Historical Slavic language, ancestor of Belarusian, and Ukrainian
This article is about 15th–18th–century East Slavic language varieties used in present-day Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. For other languages sometimes called "Ruthenian", seeRuthenian § Languages.
Severallinguistic issues are debated among linguists: various questions related to classification of literary and vernacular varieties of this language; issues related to meanings and proper uses of variousendonymic (native) andexonymic (foreign)glottonyms (names of languages and linguistic varieties); questions on its relation to modern East Slavic languages, and its relation toOld East Slavic (the colloquial language used inKievan Rus' in the 10th through 13th centuries).[7]
Since the termRuthenian language wasexonymic (foreign, both in origin and nature), its use was very complex, both in historical and modern scholarly terminology.[9]
Contemporary names, that were used for this language from the 15th to 18th centuries, can be divided into two basic linguistic categories, the first beingendonyms (native names, used by native speakers as self-designations for their language), and the secondexonyms (names in foreign languages).
Common endonyms:
Ruska(ja) mova, written in various ways, as:ру́скаꙗмо́ва, and also as:ру́скїйѧзы́къ (ruskiy jazyk').
Prosta(ja) mova (meaning: thesimple speech, or thesimple talk), also written in various ways, as:проста(ѧ) мова orпростй ѧзыкъ (Old Belarusian / Old Ukrainian:простый руский (язык) orпростая молва,проста мова) – publisherHryhorii Khodkevych (16th century). Those terms for simple vernacular speech were designating itsdiglossic opposition to literaryChurch Slavonic.[10][11][12]
It was sometimes also referred to (in territorial terms) asLitovsky (Russian:Литовский язык / Lithuanian). Also by Zizaniy (end of the 16th century), Pamva Berynda (1653).
Common exonyms:
inLatin:lingua ruthenica, orlingua ruthena, which is rendered in English as:Ruthenian orRuthene language.[13]
inGerman:ruthenische Sprache, derived from the Latin exonym for this language.
inHungarian:Rutén nyelv, also derived from the Latin exonym.
Modern names of this language and its varieties, that are used by scholars (mainly linguists), can also be divided in two basic categories, the first including those that are derived fromendonymic (native) names, and the second encompassing those that are derived fromexonymic (foreign) names.
Names derived from endonymic terms:
One "s" terms:Rus’ian,Rusian,Rusky orRuski, employed explicitly with only one letter "s" in order to distinguish this name from terms that are designating modernRussian.[14]
West Russian orWestern Rus' language or dialect (Russian:западнорусский язык,romanized: zapadnorusskij jazyk, западнорусское наречиеzapadnorusskoye narechie)[15] – terms used mainly by supporters of the concept of the Proto-Russian phase, especially since the end of the 19th century. Employed by authors such asKarskiy andShakhmatov.[16] Outside Russia, these terms are no longer commonly used, and regarded as pejorative or even imperialist, particularly in Belarus and Ukraine. A noticeable shift already occurried in the late Soviet period, when theLithuanian Chronicles, still calledWestern Rus' Chronicles (Zapadnorusskie letopisi) inPSRL Volume 17 (1907), were rebrandedBelarusian–Lithuanian Chronicles (Belorussko-litovskie letopisi) in PSRL Volumes 32 (1975) and 35 (1980).[17]
Old Belarusian language (Belarusian:Старабеларуская мова,romanized: Starabyelaruskaya mova) – term used by various Belarusian and some Russian scholars, and also byKryzhanich. The denotationBelarusian (language) (Russian:белорусский (язык)) when referringboth to the post-19th-century language and to the older language had been used in works of the 19th-century Russian researchersFyodor Buslayev, Ogonovskiy, Zhitetskiy, Sobolevskiy, Nedeshev, Vladimirov and Belarusian researchers, such asKarskiy.[18]
Old Ukrainian language (Ukrainian:Староукраїнська мова,romanized: Staroukrajinsjka mova) – term used by various Ukrainian and some other scholars.
Lithuanian-Rus' language (Russian:литовско-русский язык,romanized: litovsko-russkij jazyk) – regionally oriented designation, used by some 19th-century Russian researchers such as: Keppen, archbishop Filaret, Sakharov, Karatayev.
Lithuanian-Slavic language (Russian:литово-славянский язык,romanized: litovo-slavjanskij) – another regionally oriented designation, used by 19th-century Russian researcherBaranovskiy.[19]
Ruthenian orRuthene language – modern scholarly terms, derived from older Latin exonyms (Latin:lingua ruthenica,lingua ruthena), commonly used by scholars who are writing in English and other western languages, and also by various Lithuanian and Polish scholars.[21][22]
Ruthenian literary language, orLiterary Ruthenian language – terms used by the same groups of scholars in order to designate more precisely theliterary variety of this language.[5]
Ruthenian chancery language, orChancery Ruthenian language – terms used by the same groups of scholars in order to designate more precisely thechancery variety of this language, used in official and legal documents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.[23]
Ruthenian common language, orCommon Ruthenian language – terms used by the same groups of scholars in order to designate more precisely thevernacular variety of this language.[24]
North Ruthenian dialect or language – a term used by some scholars as designation for northern varieties, that gave rise to modernBelarusian language,[25] that is also designated asWhite Ruthenian.[26]
South Ruthenian dialect or language – a term used by some scholars as designation for southern varieties, that gave rise to modernUkrainian language,[27][28] that is also designated asRed Ruthenian.
Terminologicaldichotomy, embodied in parallel uses of various endoymic and exonymic terms, resulted in a vast variety of ambiguous, overlapping or even contrary meanings, that were applied to particular terms by different scholars. That complex situation is addressed by most English and other western scholars by preferring the exonymicRuthenian designations.[29][30][22]
According to linguist Andrii Danylenko (2006), what is now called 'Ruthenian' first arose as a primarily administrative language in the 14th and 15th centuries, shaped by thechancery of theGrand Duchy of Lithuania inVilnius (Vilna).[32][a] He identified the Polissian (Polesian) dialect spoken on both sides of the modern Belarusian–Ukrainian border as the basis of both written Ruthenian (rusьkij jazykъ or Chancery Slavonic) and spoken dialects of Ruthenian (проста(я) моваprosta(ja) mova or "simple speech"),[33] which he called 'two stylistically differentiated varieties of one secular vernacular standard'.[34]
From the second half of the 15th century through the 16th century, when present-day Ukraine and Belarus were part of theGrand Duchy of Lithuania, theRenaissance had a major impact on shifting culture, art and literature away from Byzantine Christiantheocentrism as expressed inChurch Slavonic.[35] Instead, they moved towardshumanistanthropocentrism, which in writing was increasingly expressed by taking the vernacular language of the common people as the basis of texts.[35] New literary genres developed that were closer to secular topics, such as poetry, polemical literature, and scientific literature, while Church Slavonic works of previous times were translated into what became known as Ruthenian, Chancery Slavonic, or Old Ukrainian (also called проста моваprosta mova or "simple language" since the 14th century).[36] It is virtually impossible to differentiate Ruthenian texts into "Ukrainian" and "Belarusian" subgroups until the 16th century; with some variety, these were all functionally one language between the 14th and 16th century.[37]
The vernacular Ruthenian "business speech" (Ukrainian:ділове мовлення,romanized: dilove movlennya) of the 16th century would spread to most other domains of everyday communication in the 17th century, with an influx of words, expressions and stylefrom Polish and other European languages, while the usage of Church Slavonic became more restricted to the affairs of religion, the church, hagiography, and some forms of art and science.[38]
When theCossack Hetmanate arose in the mid-17th century,Polish remained a language of administration in the Hetmanate, and most Cossack officers andPolish nobles (two groups which overlapped a lot) still communicated with each other using a combination of Latin, Polish and Ruthenian.[41] On the other hand, the language barrier between Cossack officers andMuscovite officials had become so great that they needed translators to understand each other during negotiations, and hetmanBohdan Khmelnytsky 'had letters inMuscovite dialect translated into Latin, so that he could read them.'[41]
The 17th century witnessed thestandardisation of the Ruthenian language that would later split intomodern Ukrainian andBelarusian.[42] From the 16th century onwards, two regional variations of spoken Ruthenian began to emerge as written Ruthenian gradually lost its prestige to Polish in administration.[37] The spokenprosta(ja) mova disappeared in the early 18th century, to be replaced by a more Polonised (central) early Belarusian variety and a more Slavonicised (southwestern) early Ukrainian variety.[37] Meanwhile, Church Slavonic remained the literary and administrative standard in Russia until the late 18th century.[43]
^"Statut Velikogo knyazhestva Litovskogo"Статут Великого княжества Литовского [Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Section 4 Article 1)].История Беларуси IX-XVIII веков. Первоисточники.. 1588. Archived fromthe original on 2018-06-29. Retrieved2019-10-25.А писаръ земъский маеть по-руску литерами и словы рускими вси листы, выписы и позвы писати, а не иншимъ езыкомъ и словы.
^Cited in Улащик Н. Введение в белорусско-литовское летописание. — М., 1980.
^Elana Goldberg Shohamy and Monica Barni,Linguistic Landscape in the City (Multilingual Matters, 2010:ISBN1847692974), p. 139: "[The Grand Duchy of Lithuania] adopted as its official language the literary version of Ruthenian, written in Cyrillic and also known as Chancery Slavonic"; Virgil Krapauskas,Nationalism and Historiography: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Historicism (East European Monographs, 2000:ISBN0880334576), p. 26: "By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Chancery Slavonic dominated the written state language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania"; Timothy Snyder,The Reconstruction Of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999 (Yale University Press, 2004:ISBN030010586X), p. 18: "Local recensions of Church Slavonic, introduced by Orthodox churchmen from more southerly lands, provided the basis for Chancery Slavonic, the court language of the Grand Duchy."
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.
