Kuršu kāpu kursenieku tekstu ortogrāfijas un transkripcijas problēma

This article examines orthographic practices in the written documentation of the autochthonous language of the Curonian Spit, referred to as New Curonian or the Kursenieku language. The speakers of this now extinct Baltic idiom did not possess a native writing system. Since the Reformation, their evangelization and literacy were mediated through Lithuanian and German. Consequently, the attempts to record the language in writing were based on heterogeneous orthographic principles, employing Lithuanian graphemes customary in East Prussian written usage, German orthography, or hybrid combinations thereof. When the autochthonous population endeavoured to transcribe their vernacular, they likewise relied on symbols drawn from multiple languages, including Lithuanian, German, Latvian, as well as newly devised signs with specific diacritics. Professional philologists employed graphemes of contemporary Latvian and transcription marks designed for Latvian dialects. In the second half of the twentieth century, German linguists began to apply the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to the documentation of New Curonian. Nevertheless, the IPA proved insufficient for capturing certain salient features of the geolect, most notably prosody, the absence of which is considered a significant deficiency. Over the past two decades, Lithuanian dialectology has made notable progress in adopting the IPA for dialect transcription, whereas Latvian linguistics has thus far applied IPA primarily to the standard language. Dialect material continues to be transcribed using the national system established by Jānis Endzelīns in the early twentieth century. The most recent small corpus of transcribed New Curonian texts based on sound recordings, accompanied by Lithuanian translation, was published in 2025. It employs a “Latvian” transcription system, supplemented by author-specific diacritics and symbols devised to reflect distinctive features of New Curonian. The study concludes that while such transcription remains convenient for Latvian dialectologists accustomed to it, it simultaneously underscores the need to address the question of IPA application in Latvian dialectology. Given that New Curonian may be regarded as a variant of Curonic Latvian subdialects, its documentation in IPA transcription should form part of a broader project aimed at synchronizing transcription methodologies across all—or at least a substantial number of Latvian dialects.