Ruthenian (also known as
Chancery Slavonic or
Western Russian) is a term used for the
varieties of
Eastern Slavonic spoken in the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Scholars do not agree whether Ruthenian was a separate language or a Western dialect(s) of
Old East Slavic, but it is agreed that Ruthenian has a close genetic relationship with it. Old East Slavic was the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus' (10th – 13th centuries). It can be seen as a predecessor of modern
Belarusian and
Ukrainian.
Nomenclature
In modern texts, the language in question is sometimes called "Old Belarusian" (Belarusian
starabiełaruskaja mova), "Old Ukrainian" (Ukrainian
staroukrajinska mova) or "Western Russian" (Russian
zapadnorusskij jazyk). As Ruthenian was always in a kind of
diglossic opposition to
Church Slavonic, this vernacular language was and still is often called
prosta(ja) mova (
Cyrillic проста(я) мова, literally "simple language". Contemporary sources only rarely draw any distinction between the dialect of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the dialect of the
Grand Principality of Vladimir.
On the other hand there exists a school of thought that
Old Belarusian and
Old Ukrainian must be considered as separate historical languages.
Names in contemporary use
- Ruthenian (Old Belarusian: руски езыкъ) — by the contemporaries, but, generally, not in contemporary Muscovy.
- * (variant) Simple Ruthenian or simple talk (Old Belarusian: простый руский (язык) or простая молва) — publisher Grigoriy Khodkevich (16th century).
- Lithuanian () — possibly, exclusive reference to it in the contemporary Muscovy. Also by Zizaniy (end 16th cent.), Pamva Berynda (1653).
Names in modern use
- (Old) Ruthenian — modern collective name, covering both Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian languages, predominantly used by the 20th cent. Lithuanian, also many Polish and English researches.
- (Old) West Russian, language or dialect (, ) — chiefly by the supporters of the concept of the Proto-Russian phase, esp. since the end of the 19th century, e.g., by Karskiy, Shakhmatov.
- (Old) Belarusian (language) — rarely in contemporary Muscovy. Also Kryzhanich. The denotation Belarusian (language) () when referring both to the 19th century language and to the Medieval language had been used in works of the 19th cent. Russian researchers Fyodor Buslayev, Ogonovskiy, Zhitetskiy, Sobolevskiy, Nedeshev, Vladimirov and Belarusian nationalists, such as Karskiy.
- Lithuanian-Russian () — by 19 cent. Russian researchers Keppen, archbishop Filaret, Sakharov, Karatayev.
- Lithuanian-Slavonic () — by 19 cent. Russian researcher Baranovskiy.
- Russian-Polish or even Polish dialect — Shtritter, Polish researcher Samuel Bogumił Linde, Polish writer Wisniewski. Notably, the definition had been used even when referencing to Skaryna’s translation of Bible.
Note that ISO/DIS 639-3 and SIL currently assigns the code
rue for the language which is documented with native name "русин (
rusyn)", that they simply named "Ruthenian" in English (and "
ruthène" in French) instead "modern Ruthenian" (and "ruthène moderne" in French) : this code is now designated as the
Rusyn language.
Divergence between literary Ruthenian and literary Russian
As
Eastern Europe gradually freed itself from the "
Tatar yoke" in the 14th century, there were four princes that adopted the title of
Grand Duke. Two of them started to collect the East Slavic territories: one in
Moscow and one in
Vilnius. These activities resulted in two separate mainly East Slavic states, the
Grand Duchy of Moscow, which eventually evolved into the Russian Empire, and the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which covered roughly the territories of modern
Belarus,
Ukraine and
Lithuania and later united with
Poland to form the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Linguistically, both states continued to use the regional varieties of the literary language of
Kievan Rus', but due to the immense
Polish influence in the west and to the
Church Slavonic influence in the east, they gradually developed into two distinct literary languages: Ruthenian in Lithuania and the Commonwealth, and
(Old) Russian in Muscovy. Both were usually called
Ruskij (of Rus’) or
Slovenskij (Slavonic); only when a differentiation between the literary language of Muscovy and the one of Lithuania was needed was the former called
Moskovskij 'Muscovite' (and, rarely, the latter
Lytvynskij 'Lithuanian').
This linguistic divergence is confirmed by the need for translators during the mid 17th century negotiations for the
Treaty of Pereyaslav, between
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, ruler of the
Zaporozhian Host, and the
Russian state.
Continuing Polish influence
Since the
Union of Lublin in 1569, the southern territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania came under direct administration by the Polish Crown, whereas the north retained some autonomy. It is possible that this resulted in differences concerning the status of Ruthenian as an
official language and the intensity of Polish influence on Ruthenian. However, in both parts of the Commonwealth inhabited by Eastern Slavs, Ruthenian remained a
lingua franca, and in both parts it was gradually replaced by Polish as a language of literature, religious polemic, and official documents.
New national languages
Ethnographic map of the Slavic peoples prepared by Czech ethnographer
Lubor Niederle showing territorial boundaries of Slavic languages in Eastern Europe in the mid 1920's
With the beginning of
romanticism at the turn of the 19th century, literary Belarusian and literary Ukrainian appeared, descendant from the popular spoken dialects and little-influenced by literary Ruthenian. Meanwhile,
Russian retained a layer of
Church Slavonic "high vocabulary", so that nowadays the most striking lexical differences between Russian on the one hand and Belarusian and Ukrainian on the other are the much greater share of Slavonicisms in the former and of Polonisms in the latter.
The split between literary Ruthenian and the successor literary languages can be seen at once in the newly-designed
Belarusian and
Ukrainian orthographies.
The interruption of the literary tradition was especially drastic in Belarusian: In the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,
Polish had largely replaced Ruthenian as the language of administration and literature. After that Belarusian only survived as a rural spoken language without almost any written tradition until the mid-nineteenth century.
In contrast to the Belarusians and Eastern Ukrainians, the Western Ukrainians who came to live in
Austria-Hungary retained not only the name
Ruthenian but also much more of the Church Slavonic and Polish elements of Ruthenian. For disambiguation, in English these Ukrainians are usually called by the native form of their name,
Rusyns.
Thus, by 1800, the literary Ruthenian language had evolved into three modern literary languages. For their further development, see
Belarusian language,
Rusyn language, and
Ukrainian language.
See also
