Cepsim sluokātni, paltes, plinckus…!

Abstract

The nutrition and names related to it are an essential part of tangible and intangible folk culture. Among them, cereal products used thermally unprocessed or cooked or baked have played an important role for a long time. This article deals with names for baked bread products of different ages not attested in Standard Latvian, thus under several aspects offering an insight into this thematic group of sub-dialectal vocabulary where certain changes based in both tangible and intangible folk culture can be observed over the centuries. These names occur in a wider or narrower area; they are of different origin and give evidence about language contacts, as well as reveal many linguistic phenomena characteristic to sub-dialects. In the sub-dialects, borrowed names are most widespread, e. g. Germanisms pęnkuoks (with variants), plinkšķens, kūka, paltes, Slavisms bliņa (with variants), blinčiks, blinčuks (with variants), sitnieks. Also, the name sluokātnis formed in Latvian to denote a rather ancient dish related to the celebration of the Metenis festivity is spread in a wider area in the sub-dialects. The rest of inherited designations occur less frequently, some of them even in one (or several) particular sub-dialect(s), as the derivations lāpeniņš, lejnieks, plānīte. The examined dialecticisms are reflecting diverse inner development trends in the sub-dialects, for instance, the quality change of vocalism (blina – blīna), insertion of the consonant r (sluokātnis – sluokārtnis), the interchange of voiced and voiceless noise consonants (pentuogs – pentuoks), the interchange of consonant clusters kst, kšķ and šķ (plinkstenis, plinkšķęns, plinšķęns), the use of the affixes -en-, -in- characteristic to nutrition vocabulary (plinkšķene, plinkšķins), as well as the interchange of word stems spread in the sub-dialects (e. g. blina, blinis, blins, bline).