Ruthenian

Ruthenian language
ruska mowa
Pronunciation	[/ˈrus.kɑ. ˈmɔ.wɑ/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	parallel Earth
Native to	East Slavic regions of the Republic of Three Nations
Native speakers	47 million (2012 census)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Ruthenian language
Early forms	Old East Slavic Old Ruthenian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	rue

Ruthenian /ruːˈθiːniən/ (native names: rusińska mowa/руcиньска мова/русинська мова) is an East Slavic language spoken mostly by Ruthenians in the constituent republic of Ruthenia, where it is the native language for approximately than 47 million people. Ruthenian is considered digraphic, using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, though the Latin alphabet is used almost exclusively, while the usage of the Cyrillic alphabet is limited to the Orthodox Church practices, some medial and signboards or logos. Cyrillic is viewed as traditional and conservative, it is not used in the legal sphere, where Latin is required.

The Ruthenian language is a descendant of Old East Slavic, spoken in the early medieval state of Kievan Ruś. After the fall of the Kievan Ruś as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the language developed into a form called the Old Ruthenian language - a direct ancestor of modern Ruthenian. The modern Ruthenian language retains a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Rusyn (which many scholars consider to be a dialect of Ruthenian), but is also close to Polish, Slovak and Russian.

Today there are four official spoken forms of written Ruthenian, each with their own two variants – broad and radical. The broad variants differ only in spelling of certain words and pronunciation of certain letters (in case, when a written text is being read), while the radical ones also have different grammatical features and vocabulary. In the legal sphere, such as official documents, only the broad variants are allowed, which are almost identical and only differ in ways the words are pronounced. This is also the case for the spoken language in the mass media. In all other cases Ruthenian speakers typically use their native dialects instead.

Classification

The Ruthenian language belongs to the East Slavic group of the Indo-European language family along with Russian and Rusyn. In the late XXth century, the question of whether Rusyn is a dialect of Ruthenian or these are two separate languages was actively discussed, with the debate affected by mostly political factors. Rusyńska mowa (the Rusyn language) was the native name of the Ruthenian language in Galicia up to the end of the XXth century. The matter of whether or not Rusyn is indeed a separate language continues to be speculated. The degree of mutual intelligibility with Russian, on the other hand, is lower, in fact it is lower than with Polish – a West Slavic language, although the situation varies, depending on a variety and their constituent dialects.

History

External history

The Ruthenian language is an experiment, done with the goal to unify Ukrainian and Belarusian. This scenario takes place in a reality, in which the Polish-Lituanian Commonwealth was never divided and evolved into the Commonwealth of Three Nations with Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia as its three constituent republics.

Internal history

The Ruthenian language developed from Old Ruthenian, which itself is a descendant of Old East Slavic. It was the group of East Slavic dialects spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. During this period many loanwords from Polish and other languages entered Ruthenian and influenced its phonology, such as the adoption of the /f/ and /g/ sounds, absent in the language prior to that. After the rule of the Austrian Empire and formation of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria German and Yiddish words began entering the language, primarily its Southwestern variety, called Red Ruthenian. For most of its history Ruthenian was written using both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts with Cyrillic being dominant. The use of the Latin script for Ruthenian was promoted by authorities in the Polish-Lituanian Coomnwealth (and later in the RTN), until it became the dominant script instead. But it was only at the end of the XIXth century, when the Ruthenian language became recognized as a co-official language of the state, along with Lithuanian and Polish (which prior to that was the only official language of the Commonwealth).

The use of the Ruthenian language is mostly stagnant with a bit of decline. All the countries neighbouring the RTN historically have regions with a sizable Ruthenian population and therefore Ruthenian language speakers, although many identify as Rusyn speakers instead. Ruthenian is also spoken by a large emigrant population, particularly in Canada, the United States, Australia and several countries of South America like Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. The founders of this population primarily emigrated from Galicia and to a slightly lesser extend from northern part of Ruthenia.

Written language

Ruthenian has two alphabets: Latin and Cyrillic. The Cyrillic alphabet consists of 33 letters and an apostrophe. The standardized variant, used nowadays, was proposed in 1952 with the letter "Ё" (and "ё") being introduced to mark the vowel, pronounced /ɔ/ and /jɔ/ in the Northern Ruthenian dialects, and the letter "Щ" (and its lowercase "щ") being excluded from the alphabet. The letter "ѕ" which looks the same as a Latin "s" was occasionally used to represent /d͡z/ and sounds respectively, but it was substituted with a digraph "дз". The apostrophe acts like a letter in Ruthenian and marks the /j/ sound after consonants.

Latin

The Ruthenian Latin alphabet has 39 letters:

Ruthenian alphabet

Majuscule forms (uppercase/capital letters)
A	B	C	Ć	Č	D	Ď	E	IE	(Ë)	Ě	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	Ľ	M
N	Ń	O	Ǒ	P	R	(Ŕ)	S	Ś	Š	T	Ť	U	W	Y	Z	Ź	Ž	Ǯ
Minuscule forms (lowercase/small letters)
a	b	c	ć	č	d	ď	e	ie	(ë)	ě	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	ľ	m
n	ń	o	ǒ	p	r	(ŕ)	s	ś	š	t	ť	u	w	y	z	ź	ž	ǯ

The letters F and G are used only in words of foreign origin (e.g. graf, gram, etc), except for several words, that contain the phoneme /g/ – rǒzga ("twig"). The original Slavic phoneme /ɡ/ had become [ɣ] or [ɦ] already in Old Ruthenian, except for the combination /zg/, where "g" is preserved. The sound [f] was never present in native Slavic vocabulary and even nowadays is usually being substituted with [xw] in initial and medial positions and [xʷ] word-finally. The letters Q, V, and X are used exclusively in foreign names (mostly in personal names and occasionally in placenames), they are replaced with KW, W and KS in other foreign words (although V can sometimes be retained, such as in vakuum "vacuum", volt "volt", though they are still pronounced with [ʋ~w]).

The letter Ë is not always considered to be separate from E. The diactritic above this letter is optional, except for some words, it is only used consistently in dictionaries and books for children, such as primers. The letter Ë indicates the sound [ɔ] or [ä] in Northern Ruthenian varieties, which corresponds to [ɛ] in other varieties, for example sëstra "sister" is pronounced [sɛstra] in the South and is usually written as sestra. Such words as čëtyri ("four") are always written with ë, because they are pronounced with an [ɛ] only in the Red Ruthenian variety. The digraph IE represents an outcome of the Common Slavic *ę, which coincided with /ja/ in most varieties, but unlike ë its distribution is not predictable and thus substituting it with "ja" or "a" is considered a spelling error.

Other letters, such as Ě and Ǒ represent the outcomes of so-called "narrow vowels", which used to be written as "é" and "ó" just as in Polish. In the Southern varieties they are both pronounced [i], while in the Black Ruthenian variety they instead became diphthongs [ɪe] and [ʊo]. The letter Ŕ is only consistently used in official documents and in Green Ruthenian, where it denotes a distinct sound [rʲ], elsewhere it can be optionally used – both buŕak and burak ("beet") are acceptable. The letter Ł had been used until 1952, but is now substituted with W, however it can still occasionally be found in some texts or logos.

Cyrillic

The Cyrillic Ruthenian alphabet

А а	Б б	В в	Г г	Ґ ґ	Д д	Е е	Є є	Ё ё	Ж ж	З з	И и/ы*
І і	Ї ї	Й й	К к	Л л	М м	Н н	О о	П п	Р р	С с	Т т
У у	Ў ў	Ф ф	Х х	Ц ц	Ч ч	Џ џ	Ш ш	Ь ь	Ю ю	Я я	’

• The letter "ы" is used exclusively in the Northern varieties (primarily in Lithuania) while "и" is instead used in the South. The pronunciation of these letters depends on the dialect and varies from [ɨ] in the Northern dialects to [ɪ] or [e] in Southern dialects.

Variants

As established by law and government policy, there are four official forms of written Ruthenian, usually called Red (or Southwestern), Green (or Eastern), White (or Northern) and Black (Northwestern). The association with colours is based on traditional names of territories, to which these variants are native, and the names themselves are based on traditional colours of cardinal directions: "red" – South, "green" – East, "white" – North and "black" – West. Although officially the variants are instead named according to their geographic location, the names based on colour are more widely accepted, and they are commonly used among scholars as well.

Although the variants provide standards for how to pronounce written words, they are not used as colloquial spoken languages. No standard of spoken Ruthenian is officially sanctioned (apart from several cases, where one of the variants is required), even though certain forms and ways of pronounciation are recommended as a de facto "official", native Ruthenians speak their own dialects in all circumstances. Thus, the use of any Ruthenian dialect, whether it coincides with the written norms or not, is accepted as correct spoken Ruthenian in almost every circumstance (apart from the legal sphere). Thus every variant also has two forms: broad in which the vocabulary coincides with the written standard and only has its own distinct pronunciation of certain vowels; and radical (or "narrow") which differs not only in pronunciation, but also in vocabulary and grammar. Outside of their native areas, radical variations are not used.

Example

In the example below, the broad subtypes of the four variants are used.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Standard	Usě ľudi naroǯajuť sie wǒľnymi j rǒwnymi u swojǒj hǒdnośťi j prawach. Ony naděleni rozumom i sumlěńńem i powinni dějati w wǒdnošeńńi odin do odnoho w dusě braterstwa.
Red	[u.ˈɕi ˈʎu.de. nɑ.rɔ.ˈd͡ʐɑ.jut. ɕe. ˈʋiʎ.ne.meɪ̯. ˈriu̯.ne.me. u. ˈswɔ.jiɪ̯. ˈɦid.nɔ.steɪ̯. ˈprɑ.wɑx. wo.ˈne. nɑ.ˈɟi.lɛ.ni. ˈrɔ.zu.mom. i. sum.ˈʎi.ɲɛm. i. pɔ.ˈʋen.ni ˈɟi.jɑ.teu̯. wid.ˈnɔ.ʂɛ.ɲi. je.ˈden. dɔ. jed.ˈnɔ.ɦɔu̯. ˈdu.ɕi. bra.ˈter.stwɑ]
Green	[u.ˈsʲi ˈlʲu.dɪ. nɑ.ˈrɔ.d͡ʒu.ju.t͡sʲːɑ. ˈʋilʲ.nɪ.mɪɪ̯. ˈriu̯.nɪ.mɪ. u. sʋɔ.ˈjiɪ̯. ˈɦid.nɔ.sʲtʲiɪ̯. prɑ.ˈwɑx. wɔ.ˈnɪ. nɑ.ˈdʲi.ɫɛ.nʲi. ˈrɔ.zu.mɔm. i. sum.ˈlʲi.nʲːɑm. i. pɔ.ˈʋɪ.nʲːi ˈdʲi.jɑ.tɪu̯. ʋid.ˈnɔ.ʃɛ.nʲːi. ɔ.ˈdɪn. dɔ. ˈɔd.nɔ.ɦɔu̯. ˈdu.sʲi. bra.ˈtɛr.stʋɑ]
White	[u.ˈsʲe̞ ˈlʲu.d͡zʲi. na.ra.ˈd͡ʐa.ju.t͡sːa. ˈvɔlʲ.nɨ.mʲiɪ̯. ˈrɔu̯.nɨ.mʲi. u. sʋɔ.ˈjɔɪ̯. ˈɣɔd.na.sʲt͡sʲiɪ̯. pra.ˈvax. ja.ˈnɨ. na.ˈd͡zʲe̞.lʲɛ.nɨ. ˈrɔ.zu.mam. i. sum.ˈlʲe̞.nʲːɛm. i. pa.ˈvʲi.nːɨ. ˈd͡zʲe̞.ja.t͡sʲ u. vad.ˈnɔ.ʂɛ.nʲːi. a.ˈd͡zʲin. da. ad.na.ˈɣɔu̯. ˈdu.sʲe̞. bra.ˈt͡sʲɛr.stva]
Black	[u.ˈsʲɪe̞ ˈlʲu.d͡zʲi. nä.rä.ˈd͡ʐä.ju.t͡sːä. ˈʋɔlʲ.nɨ.miɪ̯. ˈrɔu̯.nɨ.mi. u. sʋɔ.ˈjɔɪ̯. ˈɣɔd.nɔ.sʲt͡sʲiɪ̯. prä.ˈʋäx. a.ˈnɨ. nä.ˈd͡zʲɪe̞.lʲɛ.nɨ. ˈrɔ.zu.mäm. i. sum.ˈlʲɪe̞.nʲːäm. i. pä.ˈʋi.nːɨ. ˈd͡zʲɪe̞.jä.t͡sʲ u. ɣäd.ˈnɔ.ʂɛ.nʲːi. ä.ˈd͡zʲin. dä. äd.nä.ˈɣɔu̯. ˈdu.sʲi. brä.ˈt͡sʲɛr.stʋä]
English translation	All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.