rahul'/rahul's'kyj, etc.

[curt fredric woolhiser]

Dear SEELANGers,

Thanks to all of you who responded to my query regarding the 
Ukrainian adjective "rahul's'kyj".  It sounds as if "rahul'" and 
"rahul's'kyj" have undergone a certain amount of semantic change (at 
least in youth slang) over the last decade, referring originally to 
recent migrants from rural areas, but now (as suggested by Edward 
Rakhimkulov's response, reproduced below) applying more generally to 
representatives of the urban lower working class. Perhaps in the 
context of the quote in "Halas" the phrase "vidverto rahul's'kyj 
surzhyk" could be translated as "bluntly lumpenish patois."
        I'm wondering, however, if in contemporary Ukrainian youth 
culture "rahul's'kyj" could in some contexts even have positive 
connotations, i.e. "streetwise", "tough", "macho" etc., reflecting 
the "covert prestige" associated with urban working-class culture in 
many modern industrial societies. Here's another example from the 
same issue of "Halas": "A hitaryst Vadik ne prosto zaminiv soljaru 
Siroz^y, a j vnis svij strumin' -- spravz^nij rahul's'kyj saund!" At 
first, it seemed to me that "Halas" here was just making fun of the 
guitarist Vadik, but now I'm not exactly sure. After all, if the 
Snake Brothers' use of "vidverto rahul's'kyj surzhyk" mixed with 
Galician dialect is seen as something fresh and exciting, perhaps 
Vadik's "spravz^nij rahul's'kyj saund" is, too. Any thoughts?
        This brings me to another question I had regarding 
contemporary Ukrainian youth slang. My initial impression was that 
much of it was borrowed from either Russian youth slang (including 
many borrowings from English) or Russo-Ukrainian surzhyk. This 
impression was certainly reinforced by the "Slovnyk tlumachen' 
muzychnoho slengu" in Halas, where we find such gems as "pjerjexod" 
('brejk, pasaz^ u vykonanni barabannyka'), "podbjerliozit'" 
('poz^uvaty'), "po sosjedjam" ('c^ipljaty vypadkovi noty, hraty 
brudno'), and "pos^la kalbasa" ('zaxopljujuc^a improvizacija, 
poc^atok xoros^oji hry"). The case of "rahul', on the other hand, 
suggests that regional varieties of Ukrainian have also contributed 
to the formation of contemporary youth slang in Ukraine. Does anyone 
know of other examples of regional/dialectal Ukrainian words that 
have been widely adopted in youth slang?

Curt Woolhiser


========================================
Curt F. Woolhiser
Dept. of Slavic Languages
and Literatures
Calhoun 415
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78713-7217 USA

Tel. (512) 232-9133, (512) 471-3607
Fax: (512) 471-6710
Email: cfwoolhiser at mail.utexas.edu
Slavic Department Home Page:
http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/slavic/
========================================



===========================================================================
Bernd Kronenbürger writes:

In Lviv I heard the word "rahul'". I was told that this is a person (rather
a man) of a simple or primitive but self-confident character. As I
understood it is a word that people from Lviv use for country folk that come
to their city or weakly urbanized newcomers in their city.


============================================================================
Natalia Moroz writes:

 "rahul' or "rahulstvo" is "zhlob" or "Zhlobstvo" in Russian which means
rude, uneducated person.

It can be rendered in English as " slob", "uncouth"-adj or
brutish?brutishness.


===========================================================================

Edward Rakhimkulov writes:


>"Rahul`s`kyy" in the Halychyna dialect of Ukrainian was initially (and
>largely still remains) a derogatory adjective referring to the lack of
>culture of people coming from villages. "Rahul" thus means a person born and
>raised in the village and expressing a lack of "refined" (in the opinion of
>those using this term) culture of a city, "uncultured" individual.  However,
>in the recent years, the term has acquired a broader meaning (higher
>valence), covering also city folks.
>
>Ale vse odno, v osnovnomu "rahul`skyy" i "rahul`" zalyshayut`sya obrazlyvymy
>terminamy, scho vykorystovuyut`sya v osnovnomu v zaxidniy Ukraini.  Schodo
>movy, to ce oznachaye vyraznyy sil`s`kyy akcent lyudey z sil.  Ye syl`ni
>fonetychni vidminnosti u vymovi zvukiv, a takozh pevni hramatychni
>vidminnosti (e.g. "ya si tak smiyala" zamist` "ya tak smiyalas'(ya)")
>

==========================================================================

Vitaly A. Chernetsky writes:

The closest English equivalents of these words, as I understand their
usage, in my opinion would be "redneck," "hick," "hillbilly" (i.e.
narrow-minded, from the country/small town, in a pejorative way). "Braty
Hadiukiny" do indeed frequently use this type of contemporary Ukrainian
vernacular in their songs (imitating both the vocabulary and the
pronunciation).

=========================================================================

Alex Krouglov writes:

It is either "yobbishness" or "yobbish behaviour, manner, culture", etc.
From "yob" - rough, uneducated person, traditionally rendered in Ukrainian
as "zhlob" or "rahul".

==========================================================================

Alla Nedashkivska writes:

In my "Slovnyk Ukrajins'koho Molodizhnoho slengu":
rahulizm= marazm, durnytsja (nonsense)
rahul'= nekmitlyva ljudyna, perevazhno z provintsiji (not a smart person,
usually from a village, perhaps it could be translated as a hillbilly???)
rahul'stvo, as I understand, is something of a low quality.


==========================================================================
Alexandra Hrycak writes:

While doing research, I often came across  rahul's'kyj when I asked 
people "what
is the stereotype people had of those who spoke Ukrainian?" and they sometimes
answered using this term (they thought we were just a bunch of rahuli"). When I
asked my respondents what it means, they said that a "rahul" has gold teeth, is
unsophisticated and comes from a village or small town.  The Ukrainian he/she
speaks is unpolished and includes lots of non-standard colloquialisms.  I
believe the easiest American equivalent is "hick," but that doesn't 
seem to work
for the translation: "when the Hadiukin brothers used a comic mixture of hick
surzhyk mixed with Galician dialect, it seemed a breath of fresh air."

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