Ruthenian language: features and classification of dialects

The Rusyn language is a whole group of different dialects and linguistic formations common among the Rusyn people who lived in Ukraine in Transcarpathia, in eastern Slovakia and in the southeast of Poland. Also representatives of the people lived in some areas of Serbia, Croatia, Hungary and even in Canada and the United States.

In our time, according to statistics, the number of Rusyns is about one and a half million people. Rusyn language is similar to Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, as it belongs to the same language group.

The opinions of linguists

This language is one of the official languages of Vojvodina, the autonomous province of Serbia, located in the north of the Danube. Until now, there is no consensus on whether the Ruthenian language can be considered independent. Ukrainian linguists, however, like the authorities, do not recognize Rusyns as a separate nationality, treating them as an ethnographic group of Ukrainians, and their speech as a dialect of Ukrainian. However, not so long ago, in 2012, a resolution was adopted according to which Rusyn became the language of the small peoples of Ukraine.

Of course, the two related languages that exist in the territory of one country will be similar. This is normal. The exception is not the Ruthenian language. His vocabulary, however, to a much greater extent than the Ukrainian, is filled with ecclesiastical Slavs. A distinctive feature of it is the presence of polonizms, Slovaks, Germanisms and Magyarisms. Many lexical elements from Hungarian were translated into the Rusyn language.

Collision history

In 19 and up to the middle of the 20th century, three tendencies prevailed in the Ruthenian cultural society. As a literary language Russophiles proposed to introduce Russian, Ukrainophiles, respectively, Ukrainian. The third group attempted to create a literary Ruthenian language.

During the war, Podkarpackie was under the Hungarian occupation, and the Podkarpackie Society of Sciences played an important role in the cultural development of the region. In the first year of the war, the "Grammar of the Russian Language" was published, the author of which was Dr. Ivan Garayda - a teacher, translator, publisher, linguist and educator. It is he who creates the literary Subcarpathian Ruthenian. In this language in the following years, magazines, newspapers and books were published in the province.

Legal language

Despite the fact that in the post-war period the literary Ukrainian language was actively cultivated in the Subcarpathian region, it did not take root among the Rusyns. Moreover, the development of the Ukrainian phonetic writing became a big problem for many residents, and so many Transcarpathian Rusyns do not consider themselves to be Ukrainians.

Despite all this, after the war in Transcarpathia only Ukrainian was official, although in Vojvodina the literary Ruthenian was approved in the twenties, and in 1923 the first grammar was published.

So far, there has not been a common literary Ruthenian language. A translator may not be required to understand different dialects - the general essence of the text can be understood even without knowing the language (provided that another Eastern Slavonic, for example, Russian) is known, but this is not enough to fully understand the literary work.

Basic dialects

In the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine and in the part of the Presov region in the northeast of Slovakia, the so-called Podkarpattya Rusyn dialects are widely distributed, which in turn are divided into Verkhovyna and Dolian. Dolinyansky is divided into western (Lematic) and eastern (Lishatsky, or Maramoroshsky). The Lematic dialect is common in the west of north-eastern Slovakia. In the Lishat dialect, they speak Rusyns who live in the territory from the Teresva Valley in the east to the Rika Valley in the west.

In the Transcarpathian region, in the Volovets and Mizhgirsky districts, the Verkhovinian dialect is widespread, which is something between the valley and Boykovsky dialects.

The Lemko dialect now exists in Slovakia on the southern side of the Carpathians. Some Lemkos consider themselves to be Ukrainians, and their language - dialect Ukrainian. The other part identifies itself as a separate people.

Features

The Rusyn language, whose history of appearance is so unusual, absorbed many nuances characteristic of adverbs common in the border areas.
It distinguishes two types of vowels o and e, which was observed in the Old Russian language and in most of the North Russian dialects. In Podkarpatussinsky, "e" is pronounced in the same way as in Russian, if there is a firm consonant (nebo, salo, derevo) behind it, but if the same vowel stands before the relaxed consonant, the nature of the sound changes. The tongue, when spoken, approaches the front of the sky, and the lips are stretched, as in the sound of "and". There is tension in the articulation of the language, and the vowel "e" acquires a completely different sound, the sound becomes strained, narrow, as in the German word see.

Also, two variants of pronunciation can have a "o" sound. In the usual version, it does not differ from the Russian or Czech "o", but before soft consonants it is pronounced with outstretched lips, it turns out something in between "o" and "u".
Consonant labial "n", "b", "c", "m" in Podkarpatussinsky are pronounced with softening, if after them follows the soft "o" described above. The dental vowels "t", "d", "n" before this vowel do not soften completely, but become semi-soft, but "c" and "h" become soft.

Other sounds

Since the labial sound "c" is soft when spoken, it gradually and completely disappeared. In all the Carpathian dialects, the word "holy" was pronounced as "syaty" in the western part and as "syaty" among the eastern group of dialects.

But here the sound of "s" is kept separate from "and". From the dialects of Ukrainian Podkarpatussinsky differs by the pronunciation of words with the ending of "ayu", for example: "davu" instead of "I give" and "I know" instead of "I know"; in the third person of the plural, the rule is preserved (davut, know).

Here are some more characteristic features of the Rusyn traits: iotirovannoe and (olayichi, doyichi), the presence of the sound of T ', the unique lettering of "yy" (top, third). Voortnymi pronouns in this language are formed with the help of the particle "Xia", which is added after the pronoun (you can find it back). These are the main features that distinguish the Ruthenian language.

History of recognition

As mentioned above, Podkarpattya was occupied by the Hungarians, and in 1939 the Ruthenian language was supported by the occupation government. They considered Rusyn-Magyaron as Russified Hungarians. This time can be called, to a certain extent, the flourishing of the Ruthenian language: the "Grammar of the Russian Language" comes out, books are published, newspapers and magazines are printed. However, in 1944, Podkarpattya joined the Ukrainian SSR, and the Soviet government bans the cultural and educational activities conducted by the Ruthenians. They are recognized only as a small ethnic group of Ukraine, and their language is a dialect, despite the fact that in Yugoslavia Rusyns were officially recognized as a separate people.

Country of Soviets

Only in 1991, after the fall of communism, the countries that are part of the USSR gradually recognized the Ruthenians as a people. In Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Russia, Ruthenian is supported in the cultural and educational sphere, and more than twenty years later the Rusyns recognized Ukraine.

Interestingly, the word "Rusyn" is known for a long time. Even in the Tale of Bygone Years, this ethnonym was used to refer to people living in Russia. The word is found seven times in the contract between Oleg and the Greeks, dated 911. From the 13th to the 18th century, Ukrainians and Byelorussians were called that way. In Lithuania and Poland at the time Rusyns called any resident who professed Orthodoxy and spoke some Eastern Slavonic language or dialect (the Poles themselves and Lithuanians were mostly Catholics).

Until 1945, there was no adjective "Rusyn", instead of it used "Rusky" (hence the name of the book "Grammar of the Russian language"). After the war, the word "Rusky" acquired the meaning "Russian", which was reflected both in spoken Ruthenian and in literary.

The study of the Ruthenian

This interesting archaic speech certainly attracts attention. There are a lot of songs that are still sung by Rusyns in their native dialect, so you can orient yourself to them first. Any carrier of the East Slavic language can easily learn the Ruthenian language. The self-teacher can be found on the corresponding information resources, but the communities in the social networks devoted to the Rusyn, where the native speakers of the language communicate directly, and will learn from them, will help more.

In addition, when taking a trip, you can spend some time in the area where they speak Ruthenian. This will give a quick start to the study of the language, will allow us to master phonetic features. But before undertaking the training, it is necessary to determine the dialect, since there is still no general literary Ruthenian.