Rusyn language

Not to be confused with Ruthenian language.

Rusyn
русиньский язык, русиньска бесїда rusyn’skyj jazyk, rusyn’ska besjida
Pronunciation	/ˈruːsɨn/
Native speakers	620,000 (2000–2006) Census population: 70,000. These are numbers from national official bureaus for statistics: Slovakia – 33,482 Serbia – 15,626 Ukraine – 6,725 Poland – 10,000 Croatia – 2,337 Hungary – 1,113 Czech Republic – 777
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Rusyn
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Serbia (Vojvodina) Slovakia
Language codes
ISO 639-3	rue
Glottolog	rusy1239
Linguasphere	53-AAA-ec < 53-AAA-e (varieties: 53-AAA-eca to 53-AAA-ecc)

Rusyn /ˈruːsᵻn/ (Rusyn: русиньска бесїда or русиньскый язык), also known in English as Ruthene UK /rʊˈθiːn/ US /ruːˈθiːn/ (sometimes Ruthenian), is an East Slavic language variety spoken by the Rusyns of Eastern Europe.

There are controversial political implications about the nature of Rusyn as a language or dialect. While some linguists treat it as a distinct language (with its own ISO 639-3 code), some scholars of Slavic languages treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian.

Geographical distribution

Ethnic map of Austria-Hungary; Ruthenians are light green, in the upper right corner.

Official usage of Pannonian Rusyn language in Vojvodina, Serbia.

Rusyn, or, specifically, Carpatho-Rusyn, is a vernacular spoken in the Transcarpathian Region of Ukraine; northeastern Slovakia; in Vojvodina, Serbia; southeastern Poland, where the Rusyn dialect is generally known as Łemkowski, after the characteristic word лем/lem (meaning "only", "but" and "like"); Hungary (where the people and language are called Ruszin); and northern Maramureș, Romania, where the people are called Ruteni and the language Ruteană.

Classification

The classification and identification of the Rusyn language is historically and politically problematic. Prior to World War I, Rusyns were recognized as the Ruthenes of Galicia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand had planned to recognize them as one of the ten states of a planned United States of Greater Austria before his assassination. After the war, Austria-Hungary was partitioned, and Ruthenia was appended to the new Czechoslovak state as its easternmost province. With the advent of World War II, Ruthenia declared its independence, lasting one day, until its annexation by Hungary. After the war, the Ruthenes of Czechoslovakia, occupied by Hungary, were annexed by the Soviet Union as part of the Ukrainian SSR, which proceeded with an anti-ethnic assimilation program. Poland did the same, using internal exile to move all Rusyns from the southern homelands to western areas conquered from Germany, and immersed in Polish.

Scholars with the former Institute of Slavic and Balkan Studies in Moscow (now the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences) formally re-acknowledged Rusyn as a separate language in 1992, and trained specialists to study the language. These studies were financially supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Ukrainian politicians do not recognise Rusyns as a separate ethnicity, regardless of Rusyn self-identification. Ukraine officially considers Rusyn a dialect of Ukrainian, related to the Hutsul dialect of Ukrainian.

Attempts to standardise variants of Rusyn have been unsuccessful. Rusyns live in four countries, and efforts are hampered because Rusyns living outside the traditional home region often do not speak the language fluently. Different orthographies have been developed (in most cases using variants of the Cyrillic script), and a number of different grammatical standards exist, based on regional dialects.

It is not possible to estimate accurately the number of fluent speakers of Rusyn; however, their number is estimated in the tens of thousands, primarily living in Ukraine and Slovakia.

Serbia has recognized Rusyn, more precisely Pannonian Rusyn in Vojvodina, Serbia as an official minority language. Since 1995, Rusyn has been recognized as a minority language in Slovakia, enjoying the status of an official language in municipalities where more than 20 percent of the inhabitants speak Rusyn.

Rusyn is listed as a protected language by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Romania.

Grammars and codification

The Rusyn dialect was codified as a language in Vojvodina region of Yugoslavia in 1923 and in Slovakia in 1995. Early grammars include Dmytrij Vyslockij's (Дмитрий Вислоцкий) Карпаторусский букварь (Karpatorusskij bukvar') Vanja Hunjanky (1931) and Metodyj Trochanovskij's Буквар. Перша книжечка для народных школ. (Bukvar. Perša knyžečka dlja narodnŷch škol.) (1935).

Dialects

The Carpatho-Rusyn language can be divided as follows:

Name	Language area	Annotation
Hutsul	In the mountainous part of Suceava County and Maramureș County in Romania and the extreme southern parts of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (province) of Ukraine (as well as in parts of the Chernivtsi and Transcarpathian Oblasts), and on the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains.
Boyko	Northern side of the Carpathian Mountains in the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts of Ukraine. It can also be heard across the border in the Subcarpathian Voivodship (province) of Poland
Lemko	Outside Ukraine in the Prešov Region of Slovakia along the southern side of the Carpathian Mountains. It was formerly spoken on the northern side of the same mountains, in what is now southeastern Poland, prior to Operation Vistula – now used in several diaspora communities scattered in northern Poland	Being revived; in Poland it has the status of an ethnic minority language. A newspaper, Karpatska Rus', has been published in this dialect since 1939.
Dolynian Rusyn	Transcarpathian Oblast of Ukraine.
Subcarpathian Rusyn
Priashiv Rusyn	The Prešov Region (in Rusyn: "Пряшів" Priashiv) of Slovakia, as well as by some émigré communities, primarily in the United States of America.
Pannonian Rusyn	Northwestern Serbia and eastern Croatia	One of the official languages of the Serbian Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.
Bačka

Boiko, Hutsul, Lemko and Dolinian are identified (and for the same speakers) as Ukrainian dialects since most of their speakers identify themselves as Ukrainians (or in the case of the Lemkos of Poland, only as Lemkos).

Alphabet

Letters and symbols of the Carpatho-Rusyn alphabet

Capital	Small	Name	Translit.	Pronunciation	Notes
А	а	a	a	/a/
Б	б	бэ	b	/b/
В	в	вэ	v	/v/
Г	г	гэ	h	/ɦ/
Ґ	ґ	ґэ	g	/ɡ/
Д	д	дэ	d	/d/
Е	е	e	e	/e/
Є	є	є	je	/je/
Ё	ё	ё	jo	/jo/	not present in Pannonian Rusyn
Ж	ж	жы	ž	/ʒ/
З	з	зы	z	/z/
И	и	и	y	/ɪ/
І	і	i	i	/i/	not present in Pannonian Rusyn
Ы	ы	ы	y	/ɨ/
Ї	ї	ї	ji	/ji/
Й	й	йы	j	/j/
К	к	кы	k	/k/
Л	л	лы	l	/l/
М	м	мы	m	/m/
Н	н	ны	n	/n/
О	о	o	o	/o/
П	п	пы	p	/p/
Р	р	ры	r	/r/
С	с	сы	s	/s/
Т	т	ты	t	/t/
У	у	у	u	/u/
Ф	ф	фы	f	/f/
Х	х	хы	x, ch, h	/x/
Ц	ц	цы	c	/t͡s/
Ч	ч	чы	č	/t͡ʃ/
Ш	ш	шы	š	/ʃ/
Щ	щ	щы	šč	/ʃt͡ʃ/
Ю	ю	ю	ju	/ju/
Я	я	я	ja	/ja/
Ь	ь	мнягкый знак (ірь)	’	/ʲ/	marks preceding consonant's palatalization
Ъ	ъ	твердый знак (ір)	”		not present in Pannonian Rusyn

Until World War II, the letter Ѣ ѣ (їть) was used, and was pronounced /ji/ or /i/.

Newspapers

• Karpatska Rus'
• Русинська бесіда
• Народны новинкы
• Podkarpatská Rus – Подкарпатська Русь ("")
• Amerikansky Russky Viestnik †
• Lemko (Philadelphia, USA) †
• Руснаци у Швеце – Rusnaci u Svece

See also

• Besida
• Alexander Duchnovič's Theatre
• Eastern Slovak dialects
• Old Ruthenian
• Pannonian Rusyns
• Rusyns
• Petro Trochanowski, contemporary Rusyn poet
• Metodyj Trochanovskij, Lemko Grammarian

Further reading

• A new Slavic language is born. The Rusyn literary language in Slovakia. Ed. Paul Robert Magocsi. New York 1996.
• Magocsi, Paul Robert. Let's speak Rusyn. Бісідуйме по-руськы. Englewood 1976.
• Aleksandr Dmitrievich Dulichenko. Jugoslavo-Ruthenica. Роботи з рускей филолоґиї. Нови Сад 1995.
• Taras Kuzio, "The Rusyn question in Ukraine: sorting out fact from fiction", Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, XXXII (2005)
• Elaine Rusinko, "Rusinski/Ruski pisni" selected by Nataliya Dudash; "Muza spid Karpat (Zbornik poezii Rusiniv na Sloven'sku)" assembled by Anna Plishkova. Books review. "The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 42, No. 2. (Summer, 1998), pp. 348-350. JSTOR archive
• Плішкова, Анна [Anna Plishkova] (ed.): Муза спід Карпат (Зборник поезії Русинів на Словеньску). [Muza spid Karpat (Zbornik poezii Rusiniv na Sloven'sku)] Пряшів: Русиньска оброда, 1996. on-line
• Геровский Г.Ю. Язык Подкарпатской Руси – Москва, 1995
• Marta Harasowska. "Morphophonemic Variability, Productivity, and Change: The Case of Rusyn", Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1999, ISBN 3-11-015761-6.
  • Book review by Edward J. Vajda, Language, Vol. 76, No. 3. (Sep., 2000), pp. 728–729
• I. I. Pop, Paul Robert Magocsi, Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture, University of Toronto Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8020-3566-3
• Plišková, Anna: Rusínsky jazyk na Slovensku: náčrt vývoja a súčasné problémy. Prešov : Metodicko-pedagogické centrum, 2007, 116 s. Slovak Rusyn

External links

• Rusyn language at the World Academy of Rusyn Culture
• Rusyn Greco Catholic Church in Novi Sad (Vojvodina-Serbia)
• Rusyn-Ukrainian On-Line Dictionary