Ruthenian

Ruthenian language
Halycka mowa
Pronunciation	[/ˈɦɑ.lɪt͡s.kɑ/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	parallel Earth
Native speakers	3 186 000 (2001 census)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Ruthenian language
Early forms	Old East Slavic Old Ruthenian
Official status
Official language in	Ukraine
Recognised minority language in	Poland
Language codes
ISO 639-3	rue

Ruthenian /ruːˈθiːniən/ (native names: ruteńska mowa/рутеньска мова, halycka mowa/галицка мова) is an East Slavic language spoken by Ukrainians and Poles in the Halicia Region, where it is the co-official language (along with Ukrainian and Polish) and is the native language for more than 3 million people. Ruthenian is considered digraphic, using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, though the Latin alphabet is more commonly used, while the Cyrillic alphabet is used in the Orthodox practice, road signes and in the North-Eastern part of Halicia, where Ukrainian is dominant.

The Ruthenian language is a descendant of Old East Slavic, spoken in the early medieval state of Kievan Rus'. After the fall of the Kievan Rus' as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the language developed into a form called the Old Ruthenian language - a common ancestor of modern Ruthenian, Rusyn, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. Unlike its closest relatives, Ruthenian has always maintained a sufficient base in Halicia, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs and then in early literature. The modern Ruthenian language retains a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Rusyn, Belarusian and Ukrainian, but is also close to Polish and Slovak.

Classification

The Ruthenian language belongs to the East Slavic group of the Indo-European language family. According to the doctor of philology Kostiantyn Tyszczenko Ruthenian (as well as Ukrainian and Belarusian) has more common features with West Slavic languages, like Polish and Slovak, than with Russian, thereby the East Slavic is likely a geographic grouping.

The classification and identification of Ruthenian is historically and politically problematic. The Ruthenian language is closely related to Ukrainian and Rusyn. Before World War I, Rusyns or Ruthenians were recognized as Halician Ukrainians within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the XXth century, the question of whether Ruthenian and Ukrainian languages are dialects of a single language or two separate languages was actively discussed, with the debate affected by linguistic and political factor. The matter of whether or not Ruthenian is indeed a separate language continued to be speculated until 1961, when Halicia became a part of the Ukrainian SSR by a referendum. These two languages still share a large degree of a mutual intelligibility.

The boundary between Ruthenian and Rusyn languages is still a question of debate, since rusyńska mowa (the Rusyn language) was the native name of the Ruthenian language until 1961 and there is no unified Rusyn language, but a group of various dialects which are not fully mutually intelligible. Ukraine officially considers Rusyn and Ruthenian the same with the exception of the Pannonian Rusyn spoken in Serbian Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. Even Ruthenian speakers called themselves rusyny rather than ruteny. Since 1995, Rusyn has been recognized as a minority language in Slovakia, having the status of an official language in municipalities where more than 20 percent of the inhabitants speak Rusyn. Meanwhile Rusyn dialects in Transcarpathia are officially considered dialects of the Ruthenian language.

History

External history

Having been a kid, i often wondered, why is the way people of my region speak so differently from those who speak on television. Well, after entering school I found out, that "television people" spoke standard Ukrainian (or Polish, or Russian, depending on a TV channel), while I was speaking a western dialect. So I just thought it would be a great idea to standardize my own dialect (combining with its direct neighbours) into a separate language (and why not, Rusyn has almost done just the same thing). Now I can say, that I am a Ruthenian (or Halician) native speaker. So it's not just "another Slavic conlang" to me, it is trully personal.

Internal history

The Ruthenian language developed from Old Ruthenian, which itself is a descendant of Old East Slavic. Old Ruthenian is seen as a predecessor of modern Belarusian, Ruthenian and Ukrainian (In modern texts, the language is sometimes called "Old Ukrainian" or "Old Belarusian"). 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 the phonology, like the adoption of /f/ and /g/ sounds, absent in the language earlier. After the rule of the Austrian Empire and formation of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria German and Yiddish words began entering the language. For much of the 19th century the Austrian authorities demonstrated some preference for Polish culture, but the Ruthenians were relatively free to partake in their own cultural pursuits in Halicia and Bukowyna, where Ruthenian was widely used in education and official documents, unlike in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian language was banned from schools, publication and importation of most Ukrainian-language books, public performances and lectures were prohibited.

For most of its history Ruthenian was written in the Cyrillic script and occasionally in the Latin one. In 1834 Josyp Łozynśkyj, a Ukrainian scholar and priest from Lwiw, introduce a new Latin script based on the Polish alphabet. The use of the Latin script for Ruthenian was promoted by authorities in Halicia under the Austrian Habsburg Empire, but it was not standardized until 1956.

By the time of the collapse of Austro-Hungary in 1918, Ruthenians were ready to openly develop a body of national literature and form an independent state (West Ukrainian People's Republic), however the period of independence was brief (from 1918 to 1921) after which Halicia became a part Poland. Unlike Belarus and Ukraine, this territory did not become a subject of extermination in the Soviet Union, e.g. during Holodomor and Great Purge. In 1961 Halicia became an autonomous region of the Ukrainian SSR via a non-legitimate referendum. Many Poles moved from this territory due to political reasons, but more than a half remained living there with the largest population in the city of Lwiw, which gained a special status within the region. Ruthenian language became recognized as a commonly spoken language. It became co-official language along with Ukrainian and Polish in 1990.

The use of the Ruthenian language is mostly stagnant with a bit of decline. Although there are 4 million ethnic Ukrainians in the territory, the Ruthenian language is prevalent only in western and southern Halicia. In Lwiw, Ukrainian, Polish and Ruthenian are spoken, a notable shift from the recent past when the city was primarily Polish-speaking. The shift is believed to be caused by a population influx and migrants from other regions of Ukraine. In rural areas Ukrainians also gradually shift from Ruthenian to Ukrainian.

Dialects

The map represents languages spoken by a majority of the population in the region.

  Ruthenian (halycka mowa/галицка мова)

  Polish (język polski)

  Ukrainian (українська мова)

  Rusyn (русиньска мова)

1. Dolinian Ruthenian is spoken in the Transcarpathian Oblasť. It is notable for the retention of a distinct phoneme /ɤ/, /a/ in places of /e/ or /i/ in the standard and a phoneme /y/ in some places of a regular /i/ in the standard.
2. Upper Dnistrian (Kresowy) is considered to be the main Halician Ruthenian dialect, spoken in the Lwiw, Ternopiľ, and Iwano-Frankiwsk and the standard is mostly based on this dialect. Its distinguishing characteristics are the influence of Polish and the German vocabulary, which is reminiscent of the Austro-Hungarian rule.
3. Pokuttia is spoken in the Czerniwci and Ternopiľ Oblasť of Ukraine. This dialect has some distinct phonetic and lexical features, most notable of which is a shift of /ɛ/ into /æ/ in certain positions and /ɔ/ instead of /ɛ/ after some postalveolar fricatives (like in standard Ukrainian).
4. Hutsul is spoken by the Hucul people on the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, in the extreme southern parts of the Iwano-Frankiwsk Oblasť and Transcarpathian Oblasťs. It also preserves the /ɨ~ɤ/ sound and have /d͡ʐ/ reduced to /ʒ/.

Orthography

Ruthenian has two alphabets: Latin and Cyrillic. The Cyrillic alphabet consists of 32 letters and an apostrophe, which is almost identical to the Ukrainian one. The standardized variant, used nowadays, was proposed by Євген Желехівски (Jewhen Želechiwsky). The letter "Ё" (and "ё") was introduced in 1961 to mark the vowel /ɛ/ which is pronounced /ɔ/ and /jɔ/ in the Pokuttia dialect, but it was excluded in 1990 together with the letter "Щ" (and its lowercase "щ"). The letter "ѕ" which looks the same as a Latin "s" and "џ" were occasionally used to represent /d͡z/ and /d͡ʐ/ sounds respectively, but they were substituted with digraphs. The apostrophe acts like a letter in Ruthenian and marks the /j/ sound after consonants.

The Cyrillic Ruthenian alphabet

А а	Б б	В в	Г г	Ґ ґ	Д д	Е е	Є є	Ж ж	З з	И и
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	Ф ф	Х х	Ц ц	Ч ч	Ш ш	Ь ь	Ю ю	Я я	’

The Latin script had occasionally been used since the XVIIth century, but it was not widespread until 1834, when Josyp Lozyńsky proposed an alphabet based closely on the Polish orthography after writing an article "O wprowadzeniu abecadła polskiego do piśmiennictwa ruskiego" ("About the implementation of Polish abecadło into Ruthenian writing"). This alphabet was also called abecadło.

Abecadło

A a	B b	C c	Ć ć	Cz cz	D d	Ď ď	E e	é	F f	G g
H h	I i	J j	K k	L l	Ł ł	M m	N n	O o	ó/ü	P p
R r	S s	Ś ś	Sz sz	T t	Ť ť	U u	W w	Y y	Z z	Ź ź	Ż ż

It has not gained a widespread recognition, despite having represented Ruthenian phonology much better than a Church Slavonic Cyrillic writing system. But with the spread of the Greek and Roman Catholic churches Latin alphabet got more popularity. So in 1859 a new project was proposed by a Czech slavist Jozef Jireček. According to the author's plan, latinization would promote a formation of a new standard Ruthenian and/or Ukrainian language (at those times they were still considered the same) free from the Old Church Slavonic and Russian influence. It was mostly based on a Czech orthography with some additional Polish letters. This writing system would eventually evolve into a modern Ruthenian alphabet, but it still had additional letters, for example: /ʂ/, /t͡ʂ/, /ʐ/ and /d͡ʐ/ were written as "š", "č", "ž" and "dž" from which the last two entered new alphabet; "ě" was used instead of earlier "é" (now written as "y") and "ü" instead of earlier "ó" (this letter represented the /y/ sound which had merged /i/ by the end of the XIXth century in most dialects). Finally, the letter "ł", used for writing [w], that originated from *l, was substituted by "w" in 1990.

Latin Ruthenian script

A a	B b	C c	Ć ć	Cz cz	D d	Ď ď	Dz dz	Dź dź	Dž dž	E e	F f
G g	H h	I i	J j	K k	L l	Ľ ľ	M m	N n	Ń ń	O o	P p
R r	S s	Ś ś	Sz sz	T t	Ť ť	U u	W w	Y y	Z z	Ź ź	Ž ž

Example

The table's caption

Modern Latin	Abecadło	Cyrillic	English translation
W tynkim fliuiďi myhoťiń Kupajut siy zemja i more Rozczyniuje žytie i smyrť I rode siy dobro ta hore.	W tynkóm fliuiďi myhoťiń Kupajut sé zemja i more Rozczyniuje žytie i smyrť I rode sé dobro ta hore.	В тинкім флюїдї миготїнь Купают сьи зем’я і море, Розчинює житє і смирть І роде сьи добро та горе.	In a thin fluid of glares The land and the sea are bathing, Life and death are deliquescing And blessing and grief will be born.

Phonology

Vowels

Standard Ruthenian has six vowel phonemes:

	Front	Back
Close	i /i/	u /u/
Close-mid	y /e~ɪ/
Open-mid	e /ɛ/	o /ɔ/
Open		a /ɑ/

/ɪ/ may be classified as a close-mid front vowel, transcribed in the IPA as [e]. /ɔ/ is usually somewhat rounded [ɔ̜], but sometimes, it is pronounced with neutral lips [ʌ], while the lack of rounding is compensated for by a stronger retraction of the tongue. Unstressed /ɛ/ can be raised to [ɛ̝] near [e].

Despite Ruthenian having long vowels, the distinction between them and short vowels is not phonemic. Long vowels originated from the acute accent in Old East Slavic and from the shortening of endings. They are no longer distinguished in spelling, but in linguistic papers they are marked with an acute or a macron above a vowel. Unstressed vowels are somewhat reduced in time and, as a result, in quality. The table below represents all major allophones of the standard:

	Front		Back
	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː	u	uː
Close-mid	ɪ, e	eː, ɪ̯e
Open-mid	ɛ, ɛ̝	ɛ̝ː	ɔ̜, o	ɔ̝ː
Open			ɑ, ä	äː

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n		ń /ɲ/
Plosive	voiceless	p	t		ť /c/	k
	voiced	b	d		ď /ɟ/	ɡ
Affricate	voiceless		c /ts/	cz /t͡ʂ/	ć /t͡ɕ~t͡sʲ/
	voiced		dz /d͡z/	dž /d͡ʐ/	dź /d͡ʑ~d͡zʲ/
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	sz /ʂ/	ś /ɕ~sʲ/	ch /x/
	voiced		z	ž /ʐ/	ź /ʑ~zʲ/		h /ɦ/
Approximant		w /w~ʋ/	l /l̪/		ľ /ʎ/, j
Trill			r

The palato-alveolar fricatives and affricates are pronounced in a range between alveolar palatalized (like Ukrainian /sʲ/ and /t͡sʲ/) and trully palato-alveolar (like Polish /ɕ/ and /t͡ɕ/) depending on a speaker. Unlike Ukrainian palatalized consonants, Ruthenian ones are trully palatal. Phoneme written "w" is pronounced [ʋ] before front vowels and [w] elsewhere. The friction of /x/ is weaker than in Ukrainian and intervocally is closer to English /h/. The approximants /j/ and /w/ may be regarded as non-syllabic vowels when not followed by a vowel. For example, kraj "land, state" [krɑi̯], awtor ('author') [ˈɑu̯.tɔr]. Velar plosives /k/ and /g/ are palatalized to /kʲ/ and /gʲ/ before a front vowel. /x/ can also be palatalized in the northern parts of Ruthenian-speaking territory. /f/ may often be pronounced as /xʷ/ or /ʍ/

Unlike Ukrainian, in Ruthenian final devoicing can occure for stops, for example, in ďid "grandfather", which can be pronounced either [ˈɟiːd] or [ˈɟiːt]. Word-medially this fenomenon occures very often: bereza "birch" [bɛ.ˈrɛ.z̪ɑ] - berezka "small birch" [bɛ̝.ˈrɛ̝ːs̪.kɑ].