Believer gives the word in Polish and then provides its German equivalent when asked for translation:

So viel wie viel wir wissen, kostet so ein Aufenthalt tausendachthundert Zloty. Sie nehmen die Rente und Rest zahlt opieka.
/Opieka ist wer?/
Sozialdienst, so wie in Deutschland. Opieka społeczna.
(Eng.: So much as much we know, such stay costs a thousand and eight hundred zlotys. They take the pension and the rest is paid by opieka.
/Opieka is who?/
Social welfare, just like in Germany. Opieka społeczna.)

In some situations, Masurian Old Believers use Polish words if they cannot find a German equivalent at a given moment, as in the example below:

Ich hab zu Hause viel gemacht, aber nachdem habe ich mit gemacht mit mit diese... Galaretka. War auch gut.
(Eng.: I made a lot at home, but then I also made with with that… Jelly. Was good, too.)

Speakers also insert Polish words when they think a given word belongs to German vocabulary, as in the examples below:

Die Anna wa gesten auf rezonans, nicht?
(Eng.: Anna was at MRI [Pol. rezonans] yesterday, no?)

Und sie kam nachher mit einer Tarife irgendwann gefahren.
(Eng.: And she came then after some time by taxi [Pol. taryfa].)

mit den adwokaten
(Eng.: with barristers [Pol. adwokat])

In the fragment below, a sentence in Russian is quoted within a longer utterance in German. The speaker talks in German about when she first saw a flying zeppelin in her childhood, and quotes in Russian, and then translates into German what her family members said. That indicates that Russian was the language used at her home:

Ich weiß das erste Mal (…) Zeppelin fuhr, da war ich vielleicht na so zehn Jahre, nich. Da waren die Großen (…) Die Mutter von deinem Vater wohnte bei uns, ging sie ans Kloster un da fährt ein Zeppelin, nich? Un die gucken, na, Anna, komm mal hier, da fährt der Satan! Verstehs doch, tam Satanaj jed’et (…) Weiß du Anchen, da fährt, da fliegt der Satan.

/Hat er das auf Deutsch gesagt oder auf Russisch?/

Of Russisch (…) sie konnte doch kein Deutsch, damals sie konnten doch nich.

(Eng.: I remember the first time (...) a zeppelin went , I was well perhaps ten years old, no. There were the old ones (...) Your father’s mother lived with us, she went to the cloister and there goes a zeppelin, no? And they look, well Anna, come on here, there goes Satan! You understand, Satan goes there (...) You know Annie, there goes, flies Satan.

/Did he say that in German or in Russian?

In Russian (...) she didn’t know German, they didn’t back then.)

Polish influences

An interesting feature of the German language spoken by Masurian Old Believers is grammatical interference from Polish. Old Believers stay in contact with the Polish language and know Polish language patterns well. Speaking in German, they construct sentences which use German words, but Polish grammar rules. In the example below the speaker uses the past participle of the verb ‘anrufen’ (Eng. to call), which is bound by the ‘sentence frame’ . In German, it is followed by the object in the Accusative case, without a preposition. The speaker, speaking in German, used Polish grammar rules twice in the sentence. Elements of the sentence are not strictly syntactically bound in Polish, and they can appear anywhere in the sentence. The verb ‘zadzwonić’ (‘to call’) is followed by an object that requires the preposition ‘do’ (‘to’, Ger. ‘zu’) in Polish. That is how the sentence below was constructed:

Und ich hab angerufen zu Marianka ('I called to Marianka')

The same sentence in standard German would be: Und ich hab Marianka angerufen.
Polish interference can also be seen in the phonetics of the German spoken by Masurian Old Believers. The reason for that may be, among other factors, formal similarities between German words and their Polish counterparts which are borrowings from German. Living in a Polish-speaking environment, Old Believers may have grown accustomed to the Polish sounds of such words and transfer them onto the original German words, like in the next example, where the speaker uses the word ‘Schopen’ (‘shed’), transferring the sound of the Polish equivalent, ‘szopa’ (which was borrowed from German), onto the original German word, ‘Schuppen’:

Sie haben jetz neue B’änk’e g’emacht und die alte Bänk’e die stehen alle auf de anden Seite in diesem Schopen.
('They made new benches now and the old benches, they all stand on the other side in that shed')

A characteristic feature of the pronunciation of the word ‘Schopen’ is a short, open [ɔ], typical of Polish, instead of the German [o].

Russian influences

Masurian Old Believers, while speaking German fluently and naturally, may use grammatical patterns as well as different linguistic and even phonetic features of Russian. One of such examples of grammatical interference is the construction of the object of a sentence consisting of the preposition ‘für’ (for) and a noun in Accusative instead of a noun in Dative with no preposition. Such construction in the language of the Old Believers in north-eastern Poland has been analysed by Zielińska (1996: 111Zielińska 1996 / komentarz/comment/r /
Zielińska, Anna 1996. Wielojęzyczność staroobrzędowców mieszkających w Polsce. Warszawa: Slawistyczny Ośrodek Wydawniczy.
); Ewa Dzięgiel (2009: 95 ffDzięgiel 2009 / komentarz/comment/r /
Dzięgiel, Ewa & Anna Zielińska (red.) 2009. Polszczyzna za granicą jako język mniejszości i języki mniejszościowe w Polsce. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynała Wyszyńskiego.
) described the same phenomenon in non-Old Believer parts of the region. Masurian Old Believers use the construction sporadically, e.g.:

Ich habe für Ania erzählt.
(Eng. I told to Ania.)
Standard: Ich habe Ania erzählt.
(Eng. I told Ania.)

An example of lexical interference in the German spoken by Masurian Old Believers is the usage of German words according to the usage patterns and grammatical rules of Russian. This phenomenon concerns mostly phrases related to religious practice. In the example below a Masurian Old Believer wanted to say that she prayed for people mentioned earlier in the conversation. Old Believers pray by reading Psalms and in Russian the verb ‘to read’ is used in this context, which is why the speaker uses the verb ‘lesen’ (Eng. to read) in German:

Sag ihnen, dass ich für sie lese.
(Eng. Tell them that I read for them.)

Masurian Old Believers sometimes insert single words or phrases in Russian, which may serve the purpose of making a joke or conveying warm feelings. In the example below, an Old Believer makes a joke about the way new German words are formed from Russian. She quotes the words of a Wojnowo (Ger. Eckertsdorf) resident asking a shop assistant for meat. He attempts to make a new German word from the Russian word arszyn (аршин) by adding the German morpheme -en:

Da kommt er von Eckertsdorf nach Ukta Fleisch kaufen. Die Frau hat ihn rausgeschickt. Er sollte da Fleisch kaufen. „Ein Arschen Fleisch“ Arszyna, das ist Pfund oder Kilo. „Ein Arschen Fleisch“, aber er bekam Fleisch.
(Eng. He comes from Wojnowo to Ukta to buy some meat. The wife sent him. He was supposed to buy meat. „One Arschen  of meat.” Arshina, that’s a pound or a kilo. „One Arschen of meat”, but he got meat.)

Phonetic influence of Russian on the German spoken by Masurian Old Believers include the palatalisation of consonants followed by [e] in words. This feature is not present in standard German. It is a transfer of Russian phonetic rules, where the vowel [je] always palatalises the preceding consonant. Examples include:

D’ezembe – Dezember (December)
G’eld – Geld (money)
k´ennen -  kӧnnen (can, be able to)
schw´er  - schwer (hard, difficult)
w´er  - wer (who)

Words quoted in Russian are pronounced according to the phonetic rules of Russian, e.g. starav’ery – Old Believers, mal’enna – molenna.

New constructions

Quite often, while speaking German, Masurian Old Believers make new constructions. It may result from the contact of the three languages they speak. Such new constructions are difficult to categorise unambiguously as Polish, German, or Russian. During conversations, Old Believers may express a thought or an observation in a way that is understandable, but the form of which deviates slightly from the standard pattern of use of a given word or phrase. That phenomenon is related to language interference. Uriel Weinreich, who studied the phenomenon of language contact in bi- and multilingual speakers, explains that for speakers communication is more important than grammatical correctness, so the divergent forms do not hinder understanding (Weinreich 1977: 60Weinreich 1977 / komentarz/comment/r /
Weinreich, Uriel 1977. Sprachen in Kontakt, Ergebnisse und Probleme einer Zweisprachigkeitsforschung. München: Verlag C.H. Beck.
). Newly formed constructions usually do not fit in the rules of either German or any other language used by Masurian Old Believers. In the example below, the phrase was built based on existing phrases in both Polish and German, but it is not a permanent lexical feature of German. In colloquial Polish the term for a person who is considered a relative despite no actual family connection is ‘przyszywany’ (Eng. ‘sewn on’); in German the term is ‘angeklebt’ (Eng. ‘glued, pasted’). The speaker, speaking in German, describes that unknown family relation by creating a new phrase, which does not exist in German, but reflects the intended meaning:

Die Kusine, das war so eine angeschriebene, finde ich.
(Eng. The cousin, she was a sort of an ascribed one, I reckon).