Vilamovicean is one of the smallest languages in Europe. It’s understood by about 80 people in the town of Wilamowice, Poland. Of the 20 people who are fluent speakers, almost all are over the age of 80 – there’s just one who’s younger, and that’s a 16 year old boy called Tymek.
Tymek came to SOAS today to give a seminar with Alex Andrason, a linguist who’s studying and recording Vilamovicean (aka Vilamovian or Wymysorys). It’s not often you get to meet the ‘last’ speaker of a language and it was both exciting and moving to hear their talk.
As a child, Tymek acquired Vilamovicean from his grandparents, who looked after him while his mum and dad were at work. He explained why his parents never learnt the language:
“A nöm krig, ym 1945 jür köma dy kumunista, an zy ferböta wymysiöerys cy kuza an y wymysiöejer flak cy ocin. Zy numa oly klopa an jungy makia uf dy logyn, a dy klopa trajta zy ufa Ural. Ny oly kuma cyryk.”*
“After the war, in 1945, there came communists. They prohibited speaking the Vilamovicean language and wearing Vilamovicean dresses. They took all the men and young girls and sent them to camps in the Ural Mountains. Not all of them came back.”
“Dy eldyn kuzta sun ny wymysiöerys, azu dy kyndyn oü ny, an dy wnüka oü ny, azu yta s’ gyt nok ohcik loüt wu wymysiöerys kuza an dos zajn nok elder loüt, wu hon ejwerohcik jür.”
“Then, since the parents stopped talking in Vilamovicean, the children and the grand children did not learn it. In consequence, nowadays, there are only 80 people who can still speak the language. They are elderly people who are more than 80 years old.”
Alex Andrason’s interest in the language began when he came across a webpage that Tymek wrote a few years ago. Alex contacted him and they struck up a correspondence. Now Alex goes to Wilamowice for regular ‘holidays’, where the elderly speakers welcome him like an old friend, making him dinners and gladly answering his questions about their language.
Alex’s work is uncovering significant linguistic variation even among the few remaining speakers. Today’s seminar was about how to express the future tense – it was humbling to realise that when Alex was talking about “some” speakers using a particular construction, he was referring to about five people in the whole world.
Unsurprisingly, nothing has been published in the language for a very, very long time. With no rich literary tradition or extensive grammar books to refer to, Alex and Tymek are creating a new writing system for Vilamovicean. It’s a Germanic language that has a lot in common with German and Icelandic, but you might not recognise that immediately from the way it’s spelt. That’s because they’re basing the new orthography on Polish, Tymek’s other native language. “We’re writing it down for Tymek,” said Alex, “So it’s got to look familiar to him.”
If all this sounds like a lot of work, you’ll be surprised to hear that Alex is currently studying for a PhD, not in Vilamovicean, but in biblical Hebrew. How does he find the time?!
Usually when a language only has a handful of speakers and most are elderly, that’s it, you assume the language is going to die. But Tymek is so young and enthusiastic and Alex is so highly motivated that I can’t help wondering whether there might be hope for Vilamovicean yet.
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* I’m afraid I haven’t done justice to the orthography here as Wordpress fails to display two of the characters correctly. Please tell me if you know how to fix it!