Who invented the Ukrainian language. The truth about the origin of the Ukrainian language

How the Ukrainian language was created - artificially and for political reasons

“Truth is never sweet,” Iryna Farion said recently, presenting her next book about the Ukrainian language on the First Channel of the National Radio of Ukraine.

And in something, and in this it is difficult not to agree with the now widely known deputy of the Verkhovna Rada.

The truth will always be bitter for Ukrainian "nationally conscious" leaders.

They are too at odds with her. Nevertheless, it is necessary to know the truth. Including the truth about the Ukrainian language. This is especially important for Galicia.

After all, Mikhail Sergeevich Grushevsky admitted this.

“The work on the language, like work on the cultural development of Ukrainians in general, was carried out mainly on the basis of Galician,” he wrote.

It is worth dwelling on this work, begun in the second half of the 19th century.

Galicia was then part of the Austrian Empire. Accordingly, Russia was abroad for the Galicians.

But, despite this circumstance, the Russian literary language in the region was not considered a stranger. Galician Rusyns perceived it as an all-Russian, common cultural language for all parts of historical Rus, and hence for Galician Rus.

When at the congress of Galician-Russian scientists, held in 1848 in Lviv, it was decided that it was necessary to cleanse folk speech from Polonisms, it was considered as a gradual approximation of Galician dialects to the norms of the Russian literary language.

“Let the Russians start from the head, and we will start from the feet, then sooner or later we will meet each other and converge in our hearts,” a prominent Galician historian Anthony Petrushevich said at the congress. Scientists and writers worked in the Russian literary language in Galicia, newspapers and magazines were published, books were published. All this was very displeasing to the Austrian authorities. Not without reason they feared that cultural rapprochement with a neighboring state would entail a political rapprochement and, in the end, the Russian provinces of the empire (Galicia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia) would openly declare their desire to be reunited with Russia. And then they came up with the roots of the "Mova" From Vienna in every possible way hindered the Galician-Russian cultural ties.

They tried to influence the Galicians by persuasion, threats, bribery. When it didn’t work, we switched to more energetic measures. “The Ruthenians (as the official authorities in Austria called the Galician Rusyns - Auth.), Unfortunately, did nothing to properly isolate their language from the Great Russian, so the government has to take the initiative in this regard,” said the governor of Franz- Joseph in Galicia Agenor Golukhovsky.

At first, the authorities simply wanted to ban the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in the region and introduce the Latin alphabet into the Galician-Russian writing system. But the indignation of the Rusyns with such an intention turned out to be so great that the government backed down. The fight against the Russian language was conducted in a more sophisticated way. Vienna was concerned about the creation of a movement of "young ruthenes". They were called young not because of their age, but because of the rejection of the "old" views. If the "old" Rusyns (Ruthenians) considered Great Russians and Little Russians to be a single nation, then the "young" insisted on the existence of an independent Ruthenian nation (or Little Russian - the term "Ukrainian" was introduced later). Well, an independent nation should, of course, have an independent literary language as well. The task of composing such a language was set before the “young ruthenes”.

Ukrainians began to grow together with Mova

They did it, however, with difficulty. Although the authorities provided the movement with all kinds of support, it had no influence among the people. The "young Ruthenians" were viewed as traitors, unscrupulous servants of the government. In addition, the movement consisted of people, as a rule, insignificant in an intellectual sense. That such figures would be able to create and spread a new literary language in society was out of the question. The Poles came to the rescue, whose influence in Galicia was at that time dominant.

Being ardent Russophobes, the representatives of the Polish movement saw a direct benefit for themselves in the split of the Russian nation. Therefore, they took an active part in the "language" attempts of "young ruthenes".

“All Polish officials, professors, teachers, even priests began to engage mainly in philology, not Mazurian or Polish, no, but exclusively ours, Russian, in order to create a new Russian-Polish language with the assistance of Russian traitors,” recalled a prominent public figure in Galicia and Transcarpathia Adolf Dobryansky.

Thanks to the Poles, things went faster. The Cyrillic alphabet was retained, but "reformed" to make it different from the one used in the Russian language.

They took the so-called "kulishivka" as a basis, once invented by the Russian Ukrainian-philanthropist Panteleimon Kulish with the same purpose - to separate the Little Russians from the Great Russians. The letters "y", "e", "ъ" were removed from the alphabet, but they included the "" and "ї" that are absent in Russian grammar. We tried to confuse everything with the alphabet ...

In order for the Rusyn population to accept the changes, the "reformed" alphabet was introduced into schools by order. The need for innovation was motivated by the fact that the subjects of the Austrian emperor "it is both better and safer not to use the same spelling, which is accepted in Russia."

It is interesting that the inventor of the "kulishivka" himself, who by that time had moved away from the Ukrainianophil movement, opposed such innovations.

“I swear,” he wrote to the “young Ruthenian” Omelyan Partitsky, “that if the Poles typed in my spelling to mark our discord with Great Russia, if our phonetic spelling will be presented not as an aid to the people to enlightenment, but as a banner of our Russian discord, then, writing in my own way, in Ukrainian, I will print in etymological old-world spelling.

That is, we live at home, we talk and sing songs not in the same way, and if it comes to something, then we will not allow anyone to separate ourselves. A dashing fate separated us for a long time, and we were moving towards Russian unity by a bloody road, and now the damned attempts to separate us are useless. "

But the Poles allowed themselves to ignore Kulish's opinion. They just needed Russian discord. After the spelling came the turn of the vocabulary. They tried to expel from literature and dictionaries as many words as possible used in the Russian literary language. The resulting voids were filled with borrowings from Polish, German, other languages, or simply invented words.

Mova was made a subject of political struggle

“Most of the words, phrases and forms from the previous Austro-Ruthenian period turned out to be“ Moscow ”and had to give way to new words, supposedly less harmful,” said one of the “reformers” who later repented about the linguistic “reform”. - "Direction" - this is the Moscow word, it cannot be used further - they said "young", and they now put the word "straight". "Modern" is also a Moscow word and gives way to the word "lucky", "exclusively" is replaced by the word "viclyuchno", "educational" - the word "enlightened", "society" - the word "partnership" or "suspension" ... ".

The zeal with which the Ruthenian speech was “reformed” aroused the surprise of scholars-philologists.

And not only locals.

“Galician Ukrainians do not want to take into consideration that none of the Little Russians has the right to the ancient verbal heritage, to which Kiev and Moscow have a claim to the same extent, frivolously leave and replace with Polonisms or simply fictitious words,” wrote Alexander Brickner, professor of Slavic studies at the University of Berlin ( Pole by nationality). - I cannot understand why the word "lord" was anathemized in Galicia several years ago and the word "goodness" is used instead. "Dobrodiy" is a remnant of patriarchal-slavish relations, and we cannot stand it even in Polish life. "

However, the reasons for "innovation" had to be sought, of course, not in philology, but in politics. School textbooks began to be rewritten "in a new way".

It was in vain that the conferences of folk teachers held in August and September 1896 in Peremyshlyany and Glinyany noted that now teaching aids had become incomprehensible. And they are incomprehensible not only for students, but also for teachers. The teachers complained in vain that under the current conditions "it is necessary to publish an explanatory dictionary for teachers."

And then, in general, the whole point began to be reduced to language. Power remained adamant. Dissatisfied teachers were fired from schools.

Rusyn officials who pointed out the absurdity of the changes were removed from their posts. Writers and journalists who stubbornly adhere to the "pre-reform" spelling and vocabulary were declared "Muscovites" and harassed. "Our language goes on the Polish sieve, - noted the outstanding Galician writer and public figure priest Ioann Naumovich. - Healthy grain is separated as Muscovite, and sowing remains at our mercy.

In this respect, it is interesting to compare the various editions of the works of Ivan Franko. Many words from the writer's works published in 1870-1880, for example - "look", "air", "army", "yesterday" and others, with later reprints were replaced by "look", "povitrya", "vіysko", "Vchora", etc. The changes were made both by Franco himself, who joined the Ukrainian movement, and by his "assistants" from among the "nationally conscious" editors. In total, in 43 works that were published in two or more editions during the life of the author, experts counted more than 10 thousand (!) Changes. Moreover, after the death of the writer, the "edits" of the texts continued. The same, however, as well as "corrections" of the texts of the works of other authors. Thus, an independent literature was created in an independent language, later called Ukrainian. But this language was not accepted by the people.

The works published in Ukrainian experienced an acute shortage of readers.

“Ten to fifteen years pass until the book of Franko, Kotsyubinsky, Kobylyanskaya is sold in a thousand or one and a half thousand copies,” complained in 1911 Mikhail Hrushevsky, who was then living in Galicia. Meanwhile, the books of Russian writers (especially Gogol's "Taras Bulba") quickly dispersed across the Galician villages in huge print runs for that era. We arrived, conquered and banned ...

And one more wonderful moment.

When the First World War broke out, an Austrian military publishing house published a special phrasebook in Vienna. It was intended for soldiers mobilized into the army from various parts of Austria-Hungary, so that servicemen of different nationalities could communicate with each other.

The phrasebook was compiled in six languages: German, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Croatian and Russian.

“They missed the Ukrainian language.

This is wrong, ”the“ nationally conscious ”newspaper“ Dilo ”lamented about this.

Meanwhile, everything was logical. The Austrian authorities knew very well that the Ukrainian language was created artificially and was not widespread among the people.

Plant this language on the territory Western Ukraine succeeded (and even then not immediately) only after the massacre of the indigenous population perpetrated in Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia by the Austro-Hungarians in 1914-1917. That massacre changed a lot in the region. In Central and Eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian language spread even later, but in a different period of history ...

Ukrainian is the most successful artificial language in history.

In 1848, another ghost began to wander through the territory of Austria - the ghost of Anti-Russia. Czech political and public figure Frantisek Palacky wrote a famous letter in 1848 in which he argued that the Danube Empire (Austria) was the only possible bastion against Russia, “a state that, having reached enormous proportions, is already increasing its power of superpowers of any Western country. ..

The Russian world monarchy would be an incredibly huge threat, an immeasurable and boundless catastrophe. "

Over time, the monarch himself wrote in a letter to his mother, explaining why he refused to provide assistance to Russia in the Crimean campaign: “Our future is in the East, and we will drive the power and influence of Russia into the framework that it went beyond only because of weakness and disorganization in our camp.

Gradually, preferably imperceptibly for Tsar Nicholas, but confidently, we will lead Russian politics to decline.

Of course, it is ugly to oppose old friends, but in politics it cannot be otherwise, and our natural enemy in the East is Russia. "

It was at the time of Franz Joseph that they realized that Ukraine could be the most natural defense against Russian expansion. But Ukraine without Galicia and Bukovina, which were part of the Danube monarchy, is the so-called "Russian Ukraine". Galicians were supposed to become an incubator of ideas for the Dnieper region ... Therefore, it is not surprising that Galicia became the most nationally conscious region of Ukraine - and not least thanks to the Tsar's policy. and especially "Ukrainians" is difficult to overestimate!

As you know, the eighteen-year-old Archduke became emperor in the wake of revolutionary events that forced his uncle and father to abdicate the throne.

The Rusyns also took an active part in the fight against the Hungarian rebels - the traditional enmity between the neighboring peoples, as well as the unreasonable policy of the Hungarian revolutionary authorities towards other peoples, also affected. For faithful service, the emperor presented the Galician division with a blue-yellow flag, which in 1918 became the national symbol of independent Ukraine.

At the request of Caesar Franz Joseph, a hundred thousandth Russian army under the command of Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich came to Austria's aid in 1848 to suppress the Hungarian uprising. The appearance in Galicia and Transcarpathia of the Russian army, speaking in a completely understandable almost local language, was enthusiastically received by the Galician and Transcarpathian Rusyns and became the impetus for the beginning of the revival of Russian culture.

In addition, the Rusyns saw in the Russian army their liberators from the Magyar oppression. And this also initiated the desire for political rapprochement with Russia, which became dangerous for the unity of Austria-Hungary. The Russian emperor also added fuel to the fire, proposing to exchange the Russians in Galicia and Bukovina for an equal part of the Polish territory.

In the wake of revolutionary reforms, the Rusyns also demanded greater rights for themselves and received a clear answer from Count Franz Stadium, the Austrian governor of Galicia: “You can count on the government's support only if you want to be an independent people and renounce national unity with the people outside the state. , it is in Russia, that is, if you want to be ruthenes, not Russians. It won't hurt you if you adopt a new name in order to be different from the Russians living outside Austria. "

As you can see, no one knew the term “Ukrainians” yet, and no one suggested that the Galician Rusyns (they are Russians) become them. Before his appearance, more than forty years of hard work of the Austrian authorities should have passed, which fell just during the years of the reign of Franz Joseph.

In 1859, a brochure of the Czech philologist József Ireček appeared in German in Vienna, Uber den Vorschlag das Rutenische mit lateinischen Schriftzeichen zu schreiben (“About the proposal for Rusyns to write with Latin letters»), Printed in a government printing house. On the title page were the words: "On behalf of the Imperial Royal Ministry of Cults and Education." Irechek very clearly stated the goal of the spelling reform: “As long as the Rusyns write and type in Cyrillic, they will show a tendency towards Church Slavism and thus towards Russianism. Church Slavonic and Russian influence is so great that it threatens to completely oust the local language and local literature. " But the scale of popular protests against the reform amazed the authorities indescribably. The events of 1859 went down in the history of Galicia as an “alphabet war”. The population of Galicia protests against the new name of the inhabitants and the new spelling: spontaneous gatherings are gathered, articles appear in print, petitions are written and deputations are sent. The protest took a completely unexpected form: a massive fascination with Russian culture and language began.

A literary society named after Pushkin arose in Lviv. Days of Russian Culture were held throughout Galicia. The intelligentsia was read by Pushkin, rural communities erected monuments to Alexander Sergeevich. The cultural movement quickly grew into a political one. In the Diet and the Reichsrat appeared "unifiers" - this is how the supporters of the unification of Galician Rus with Russia were called. The frightened Austrian government is retreating - the memories of the Hungarian uprising are still too fresh.

However, he does not abandon the idea of ​​raising the "Ukrainian nation". Faced with non-recognition of the Latin alphabet, the Austrian authorities and their accomplices drew attention to the presence of another Ukrainian grammar. In 1860, the writer and educator of the Russian Little Russia Panteleimon Kulish came up with a simplified alphabet in order to facilitate the elimination of illiteracy in Ukraine. It was the "kulishovka" that was turned in Galicia into the Ukrainian script, which we know today. PA Kulish himself, having learned about this, wrote with anger to Galicia: “You know that the spelling that you called“ kulishivka ”in Galicia was invented by me at a time when everyone in Russia was busy spreading literacy in simple the people. In order to make the science of literacy easier for people who have no time to study for a long time, I came up with a simplified spelling. But now they are making a political banner out of it ... Seeing this banner in the enemy's hands, I will be the first to hit it and renounce my spelling in the name of Russian unity. "

However, no attention was paid to Kulish's protest. To make the "kulishivka" even more different from the Russian writing, in 1892 in Galicia the phonetic spelling of words was introduced instead of the etymological one. Recall that phonetic spelling means that letters are written as they are heard. If phonetics is introduced into the Russian language, then the "okay" and "akay" dialects will turn into separate writing systems. The Austrian authorities of Galicia introduced something similar. The invention of new words began, created according to one criterion - if only they sounded differently from Russian. But the Austrian authorities were not interested in the convenience and expediency of phonetic spelling, but in the destruction of the linguistic connection with Russia. The phonetic reform of the Ukrainian spelling pursued exclusively political goals.

In 1893 the Austrian parliament officially approved the phonetic writing for “ Ukrainian language". Discovery of the Ukrainians From that moment on, the term "Ukrainians" was officially introduced into circulation. Naturally, the “fifth column”, which is inevitable in such cases, also renders all possible assistance to the Austrian authorities. It is interesting that - in 1890, from the rostrum of the Lviv Regional Sejm, the deputy of the Young Russian Party Yulian Romanchuk announced the offensive “ new era":" Galician-Russian people ", he said" on his behalf "," considers himself isolated from the Russian sovereign people "

That is, Pan Romanchuk simply did not know that he was Ukrainian yet ?! By the way, all these years, until the term “Ukrainians” was introduced into everyday life, there was a fierce struggle over how many letters “s” to write in the word “Russian”. Further, the methodology was simple: with the help of police measures, they began to plant a "kulishivka" in all educational institutions, select books written in literary Russian, close literary societies and dismiss all teachers who disagree with this innovation.

"Phonetics" is used for official office work, the publication of periodicals, and the printing of books. According to the later acknowledgment of the Minister of Education and Religions of the Petliura Directory, Metropolitan Illarion (aka Ivan Ogienko), the success of the introduction of "phonetics" was due only to the fact that "the whole spelling has been fixed." For Ukrainization, they also apply economic methods: the government generously lends money to the peasant cooperatives of the "Ukrainians", who lend from villages only to their adherents. Peasants who do not want to call themselves Ukrainians do not receive loans.

And in Bukovina, where the first monument to Franz Joseph began to be erected today, a rule was introduced to require a written commitment from graduates of seminaries: “I declare that I renounce the Russian people, that from now on I will not call myself Russian; only Ukrainian and only Ukrainian ”. Priests who did not sign such a document were not allowed to come. The new people need their own history.

To create it, the newly created department Ukrainian history nobody is invited at Lviv University famous graduate Kiev University Mikhail Hrushevsky. He, on the generous breads of the dying Empire of Franz Joseph, was destined to become the "father of Ukrainian history."

Mikhail Hrushevsky proposed the following scheme of Ukrainian history: 1) Ukrainians, as a separate people, have existed since the early medieval (Ant) period; 2) in Kievan Rus Ukrainians represented the core of the state, separate from the northeastern (in the future - Russian) nationality; 3) the heir to the statehood of Kievan Rus was first the Galicia-Volyn principality, and later - partly the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The customer paid off generously - the university professor became a major owner of real estate in Galicia and Kiev.

All Kievites knew the luxurious, profitable "Grushevsky house" near the station. In a war without sentimentality However, the Ukrainization of Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathian Rus was slow.

Therefore, with the outbreak of the First World War, the Austrian authorities resorted to more effective methods.

“Long before World War II, the Austrian gendarmerie was leading detailed lists“Politically unreliable”. This was done in the style of that inimitable bureaucratic idiocy that is brilliantly described in "The Brave Soldier Schweik".

In special tables, along with the names of the suspects, their marital status and occupation in column 8, "more detailed information" about unreliability or suspicion was entered. " Such "crimes" were: "travels to Russia", "agitator for the candidacy of Markov (leader of the Moscowophile party) to parliament" or simply "Russophile".

The next column recommended what to do with this person if Austria starts not even a war, but simply mobilization. For example: "Keep a close watch, if something happens - arrest." Or: "Send to the interior of the country." It is easy to see that they intended to punish not even for actions, but for views and sympathies - things that are difficult to unambiguously interpret. Arrest was considered the most reliable means. As soon as World War broke out on August 1, 1914, about 2,000 Ukrainians-Muscovites were immediately taken into custody in Lviv alone. There were so many prisoners that they filled three prisons at once!

Concerned about the "overpopulation", the presidium of the imperial-royal police directorate in Lvov even petitioned the governor of Galicia to take the "dangerous element" inside the country as soon as possible "due to the lack of space" and "the outrage of those prisoners who are now expressing loud threats that they will be counted."

According to the 1900 census, only 36,000 Ukrainians lived in Lviv. However, a place "inside the country" was soon found: the first concentration camps in Europe Terezin and Talerhof were created in last years the reign of Franz Joseph for Ukrainians who do not consider themselves Ukrainians or are only suspected of this "crime". In the most terrible of them, Thalerhof, near the city of Graz, there were not even barracks, but all of it was pounded with pillars for "anbinden" - of all the tortures the Austrians preferred to hang the victim by the leg. But not everyone got into the first "death camps" either. Priest Joseph Yavorsky testified after the war: “The army received instructions and maps with villages underlined in red pencil, which voted for the Russian candidates for the Austrian parliament. And the red line on the map left bloody victims in these villages. "

There was material evidence against the priest Pyotr Sandovich: a handwritten letter, where "the Russian flock" is written with two "s". Sentence: “Consider high treason proven, Fr. Pyotr Sandovich and his son shall be shot. " Further, Fr. Vladimir Mokhnatsky with his son Rodion, a high school student, Fr. Feofil Kachmarchik with his son Vladimir, lawyer, Fr. Vasily Kurillo with two sons ... The sons 'guilt does not even need to be proven - they are the fathers' guilt. Orthodox priests they were shooting as knowingly "Russians".

And three hundred Uniate priests were killed only on suspicion that they secretly had sympathies for Orthodoxy and Russia. " Coffee as a national idea? As you can see, our current "elite", so freely living in the country, has something to thank the late Austrian monarch for. Ukraine owes its flag, language, writing and history exclusively to the policy pursued during the years of his reign!

And the "tough methods" which had to Ukrainize Galicians serve only as an example to follow, just like the "methods" of the already "canonized" OUN-UPA and its Hauptsturmführer! So, I think, the monument in Chernivtsi is only the first swallow, and “University, railway” is, excuse me, for a “seed”!

We should pay tribute to the current adviser of the main sponsor of the monument - he speaks quite frankly about the true role of Franz Joseph in Ukrainian history and the true goals of his “Ukrainian project” - the emperor “prepared the future” for his decaying monarchy. By the way, by 1914, in the depths of the Austrian reigning house, a candidate for the future Ukrainian throne was prepared - the grand-nephew of Franz Joseph, Prince Wilhelm of Habsburg, known as Vasyl Vyshivany.

Apparently, the failure of the Habsburg project (and not only it) greatly upsets many Ukropatriots. Indeed, according to them, for example: “The common people simply loved Austria.

Moreover, thanks to this empire, they joined European politics, to European culture, to European traditions. About a year ago, a journalist from The Day wrote about her impressions of Western Ukraine.

At one of the provincial railway stations, a "poor but neatly dressed grandmother" approached her and asked for a hryvnia "for kava." (Kost Bondarenko, "ZN" dated 19.08.2000). Let me remind you that this was written before the revelations of the son of the most famous lover of "good coffee" appeared. "Granny, you probably have nothing to buy bread for?" - asked the journalist. - “Et, I will somehow live without bread. But I can't go without coffee. I'm used to it, ”my grandmother answered. “And then I realized that I am in Europe,” the journalist admitted sincerely.

Returning to the idea of ​​monuments to all "friends" of Ukraine, we have to admit that all official history"Nationally-visceral zmagannyh" is reduced to attempts individuals to become clerks with a good (for them) master from the West!

He expressed this idea most clearly - in relation to today- the notorious Vladimir Yavorivsky: "We have been the bedding of Russia for 350 years, and not a single day - America, but it would be worth trying."

They have been trying for 23 years and now they dress up again in bedding ...

http://telemax-spb.livejournal.com/427558.html

How the Ukrainian language was created - artificially and for political reasons "Truth is never sweet", - Iryna Farion recently noted, presenting her next book about the Ukrainian language on the First Channel of the National Radio of Ukraine

Some “specialists” derive Ukrainian almost from Sanskrit, others spread myths about imaginary Polish or even Hungarian influence, although most of them do not speak either Polish or Ukrainian, let alone Hungarian.

Recently popular article published by me about the formation of the Russian language aroused considerable interest among the visitors of the UNIAN website. Readers sent us a lot of reviews, comments, questions from the field of linguistics. Summarizing these questions, I will try to answer them by “ popular language”Without delving into the scientific jungle.

Why are there many words from Sanskrit in the Ukrainian language?

By comparing different languages, scientists came to the conclusion that some of them are very close to each other, others are more distant relatives. And there are those who have nothing in common with each other. For example, it has been established that Ukrainian, Latin, Norwegian, Tajik, Hindi, English, etc. are related. But Japanese, Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish, Etruscan, Arabic, Basque, etc. have nothing to do with Ukrainian or, say, Spanish.

It has been proven that for several millennia BC there was a certain community of people (tribes) who spoke close dialects. We do not know where it was or at what exact time. Perhaps 3-5 thousand years BC. It is assumed that these tribes lived somewhere in the Northern Mediterranean, perhaps even in the Dnieper region. The Indo-European proto-language has not survived to our times. The oldest written monuments that have survived to this day were written a thousand years BC in the language of the ancient inhabitants of India, which has the name "Sanskrit". Being the oldest, this language is considered to be the closest to Indo-European.

Scientists are reconstructing the proto-language on the basis of the laws of changing sounds and grammatical forms, moving, so to speak, in the opposite direction: from modern languages ​​- to a common language. Reconstructed words are given in etymological dictionaries, ancient grammatical forms - in a writer from the history of grammars.

Modern Indo-European languages ​​have inherited most of their roots from the days of their former unity. V different languages related words sometimes sound very different, but these differences obey certain sound patterns.

Compare the Ukrainian and English words that have a common origin: day - day, nich - night, son - sun, mater - mother, syn - son, eye - eye, tree - tree, water - water, two - two, might - might, cook - swear, tell - will. Thus, Ukrainian, like all other Indo-European languages, has many common words with Sanskrit and other related languages ​​- Greek, Icelandic, Old Persian, Armenian, etc., not to mention the close Slavic languages ​​- Russian, Slovak, Polish ...

As a result of the migration of peoples, wars, the conquests of some peoples by others, linguistic dialects moved away from each other, new languages ​​were formed, old ones disappeared. Indo-Europeans settled throughout Europe and penetrated into Asia (that's why they got this name).

Pro-Indo-European language family left behind, in particular, the following groups of languages: Romance (dead Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Moldavian, etc.); Germanic (dead Gothic, English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish, Dutch, Afrikaans, etc.); Celtic (Welsh, Scottish, Irish, etc.), Indo-Iranian (dead Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, Tajik, Ossetian, Gypsy, possibly also dead Scythian, etc.); Baltic (dead Prussian, Lithuanian, Latvian, etc.), Slavic (dead Old Slavonic, or "Old Bulgarian", Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Polish, Great Russian, Belarusian, etc.). Selected Indo-European branches allowed the Greek, Armenian, Albanian languages, which have no close relatives. Quite a few Indo-European languages ​​have not survived to historical times.

Why are Indo-European languages ​​so different from each other?

As a rule, the formation of a language is associated with the geographical isolation of its speakers, migration, conquests of some peoples by others. The differences in Indo-European languages ​​are explained by interactions with other - often non-Indo-European - languages. One language, displacing another, received certain signs of a defeated language and, accordingly, differed in these features from its congener (the displaced language that left its traces is called a substrate), and also experienced grammatical and lexical changes. Perhaps there are certain internal patterns of development of languages, which over time "alienate" it from related dialects. Although, most likely, the reason for the appearance of any internal patterns is the influence of other (substrate) languages.

So, in ancient times, numerous languages ​​were spread in Europe, the influence of which led to the current variegated linguistic picture. The development of the Greek language was influenced, in particular, by Illyrian (Albanian) and Etruscan. In English - Norman and various Celtic dialects, in French - Gallic, in Great Russian - Finno-Ugric languages, as well as “Old Bulgarian”. The Finno-Ugric influence in the Great Russian language gave a weakening of unstressed vowels (in particular, akane: milk - malako), consolidation g in place G, stunning consonants at the end of a syllable.

It is believed that at a certain stage of linguistic evolution, before the formation of separate Slavic and Baltic languages, there was a Balto-Slavic unity, since these languages ​​have a huge number of common words, morphemes and even grammatical forms. It is assumed that the common ancestors of the Balts and Slavs inhabited the territories from the Northern Dnieper region to the Baltic Sea. However, as a result of migration processes, this unity fell apart.

At the linguistic level, this was reflected in an amazing way: the Proto-Slavic language appears as separate language(and not the Balto-Slavic dialect) with the beginning of the so-called law open syllable... The Proto-Slavs received this linguistic law by interacting with some non-Indo-European people, whose language did not tolerate the combination of several consonant sounds. Its essence boiled down to the fact that all syllables ended in a vowel sound. The old words began to be rearranged in such a way that short vowels were inserted between the consonants or the vowels changed place with consonants, the final consonants were lost or short vowels appeared after them. So, “al-ktis” turned into “lo-ko-ti” (elbow), “kor-vas” to “ko-ro-va” (cow), “med-dus” to “me-do” (honey ), “Or-bi-ti” to “ro-bi-ti” (work), “drau-gas” to “friend” (other), etc. Roughly speaking, the Baltic languages, which were not affected by the open syllable law, give an idea of ​​the “pre-Slavic” language period.

How do we know about this law? First of all, from the oldest monuments Slavic writing(X - XII centuries). Short vowel sounds were conveyed in writing by the letters “ъ” (something between the short “o” and “s”) and “b” (short “i”). The tradition of writing "ъ" at the end of words after consonants, which passed into the Great Russian language according to the Kiev tradition of transmitting Church Slavonic, survived until the beginning of the 20th century, although, of course, these vowels were never read in Great Russian.

What language did the Proto-Slavs speak?

This language has existed since the 1st millennium BC. until the middle of the II millennium A.D. Of course, there was no coherent language in the modern sense of the word, let alone its literary version. We are talking about close dialects, which were characterized by common features.

The Proto-Slavic language, having adopted the law of an open syllable, sounded like this: ze-le-n'lie-s shu-mi-t (reads “ze-le-ni lie-with shu-mi-to” - the green forest makes noise); k'-de i-doun-t med-vie-d and vl-k'? (it reads “co-de i-do-me-do-vie-do and vly-ko? (where are the bear and the wolf?). Monotonously and evenly: tra-ta-ta-ta ... tra-ta-ta ... tra-ta-ta ... Our modern ear would hardly be able to recognize familiar words in this stream.

Some scholars believe that the non-Indo-European language of the Trypillians who inhabited the present Ukrainian lands (the substratum language is an absorbed language that left phonetic and other traces in the victorious language) was the substratum language for the Proto-Slavs that “launched” the law of the open syllable.

It was he who did not tolerate clusters of consonants, the syllables in him ended only in vowels. And it was allegedly from the Trypillians that such words of unknown origin came down to us, characterized by the openness of syllables and a strict order of sounds (consonant - vowel), like mo-g-la, ko-la and some others. They say that from the Trypillian language Ukrainian - through the mediation of other languages ​​and Proto-Slavic dialects - inherited its melody and some phonetic features (for example, the alternation of u – v, i – y, which helps to avoid dissonant accumulations of sounds).

Unfortunately, it is impossible to refute or confirm this hypothesis, since no reliable data on the language of the Trypillians (as, by the way, the Scythians) have survived. At the same time, it is known that the substrate in a certain territory (phonetic and other traces of a defeated language) is indeed very tenacious and can be transmitted through several linguistic “eras”, even through the mediation of languages ​​that have not survived to this day.

The relative unity of the Proto-Slavic dialects lasted until the 5th-6th centuries of the new era. Where the Pre-Slavs lived is not exactly known. It is believed that somewhere to the north of the Black Sea - in the Dnieper, Danube, in the Carpathians or between the Vistula and Oder. In the middle of the first millennium, as a result of violent migration processes, the Proto-Slavic unity disintegrated. The Slavs settled all of central Europe - from the Mediterranean to the North Sea.

Since then, the proto-languages ​​of modern Slavic languages ​​began to form. The starting point for the emergence of new languages ​​was the fall of the open syllable law. As mysterious as its origin. We do not know what caused this fall - another substrate or some kind of internal law of linguistic evolution, which began to operate back in the days of Proto-Slavic unity. However, not a single Slavic language has survived the open syllable law. Although he left deep traces in each of them. By and large, the phonetic and morphological differences between these languages ​​boil down to how different the reflexes caused by the fall of the open syllable are in each of the languages.

How did modern Slavic languages ​​appear?

This law declined unevenly. In one dialect, the melodious pronunciation (“tra-ta-ta”) survived longer, in others, the phonetic “revolution” took place faster. As a result, the Proto-Slavic language gave three subgroups of dialects: South Slavic (modern Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Slovenian, etc.); West Slavic (Polish, Czech, Slovak, etc.); East Slavic (modern Ukrainian, Great Russian, Belarusian). In ancient times, each of the subgroups was numerous dialects characterized by certain common features that set them apart from other subgroups. These dialects do not always coincide with the modern division of the Slavic languages ​​and the settlement of the Slavs. The processes of the formation of states, the mutual influence of Slavic dialects, as well as foreign language elements played a large role in linguistic evolution in different periods.

Actually, the disintegration of the Proto-Slavic linguistic unity could occur as follows. At first, the southern (Balkan) Slavs “broke away” from the rest of the tribes. This explains the fact that in their dialects the law of the open syllable lasted the longest - until the 9th-12th centuries.

Among the tribes that were the ancestors of the Eastern and Western Slavs, in contrast to the Balkans, in the middle of the first millennium, the language underwent dramatic changes. The fall of the open syllable law gave rise to the development of new European languages, many of which have not survived to our time.

The speakers of the Proto-Ukrainian language were scattered tribes, each of which spoke its own dialect. The glades spoke Polyany, the Derevians - the Derevlyan, the Siverians - the Siverian, the Ulic and Tiverians - their own way, etc. But all these adverbs were characterized by common features, that is, the same consequences of the fall of the open syllable, which even now distinguish the Ukrainian language from other Slavic languages.

How do we know how people spoke in Ukraine in ancient times?

There are two real sources of our current knowledge about ancient Ukrainian dialects. The first one is written monuments, the oldest of which were written in the X-XII centuries. However, unfortunately, there were no records at all in the language spoken by our ancestors. The literary language of Kiev was the "Old Bulgarian" (Church Slavonic) language, which came to us from the Balkans. This is the language into which Cyril and Methodius translated the Bible in the 9th century. It was not understandable for the Eastern Slavs, since it retained the ancient law of an open syllable. In particular, it sounded short vowels after consonants, denoted by the letters "ъ" and "b". However, in Kiev, this language was gradually Ukrainianized: short sounds were not read, and some vowels were replaced by their own - Ukrainian. In particular, the nasal vowels, which are still preserved, say, in Polish, were pronounced like ordinary ones, “Old Bulgarian” diphthongs (double vowels) were read in the Ukrainian manner. Cyril and Methodius would be very surprised to hear "their" language in the Kiev church.

Interestingly, some scholars tried to reconstruct the so-called “Old Russian” language, which was supposedly common to all Eastern Slavs, based on the ancient Kiev texts. And it turned out that in Kiev they spoke almost the “old Bulgarian” language, which, of course, in no way corresponded to the historical truth.

Ancient texts can be used to learn the language of our ancestors, but in a very peculiar way. This is exactly what Professor Ivan Ohienko did in the first half of the twentieth century. He investigated the typos, mistakes of Kiev authors and scribes who, against their will, were influenced by the living folk language. At times, ancient scribes “altered” words and “Old Bulgarian” grammatical forms deliberately - to make it “clearer”.

The second source of our knowledge is modern Ukrainian dialects, especially those that remained isolated for a long time and were almost not exposed to external influence. For example, the descendants of the Derevlyans still inhabit the north of the Zhytomyr region, and the Siverians - the north of the Chernigov region. In many dialects, ancient Ukrainian phonetic, grammatical, morphological forms have been preserved, which coincide with the typos of Kiev scribes and writers.

In the scientific literature, you can find other dates for the fall of short vowels among the Eastern Slavs - XII - XIII centuries. However, such a "lengthening of life" of the open syllable law is hardly justified.

When did the Ukrainian language appear?

The countdown, apparently, can begin from the middle of the first millennium - when short vowels disappeared. This is what caused the emergence of proper Ukrainian linguistic features- as, ultimately, and the characteristics of most Slavic languages. The list of features that distinguished our proto-language from other languages ​​can be somewhat boring for non-specialists. Here are just a few of them.

The ancient Ukrainian dialects were characterized by the so-called full accord: in place of the South Slavic sound combinations ra-, la-, re-, le - in the language of our ancestors sounded -oro-, -olo-, -re-, -ele-. For example: licorice (in “Old Bulgarian” - sweet), full (captivity), middle (Wednesday), darkness (darkness), etc. The "coincidences" in the Bulgarian and Russian languages ​​are explained by the enormous influence of the "Old Bulgarian" on the formation of the Russian language.

The Bulgarian (South Slavic) sound combination at the beginning of the root ra-, la - answered the East Slavic ro-, lo-: robot (work), grow (grow), catch (catch). In place of the typical Bulgarian sound combination -zhd - the Ukrainians had -zh-: vorozhnecha (enmity), kozen (each). The Bulgarian suffixes -asch-, -yusch - were answered by the Ukrainian -ach-, -yuch-: vyuchy (howling), soporific (incinerating).

When short vowel sounds fell after voiced consonants, in Proto-Ukrainian dialects these consonants continued to be pronounced loudly, as at present (oak, snig, love, roof). In Polish, stunning developed, in Great Russian too (dup, snack, lyubof, crof).

Academician Potebnya discovered that the disappearance of short sounds (b and b) in some places “forced” to prolong the pronunciation of the previous vowels “o” and “e” in a new closed syllable to compensate for the “contraction” of the word. So, sto-l (“sto-lo”) turned into “steel” (the final b disappeared, but the “inner” vowel became longer, turning into a double sound - diphthong). But in forms where a vowel follows the final consonant, the old sound has not changed: sto-lu, sto-li. Mo-st (“mo-hundred”) turned into place, muest, misst, etc. (depending on the dialect). The diphthong eventually transformed into a regular vowel. Therefore, in the modern literary language, “i” in a closed syllable alternates with “o” and “e” - in an open one (kit - ko-that, popil - po-pe-lu, rig - ro-gu, mig - mo-and etc.). Although some Ukrainian dialects keep ancient diphthongs in a closed syllable (kiet, popiel, rieg).

The ancient Proto-Slavic diphthongs, in particular in the case endings, denoted in the letter “yat”, found their continuation in the Old Ukrainian language. In some dialects they have survived to this day, in others they were transformed into "i" and "e" in pre-revolutionary Russian spelling. In some Ukrainian dialects, the ancient diphthong was actively supplanted by the vowel “i” (lis, on the ground, min, bili), entrenched in the literary language.

Some of the phonetic and grammatical features of the Proto-Slavic language were continued in the Ukrainian dialects. So, the Proto-Ukrainian inherited the ancient alternation of k – h, g – z, x – s (hand - rutsi, rig - rosi, fly - musi), which has also been preserved in the modern literary language. The vocative case has long been used in our language. In dialects, the ancient form of the “future” tense is active (I will be brav), as well as the ancient face and number indicators in the verbs of the past tense (I walk, we walk, you walk, you walk).

The description of all these features takes up whole volumes in the academic literature ...

What language was spoken in Kiev in prehistoric times?

Certainly not in modern literary language.

Any literary language is artificial to a certain extent - it is developed by writers, educators, cultural figures as a result of rethinking a living language. Often the literary language is foreign, borrowed, and sometimes incomprehensible to the uneducated part of the population. So, in Ukraine from the 10th to the 18th century, an artificial language was considered a literary language - the Ukrainianized “Old Bulgarian” language, in which most of the literary monuments were written, in particular, “Izborniki Svyatoslav”, “The Word about Igor's Regiment”, “Turn the Temporal Litas”, the works of Ivan Vishensky , Grigory Skovoroda, etc. The literary language was not frozen: it constantly developed, changed over the centuries, was enriched with new vocabulary, its grammar was simplified. The degree of Ukrainization of texts depended on the education and "free thinking" of the authors (the church did not approve of the penetration of the folk language into writing). This Kiev literary language, created on the basis of the "Old Bulgarian", played huge role in the formation of the Great Russian ("Russian") language.

The modern literary language was formed on the basis of the Dnieper dialects - the heirs of the dialect of the annalistic glades (and also, apparently, the Antic union of tribes, known from foreign-language historical sources) - in the first half of the 19th century thanks to the writers Kotlyarevsky, Grebinka, Kvitka-Osnovyanenko, as well as Taras Shevchenko ...

Consequently, before the formation of the national language, Ukrainians spoke different Ukrainian dialects, using the Ukrainianized “Old Bulgarian” in writing.

In the princely era, Kiev was spoken in the "generally understandable" language for the inhabitants of the capital city (Koine), which was formed on the basis of various ancient Ukrainian tribal dialects, mainly Polyans. No one has ever heard it, and it has not survived in the records. But, again, the clerical notes of ancient chroniclers and scribes, as well as modern Ukrainian dialects, give an idea of ​​this language. To represent it, one should, apparently, “cross” the grammar of the Transcarpathian dialects, where the ancient forms are best preserved, the Chernigov diphthongs in the place of “yat” and the modern “i” in a closed syllable, the peculiarities of the “deep” pronunciation of vowel sounds among the current inhabitants of the south of the Kiev region , as well as Cherkasy and Poltava regions.

Were modern Ukrainians able to understand the language spoken by the people of Kiev, say, in the first half of the 13th century (before the Horde)?

Undoubtedly, yes. For a “modern” ear, it would sound like a kind of Ukrainian dialect. Something similar to what we hear on electric trains, bazaars and construction sites in the capital.

Is it possible to call an ancient language “Ukrainian” if the very word “Ukraine” was not there?

You can call the language whatever you want - the essence does not change. The ancient Indo-European tribes also did not call their language “Indo-European”.

The laws of linguistic evolution in no way depend on the name of the language, which is given to it in different periods of history by its speakers or strangers.

We do not know how the Pre-Slovens called their language. Perhaps there was no generic name at all. We also do not know what they called their dialect. East Slavs in the prehistoric era. Most likely, each tribe had its own name and called its dialect in its own way. There is an assumption that the Slavs called their language simply “theirs”.

The word "Russian" in relation to the language of our ancestors appeared relatively late. At first, this word was used to denote a simple folk language - as opposed to the written "Slavic". Later, “Mova Ruska” was contrasted with “Polish”, “Moscow”, as well as non-Slavic languages ​​spoken by neighboring peoples (at different periods - Chud, Muroma, Meschera, Polovtsy, Tatars, Khazars, Pechenegs, etc.). The Ukrainian language was called “Ruthenian” until the X VIII century.

In the Ukrainian language, the names are clearly distinguished - "Russian" and "Russian", in contrast to the Great Russian, where these names are groundlessly confused.

The word "Ukraine" also appeared relatively late. It is found in the annals since the XII century, therefore, it arose several centuries earlier.

How did other languages ​​influence the formation of Ukrainian?

The Ukrainian language belongs to the “archaic” languages ​​in terms of its vocabulary and grammatical structure (like, say, Lithuanian and Icelandic). Most of the Ukrainian words are inherited from the Indo-European proto-language, as well as from the Proto-Slavic dialects.

Quite a lot of words came to us from tribes that were neighbors with our ancestors, traded with them, fought, etc. - Goths, Greeks, Turks, Ugrians, Romans, etc. (ship, bowl, poppy, Cossack, khata etc.). In Ukrainian, there are also borrowings from "Old Bulgarian" (for example, region, good, ancestor), Polish (cheat sheet, amusement, saber) and other Slavic. However, none of these languages ​​influenced either the grammar or the phonetics (sound structure) of the language. Myths about Polish influence are spread, as a rule, by non-specialists who have a very distant idea of ​​both Polish and Ukrainian, about the common origin of all Slavic languages.

Ukrainian is constantly being replenished with English, German, French, Italian, Spanish words, which is typical for any European language.

The official political mythology of Ukraine claims that there is an ancient Ukrainian nation that speaks no less ancient Ukrainian language, and the archaic Ukrainian language existed already in the 13th century and began to form almost from the 6th century.

Before agreeing with these statements or refuting them, it is worth referring to the historical facts, which indicate that in no written monument ancient Russia you will not find anything even remotely similar to the modern Ukrainian language. There are no traces or even hints of the existence of the Ukrainian language deeper than the second half of the 19th century.

In addition, one does not need to be a philologist to see in the Old Russian language, in which the chronicles and birch bark letters were written, the prototype of the modern literary Russian language.

Interestingly, the Old Russian language "Svidomi" is stubbornly called "Old Ukrainian" and in principle they try to name everything Russian (Little Russian), modern Ukraine, "Ukrainian". Vasily Shulgin, the former editor of the Kiev newspaper Kievlyanin, wrote about this in immigration: “They are looking for all the evidence in this story that indisputably proves that the Russian people lived and suffered in our region. In all these cases, they cross out the word "Russian" and write "Ukrainian" on top.

The fact that there is nothing in the historical documents that remotely resembles the modern Ukrainian language is explained rather ridiculously by Svidomi, they claim that in those days there were two languages ​​- spoken and written, and the one that was spoken is Ukrainian. If Ukrainian existed only in colloquially, then how did "Svidomi" know about him, because the living speakers of this language did not live to see the bright moment of "independence".

All talk about "old Ukrainian language" is nothing more than speculation, unsupported theories in the name of political mythology, and historical documents on the basis of which such conclusions can be drawn simply do not exist.

Science claims that in the 3rd century, the Proto-Slavic linguistic community emerged from the Proto-Indo-European linguistic community, and from it in the 9th century the Old Slavonic (Church Slavonic) language spun off. The latter arose among the Slavs, got his further development in the Balkans and from Bulgaria, Old Slavic came to Russia. And only then, under his strong influence, in X-XIII centuries the Old Russian language is formed.

It is possible to draw any conclusions about the origin of the language only on the basis of written sources, and "svidomye" are forced to admit that in the XI-XIII centuries. on the territory of all of Russia there was one common written-literary language, called Old Russian, created on the basis of the fusion of the local spoken language with the newcomer Old Slavonic (Church Slavonic) language.

However, they deny the existence of a common spoken language while recognizing a common written language. It is simply impossible to deny the existence of a written ancient Russian language common to all of Russia, since this is proved by the written monuments of medieval Russia that have come down to us, written only in the Old Russian language. But it is possible to fantasize about the colloquial "Old Ukrainian" language, which none of us has heard or will hear. This opens up a huge space for myth-making.

For "Svidomo" it is fundamentally important to prove the existence on the territory of southern Russia of a language other than Russian, Ukrainian. They only needed a "non-Russian" language and nothing else. That is why they categorically reject the existence in the X-XIII centuries of a structurally single, colloquial Old Russian language.

Thus, the conclusion suggests itself that all the statements of the "Svidomo" ideologues of Ukrainians that the ancient Ukrainian language ("Ukrainian Russian") was used by the population in the south of ancient Rus' with the center in Kiev by the population is an open lie. Medieval Russia spoke and wrote in a single Old Russian language, which, however, had some distinctive features in the western, eastern and northern regions of the state, which, incidentally, is inherent in any living language, and the Church used the Old Slavonic (Church Slavonic) language in its rituals.

It should be noted here that the process of spreading literacy on the territory of Russia began with the first "Slavic" grammar, which was written by a Little Russian from Podillya Melety Smotritsky, and then it was reprinted in Moscow and introduced as a textbook in all schools of Russia.

When, in the 17th century, the Church Slavonic language of the Moscow edition was supplanted by the all-Russian Church Slavonic language, which developed on the basis of the Western Russian (Kiev) edition, changes began to take place in the spoken language of the upper classes of Russian society. Elements of the Western Russian secular language began to penetrate into this language, and a powerful stream of elements of the Western Russian secular business language entered the vocabulary of the spoken language of the upper classes (and through it into the vocabulary of the secular literary and clerical language).

The basis of the Russian, or rather the all-Russian literary language was laid by the Little Russians, using the Little Russian and Great Russian dialects as material for it, as well as the Kiev edition of Church Slavonic, which of them creative heritage the genius of Lomonosov and then Pushkin continued to create the language great science and world literature.

From all that has been said, we can conclude that the literary Russian language was created by scientists and writers naturally for centuries from a mixture of Little Russian, Great Russian and Belarusian dialects with the use of Church Slavonic, and the basis of the Russian literary language is the Little Russian dialect.

Now let's see how the "Ukrainian" language was created. In fact, the language that we now call literary "Ukrainian" began to be created somewhere in the middle of the 19th century by the Polish-Little Russian Ukrainophiles. Then, until the beginning of the 20th century, the "Svidomi Ukrainians" of Austrian Galicia worked on it, and the officials of Soviet Ukraine completed its revision.

In response to this, the "Svidomi" claim that the literary Ukrainian language began much earlier, with the "Aeneid" by Kotlyarevsky and Shevchenko wrote in Ukrainian.

But the fact is that neither Kotlyarevsky nor Shevchenko had ever heard of the "Ukrainian language". And if they found out about her, they would most likely turn over in their graves in frustration, since they wrote not in Ukrainian, but in the Little Russian dialect.

What is a Little Russian dialect? This is the Old Russian language of medieval Russia, which was later abundantly diluted with Polish borrowings. This is the dialect of the village, of everyday communication of the Russian slaves of the Commonwealth, who naturally took over the words and phrases from the language of their masters over the course of several centuries. The Little Russian dialect is what we now call contemptuously surzhik. The talk of the Little Russian peasants of the Poltava and Chernigov regions is the standard of the Little Russian dialect. It is very beautiful and melodious, but, as you understand, it is too primitive to be the language of literature and science.

That is why Ivan Kotlyarevsky's Aeneid was a kind of "joke" of a well-educated Little Russian (whose native language, by the way, was Russian), a parody of Virgil, written in the everyday language of slaves, in order to amuse the high-brow intelligentsia of Russia.

However, at the end of the 19th century, the "Svidomo" decided to appoint Kotlyarevsky as the father of the Ukrainian language. Written lightly and funny, "Aeneid" was only supposed to entertain the capital's intelligentsia, and only then, "Svidomo" literary critics found in its depths a secret, deep meaning - Ukrainian revolutionary satire directed against the Russian "Tsarat".

No less interesting is one of the favorite mythologems of "Svidomo Ukrainians" and about the Valuevsky decree, as it were, forbidding the use of the Ukrainian language, or, more precisely, the Little Russian dialect. One may wonder why it was necessary to do this? How could such a Little Russian dialect harm the Russian Empire?

In fact, this is all complete nonsense. And to be convinced of this, you just need to read the quotation, not torn out of context, but the entire text of the same Valuevsky circular. He prohibited not the Little Russian dialect, but the propaganda of South Russian separatism under the guise of literature for the peasants, and before talking about this, one should recall the subversive activities of the Russophobic Poles on the territory of Little Russia, who were preparing the Polish uprising (1863) and planning to involve Little Russian peasants in it.

In January 1863, the Polish uprising began, and that's why in the summer of 1863 a document appeared entitled "The attitude of the Minister of Internal Affairs to the Minister of Public Education on July 18, made by the Supreme Command." In particular, it said the following:

“Education in all schools, without exception, is carried out in the general Russian language and the use of the Little Russian language in schools is not allowed anywhere; The very question of the usefulness and possibility of using this dialect in schools has not only not been resolved, but even the excitement of this question was accepted by the majority of Little Russians with indignation, often expressed in the press. They very thoroughly prove that there was no special Little Russian language, there is not and cannot be, and that their dialect, used by the common people, is the same Russian language, only spoiled by the influence of Poland on it; that the common Russian language is just as understandable for the Little Russians as for the Great Russians, and even much more understandable than the so-called Ukrainian language, which is now composed for them by some Little Russians and especially Poles ...

This phenomenon is all the more regrettable and deserves attention because it coincides with the political intentions of the Poles, and almost owes its origin to them ...

Taking into account, on the one hand, the present alarming state of society, worried political events, and on the other hand, bearing in mind that the issue of teaching literacy in local dialects has not yet received final resolution in legislation, the Minister of Internal Affairs considered it necessary, pending an agreement with the Minister of Public Education, the Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod and the chief of the gendarmes regarding publishing books in the Little Russian language, to make an order by the censorship department that only such works in this language that belong to the field of fine literature are allowed to be published; by skipping books in the Little Russian language, both spiritual content and educational and generally assigned for the initial reading of the people, stop ... ”.

From the cited text of the Valuevsky circular, popular among "Svidomo," it is not difficult to understand that it did not prohibit the Little Russian dialect and literature, but only blocked the mechanisms of separatism launched by the Poles and Austrians under the overlap of the Ukrainophile movement. And nothing more.

In addition, by the 70s, the censorship restrictions introduced in Russia in 1863 practically did not work. Ukrainophiles freely printed whatever they saw fit. In addition to scientific works, fiction and poetry in Little Russian, cheap popular brochures were published in large editions to educate the masses.

Returning to Shevchenko's poetry, we can say that this is the maximum that could be "squeezed" out of the popular dialect in the literary field. Few people know that half of his texts are written in literary Russian. Shevchenko is a peasant poet, there is no universal, aristocratic depth of thought and refinement of form in him. In fact, the meaning of his work is reduced to the chronic, rhymed anger of a slave to the whole world, which, in his opinion, is unfair to him. It is precisely from the aggressive, whiny, bloodthirsty pathos of his poems that Svidomi "drags along", from the glorification of the Kazatch and Gaidamatchina, from attacks on the "Muscovites", and not from some genius of his works.

When in Galicia they began to sculpt an idol out of him, many churchmen were shocked by his blasphemous poetry and plaintively asked if someone else could be chosen for this role. They were told not to. I had to edit Kobzar, and much of his work was simply concealed from the devout public.

The inability of the peasant dialect to operate with abstract, abstract concepts of science and literature, its primitiveness, "everyday life" was well seen by the activists of the Ukrainophile movement. But the amazing similarity of the Little Russian dialect to the Russian literary language prevented them even more from sleeping peacefully. For them, it was much more terrible than the culture-constructive failure of the peasant “Mova”. For the Poles and Little Russian separatists to "wake up" a separate Ukrainian nation and state, they needed a separate language, as unlike Russian as possible. This is how the idea of ​​creating a literary Ukrainian language arose.

And in the second half of the 19th century, work on the creation of the "ancient Ukrainian language" began to boil in Galicia, and Polish officials, professors, teachers, even xenza, began to engage mainly in philology in order to create a new Russian-Polish language with the assistance of Russian traitors.

First of all, it was raped Russian spelling... Initially, the reformers wanted to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet. However, the mass protests of the population forced them to abandon this intention. Then from the Russian alphabet the Russophobic Ukrainizers dropped such letters as "y", "e", "ъ" and at the same time introduced new ones - "є", "ї" and the apostrophe. This modernized alphabet was imposed on the Russian schools of Galicia, Bukovina and Transcarpathia by order of the Austrian authorities.

When it finally dawned on Kulish (whose phonetic grammar was used as the basis for the Ridnoi Mova grammar) that his Kulishovka was being used by the Poles and Austrians to split the Russians, he became hysterical.

Then the "Ukrainians", Poles and Austrians began to Ukrainianize the vocabulary of the Russian language. Words that at least somehow resembled Russian ones were thrown out of the dictionaries. Instead, they took Polish, German, as well as simply fictitious.

This artificial, hastily cobbled together synthetic language was rigidly imposed through schools on the Russian population of the Austrian Carpathian and Transcarpathian regions. In relation to those who resisted and did not want to give up the Russian language, the authorities and "Svidomo" organized persecution.

At the end of the 19th century, the most significant contribution to holy cause the creation of the Ukrainian language was contributed by the scientific society. Taras Shevchenko, headed by Pan Grushevsky. The main task of their work was the most distant departure from the literary Russian language.

By the way, the modern literary Ukrainian language has nothing to do with the Poltava-Chernigov Little Russian dialect, which seems to be recognized as the standard of the Ukrainian language. In fact, the basis of the modern Ukrainian literary language is the so-called Podgorsk Galician dialect.

This was done because the Little Russian dialect of the Poltava and Chernigov regions has too much in common with the literary Russian language. And the Podgorsk sub-dialect is most of all littered with Polish and German words.

A cross between Little Russian dialects was allowed with great precautions: every Little Russian word or phrase in which common Russian signs were noticed was either rejected or altered. Most willingly, the Russian-Ukrainian reformers reshaped ready-made Polish words in their own way and turned their language into Polish-Galician jargon.

Every citizen of Ukraine can independently verify all this. To do this, you just need to take any non-specialized text from any Ukrainian-language newspaper and check with a dictionary for the presence of warped Polish, German, Czech words in it. Anything that is not of Polish or German origin will turn out to be Russian, interspersed with Newspeak.

This list can be continued for a very long time. If you remove Polish borrowings from the modern Ukrainian language, elementary everyday communication will become extremely difficult.

Even such an old Ukrainophile as Nechuy-Levytsky was forced to note that the language is not being cleansed of "Russisms", but its purposeful substitution.

He wrote: “Professor Hrushevsky took not the Ukrainian language as the basis of his written language, but the Galician govirka with all its ancient forms, even with some Polish cases. To this he added many Polish words that Galicians usually use in conversation and in the book language, and of which there are many in the national language. Before these mixed parts of his language, prof. Grushevsky added many more words from the modern Great Russian language without any need and inserts them into his writings mechanically ... ".

This is how he characterized the “govirka” that Hrushevsky used: “The Galician book scientific language is difficult and not pure due to the fact that it was formed according to the syntax of the Latin or Polish language, since the book scientific Polish language was formed according to the model of heavy Latin, and not Polish folk ... And something so heavy happened that no Ukrainian could read it, no matter how hard he tried. "

Delving deeper into the analysis of the language that Hrushevsky and Co. had constructed, Nechuy-Levitsky was forced to come to the conclusion that all this Galician "Svidomo" public "began to write in some kind of linguistic hodgepodge, similar to a caricature of the Ukrainian folk language and the language of the classics. And they turned out not to be a language, but a kind of “distorted mirror” of the Ukrainian language. "

By its design, the literary Ukrainian language, which is now taught in Ukrainian schools, is included in the West Slavic and not the East Slavic language group... The modern Ukrainian literary language has no connection with the ancient linguistic tradition of southwestern Russia and, in fact, because of its artificiality, unnatural eclecticism, it hangs in the air. It is deprived of that amazing depth of semantic and sound shades that arise in the Russian literary language due to the organic fusion in it of Little Russian, Great Russian, Belarusian dialects and Church Slavonic, rooted in the end of the era of Proto-Slavic unity.

For this reason, the modern Ukrainian literary language is rejected by the spiritual and psychological organization of the Little Russian as something foreign, inconvenient, limiting, emasculating. For us the Little Russians, the "Ukrainian literary language", constructed at the end of the century before last by the Poles and Galicians, is something like Esperanto. With its help, it is possible to maintain the communication process at the level of clerical office work, but it is not intended to convey the entire spectrum of shades of our extremely complex spiritual and intellectual world. With this artificial language introduced from the outside, we limit ourselves, push us onto the path of spiritual and intellectual degradation. Hence our inexorable craving for the Russian language and Russian culture, breaking down all the barriers created by the Ukrainian state.

But, in spite of everything, the newly minted Polish-Galician jargon began to be exported across the border to Little Russia as a "Ridnoi Mova", where it was actively assimilated by the Ukrainophile sectarians. At the beginning of the 20th century, “Ukrainian-language” newspapers began to be published there with Austrian money. But the funniest thing about this was that the periodicals of the "Ukrainophiles" did not find a reader. The Little Russian people simply did not understand this strange language. If it were not for constant foreign cash injections, the "Ukrainian" press would quietly and quickly disappear by itself

As you can see, what is now called the “Ukrainian language” was so “native” for the Little Russians that without “special training” it was extremely difficult for them to understand it.

When, after the revolution, the Central Rada reigned in Kiev, proclaiming the Ukrainian People's Republic, the first stage of the forced Ukrainization of Little Russia began. However, the opportunity that suddenly fell on the head of the Little Russians to be reborn in the guise of a “Ukrainian” did not cause delight and euphoria in anyone except a small handful of “Svidomo” rural intelligentsia. The peasants were, at best, indifferent to nationalist slogans, they provoked irritation and indignation among the Little Russian intelligentsia, especially when it suddenly became clear that for some reason everyone had to switch to the “language” which no one knew and did not want to know.

In her memoirs about the events of 1917-1918 in Ukraine, the wife of the Ukrainian Prime Minister Golubovich, Kardinalovskaya, wrote that the Kiev intelligentsia reacted extremely negatively to Ukrainization. The woman was greatly impressed by the long lists of people published in the newspaper Russkaya Mysl who signed under the slogan "I protest against the forced Ukrainization of the Southwestern Territory."

And here is how the Party worker described already in 1926, at the height of the already Soviet Ukrainization, the situation with the “ridiculous” in Lugansk: “I am convinced that 50% of the Ukrainian peasantry does not understand this Ukrainian language, the other half, if it does, then still worse than the Russian language ... Then why such a treat for the peasants? He asked reasonably.

Now the same situation, over the years of intensive Ukrainization in the "nezalezhny", for most of the Little Russians, "Ridna Mova" is something like a special Russian-Polish jargon, serving as the business language of the ruling classes of society, a kind of Latin, in which official documents are written, and officials and politicians communicate.

But when a modern Little Russian finds himself in an informal setting, when he communicates with friends, relatives, loved ones, he switches to his native Russian or Little Russian dialect. We do not have bilingualism, as is commonly believed, but trilingualism. Somewhere 95% of the population of modern Ukraine speaks and thinks either in Russian or in the Little Russian dialect (surzhik). And only an insignificant handful of trained "Svidomo Ukrainians" speak in principle in the literary Ukrainian language.

The Svidomo do not have the resources and time to properly brainwash the population. The maximum they can do is force television channels to make funny captions for Russian films and broadcasts in clumsy Ukrainian, or translate the Russian dubbing of Western films into the terrible Ukrainian language, when their heroes speak three languages ​​at once, first in English, then in Russian and to top it off in Ukrainian.

The Ukrainian language is a familiar stranger, everything you need to know about the language is in our article:

• Dialects of the Ukrainian language
• Ukrainian language - alphabet, letters, transcription
• Ukrainian language - listen, watch online: Ukrainian songs

7 basic facts about the Ukrainian language

1. Ukrainian language (self-name: Ukrainian mova) is the language of Ukrainians, one of the Slavic languages.
2. Close to Belarusian and Russian. According to the genetic classification, the Ukrainian language belongs to the East Slavic subgroup Slavic group Indo-European family.
3. Distributed mainly on the territory of Ukraine, as well as in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Serbia and among the descendants of emigrants in Canada, USA, Argentina, Australia.
4. Is an the state language Ukraine.
5. In a number of states of Central and Eastern Europe, in which Ukrainians, as a rule, are settled compactly (Poland, Slovakia, Serbia, Romania and other countries), Ukrainian has the status of a language of a national minority or a regional language.
6. The total number of Ukrainian speakers in the world is from 36 to 45 million people.
7. In Ukraine, Ukrainian is native to 31,971 thousand Ukrainians (85.2%) and 328 thousand Russians.

How to speak Ukrainian - the specifics of the language and pronunciation

• There is no acanya in Ukrainian;
• vowel / i / in place of Old Russian / ê / and Old Russian / o / and / e / in new closed syllables: snig"snow", sil"salt", nic"Carried" (Old Russian. snҍg, salt, nesl);
• Phoneme / and / (s) in place of Old Russian / i /: miles[miliy] "cute";
• There is no softness of consonants before / e / and / and /: carried"Carried", great"big";
• Voiced consonants at the end of a word: oak[oak] "oak", nizh[nizh] "knife", rig[рiг] "horn";
• Soft end / c ′ /: finger"finger", kinets"the end";
• Instrumental endings -th, —her without reducing them to -o, -he: water"Water" earth"Earth";
• Masculine endings -ovi, -evi in the shape of dative case singular regardless of the type of stem: brothers i"Brother" horses"Horse";
• Short forms of feminine and neuter adjectives in nominative and accusative: nova"New", new"New", new"new", new"New";
• Infinitive base on - ti: carry"carry", wear"wear", read"Read" and the loss of the infinitive on* -či;
• Synthetic future tense of verbs: kupuvatima"I will buy", bitimesh"You will beat";

• Vowel sounds in the Ukrainian literary language under stress are pronounced distinctly: [punishment] (ɑ), [pride] (ɔ), [osso] (u), [séa] (ɛ), [cŕtsa] (ɪ), [liviy] ( i). The literary language is also characterized by a clear pronunciation of [a], [y], [i], [o] in unstressed syllables: [raspberry], [kuwati], [pishoў], [milk].
• In unstressed syllables, [e] is pronounced with the approach of [s], and [s] sounds like [e]. for example: [se and lo], [te y che], [dy e vys ’]. However, depending on the place in the word, on the nature of the neighboring sounds, the approximation [e] to [s] and [and] to [e] is not always the same. Before the composition according to the marked [e], the vowel [and] is pronounced as [ei], and the vowel [e] before the composition of the marked [and] sounds like [andі]: [teihen'ky], [min'i]. Unstressed [and] before the next [th] is pronounced distinctly [good], [cheirvony].
• Voiced consonants [j], [dz], [dz '] in the Ukrainian literary language are pronounced as one sound, which distinguishes them from the pronunciation of sound combinations [d] + [z], [d] + [z], [d] + [ h '].
• Hissing consonants [w], [h], [w], [j] before vowels [a], [o], [y], [e], [and] and before consonants are pronounced firmly in the Ukrainian literary language.
• In the speech stream, the consonant sounds [w], [h], [w] are likened to the following sounds [z], [c], [s], and the sounds [s], [c], [s] are likened to the following [f], [h], [w]. pronounced [zvaz's'a], [stez'ts'i], [sm'iyes ': a], not [muts's'a], [r'its': i], [zr'їsh: and ], [zhcheplein ': a], write zvazhsya, stitches, smiles, do not suffer, ricci, zrishi, wickedness.
• In a speech stream, the combination of a soft sound [t ’] with soft [s’] or [c ’] forms an elongated soft sound [c’:] or [c ’]. It is pronounced [robian: a], [t'itts': і], [brats'ky], it is written “shy”, “tittsi”, “fraternal”.
• In the speech stream ringing sound[z] in combination with other consonants is pronounced loudly: [z] ’їzd, [z] side, [z] year, li [z] ti, Moro [z] ko. The prefix z-, as a preposition, before the voiceless consonant turns into s-: pronounced [s'ts'iditi], spelled zsiditi, pronounced [sushiti], spelled zsushiti. Changing the prefix z- to c- is fixed by spelling, if the prefix is ​​in front of k, p, t, x, f: say, spitati, sturbation, schility, photograph.
• In the speech stream, voiceless consonants in front of voiced consonants are likened to paired voiced, become voiced: [beard] is pronounced, but fight is written (cf. struggling), [prozba] is pronounced, but a request is written (see ask), [khojby] is pronounced but hoh bi is written (Wed want).
• In the speech stream, the consonants [d], [t], [l], [n], [z], [s], [c] - softened in combination with soft: [м'іц'н'іс'т '] , [n'is'l'a], [s'v'ato], [g'id'n'i].
• The consonant [v] at the end of a syllable, at the beginning of a word before a consonant, is pronounced as a non-syllable sound [ў], which cannot be likened to a voiceless consonant [f]. In the speech stream, there is an alternation of sounds [y] - [b], [i] - [y], which makes it possible to avoid an undesirable, difficult for pronunciation combination of consonants.
• The alternation of [y] - [in], [i] - [d] depends on what sound - consonant or vowel - the previous word ends and the next one begins.

But the general specificity of the language is quite variable in dialects, and local dialects are very different from each other.

Dialects of the Ukrainian language

Dialects of the Ukrainian language are divided into three main dialects (or dialect groups)

• Northern (Polissya) dialect ( pivnichne, poliske narichchya). The features of the dialects of the northern dialect were formed under the influence of neighboring dialects Belarusian language... Includes East Polesie (Left-Bank Polesie), Srednepolesie (Right-Bank Polesie) and West Polesie (Volyn-Polesie) dialects.
• Southwest dialect ( pіvdenno-zadne naarіchchy). It is distinguished by significant dialectal fragmentation due to foreign language influence (Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, etc.), long-term isolation of certain dialects within various states and administrative-territorial units, partly by geographical conditions (relative isolation in the mountain valleys of the Carpathians). The features of the dialects of the southwestern dialect are noted in the South Russian language, as well as in the speech of the majority of the descendants of Ukrainian emigrants in the USA, Canada and other countries. Includes three subgroups of dialects:
  • Volyn-Podolsk (Volyn and Podolsk dialects);
  • Galician-Bukovinian (Podnistrovian, Pokut-Bukovinian (nadrut), Hutsul (East Carpathian) and Posan dialects);
  • Carpathian (Boykovsky (North Carpathian, or North Carpathian), Transcarpathian (Middle Carpathian, Subcarpathian, or South Carpathian) and Lemko (West Carpathian) dialects).
• Southeast dialect ( pіvdenno-skіdne naarіchchya). In comparison with other Ukrainian dialects, it is the most homogeneous. The dialects of the southeastern dialect are the basis of the modern Ukrainian literary language (along with the southeastern linguistic features, a number of features of other Ukrainian dialects also entered the literary language, first of all, the dialects of the southwestern dialect). The dialectal peculiarities of the southeastern dialect (along with the peculiarities of the northern) underlie the dialects of Ukrainian settlers in Russia (in the Kuban, in the Volga region, Siberia, in Far East), Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Includes Middle Dnieper, Slobozhansk and steppe dialects.

Ukrainian language - alphabet

The Ukrainian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, the alphabet consists of 33 letters.

The peculiarities of the Ukrainian alphabet in comparison with other Cyrillic ones is the presence of letters Ґ , Є and Ї

Letter	Name	IPA
Ah	a / ɑ /	/ɑ/
B b	bе / bɛ /	/ b /
In in	ve / ʋɛ /	/ ʋ /, / w /
G g	ge / ɦɛ /	/ɦ/
Ґ ґ	ґе / gɛ /	/ g /
D d	de / dɛ /	/ d /
Her	e / e /	/ɛ/
Є є	є / je /	/ jɛ /, / ʲɛ /
F f	same / ʒɛ /	/ʒ/
Z z	ze / zɛ /	/ z /
And and	and / ɪ /	/ɪ/
I i	i / i /	/ i /, / ʲi /, / ɪ /, / ʲɪ /
Ї ї	ї / ji /	/ ji /, / jɪ /
Th y	jot / jɔt /	/ j /
K k	ka / kɑ /	/ k /
L l	el / ɛl /	/ l /
Mm	em / ɛm /	/ m /

Letter	Name	IPA
N n	en / ɛn /	/ n /
Oh oh	o / ɔ /	/ɔ/
N n	ne / pɛ /	/ p /
P p	ep / ɛr /	/ r /
With	eu / ɛs /	/ s /
T t	te / tɛ /	/ t /
U u	y / u /	/ u /
F f	ef / ɛf /	/ f /
X x	ha / xɑ /	/ x /
Ts c	tse / t͡sɛ /	/ t͡s /
H h	what // t͡ʃɛ /	// t͡ʃ /
W w	sha / ʃɑ /	/ʃ/
U u	ucha / ʃt͡ʃɑ /	/ ʃt͡ʃ /
B b	m'yaky sign / mjɑˈkɪj znɑk /	/ʲ/
Yu yu	yu / ju /	/ ju /, / ʲu /
I am i	i / ja /	/ jɑ /, / ʲɑ /

An example of a text in Ukrainian

The development of the literary process is both versatile and not unambiguous among bagatech relationships. At the same time, there are a number of features that change from capital to capital, which characterize the cultural and artistic unity of the Ukrainian literature. At the connection with the cim, a good look, the artistic word in the Ukrainian art is not only in the houses of literary centers, but in the context of regions. Varto respect that such studios are guilty of relying on the idea of ​​artistic integrity of the Ukrainian literature, on the unique character of the cultural process.

Ukrainian language - listen, watch online: films in Ukrainian, Ukrainian songs

"Bachu-bachu, I smell-feel" - Nova positive Ukrainian song!

Ukrainian Music

DESPACITO (Here by the light) Ukrainian version

Just for fun

The Ukrainian language was created in 1794 on the basis of some features of the South Russian dialects that still exist in the Rostov and Voronezh regions and, at the same time, are absolutely mutually understandable with the Russian language that exists in Central Russia. It was created by deliberate distortion of common Slavic phonetics, in which, instead of common Slavic "o" and "ѣ", they began to use the sound "i", "xv" instead of "f" for a comic effect, and also by clogging the language with heterodox borrowings and deliberately invented neologisms.

In the first case, this was expressed in the fact that, for example, a horse that sounds like a horse in both Serbian and Bulgarian, and even in Luzhitsa, began to be called kin in Ukrainian. The cat began to be called kit, and so that the cat would not be confused with the whale, the whale began to be pronounced as kyt.

According to the second principle the stool has become a doctor, a runny nose is undead, and an umbrella has become a razchipirka... Then the Soviet Ukrainian philologists replaced the roschipirka with a parasol (from the French parasol), returned the stool Russian name, since the doctor sounded not quite decent, and the runny nose remained undead. But in the years of independence, common Slavic and international words began to be replaced by artificially created ones, stylized as common folk lexemes. As a result, the midwife became a numb-cutter, the lift became a pidyomnik, the mirror became a chandelier, the percentage became vid, and the gearbox became a screen-hover.

As for the declension and conjugation systems, the latter were simply borrowed from the Church Slavonic language, which until the middle of the 18th century performed the function of a common literary language for all Orthodox Slavs and even among the Vlachs, who later renamed themselves Romanians.

Initially, the scope of the future language was limited to everyday satirical works that ridicule the illiterate chatter of marginal social strata.

Inventor of the Little Russian dialect Ivan Petrovich Kotlyarevsky

The first to synthesize the so-called Little Russian language, there was a Poltava nobleman Ivan Kotlyarevsky... In 1794, for the sake of joke, Kotlyarevsky created a kind of yazyk padonkaff, on which he wrote a playful arrangement “ Aeneids"The greatest ancient Roman poet Publius Virgil Maron.

"Aeneid" by Kotlyarevsky at that time was perceived as macaroni poetry - a kind of comic poems created according to the principle formulated by the then Franco-Latin proverb " Qui nescit motos, forgere debet eos"- who does not know the words, must create them. This is how the words of the Little Russian dialect were created.

The inventor of the "Siberian language" Yaroslav Anatolyevich Zolotarev

The creation of artificial languages, as practice has shown, is available not only to philologists. So, in 2005, a Tomsk businessman created the so-called Siberian language, "Which has gone from the times of Velikovo Novgorod and have come down to our days in the narechchi of the Siberian people".

In this pseudo-language, on October 1, 2006, an entire section of Wikipedia was even created, numbering more than five thousand pages and deleted on November 5, 2007. In terms of content, the project was the mouthpiece of the politically active non-lovers of "This Country". As a result, every second SibWiki article was a non-illusory masterpiece of Russophobic trolling. For example: "After the Bolshevik coup, the Bolsheviks mocked Central Siberia, and then completely pushed Siberia to Rossei"... To all this, poems of the first poet of the Siberian dialect Zolotarev with speaking names were attached "Moskalska bastard" and "Moskalski vy..dki"... Using the rights of an administrator, Zolotarev rolled back any edits as written “in a foreign language.

If this activity had not been covered up in the very embryo, then already now we would have had a movement of Siberian separatists, inspiring Siberians that they are separate people that one should not feed the Muscovites (non-Siberian Russians were called that way in this language), but one should independently trade in oil and gas, for which it is necessary to establish an independent Siberian state under the patronage of America.

"Ukrov" was invented by Tadeusz Chatsky

The idea of ​​creating a separate national language on the basis of the language invented by Kotlyarevsky was first picked up by the Poles - the former masters of the Ukrainian lands: A year after the appearance of Kotlyarevsky's "Aeneid" Jan Pototsky urged to call the lands of Volynsha and Podolia, which have recently become part of Russia, the word "Ukraine", and the people inhabiting them, to call them not Russians, but Ukrainians. Another Pole, Count Tadeusz Chatsky deprived of his estates after the second partition of Poland, in his work "O nazwiku Ukrajnj i poczatku kozakow" became the inventor of the term " Ukr". It was Chatsky who produced it from some unknown horde of “ancient ukrovs” who had allegedly left the Volga in the 7th century.

At the same time, the Polish intelligentsia began to make attempts to codify the language invented by Kotlyarevsky. So, in 1818 in St. Petersburg Alexei Pavlovsky was published "Grammar of the Little Russian dialect", but in Ukraine itself this book was received with hostility. Pavlovsky was scolded for the introduction of Polish words, was called lyakh, and in "Adding Little Russian Grammar to the Grammar" published in 1822, he specifically wrote: "I swear to you that I am your one-man"... The main innovation of Pavlovsky was that he proposed writing "i" instead of "ѣ" in order to aggravate the differences between the South Russian and Central Russian dialects that had begun to fade.

But the most big step in the propaganda of the so-called Ukrainian language, there was a major hoax associated with the artificially created image of Taras Shevchenko, who, being illiterate, in fact did not write anything, and all his works were the fruit of mystifying labor at first Evgeniya Grebenki, and then Panteleimon Kulish.

The Austrian authorities viewed the Russian population of Galicia as a natural counterbalance to the Poles. However, at the same time, they were afraid that the Russians would sooner or later want to join Russia. Therefore, the idea of ​​Ukrainians was the most convenient for them - the artificially created people could be opposed to both the Poles and the Russians.

The first who began to introduce the newly invented dialect into the minds of the Galicians was the Greek Catholic canon Ivan Mogilnitsky... Together with Metropolitan Levitsky, Mogilnitsky in 1816, with the support of the Austrian government, began to create primary schools with the "local language" in Eastern Galicia. True, Mogilnitsky slyly called the "local language" he promoted as Rus.

Austrian government assistance to Mogilnitsky the main theorist of Ukrainianism Grushevsky, who also existed on Austrian grants, argued as follows:

"The Austrian government, in view of the deep enslavement of the Ukrainian population by the Polish gentry, sought ways to raise the latter socially and culturally."

A distinctive feature of the Galician-Russian revival is its complete loyalty and extreme servility towards the government, and the first work in the "local language" was a poem Markiyan Shashkevich in honor of Emperor Franz, on the occasion of his name day.

December 8, 1868 in Lviv under the auspices of the Austrian authorities was created All-Ukrainian partnership "Prosvita" named after Taras Shevchenko.

To have an idea of ​​what the real Little Russian dialect was like in the 19th century, you can read an excerpt from the then Ukrainian text:

“Reading the euphonious text of the Word, it is not difficult to overshadow its poetic definition; For this, I tried not only to correct the text of the same internally, but also to restore the original poetic structure of the Word in the external form, if possible. "

Jews went further ukrov

The society set itself the goal of promoting the Ukrainian language among the Russian population of Chervona Rus. In 1886, a member of the society Evgeny Zhelekhovsky invented the Ukrainian writing without "ъ", "e" and "ѣ". In 1922, this writing in Zhelikhovka became the basis for the Radian Ukrainian alphabet.

Through the efforts of society in the Russian gymnasiums in Lvov and Przemysl, teaching was translated into the Ukrainian language invented by Kotlyaresky for the sake of joke, and the ideas of Ukrainian identity began to be instilled in the pupils of these gymnasiums. The graduates of these gymnasiums began to prepare teachers of public schools, who brought the Ukrainians to the masses. The result was not long in coming - before the collapse of Austria-Hungary, it was possible to raise several generations of a Ukrainian-speaking population.

This process took place in front of the Galician Jews, and the experience of Austria-Hungary was successfully used by them: a similar process of artificially introducing an artificial language was carried out by the Zionists in Palestine. There, the bulk of the population was forced to speak Hebrew - the language invented by a Luzhkov Jew. Lazar Perelman(better known as Eliezer Ben Yehuda, Hebrew אֱלִיעֶזֶר בֶּן־יְהוּדָה).

In 1885, Hebrew was recognized as the only language of instruction in some subjects at the Jerusalem School of Bible and Labor. In 1904, Hilfsfein founded the Union for Mutual Aid of German Jews. Jerusalem's first teachers' seminary for Hebrew teachers. Hebrewization of names and surnames was widely practiced. All Moses became Moshe, Solomon - Shlomo. Hebrew was not just heavily promoted. The propaganda was reinforced by the fact that from 1923 to 1936, the so-called units of the defense of the Gdut Meginay Hasafa language (גדוד מגיני השפה) were prowling through Palestine under the British mandate, which beat the muzzles of all those who spoke not Hebrew, but Yiddish. Particularly stubborn muzzles were beaten to death. Borrowing of words is not allowed in Hebrew. Even the computer is not in it קאמפיוטער , a מחשב , the umbrella is not שירעם (from the German der Schirm), and מטריה and the midwife is not אַבסטאַטרישאַן , a מְיַלֶדֶת - almost like a Ukrainian navel cutter.

7 facts about the Ukrainian language that Ukrainians consider indisputable

(taken from the Urainian site 7dniv.info)

1. The oldest mention of the Ukrainian language dates back to 858. Slavic educator Constantine (Cyril) Philosopher, describing his stay in the Crimean city of Chersonesos (Korsun) during a trip from Byzantium to the Khazars, notes that: "Chlovka obrgat verb Russian conversation"... And for the first time, the Ukrainian language was equated to the level of the literary language at the end of the 18th century after the publication in 1798 of the first edition of the "Aeneid", the author of which is Ivan Kotlyarevsky... It is he who is considered the founder of the new Ukrainian literary language.

2. The oldest grammar in Ukraine called "The grammar of the good-spoken Hellenic-Slovenian language" was published by the Stavropigiysky printing house of the Lvov brotherhood in 1651.

3. In the 2nd half of the XIX century. the letters y, b, e, b fell out of the civil alphabet in Ukraine; the letters and i were fixed by different sounds.

4. Byzantine traveler and historian Prisk Pannian in 448, being in the camp of the Hunnic leader Attila, on the territory of modern Ukraine wrote down the words "honey" and "strava", this is a mention of the very first Ukrainian words.

5. The basis of the modern spelling system was spelling, applied by B. Grinchenko in the "Dictionary of Ukrainian language" in 1907 - 1909.

6. The "most Ukrainian" letter, that is, not used in the alphabets of other peoples, is "g". This breakthrough sound was denoted in various ways in the Ukrainian letter by at least from the XIV century, and from 1619 the letter g leads the genealogy in the Ukrainian alphabet, which, as a variety of the Greek "scale", was first introduced by M. Smotrytsky in his "Gramatitsi".

7. "The most passive", that is, the least frequently used letter of the Ukrainian alphabet, is "f".

"Yazyk padonkaff" or "who does not know the words, must create them"

As you can see, the Ukrainians themselves admit that he invented the current "Ridnu Mova" at the end of the 18th century. Ivan Kotlyarevky, but they are silent about its playful creation by deliberately distorting common Slavic phonetics and littering the language with heterodox borrowings and deliberately invented neologisms like health care.

Modern ukrophilologists are also silent that Kotlyarevsky's "Aeneid" in the 18th century was perceived precisely as macaroni poetry - a kind of comic poetry. Now it is presented as an epic work of the Little Russians.

No one stutters at all about why the letter "f" has become the least used in Ukrainian Newspeak. After all, Kotlyarevsky in the newly invented Little Russian language replaced the sound "f" with "hv" exclusively for comic effect.

Eh, Ivan Petrovich knew what crap he had invented ... However, he was horrified during his lifetime when he found out what his linguistic tricks had led him to. An innocent joke of a Poltava nobleman became a nightmare in reality.

Ukraine is preparing to switch to the Latin alphabet

Sergiy Mironovich Kvit

The Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, a member of the Petro Poroshenko bloc and a member of the right-wing Ukrainian nationalist organization "Trident" named after S. Bandera said in one of his private conversations that soon Ukraine will switch to the Latin script. According to the minister, such a decision will lead to significant savings in budgetary funds due to the fact that the interfaces of computers, mobile phones, smartphones and other equipment will not have to be changed to the Cyrillic alphabet.

Also, the introduction of the Latin alphabet in Ukraine will greatly simplify the stay of foreign tourists in the country and make it more comfortable, and, therefore, will contribute to the influx of tourists from Europe.

I must say that the project for the transition to the Latin alphabet was proposed even under Yanukovych. The author of the bill was then a deputy with the characteristic surname Latynin.

cyrillic | Latin alphabet | pronunciation

a A a A [a]
b B b B [b]
in B v V [v] / [w]
г Г gh Gh [γ]
ґ Ґ g G [g]
d D d D [d]
e E e E [e]
є Є je Je / [‘e]
f F zh Zh [h]
З З z Z [z]
and AND y Y [y]
і І i I [i]
ї Ї ji Ji
th J j J [j]
k K k K [k]
l L l L [l]
m M m M [m]
n N n N [n]
o O o O [o]
p P p P [p]
р Р r R [r]
with С s S [s]
t T t T [t]
у у у u U [u]
ф Ф f F [f]
x X kh Kh [x]
c C c C
h h ch ch
Ш Ш sh Sh [∫]

However, then this project was blocked by the communists. Now, when the communists were simply expelled from the Rada, no one will prevent the nationalists from abandoning everything national in favor of the "universal". nevertheless, preparations for such a transition had been going on latently all the previous years. So, on January 27, 2010, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine issued Resolution No. 55, in which it streamlined the rules of transliteration of the Ukrainian alphabet in Latin letters, approving the transliteration table, and the corresponding GOST was adopted on July 11, 1996. The official system of Ukrainian transliteration is based more on political than on scientific principles and is too closely tied to the English spelling. The motivation for such a close connection is the arguments, allegedly, firstly, if the English language in the modern globalized world is international, then all transliterations must be strictly subordinate to the norms of English spelling.

Galician nationalists, who were still fed by the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, tried to write in Latin in Ukrainian. However, even the creator of the Ukrainian Latin alphabet, the so-called "abetsadlo", Iosif Lozinsky, later reconsidered his position and completely broke with the Ukrainophil movement. In 1859, the Czech Slavist Josef Irechek proposed his own version of the Ukrainian Latin alphabet based on the Czech alphabet.

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