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Ukrainian dialects

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Ukrainian dialects

A dialect is a territorial, professional or social variant of a standard literary language.

Contents

In the Ukrainian language there are 3 major dialectical groups according to territory: the south-western group, the south-eastern group and the northern group of dialects.

Dialects outside of Ukraine

Rusyn is considered by some Rusyn linguists and Rusyns to be a separate language:

  • Rusyn has only been recently considered a Slavic literary language, and was codified only recently in Slovakia in 1995. Rusyn has been spoken for several hundred years by over 1100 Rusyn Villages in the Carpathian Mountains and surrounding areas. The Rusyn however varies from location to location and is influenced by the languages that are spoken nearby which can include Polish, Slovakian, Hungarian, Romanian and literary Ukrainian.

    • The Rusyn language is considered to be a dialect of Ukrainian by Ukrainian linguists:

  • Dolinian Rusyn or Subcarpathian Rusyn is spoken in the Transcarpathian Oblast.
  • Pannonian or Bačka Rusyn is spoken in northwestern Serbia and eastern Croatia. Rusin language of the Bačka dialect has been recognised as one of the official languages of the Serbian Autonomous Province of Vojvodina).
  • Pryashiv Rusyn is the Ukrainian dialect spoken in the Prešov (in Ukrainian: Pryashiv) region of Slovakia, as well as by some émigré communities, primarily in the United States of America.

    • Emigre dialects

    Ukrainian is also spoken by a large émigré population, particularly in Canada, United States and several countries of South America like Argentina and Australia. The founders of this population primarily emigrated from Galicia, which used to be part of Austro-Hungary before World War I, and belonged to Poland between the World Wars. The language spoken by most of them is based on the Galician dialect of Ukrainian from the first half of the twentieth century. Compared with modern Ukrainian, the vocabulary of Ukrainians outside Ukraine reflects less influence of Russian, yet may contain Polish or German words. It often contains many loan words from the local language.

    In recent times there have been attempts to categorise some of the Ukrainian dialects into separate languages. This has been happening primarily in the Carpathian regions of Ukraine, but also with the speakers of the Polissian dialect, the Kuban dialect and Rusyn. The debates as to independence of these dialects-languages has promoted inflamed discussions.

    In the Internet community, Padonkaffsky jargon is a slang language that uses original words with an unmistakably Ukrainian flavor.

    References

    Ukrainian dialects Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA