Golyad language

Golyad (Russian: голя́дский язык) or East Galindian (Latvian: austrumgalindu valoda, Lithuanian: rytų galindų kalba) is a poorly attested extinct Baltic language of the Dnieper Balts living in the Protva basin in present-day Russia.^[2] The Golyad people are believed to have descended from the Moshchiny culture and is the only known ethnonym for the Dnieper-Oka language.^[1] Due to there being no known written documents of the Golyad language, the language is poorly known.^[3] The language went extinct in the 12th century due to Early Slavic migration and assimilation.^[1] It is believed the vernaculars of the Finno-Ugrians and Volga Finns adopted loanwords from East Galindian.^[4]

Golyad
East Galindian, Golyadsky
*Galindai
Region	Protva basin
Ethnicity	Eastern Galindians
Extinct	12th century AD[1]
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Baltic Dnieper-Oka Golyad
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xgl (shared with West Galindian)
Linguist List	xgl
Glottolog	None
Eastern Europe in 7–8th century with Baltic tribes shown in dark purple and Golyad people being shown in the isolated pocket within Slavic territory.
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Phonology

Based on Baltic substratum and hydronomy in the Protva basin, the following phonology can be reconstructed:^[5][6]

Consonants

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Velar
			plain	pal.
Nasal		m	n	nʲ
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	tʲ	tʃ	k
	voiced	b	d	dʲ		ɡ
Fricative	voiceless		s		ʃ
	voiced	v	z		ʒ
Trill			r	rʲ
Approximant			l	lʲ	j

Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
High	i	iː			u	uː
Mid		eː				oː
Mid-low	ɛ
Low			a	aː

Lexicon

There are some Russian dialectal words from the Protva basin region suspected to be of Baltic origin:^[7]

Russian	Transliteration	Translation	Proposed Baltic cognates
алáня	alánja	'beer'	Lithuanian: alìnas 'special type of beer', Lithuanian: alùs, Latvian: aliņš
кромсáть	kromsát'	'to break something into pieces'	Lithuanian: kramsė́ti, Latvian: kramstīt
нóрот	nórot	'fishing gear'	Lithuanian: nérti, Latvian: nērt 'to sink'
пикýлька	pikúl'ka	'type of weed'	Lithuanian: pìkulė 'sisymbrium'

It is believed that the hydronyms "Lama", "Yauza", "Nudol" and "Churilikha" have Baltic origins.^[8] Specifically, the Churilikha's name has origins in the Lithuanian word for narrow and other names for the Churilikha such as Goledyanka have origins from the Golyad themselves.^[9] It is also believed that the name of the two villages of Golyadi has their names originate from the Golyads.^[8][10]