Говор деревни Койды Мезенского района Архангельской области (в сопоставлении с соседними говорами)(

Abstract

The present article deals with the dialect of Kojda, a village situated on the White Sea coast in the Mezen' rajon of the Archangel'sk oblast'. The dialects of the Archangel'sk oblast' are poorly described, because most of the area is not included in the Dialect Atlas of the Russian Language (DARJa).

The dialects spoken to the north of the Northern Dvina developed from the Old Novgorod dialect of the first Russian settlers, who came in the Middle Ages. Kojda was founded at a later stage, in the 17th century, presumably by people from neighbouring settlements. A large proportion of the present population, however, are descendants of Old Believers from Novgorod.

The main part of the article consists of an enumeration of the main dialectical features of Kojda. These features were found on a tape recording of an 88-year old inhabitant of the village. These dialectal char-acteristics were compared with data from several publications dealing with dialects from the Archangel'sk oblast', in particular with dialects from the Pinega rajon, which is situated near Kojda.

Most features are typical of the Archangel'sk dialects. An exception is the comparatively open pronunciation of the Old Russian jat'. Some data suggest that there are more features which are not typical of all dialects of the Archangel'sk oblast', but further research is needed. My findings suggest that the dialect of Kojda is more similar to the Pinega dialects than might be expected from the literature, though it seems to be less archaic.