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Žemaitija
Samogitia or Žemaitija ( Samogitian: ''Žemaitėjė''; see below for alternative and historical names) is one of the five cultural regions of Lithuania and formerly one of the two core administrative divisions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania alongside Lithuania proper. Žemaitija is located in northwestern Lithuania. Its largest city is Šiauliai. Žemaitija has a long and distinct cultural history, reflected in the existence of the Samogitian language. Etymology and alternative names Ruthenian sources mentioned the region as жемотьская земля, ''Žemot'skaja zemlja''; this gave rise to its Polish form, , and probably to the Middle High German . In Latin texts, the name is usually written as etc. The area has long been known to its residents and to other Lithuanians exclusively as Žemaitija (the name Samogitia is no longer in use within Lithuania and has not been used for at least two centuries); Žemaitija means "lowlands" in Lithuanian. The region is als ...
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Samogitia
Samogitia or Žemaitija ( Samogitian: ''Žemaitėjė''; see below for alternative and historical names) is one of the five cultural regions of Lithuania and formerly one of the two core administrative divisions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania alongside Lithuania proper. Žemaitija is located in northwestern Lithuania. Its largest city is Šiauliai. Žemaitija has a long and distinct cultural history, reflected in the existence of the Samogitian language. Etymology and alternative names Ruthenian sources mentioned the region as жемотьская земля, ''Žemot'skaja zemlja''; this gave rise to its Polish form, , and probably to the Middle High German . In Latin texts, the name is usually written as etc. The area has long been known to its residents and to other Lithuanians exclusively as Žemaitija (the name Samogitia is no longer in use within Lithuania and has not been used for at least two centuries); Žemaitija means "lowlands" in Lithuanian. The region is also ...
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Cultural Regions Of Lithuania
Lithuania can be divided into historical and cultural regions (called ethnographic regions). The exact borders are not fully clear, as the regions are not official political or administrative units. They are delimited by culture, such as country traditions, traditional lifestyle, songs, tales, etc. To some extent, regions correspond to the zones of Lithuanian language dialects. This correspondence, however, is by no means strict. For example, although the Dzūkian dialect is called South Aukštaitian, it does not mean that Dzūkija is part of Aukštaitija. In certain parts of some regions, dialects of other regions are spoken, while for example in Samogitia, there are three indigenous dialects (southern, northern and western Samogitian), some of which are subdivided into subdialects. Regions in politics No region, except for Samogitia, has ever been a political or an administrative entity. However, some work was done recently to delimit their boundaries more clearly, as the ...
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Grand Duchy Of Lithuania
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. The state was founded by Lithuanians, who were at the time a polytheistic nation born from several united Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija. The Grand Duchy expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus' and other neighbouring states, including what is now Lithuania, Belarus and parts of Ukraine, Latvia, Poland, Russia and Moldova. At its greatest extent, in the 15th century, it was the largest state in Europe. It was a multi-ethnic and multiconfessional state, with great diversity in languages, religion, and cultural heritage. The consolidation of the Lithuanian lands began in the late 13th century. Mindaugas, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy, was crowned as Catholic King of Lithuania in 1253. The pagan state was targeted in a religious crusade by ...
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Telšiai
Telšiai (; Samogitian: ''Telšē'') is a city in Lithuania with about 21,499 inhabitants. It is the capital of Telšiai County and Samogitia region, and it is located on the shores of Lake Mastis. Telšiai is one of the oldest cities in Lithuania, probably dating earlier than the 14th century. Between the 15th and 20th centuries, Telšiai became a district capital and between 1795 and 1802 it was included in the Vilnius Governorate. In 1873, Telšiai was transferred to the Kovno Governorate. Names The name Telšiai is a variant of the same Lithuanian language root (''-telš-'', ''-tilž-'') as Tilžė with the meaning connected to water. The name Telšiai or Telšē in Samogitian dialect of Lithuanian is derived from a verb ''telkšoti'' (literally, ''to be flooded with water'', ''to splash'', etc.). The name of Telšiai has been recorded in different forms and different languages throughout its history. Most of them are derived from ''Telšē'' in Samogitian dialect. Some ...
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Samogitian Language
Samogitian ( sgs, žemaitiu kalba, link=no or sometimes ', ''žemaitiu šnekta'' or '; lt, žemaičių tarmė, žemaičių kalba) is an Eastern Baltic language spoken mostly in Samogitia (in the western part of Lithuania). In Lithuania, it is mostly treated as a dialect of Lithuanian, but it is also considered as a separate language by some linguists inside and outside of Lithuania. Its recognition as a distinct language is increasing in recent years, and attempts have been made to standardize it. The Samogitian language should not be confused with the interdialect of the Lithuanian language as spoken in the Duchy of Samogitia before Lithuanian became a written language, which later developed into one of the two variants of written Lithuanian used in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania based on the so-called middle dialect of the Kėdainiai region. This was called the Samogitian (Žemaitian) language; the term "Lithuanian language" then referred to the other variant, which had bee ...
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Kelmė District Municipality
Kelmė (; is a city in northwestern Lithuania, a historical region of Samogitia. It has a population of 8,206 and is the administrative center of the Kelmė district municipality. History Kelmė's name may come from the Lithuanian ''kelmynės'', literally: ''the stubby place'', because of the forests that were there at the time of its founding. Kelmė was first mentioned in 1416, the year that Kelmė's first church was built. Prior to World War II, Kelmė ( yi, Kelm) was home to a famous Rabbinical College, the Kelm Talmud Torah. According to an 1897 census, 2,710 of Kelme's 3,914 inhabitants were members of the town's Jewish population, the vast majority of whom were merchants and traders and lived in the town. Most of the Jews in Kelmė rural district were murdered during a mass execution on July 29, 1941. On August 22 a second mass execution occurred. On October 2, 1941, some Kelmė and Vaiguva Jews were murdered in Žagarė. The executions were committed by Lithuanians n ...
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Mažeikiai District Municipality
Mažeikiai District Municipality ( lt, Mažeikių rajono savivaldybė, sgs, Mažėikiu rajuona savivaldībė) is located in the north-west of Lithuania, on the River Venta in Telšiai County. The administrative center of Mažeikiai District is the city of Mažeikiai. Its territory of is composed of of towns and settlements, of industrial enterprises and roads, of agricultural lands, of forests, and of tracts of other designation. There is one urban and 8 rural elderates. In 2003, the population was 67,393. Of this number, 46,223 live in towns and 21,170 in villages. It is situated in northern Samogitia. Mažeikiai District borders with the Republic of Latvia in the north, with Akmenė District Municipality in the east, with Telšiai District Municipality in the southeast, with Plungė District Municipality in the southwest and with Skuodas District Municipality in the west. Mažeikiai District stretches for east-to-west and north-to-south. Petraičiai village is the weste ...
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Duchy
A duchy, also called a dukedom, is a Middle Ages, medieval country, territory, fiefdom, fief, or domain ruled by a duke or duchess, a ruler hierarchically second to the king or Queen regnant, queen in Western European tradition. There once existed an important difference between "sovereign dukes" and dukes who were ordinary noblemen throughout Europe. Some historic duchies were sovereign in areas that would become part of nation-states only during the modern era, such as happened in Germany (once a federal empire) and Italy (previously a unified kingdom). In contrast, others were subordinate districts of those Kingdom (politics), kingdoms that had unified either partially or completely during the medieval era, such as France, Spain, Sicily, Naples, and the Papal States. Examples In France, several duchies existed in the medieval period, including Duchy of Normandy, Normandy, Duchy of Burgundy, Burgundy, Brittany, and Aquitaine. The medieval German Stem duchy, stem duchies (germ ...
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Yiddish Language
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages.Aram Yardumian"A Tale of Two Hypotheses: Genetics and the Ethnogenesis of Ashkenazi Jewry".University of Pennsylvania. 2013. Yiddish is primarily written in the Hebrew alphabet. Prior to World War II, its worldwide peak was 11 million, with the number of speakers in the United States and Canada then totaling 150,000. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers,Solomon Birnbaum, ''Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache'' (4., erg. Aufl., Hambu ...
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Palanga
Palanga (; bat-smg, Palonga; pl, Połąga; german: Polangen) is a seaside resort town in western Lithuania, on the shore of the Baltic Sea. Palanga is the busiest summer resort in Lithuania and has sandy beaches (18 km, 11 miles long and up to 300 metres, 1000 ft wide) and sand dunes. Officially Palanga has the status of a city municipality and includes Šventoji, Nemirseta, Būtingė, Palanga International Airport and other settlements, which are considered as part of the city of Palanga. Legend According to legend, there was a pagan shrine at the foot of a hill in Palanga where a beautiful priestess named Birutė used to tend the ceremonial fires. Having heard of Birutė's beauty, Kęstutis, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, came to make her his wife. The Lithuanian Bychowiec Chronicle records that Birutė "did not consent, and answered that she had promised the gods to remain a virgin as long as she lived. Kęstutis then resorted to take her by force, and with ...
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