Ruthenian language

Not to be confused with Rusyn language.

"Old Belarusian" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Classical Belarusian.

Ruthenian
Old Ruthenian руский языкъ ruskij jazykŭ
Native to	Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (language of administration of Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1699)
Extinct	developed into Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn.
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Ruthenian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguist list	orv-olr
Glottolog	None

Ruthenian or Old Ruthenian (see other names) was the group of varieties of Eastern Slavonic spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The written form is also called Chancery Slavonic by Lithuanian linguists.

Scholars do not agree whether Ruthenian was a separate language or a Western dialect(s) of Old East Slavic, but it is agreed that Ruthenian has a close genetic relationship with it. Old East Slavic was the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus' (10th–13th centuries). Ruthenian can be seen as a predecessor of modern Belarusian, Rusyn and Ukrainian. Indeed, all these languages, from Old East Slavic to Rusyn, have been labelled as Ruthenian (Ukrainian: Рутенська мова, русинська мова).

Nomenclature

Ruthenian language grammar by Stepan Smal-Stotsky

In modern texts, the language in question is sometimes called "Old Belarusian" or starabiełaruskaja mova (Belarusian: “Старабеларуская мова”) and "Old Ukrainian" or staroukrajinska mova (Ukrainian: “Староукраїнська мова”). As Ruthenian was always in a kind of diglossic opposition to Church Slavonic, this vernacular language was and still is often called prosta(ja) mova (Cyrillic проста(я) мова), literally "simple language".

On the other hand, there exists a school of thought that Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian must be considered as separate historical languages.

Names in contemporary use

• Ruthenian (Old Belarusian: руски езыкъ) — by the contemporaries, but, generally, not in contemporary Russia.
  • (variant) Simple Ruthenian or simple talk (Old Belarusian: простый руский (язык) or простая молва, про́ста мова) — publisher Grigoriy Khodkevich (16th century).
• Lithuanian (Russian: Литовский язык) — possibly, exclusive reference to it in the contemporary Russia. Also by Zizaniy (end of the 16th century), Pamva Berynda (1653).

Names in modern use

• (Old) Ruthenian — modern collective name, covering both Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian languages, predominantly used by the 20th-century Lithuanian, also many Polish and English researchers.
• (Old) West Russian, language or dialect (Russian: (Древний) западнорусский язык, Russian: (Древнее) западнорусское наречие) — chiefly by the supporters of the concept of the Proto-Russian phase, esp. since the end of the 19th century, e.g., by Karskiy, Shakhmatov. Russian Wikipedia uses the term West Russian written language (Западнорусский письменный язык).
• (Old) Belarusian (language) — rarely in contemporary Russia. Also Kryzhanich. The denotation Belarusian (language) (Russian: белорусский (язык)) when referring both to the 19th-century language and to the Medieval language had been used in works of the 19th-century Russian researchers Fyodor Buslayev, Ogonovskiy, Zhitetskiy, Sobolevskiy, Nedeshev, Vladimirov and Belarusian nationalists, such as Karskiy.
• Lithuanian-Russian (Russian: литовско-русский) — by 19th-century Russian researchers Keppen, archbishop Filaret, Sakharov, Karatayev.
• Lithuanian-Slavonic (Russian: литово-славянский) — by 19th-century Russian researcher Baranovskiy.
• Russian-Polish or even Polish dialect — Shtritter, Polish researcher Samuel Bogumił Linde, Polish writer Wisniewski. Notably, the definition had been used even when referencing to Skaryna’s translation of Bible.
• Old Ukrainian or staroukrajinska mova (Ukrainian: “Староукраїнська мова”).
• Chancery Slavonic (see above).
• ruski — used by Norman Davies in Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe.

Note that ISO/DIS 639-3 and SIL currently assigns the code rue for the language which is documented with native name "русин (rusyn)", that they simply named "Ruthenian" in English (and "ruthène" in French) instead "modern Ruthenian" (and "ruthène moderne" in French) : this code is now designated as the Rusyn language.

Divergence between literary Ruthenian and literary Russian

File:Rus-1389-lg.png

East Slavic languages in 1389. Areas with different spoken dialects are shown in different colors. Territories using different written languages are delineated by dashed lines: the green line for the Ruthenian (“западнорусский”) and the orange line for the Old-Russian (“старорусский”).

As Eastern Europe gradually freed itself from the "Tatar yoke" in the 14th century, two separate mainly East Slavic states emerged: the Grand Duchy of Moscow (Muscovy), which eventually evolved into the Tsardom of Russia and subsequently the Russian Empire; and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which covered roughly the territories of modern Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and western Russia, and later united with Poland to form the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Linguistically, both states continued to use the regional varieties of the literary language of Kievan Rus', but due to the immense Polish influence in the west and to the Church Slavonic influence in the east, they gradually developed into two distinct literary languages: Ruthenian in Lithuania and the Commonwealth, and (Old) Russian in Muscovy. Both were usually called Ruskij (of Rus’) or Slovenskij (Slavonic); only when a differentiation between the literary language of Muscovy and the one of Lithuania was needed was the former called Moskovskij 'Muscovite' (and, rarely, the latter Lytvynskij 'Lithuanian').

This linguistic difference is confirmed by the need for translators during the mid-17th-century negotiations for the Treaty of Pereyaslav, between Bohdan Khmelnytsky, ruler of the Zaporozhian Host, and the Tsardom of Russia.

Continuing Polish influence

After the Union of Lublin in 1569, the southern territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania came under direct administration by the Polish Crown, whereas the north retained some autonomy. It is possible that this resulted in differences concerning the status of Ruthenian as an official language and the intensity of Polish influence on Ruthenian. However, in both parts of the Commonwealth inhabited by Eastern Slavs, Ruthenian remained a lingua franca, and in both parts it was gradually replaced by Polish as a language of literature, religious polemic, and official documents.

New national languages

With the beginning of romanticism at the beginning of the 19th century, literary Belarusian and literary Ukrainian appeared, descendant from the popular spoken dialects and little-influenced by literary Ruthenian. Meanwhile, Russian retained a layer of Church Slavonic "high vocabulary", so that nowadays the most striking lexical differences between Russian on the one hand and Belarusian and Ukrainian on the other are the much greater share of Slavonicisms in the former and of Polonisms in the latter. In his 1827 Little Russian Folksongs Mykhaylo Maksymovych used a new orthography for the Ukrainian language which was based on etymology. Maksymovychivka looked quite similar to Russian, but it was a first step towards an independent orthography. In 1834, Maksimovich was appointed professor and the first rector of Russian literature at the newly created Saint Vladimir University in Kiev, established by the Russian government to reduce Polish influence in Ukraine.

The split between literary Ruthenian and the successor literary languages can be seen at once in the newly designed Belarusian and Ukrainian orthographies.

The interruption of the literary tradition was especially drastic in Belarusian: In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Polish had largely replaced Ruthenian as the language of administration and literature. After that Belarusian only survived as a rural spoken language with almost no written tradition until the mid-19th century.

In contrast to the Belarusians and Ukrainians, the Western Ruthenians who came to live in Carpathian Mountains in Austria-Hungary retained not only the name Ruthenian but also much more of the Church Slavonic and Polish elements of Ruthenian. For disambiguation, in English these people are usually called by the native form of their name, Rusyns.

Thus, in the 19th century, the literary Ruthenian language had evolved into three modern literary languages. For their further development, see Belarusian language, Rusyn language, and Ukrainian language.

See also

• Ukrainian language
• Belarusian language
• Rusyn language
• East Slavic languages

Literature

• Brogi Bercoff, Giovanna: “Plurilingualism in Eastern Slavic culture of the 17th century: The case of Simeon Polockij.” In: Slavia: Časopis pro slovanskou filologii, vol. 64. p. 3-14.
• Danylenko, Andrii: "'Prostaja mova', 'Kitab', and Polissian Standard". In: Die Welt der Slaven LI (2006), no. 1, p. 80-115.
• Danylenko, Andrii: "On the Name(s) of the prostaja mova in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth", In: Studia Slavica Hung., 51/1-2 (2006),p. 97-121
• Dingley, Jim [James]. “The two versions of the Gramatyka Slovenskaja of Ivan Uževič.’ In: The Journal of Byelorussian Studies, 2.4 (year VIII), p. 369-384.
• Frick, David A. "'Foolish Rus': On Polish civilization, Ruthenian self-hatred, and Kasijan Sakovyč." In: Harvard Ukrainian studies 18.3/4 (1994), p. 210-248.
• Martel, Antoine. La langue polonaise dans les pays ruthènes: Ukraine et Russie Blanche 1569/1667. Lille 1938.
• Moser, Michael: "Mittelruthenisch (Mittelweißrussisch und Mittelukrainisch): Ein Überblick." In: Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 50 (2005), no. 1-2, p. 125-142.
• Mozer [= Moser], Michaėl’. "Čto takoe 'prostaja mova'?". In: Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47.3/4 (2002), p. 221-260.
• Pivtorak, Hryhorij. “Do pytannja pro ukrajins’ko-bilorus’ku vzajemodiju donacional’noho periodu (dosjahnennja, zavdannja i perspektyvy doslidžen’)”. In: Movoznavstvo 1978.3 (69), p. 31-40.
• Pugh, Stefan M.: Testament to Ruthenian. A Linguistic Analysis of the Smotryc’kyj Variant. Cambridge 1996 (= Harvard Series of Ukrainian Studies).
• Shevelov, George Y. “Belorussian versus Ukrainian: Delimitation of texts before A.D. 1569”. In: The Journal of Byelorussian Studies 3.2 (year 10), p. 145-156.
• Stang, Christian: Die westrussische Kanzleisprache des Grossfürstentums Litauen. Oslo 1935 (= Skrifter utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, Historisk-filosofisk Klasse 1935,2).
• Strumins’kyj, Bohdan. “The language question in the Ukrainian lands before the nineteenth century”. In: Aspects of the Slavic language question. Ed. Riccardo Picchio, Harvey Goldblatt. New Haven 1984, vol. 2, p. 9-47.

External links

• "Hrodna town books language problems in Early Modern Times" by Jury Hardziejeŭ