Pogańskie gwary z Narewu

Pagan dialects from Narew, this is a title of a glossary which contains about 200 Polish‐Baltic words, which was unearthed by Vjačesłav Zinov in 1978 in the eastern border area of the Białowieża Forest. A copy (the original was lost in the meantime) was interpreted by Professor Zigmas Zinkevičius (1984, 1992) as a monument of the Jatvingian language with elements of the Lithuanian language. In my opinion, the speakers of this language were not native to the area but they probably originated from Courland. The legitimacy of this opinion is supported by the similarities to the north‐western Latvian dialects and to the neighbouring Fenno‐Ugric languages, i.e. Livonian and Estonian, as well as numerous Germanisms. If this was indeed the Jatvingian (Sudovian) language, one would expect more numerous convergences with the Prussian language, and on the other hand, Polish and Belarusian borrowings. In the Polish part of the glossary one may discern phonetic and lexical features of the north‐eastern Borderland Polish language and the local Belarusian dialects

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