Support for Rusyn language

[Andriy Danylenko]

I do not remember the exact citation from Baudouin de Courtenay who said about a literary language as a dialect, which is simply supported by army, police, etc.

Let any dialect become a separate language! Vive la democratie! Are you with us?…

Yet, I am wondering, who is sufficiently qualified (as a LINGUIST, even not a Slavist, and not a Politician) to determine a distance between a language and a dialect? (A question which would torment Potebnja who was pondering over the questione della lingua in Malorossija)

Can I declare a vernacular spoken in my village, a language or not? Or should I first declare my village’s independence and then make the same with the dialect/language?

May we compare a case of Rusyn with the fate of “malorusskoje narechije”? Is this politically or linguistically correct in view of Ukraine’s long experience in its relationships with Russia and Poland?

Who has objective criteria to base his theory of literary language upon?

Is there a universal theory of literary language, to wit, let’s make this dialect a language, or vice versa?

There are more questions than answers, which may prompt me as a linguist (and not a villager) to accept a vernacular spoken in a neighboring village as a separate language.


A.D.



-- "Robert A. Rothstein" <rar at SLAVIC.UMASS.EDU> wrote:
As Professor Danylenko undoubtedly understands, codification is a
necessary step along the road to establishing a new literary or standard
language.  If the codified version is accepted by speakers and takes on
all the functions of a standard language, then there is reason to
recognize the existence of a new language.  In the case of the Rusyns of
Slovakia, Poland (the Lemkos), the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine,
Hungary and Romania, if they are successful in their process of language
building, outside observers should agree with the contention of many
Rusyns, that what they speak is not a dialect (or dialects) of Ukrainian
but a separate language.  The Macedonians were the last Slavs to go
through such a process, and nowadays almost all Slavists would grant
them the right to say that what they speak is not a Bulgarian dialect.
Similarly hardly anyone would now claim that Ukrainian is merely a
dialect of Russian.  In the new Europe the existence of regional
languages does not have to be a political question, although there are
those who would make it such.

To Professor Mills: Horace Lunt has argued convincingly that the Rusin
spoken in the Vojvodina, largely by the descendents of emigrants from
Eastern Slovakia, is
best analyzed as a kind of Serbianized East Slovak, and thus a variety
of West, not East, Slavic.

Bob Rothstein


Andriy Danylenko wrote:

>I thought everybody understood that this codification is a mere political action aimed at, guess what...
>
>Andriy Danylenko
>danylenko at juno.com
>adanylenko at pace.edu
>
>-- Charles Mills <cmills at KNOX.EDU> wrote:
>I thought Rusin was the fourth (or fifth or sixth or seventh) West
>Slavic language.
>
>
>Elaine Rusinko wrote:
>
>As many of you know, the Rusyn language was codified in Slovakia in 1995
>as the fourth East Slavic language ...
>
>
>

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