How did Ukrainian language originate? History of the development of the Ukrainian language.

The emergence of Ukrainian writing

I continue to debunk the myths and falsifications of Svidomo historians and modern Ukrainian language scholars regarding the Ukrainian language.

For the first time, modern Ukrainian writing and Ukrainian letters appeared in 1857 and were developed by Panteleimon Kulish.

The Kulish system or “Kulishovka” (Ukrainian kulishivka) is a Ukrainian spelling named after P. A. Kulish, who used it in “Notes on Southern Rus'” (vol. 1, 1856) and in “Grammar” (1857). Later it was used in the magazine "Osnova", which was published in 1861-1862. in St. Petersburg V. M. Belozersky, N. I. Kostomarov and P. A. Kulish.

The new writing system was happily taken up by the Poles, who saw in it another way to alienate the Russian people from Galicia from their brothers in Great Russia and Little Russia.

“You know that the spelling, nicknamed “Kulishivka” in Galicia, was invented by me at a time when everyone in Russia was busy spreading literacy among the common people. In order to make the science of literacy easier for people who do not have 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. Poles are pleased that not all Russians write the same way in Russian; They have recently especially begun to praise my invention: they base their absurd plans on it and therefore are ready to flatter even such an opponent as me... Now I am tempted to write a new statement of the same kind regarding the “kulishivka” they extol. Seeing this banner in enemy hands, I will be the first to strike at it and renounce my spelling in the name of Russian unity.”

Despite the fact that he did such a disservice to the Ukrainians, he was not a stupid man and realized his mistake. He later wrote:

“Without ezuita Lyakh, Moskal without bureaucrat

There is a friend and a brother among us.

That's why the Dnieper hates my brother, the wild one,

Three times as great as one empire.”

Here's what the innovations in Ukrainian spelling looked like:

The letter i was used

in place of the old yat (summer, hay, autumn);

in place of the old [o], [e] in closed syllables (style, zhinka, pich);

in place of the iotized one (Ukraine, moikh, quiet).

The letter ы was not used, being replaced by i (blue, fox).

The letter ъ was used as a dividing sign in the middle and at the end of words after consonants (five, rozvyazav, wind, smіkh).

The letter є in the original version of kulishovka was used only after soft consonants in neuter nouns (vesille, tret, schaste). The sound [e] was conveyed by the letter e (friend, sister); the combination after vowels (walking, thinking) was also transmitted at first - in the late Kulishovka, in the latter case, they also began to use є (vіluchaє, dvoe, svoe).

The letter e was used (yom, tear, technuv, folk).

The plosive [g] was originally rendered by the Latin letter g (dziga, gulya), later by the letter ґ, including as the preposition “to” (directly ґ desert Moab).

In the third person of reflexive verbs it was written -t(b)tsya (turn around, vsmіkhnettsya), later -tsya (people, stanetstsya); in the second person - -shsya and -ssya (odіbyeshsya, vіtaєssya).

At the same time, the prefixes ros- and roz- (rosskazhut, rozchervonitsya) were used.

Instead of f, xv was often used: hvaraon, Khvilistimska land, Sikhv, Yakhvet or (before consonants) x: Ehraim; in place of fita - kht: Makhtusailo.

The modern Ukrainian language is based on a different system.

The Zhelehovsky system or “Zhelehovka” (Ukrainian zhelehivka) is a spelling system for the Ukrainian language, developed and first used by E. Zhelehovsky in the “Little Russian-German Dictionary”, published in Lviv in 1886, and declared official for the Ukrainian language in Austria-Hungary in 1893. Gradually replaced alternative systems. Used until 1922 (in some editions - until the 1940s). On its basis, in the 1920s, the current Ukrainian spelling was created that replaced it, completely coinciding with it in alphabet and differing in the points listed below, aimed at adapting to Eastern Ukrainian phonological norms.

There are few differences from the current Ukrainian spelling; the alphabet is completely the same. Main features:

additional verbs -mu, -mesh, -me in the forms of the future tense and the reflexive particle -sya are written separately with the verb: took sya, robiti me, walk mesh;

after soft lingual consonants (mainly in the place of the old yatya) it is written ї, not і: dd, leto;

after labial consonants there is no dividing apostrophe: byu;

the suffixes of the adjectives -skiy, -tskiy are written without a soft sign, but the softness is indicated [s], [ts] before the following soft consonant: svyatiy, smikh, tsvyakh;

in accordance with the Galician dialect pronunciation, in verbal and collective nouns of the neuter gender it is written є, not i, consonants before the etymological [j] are not doubled.

This is how literary Ukrainian writing arose, subsequently developed by the works of Kotlyarevsky, Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka.

Modern falsifiers of Ukrainian history are trying to convince us that in ancient times in Rus'-Ukraine everyone spoke only Ukrainian, and then, after 1654, the insidious “Muscovites” crept in and forced everyone to speak Russian. It’s even embarrassing to comment on such nonsense. But the main task was to tear Ukrainians away from the huge layer of their native Russian culture by teaching them the Ukrainian language, and it was successfully accomplished by modern Ukrainizers. Children of Independence from Galicia completely stopped understanding the Russian language. Banderstat is now a separate province.

Just a rhetorical question. If the Ukrainian language is not recorded in any ancient document, then how did Ukrainian philologists guess about its existence? And why do they stubbornly call the Russian language ancient Ukrainian in their scribbles?

Professor at Harvard University in the USA, ethnic Ukrainian Roman Shporlyuk, wrote: “The easiest way to destroy Ukraine is to start Ukrainizing non-Ukrainians. The greatest danger to independent Ukraine is represented by language fanatics.”

Formation of the Ukrainian literary language

As the Ukrainian historian and writer Oles Buzina wrote: “It is well known that in 1619 the “Grammar” of Meletiy Smotrytsky, a philologist originally from the town of Smotrych in Podolia, was published.

In the Ukrainian language course it is taught as one of the first “Ukrainian” grammars. And at the same time they inform students that it turned out to be so “successful” that it was taught in Moscow even in the 18th century. So what language does Smotrytsky’s book describe and in what language is it written? We open the original and read on the title page: “The correct syntagma of Slavic grammar, by the indignity of the many-sinful deceiver Meletius Smotritsky.” Does it sound very Ukrainian? Do you know what terms Smotritsky used in his textbook? His tense is “future” and “present”, and not “maybe” and “now”; the number, naturally, is “plural” and “singular”. He uses the term “verb is the bowed part of the word”, and not “dieslovo”, as in modern Ukrainian textbooks. Its cases are “nominative”, “genitive”, “dative”, “accusative”, “vocal”, “instrumental”. “Grammar” by Smotrytsky describes the rules of the Russian language, which was spoken by this educated monk from Podolia.”

The modern Ukrainian literary language began to take shape in the middle of the 19th century, and Kotlyarevsky made a huge contribution to this process with his Aeneid. Although before him, attempts were also made to write something in Ukrainian and translate famous works into it, even the Bible, but what came out as a result could only cause laughter. For example, the same creator of the alphabet, Panteleimon Kulish, translated into Ukrainian the lines from the Bible “Let Israel trust in the Lord” - “Hai dufae Srul na Pana”, and there were many such incidents with translations when writing the first works in Ukrainian. Most often, words missing from the newly created literary language were replaced with Russian or Polish words written in Ukrainian letters.

Kotlyarevsky was the first to publish an essay in the Little Russian language. This language is indicated on the title page of the lifetime edition of his humorous poem "The Aeneid" (1798, first edition). Moreover, the first 3 parts of this work were originally published in St. Petersburg in Russian and only then translated into Little Russian. The original of Kotlyarevsky’s poem is closer in vocabulary to the Russian language than to the Ukrainian language: 74% of word matches with the Russian language, and only 59% of matches with the Ukrainian language. In fact, what is published today as Kotlyarevsky’s poem is far from the original of this work, and is a translation of the Russian-language original of the poem into modern Ukrainian. And this translation begins with the name itself: instead of the word “Aeneid” on the covers of publications in the 20th century. stands for "Eneida". The original of Kotlyarevsky’s “Aeneid” was written in Russian letters, using the then existing alphabet, and was intended for a Russian reader (there was no Ukrainian reader at that time) - after all, this is the first printed work in history in the “Little Russian language”. The original "Aeneid" by Kotlyarevsky was written in Russian. This is exactly what Kotlyarevsky’s Ukrainian falsifiers want to hide. However, this is not so significant, since Kotlyarevsky himself indicated that he was translating his work into Little Russian! A language that later became Ukrainian. The first work written in the literary Ukrainian language can be considered the “Aeneid” by Kotlyarevsky.

From a letter from the Ukrainophile poet P. Grabovsky to Ivan Franko: “We have many people in Ukraine who write in Ukrainian but speak Moscow.”

In fact, the creation of a literary Ukrainian language meant that new Polish words were introduced into the common Russian-Polish dialect or new Ukrainian ones were invented if there were not enough existing Russian and Polish ones.

Although even the icon of Ukrainian nationalism Taras Shevchenko wrote equally a lot in both Ukrainian and Russian. Even the first edition of “Kobzar” in 1840 was written in Russian and its name sounds like “Kobzar”; this soft sign was later removed.

All fiction is in Russian. Even the famous play from the history of the Zaporozhye Cossacks “Nazar Stodolya” was originally written in Russian and only then translated into Ukrainian.

This is what his “Katerina” looked like in its original form:

“Katerino, my heart!

Lyshenko for you!

Where did you come to the suite?

For a little orphan?

Who are you trying, trying,

Without a sweetheart, in a suite?

Father, mats are alien people,

Our lives are hard!..”

The compiler of an explanatory dictionary of the living Great Russian language, V. Dal, once said: “Whoever thinks in what language belongs to that people. I think in Russian." A person reveals his essence most fully in his diaries; here he has no one to show off or flirt with. Everything he writes corresponds to his way of thinking and reflects his worldview. If we look into the diary of Taras Grigorievich, we will notice with surprise that it is written in Russian, therefore Shevchenko thought in Russian, this is understandable, since the Ukrainian language was only acquiring literary features at that time, including thanks to the efforts Shevchenko, and the Russian language, originally inherent to the people, reflected all its semantic richness. Here is a short excerpt from the poet’s diary: “May 12, 1858. I accompanied Gritsko Galagan to Little Russia and went to Countess Nastasya Ivanovna with the goal of setting up a permanent apartment for himself at the Academy. She promises. And I believe her promise." As we see, even Shevchenko uses the term Little Russia, and not Ukraine, in the name of the territory.

An interesting story happened with L. Glebov. Of the 107 fables in the 1894 collection, 87 were stolen from I. Krylov, and the rest from lesser-known authors. The fables were simply translated into Ukrainian and presented as their own. Naturally, the censorship caught such gems and prohibited their publication. After that, complaints about the oppression of Ukrainian literature flowed in a wide stream.

The classic of Ukrainian literature Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky saw in the obsessive Galician penetration into Ukrainian literature a threat to it, this is what he wrote about this: “All this countless number of stolen Polish words, grabbed from Galician books at random, all sorts of wonderful Galician words, all these Galician spelling marks and dots are real guns and cannons with which newspaper writers drive the Ukrainian general public away from Ukrainian literature... The public simply laughs at this newspaper language. And yet the party published three Galician grammars for Ukrainians with Galician cases. I know the main accomplices of this party, since they also pressed me to write like that. I also had Prof. Grushevsky also asked and persuaded me to write in Galician forms in the same way. They don’t read Galician books in Ukraine; they are difficult to read. It was not in vain that I raised a fuss, since we are losing such a wide public. And when Kulish told you that the Galician written language should be thrown into the trash, he was telling the truth... This is the work of a conspiracy of a few neo-Ukrainians who took control of the publications and on whom the proofreading depends.” .

Later, new masterpieces of the Ukrainian language were created in the Ukrainian diaspora. Thus, in Mannheim in 1945, the second edition of the “Prayer Book for the Development of the Ukrainian Orthodox People” was published. There, the Greco-Roman and biblical names of saints, which over a thousand years have become their own in Rus', were replaced by ordinary common nicknames - Timosh, Vasil, Gnat, Gorpina , Natalka, Polinarka. In the last name one can only hardly recognize St. Apollinaris. Women's names in the "prayer book" sound especially creepy to the Orthodox ear, especially when they are preceded by a "martyr" or "venerable": "Holy martyrs Paraska, Todoska, Yavdokha", saints "Yaryna and Gapka", martyrs "Palazhka and Yulka" ", Rev. "Khivrya".

Intrusion into the sacred sphere is an unacceptable act and punishable by Higher powers.

In this regard, I would like to cite a study by runmaster Yuri Larichev regarding the Lord’s Prayer:

“Those familiar with esotericism know the ancient magical symbol (Thoth) - a square, inside it is a triangle, and in the center is a dot. The sequence of numbers is also known: 1, 3, 4. “The One, having bifurcated into the Trinity, manifested itself as the Fourth” (from the Slavic Veda).

The prayer of Jesus Christ is composed in exact accordance with the ancient symbol of Thoth. It consists of one appeal, three affirmative “yes” and four request verbs (give, leave, enter, deliver). The last phrase is “for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen" is not included in the prayer. It is said by the priest after the prayer.

“Our Father, who art in heaven!

Hallowed be Thy name,

May your kingdom come

Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth.

Give us this day our daily bread;

And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors;

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Here are Ukrainians - Greek Catholics (Uniates) and representatives of the separated independent UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate - praying in Ukrainian. Instead of saying “yes” three times, they say their “let’s not” three times. Firstly, “hai” is a slightly disparaging “let”; secondly, the subconscious perceives words with the prefix “not” as a negation. So it turns out that such a prayer is a stupid shock of air.”

“Our Father Our Father, who art in heaven,

Let him be holy, I am Yours,

Let Your kingdom come,

let Thy will be done,

as in heaven, so on earth.”

It was not worth destroying the unity of the Orthodox Church and distorting the sacred meaning of the prayer by translating it from Church Slavonic into modern Ukrainian. Maybe this is the reason for all the troubles of today's Ukraine.

Why did I dwell in such detail on the emergence of the Ukrainian literary language? The fact is that here it is especially clear how the Ukrainian language spun off from Russian, and then, through the introduction of Polonisms, was transformed into a modern language. Modern, so-called Ukrainizers, are trying to cripple it even more by introducing diasporisms, engaging in word creation and borrowing many words and terms from the modern Polish language. In fact, today's language has turned into a kind of newspeak, which has little resemblance to the classical language of Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka, Zagrebelny and other Ukrainian writers of the 19th - 20th centuries.

Why was the creation of the Ukrainian language necessary? Was it an objective necessity? At first, this was a way for the Russian peasantry to adapt to the language of their conquerors - the Poles. Later, this became part of the Western project’s plan to divide a single people into three different ones - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks and Communists also had a hand in this. During Yushchenko's five-year plan, this process received the highest approval of the president, in order to further alienate the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. To break a single linguistic and spiritual space, to deprive Russians of their native language in Ukraine, this meant breaking all ties with Russia. But, fortunately, the plan of the Washington Regional Committee failed. The reign of Judas ended and everything fell into place.

I would like to end this section with the words of the great Russian-Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol: “there is no word that would be so sweeping, lively, so bursting out from under the very heart, so seething and vibrantly trembling, like an aptly spoken Russian word.”

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One of the main issues of cultural and political life in Ukraine, of course, is the issue of recognizing the Russian language as the state language. Politicians who call themselves democrats are absurdly stubborn in opposing the implementation of international norms, according to which “the great and powerful,” as native to more than half of the citizens, is simply obliged to have sovereign status. Moreover, there are widespread attempts to discredit the Russian language as a “Finno-Tatar dialect”, contrasting it with the supposedly ancient and truly Slavic Ukrainian language, better known as “Mova”. Therefore, we should once again turn to the history of the appearance of this adverb.

When the famous philosopher Prince Evgeny Trubetskoy called “Mova” a “backwater provincial dialect,” he was right and wrong at the same time. Wrong, because this definition sounds offensive, and right in everything else. Like the very idea of Ukrainianness, “mova” is an artificial phenomenon, not organic to the history of Western Rus', a kind of philological homunculus. The Ukrainian language was created by a group of Lvov (Lemberg) scientists and writers with Austrian money in the second half of the 19th century. The authorities of Austria-Hungary in Galicia, which then belonged to them, actively fabricated the “Ukrainian” nationality in order to reduce Polish and Russian influence. Thus, the emergence of this language is, first of all, a fact of politics, not culture. The new language was created on the basis of the Western Russian dialect, which had many Polonisms and Latinisms with the expectation of maximum demarcation from the Russian language. But in the 40s of the same 19th century, the famous Slavist Yuri Venelin, a Carpathian Rusyn by origin, considered it necessary to overcome linguistic differences, which he reasonably considered to be a consequence of the long rule of foreigners over the majority of Slavic lands.

Moreover, the newly invented language turned out to be inaccessible to the Ukrainian common people, as Ukrainian leaders themselves honestly admitted.

This is how N. Pleshko recalled how during the Civil War he attended a congress of justices of the peace. The chairman “began to conduct it in Ukrainian language,” court members made reports, and the defense attorneys began speaking Ukrainian. My place was close to the audience, which consisted mainly of peasants, and they began to look at each other in bewilderment, and one of them, bending over to his neighbor, said: “Petro, and Petro, why did the gentlemen show up, what?” The singer and poet Alexander Vertinsky, who was born and spent his youth in Kiev, wrote irritably to his wife during the Stalinist era, when everything Ukrainian was allegedly persecuted: “I’m racking my brains over the Ukrainian text, vaguely guessing the content, because such words did not exist before and now they are “creating” them.” "Ukrainian language", littering it with all sorts of "Galicisms", Polish-Transcarpathian quirks, and no one in Kyiv can or knows how to speak this language!

On top of everything else, this “wonderful” invention separated its adherents from the entire layer of ancient Russian literature, including that created in Little Russia. A particularly tragicomic situation developed when trying to perform divine services in the “Ukrainian Church” in the “Mauve”. Instead of “Our Father” we should have read “Our Father”! How not to recall Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The White Guard”: “What language do they serve in, son? On the divine, grandma."

The authors, declared classics of modern Ukrainian literature, also found it difficult to fit into the Procrustean bed of its otherness in relation to the great Russian culture. Even Taras Shevchenko, a Ukrainian peasant by origin, kept his most intimate notes, including his diary, in Russian.

One cannot ignore the pragmatic component in the emergence of a special literature of Little Russian Newspeak. Establishing a position in the great Russian literature of the 19th century, after Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, of course, was very difficult. Writings in all sorts of dialects that were just beginning to be written were a different matter. Moreover, the Moscow and St. Petersburg public treated such experiments very sympathetically. After all, this is the only way that Marko Vovchok or Lesya Ukrainka could gain at least some fame.

Even the great Gogol, who arrived in the capital with Hans Kuchelgarten, became famous after his Ukrainian stories. And how much they fussed with Shevchenko in Moscow and St. Petersburg, molding him into a “regional genius”!

It is not for nothing that one of the smartest heroes in Turgenev’s “Rudin”, Pigasov, asserted, “if I had extra money, I would now become a Little Russian poet. - What else is this? Good poet! - Daria Mikhailovna objected, - do you know Little Russian? - Not at all; Yes it is not necessary. Why not? - Yes, just like that, no need. All you have to do is take a sheet of paper and write at the top: Duma; then start like this: Goy, you are my share, share! Or: Sede Kazachino Nalivaiko on the mound; and there: By the mountain, by the green, gray, gray, gop! hon! or something like that. And the trick is in the bag. Print and publish." The imperial government, not without the influence of the famous note by M.V. Yuzefovich, who presented all Ukrainophilism as the fruit of “Polish intrigue,” banned the use of the Ukrainian language (Emsky decree of May 18, 1876). By the way, translations into Ukrainian of Gogol’s “Taras Bulba” were discovered at the same time, where the word “Russian” was “translated” as “Ukrainian” (a common lie). The imperial decree, however, was not actually carried out, but gave the “movie” a taste of forbidden fruit. But the Bolsheviks pursued an active policy of Ukrainization, forcing the unfortunate inhabitants of Little Russia to learn this very “grace”. However, all efforts to create at least some serious Ukrainian-language literature failed.

It’s even strange that not only Platonov or Sholokhov, but even Yevtushenko did not succeed in the field of (admittedly meager) Little Russian literature.

Perhaps this is why current fighters for Ukrainian culture are so fond of looking for Khokhlatsky roots in Voloshin, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky and other classics. Ostap Cherry and Pavlo Tychina cannot get by.

Actually, I’m not at all against the Ukrainian language, although in places it seems like a parody of Russian. In Soviet times, it was adopted by a significant part of the inhabitants of the Ukrainian SSR and entered the general cultural cosmos of the huge country. However, attempts to forcibly introduce it, with the obvious goal of breaking the single space of the great Russian civilization, cannot but cause indignation. True, these attempts are ultimately doomed to failure, because they are not only not accepted by the population, but also contradict the worldwide trend towards globalization (no matter how you look at it). In my opinion, it would be easier to make English the state language of Ukraine.

One of the most educated Little Russians, liberal politician, lawyer I.I. At the beginning of the last century, Petrunkevich wrote to Academician Vernadsky: “My homeland is in Ukraine... I am connected with Ukraine not only by cold ideas of law, but also by feelings rooted in blood, in memories and impressions of nature, in the sounds of the people's language... But all these local influences are not overshadow the entire homeland in me, and the unity of Russia for me is not only a state idea or the coexistence of two nationalities, but a living and indivisible whole, which has its amazingly artistic and indisputable reflection in such gifted people as Gogol and Korolenko, for whom Ukrainian and Russian are like the particular and the general were reflected with extraordinary clarity. Try to separate the Ukrainian from the Russian in them: neither one nor the other will work, the living will be turned into the dead.” It was as a true patriot of Ukraine that Petrunkevich was well aware that, cut off from the roots of the great Russian culture, the weak tree of the Ukrainian dialect was doomed to wither and die.

Entire science fiction novels have been written today about the origin of the Ukrainian language and the etymology of Ukrainian words.

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

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 languages. But Japanese, Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish, Etruscan, Arabic, Basque, etc. are in no way connected with Ukrainian or, say, Spanish.

It has been proven that several thousand years BC there was a certain community of people (tribes) who spoke similar dialects. We don't know where it was or at what exact time. Possibly 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 this day. 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 is called “Sanskrit”. Being the oldest, this language is considered the closest to Indo-European.

Scientists reconstruct the proto-language based on the laws of change in 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 the literati from the history of grammars.

Modern Indo-European languages have inherited most of their roots from the time of their former unity. In different languages, related words sometimes sound very differently, but these differences are subject to certain sound patterns.

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

As a result of migrations of peoples, wars, conquests of some peoples by others, language dialects moved away from each other, new languages were formed, and old ones disappeared. The Indo-Europeans settled throughout Europe and penetrated into Asia (which is why they got their name).

The Proto-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 Church Slavonic, or “Old Bulgarian”, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Polish, Great Russian, Belarusian, etc.). Separate Indo-European branches developed Greek, Armenian, Albanian languages, which have no close relatives. Quite a few Indo-European languages did not survive into 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, and the conquest of some peoples by others. Differences in Indo-European languages are explained by interactions with other – often non-Indo-European – languages. One language, displacing another, received certain characteristics of the defeated language and, accordingly, differed in these characteristics from its relative (the displaced language that left its traces is called the substrate), and also experienced grammatical and lexical changes. Perhaps there are certain internal patterns of language development that, over time, “distance” it from related dialects. Although, apparently, the reason for the appearance of any internal patterns is the influence of other (substrate) languages.

Thus, in ancient times, numerous languages were widespread in Europe, the influence of which led to the current motley linguistic picture. The development of the Greek language was influenced, in particular, by Illyrian (Albanian) and Etruscan. Into English - Norman and various Celtic dialects, into French - Gaulish, into Great Russian - Finno-Ugric languages, as well as “Old Bulgarian”. The Finno-Ugric influence in the Great Russian language weakened unstressed vowels (in particular akanye: milk - malako), strengthened g on site G, deafening of 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 disintegrated.

At the linguistic level, this was reflected in a surprising way: the Proto-Slavic language emerged as a separate language (and not a Balto-Slavic dialect) with the onset of the so-called law of the 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 with a vowel sound.

How do we know about this law? First of all, from the most ancient monuments of Slavic writing (X - XII centuries). Short vowel sounds were represented in writing by the letters “ъ” (something between the short “о” and “ы”) and “ь” (short “i”). The tradition of writing “ь” at the end of words after consonants, which passed into the Great Russian language according to the Kyiv tradition of transmitting Church Slavonic, survived until the beginning of the twentieth 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 2nd millennium AD. Of course, there was no coherent language in the modern understanding of this word, much less its literary version. We are talking about close dialects that were characterized by common features.

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

It was he who did not tolerate clusters of consonants; the syllables in it ended only with vowels. And it was allegedly from the Trypillians that such words of unknown origin came to us, characterized by open syllables and a strict order of sounds (consonant - vowel), such as mo-gi-la, ko-by-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 u-v, i-y, which helps to avoid dissonant clusters of sounds).

vUnfortunately, it is impossible to either refute or confirm this hypothesis, since no reliable data about the language of the Trypillians (as, by the way, of the Scythians) has been preserved. 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 “epochs,” 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. It is not known exactly where the Proto-Slavs lived. It is believed that somewhere north of the Black Sea - in the Dnieper, Danube, Carpathian Mountains or between the Vistula and Oder. In the middle of the first millennium, as a result of rapid migration processes, the pre-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 law of the open syllable. As mysterious as its origin. We do not know what caused this fall - another substrate or some internal law of linguistic evolution, which began to operate during the times of Proto-Slavic unity. However, the law of the open syllable has not survived in any Slavic language, although it left deep traces in each of them. By and large, the phonetic and morphological differences between these languages come 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 melodic pronunciation (“tra-ta-ta”) was preserved longer, while in others the phonetic “revolution” took place faster. As a result, the Proto-Slavic language gave rise to three subgroups of dialects: South Slavic (modern Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, Slovenian, etc.); Western Slavic (Polish, Czech, Slovak, etc.); East Slavic (modern Ukrainian, Great Russian, Belarusian). In ancient times, each of the subgroups represented numerous dialects, characterized by certain common features that distinguished them from other subgroups. These dialects do not always coincide with the modern division of Slavic languages and the settlement of the Slavs. The processes of state formation, the mutual influence of Slavic dialects, as well as foreign language elements played a major role in linguistic evolution in different periods.

Actually, the collapse of the Proto-Slavic linguistic unity could occur in the following way. First, the southern (Balkan) Slavs “broke away” territorially from the other 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, unlike the Balkan ones, the language experienced dramatic changes in the middle of the first millennium. 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 disparate tribes, each of which spoke its own dialect. The Polyany spoke in Polyansky, the Derevlyans spoke in Derevlyansky, the Siveryans spoke in Siveryansky, the Ulichi and Tivertsy spoke in 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 about how people spoke in Ukraine in ancient times?

There are two real sources of our current knowledge about ancient Ukrainian dialects. The first is written monuments, the oldest of which were written in the 10th–12th centuries. However, unfortunately, no records were kept at all in the language our ancestors spoke. The literary language of Kyiv 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 to the Eastern Slavs, since it retained the ancient law of the open syllable. In particular, it contained short vowels after consonant sounds, denoted by the letters “ъ” and “ь”. However, in Kyiv this language was gradually Ukrainized: short sounds were not read, and some vowels were replaced with their own - Ukrainian. In particular, nasal vowels, which are still preserved, say, in Polish, were pronounced as usual, “Old Bulgarian” diphthongs (double vowels) were read in the Ukrainian manner. Cyril and Methodius would have been very surprised to hear “their” language in the Kyiv church.

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

Ancient texts can be used to study the language of our ancestors, but in a very unique way. This is what Professor Ivan Ogienko did in the first half of the twentieth century. He investigated the slips and mistakes of Kyiv authors and copyists who, against their will, were influenced by the living folk language. At times, ancient scribes “remade” words and “Old Bulgarian” grammatical forms deliberately - to make it “more understandable.”

The second source of our knowledge is modern Ukrainian dialects, especially those that remained isolated for a long time and were almost not subject to external influence. For example, the descendants of the Derevlyans still inhabit the north of the Zhitomir region, and the descendants of the Siveryans still inhabit the north of the Chernigov region. In many dialects, ancient Ukrainian phonetic, grammatical, and morphological forms have been preserved, coinciding with the clerical notes of Kyiv clerks and writers.

In the scientific literature you can find other dates for the fall of short vowels among the Eastern Slavs - the 12th - 13th centuries. However, such a “life extension” 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 Ukrainian linguistic characteristics proper - as, ultimately, the characteristics of most Slavic languages. The list of features that distinguished our proto-language from other languages may turn out to be somewhat boring for non-specialists. Here are just a few of them.

Ancient Ukrainian dialects were characterized by so-called full-vocality: instead of the South Slavic sound combinations ra-, la-, re-, le - in the language of our ancestors the sounds were -oro-, -olo-, -ere-, -ele-. For example: licorice (in “Old Bulgarian” – sweet), full (captivity), sereda (Wednesday), morok (darkness), etc. The “coincidences” in the Bulgarian and Russian languages are explained by the enormous influence of “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-: robota (work), rosti (grow), ulovluyu (catch). In place of the typical Bulgarian sound combination -zhd - the Ukrainians had -zh-: vorozhnecha (enmity), kozhen (everyone). The Bulgarian suffixes -ash-, -yushch - were answered by the Ukrainian -ach-, -yuch-: viyuchy (howling), smoldering (sizzling).

When short vowel sounds fell after voiced consonants, in Proto-Ukrainian dialects these consonants continued to be pronounced voiced, as they are now (oak, snow, love, blood). Stunning has developed in Polish, and in Great Russian too (dup, snek, lyubof, krof).

Academician Potebnya discovered that the disappearance of short sounds (ъ and ь) in some places “forced” the pronunciation of the previous vowels “o” and “e” to be prolonged in a new closed syllable in order to compensate for the “shortening” of the word. So, stol-l (“sto-lo”) turned into “stіel” (the final ъ disappeared, but the “internal” vowel became longer, turning into a double sound - a diphthong). But in forms where the final consonant is followed by a vowel, the old sound has not changed: sto-lu, sto-li. Most (“mo-sto”) turned into mіest, muest, mіist, etc. (depending on the dialect). The diphthong eventually transformed into a regular vowel. Therefore, in modern literary language, “i” in a closed syllable alternates with “o” and “e” - in an open one (kit - ko-ta, popil - po-pe-lu, rig - ro-gu, mig - mo-zhe and etc.). Although some Ukrainian dialects store ancient diphthongs in a closed syllable (keet, popiel, rieg).

Ancient Proto-Slavic diphthongs, in particular in case endings, denoted in writing by the letter “yat”, found their continuation in the ancient Ukrainian language. In some dialects they have been preserved to this day, in others they have been transformed into “i” (as in the literary language): lie, na zemlie, mieh, beliy, etc. By the way, Ukrainians, knowing their language, never confused the spelling of “yat” and “e” in pre-revolutionary Russian spelling. In some Ukrainian dialects, the ancient diphthong was actively replaced by the vowel “i” (lis, on the ground, mikh, biliy), becoming entrenched in the literary language.

Some of the phonetic and grammatical features of the Proto-Slavic language were continued in Ukrainian dialects. Thus, Proto-Ukrainian inherited the ancient alternation k–ch, g–z, x–s (ruka – ruci, rig – rozi, fly – musi), which has been preserved in the modern literary language. The vocative case has been used in our language for a long time. In dialects, the ancient form of the “pre-future” tense (I will brav), as well as the ancient indicators of person and number in past tense verbs (I - go, we - walked, you - walked, you - walked), are active in dialects.

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

What language was spoken in Kyiv in prehistoric times?

Of course, not in modern literary language. Any literary language is to a certain extent artificial - it is developed by writers, educators, and 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. Thus, in Ukraine from the 10th to the 18th centuries, the literary language was considered an artificial - Ukrainianized “Old Bulgarian” language, in which the majority of literary monuments were written, in particular “Svyatoslav’s Selections”, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, “The History of Time Literatures”, 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 vernacular language into writing). This Kievan literary language, created on the basis of “Old Bulgarian,” played a 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 chronicle glades (as well as, apparently, the Anta union of tribes, known from foreign 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 a national language, Ukrainians spoke different Ukrainian dialects, using the Ukrainized “Old Bulgarian” in writing.

During the princely era in Kyiv they spoke a language “commonly understood” by the residents of the capital city (koine), which was formed on the basis of various ancient Ukrainian tribal dialects, mainly Polans. No one ever heard it, and it was not recorded. But, again, the notes of ancient chroniclers and copyists, as well as modern Ukrainian dialects, give an idea of this language. To imagine it, it is apparently necessary to “cross” the grammar of Transcarpathian dialects, where the ancient forms are best preserved, Chernigov diphthongs in 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. To a “modern” ear it would sound like a peculiar Ukrainian dialect. Something like what we hear on trains, at bazaars and construction sites in the capital.

Is it possible to call an ancient language “Ukrainian” if the word “Ukraine” itself did not exist? — 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 that is given to it at different periods of history by its speakers or outsiders.

We do not know what the Proto-Slavs called their language. Perhaps there was no generic name at all. We also do not know what the Eastern Slavs called their dialect in prehistoric times. Most likely, each tribe had its own self-name and called its dialect in its own way. There is an assumption that the Slavs simply called their language “their”.

The word “Russian” appeared relatively late in relation to the language of our ancestors. This word first denoted a simple folk language - as opposed to written “Slavic”. Later, “Ruska Mova” was contrasted with “Polish”, “Moscow”, as well as non-Slavic languages spoken by neighboring peoples (in different periods - Chud, Muroma, Meshchera, Polovtsy, Tatars, Khazars, Pechenegs, etc.). The Ukrainian language was called “Russian” until the 18th century.

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

The word “Ukraine” also appeared relatively late. It has been found in chronicles since the 12th 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 its vocabulary and grammatical structure (like, say, Lithuanian and Icelandic). Most Ukrainian words are inherited from the Indo-European proto-language, as well as from Proto-Slavic dialects.

Quite a lot of words came to us from the tribes that neighbored our ancestors, traded with them, fought with them, etc. - Goths, Greeks, Turks, Ugrians, Romans, etc. (ship, bowl, poppy, Cossack, hut etc.). Ukrainian also has borrowings from “Old Bulgarian” (for example, region, benefit, ancestor), Polish (crib, funny, saber) and other Slavic. However, none of these languages influenced either the grammar or phonetics (sound structure) of the language. Myths about Polish influence are spread, as a rule, by non-specialists who have a very vague understanding of both the Polish and Ukrainian languages, and the common origin of all Slavic languages.

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

The main hypothesis at present is the concept of Alexey Shakhmatov, according to which the Ukrainian language arose as a result of the collapse of the Old Russian language (which, in turn, came from the Proto-Slavic language) at approximately the same time as the Belarusian and Russian languages.

However, a number of researchers believe that the Old Russian language was exclusively a literary language, there was no single Old East Slavic language, and the formation of the Ukrainian language (as well as Belarusian and Russian) is associated with the collapse of the Proto-Slavic language.

IX-XIV centuries

The Ukrainian language originates from the Old Russian language, which in turn has its origins in the Proto-Slavic linguistic unity from the 6th century. n. e. In the 11th-12th centuries, during the period of the birth of the three East Slavic nationalities, the Old Church Slavonic language formed the basis of the written language of the Old Russian state.

According to modern linguistic ideas, until the 14th century, in the territory of distribution of the Old Russian language (including the areas in which the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed, as well as most of the Russian language), no tangible dialect differences were established. G. A. Khaburgaev identifies two dialect associations in the early East Slavic area (before the 13th century): South East Slavic and North East Slavic. Until the 8th-11th centuries, the center of the southern part of the range was the middle Dnieper region, and the center of the northern part of the range was Priilmenye, from where the speakers of East Slavic dialects settled throughout the territory of the future Old Russian state - the speakers of South East Slavic dialects occupied the areas of formation of the future Ukrainian, Belarusian and southeastern parts Russian languages, and speakers of North-East Slavic are the area of formation of the northern part of the future Russian language. For a given historical period, relative dialectal unity of the East Slavic territory is assumed. Academician Zaliznyak writes that according to the birch bark documents, only the Pskov-Novgorod dialects differed from the rest, while sharply criticizing “amateur linguistics”, which assumes the existence of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages until the 14th-15th centuries, when they formed as separate East Slavic languages as a result of the disengagement of Lithuania and Muscovite Rus'. On the other hand, the formation of the “proto-Ukrainian” language as the common language of the territory inhabited by the Slavs of Southern and Southwestern Rus' was hampered by its fragmentation into lands that belonged to different states. Thus, Chernigov-Severshchina, Podolia and Kiev region with Pereyaslav region, as well as most of Volyn were in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Northern Bukovina became part of the Principality of Moldova - here, too, for a long time all state affairs were conducted in the “Russian” language; the lands of Western Volyn and Galicia were annexed by Poland, and Transcarpathia by Hungary.

XV-XVIII

After the future Belarusian and Ukrainian lands became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Western Russian language (“Ruska Mova”) was formed on the territory of “Lithuanian Rus” in the 14th-15th centuries. According to a modern review of scientific works done by Professor Moisienko, “Ruska Mova” comes from the Old Russian language by splitting off the “Polesie” dialect from it. At the same time, spoken languages did not participate in the formation of the Western Russian language. Until the 16th century, “Ruska Mova” was “supra-dialectal” throughout the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but in the 16th century, based on written sources, it is possible to establish the appearance of the “Ukrainian complex”, that is, colloquial Ukrainian speech begins to affect the peculiarities of writing in “Ruska Mova”. It should be noted that the separation of the “Old Ukrainian” and “Old Belarusian” (original “Polessie”) dialects was not complete, in particular in business correspondence it disappeared by the end of the 16th century. This causes difficulty in defining written monuments as “Ukrainian” or “Belarusian” and heated debate among researchers.

In the XVII-XVIII centuries. folk speech has an increasing influence on the book language, especially in interludes, verses, etc., as well as among individual writers (Galatovsky, Nekrashevich, Konissky, etc.). At the end of the 18th century, in connection with the annexation of Right Bank Ukraine to Russia, the influence of the Great Russian language on the Ukrainian language increased (for example, in the writings of the Russian and Ukrainian philosopher Grigory Skovoroda).

Modern (late 18th century to present)

The Western Russian language has not coincided with the Ukrainian spoken language since its appearance, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. A new Ukrainian literary language emerges, independently developing on a folk linguistic basis. I. P. Kotlyarevsky is considered the first creator of works in the literary Ukrainian language repeating the spoken language, and his first work is “The Aeneid,” written in 1798. I. P. Kotlyarevsky wrote in the style of comic poetry “Burlesque” based on Ukrainian speech and folklore. In purely linguistic terms, however, Ivan Nekrashevich came closer to codifying the literary language, trying to create a literary standard based on the northern dialects. Historically, however, it was Kotlyarevsky’s project based on the southeastern dialects that was continued, since it was these territories that became the main area for the development of Ukrainian national culture in the first half of the 19th century.

The formation of the modern Ukrainian literary language is associated with the Ukrainian poet T. G. Shevchenko, who finally established the living spoken language as its basis.

Notes

In Russia, Moldova, including the unrecognized Transnistrian Moldavian Republic, in Belarus, Romania, Poland and Slovakia.
In Canada, USA, Kazakhstan, Brazil, etc.
History of Ukrainian language // Ukrainian language. Encyclopedia. - K.: Institute of Brain Science named after O. O. Potebny NAS of Ukraine; Ukrainian Encyclopedia, 2004. - pp. 235-239.
Old Russian language // Ukrainian language. Encyclopedia. - K.: Institute of Brain Science named after O. O. Potebny NAS of Ukraine; Ukrainian Encyclopedia, 2004. - pp. 129-130.
, With. 418.
, With. 420.
, With. 438.
, With. 7.
Novgorod Rus' according to birch bark documents - POLIT.RU (undefined) . Retrieved December 5, 2018.
Ivanov V.V. Old Russian language// Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary / Chief editor V. N. Yartseva. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1990. - 685 p. - ISBN 5-85270-031-2.
About the history of the Russian language (undefined) . elementy.ru. Retrieved October 11, 2015.
Ethnolinguistic affiliation of Russian language during the time of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - page 4: My library (undefined) . www.vuzlib.com.ua. Retrieved October 11, 2015.

Just for fun

The Ukrainian language was created in 1794 on the basis of some features of the southern Russian dialects, which still exist today in the Rostov and Voronezh regions and at the same time are absolutely mutually intelligible with the Russian language, existing in Central Russia. It was created through a deliberate distortion of common Slavic phonetics, in which instead of the common Slavic “o” and “ѣ” they began to use the sound “i” and “hv” instead of “f” for a comic effect, as well as 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, which sounds like a horse in Serbian, Bulgarian, and even Lusatian, began to be called kin in Ukrainian. The cat began to be called kit, and so that the cat would not be confused with a whale, kit began to be pronounced as kyt.

According to the second principle the stool became a sore throat, the runny nose became an undead creature, and the umbrella became a cracker. Later, Soviet Ukrainian philologists replaced the rozchipirka with a parasol (from the French parasol), the Russian name was returned to the stool, since the stool did not sound quite decent, and the runny nose remained undead. But during the years of independence, common Slavic and international words began to be replaced with artificially created ones, stylized as common lexemes. As a result, the midwife became a navel cutter, the elevator became a lift, the mirror became a chandelier, the percentage became a hundred percent, and the gearbox became a screen of hookups.

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

Initially, the scope of application of the future language was limited to everyday satirical works that ridiculed 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, was a Poltava nobleman Ivan Kotlyarevsky. In 1794, Kotlyarevsky, for the sake of humor, created a kind of padonkaff language, in which he wrote a humorous adaptation of “ Aeneids"by the greatest Old Roman poet Publius Virgil Maro.

Kotlyarevsky’s “Aeneid” in those days was perceived as macaroon poetry - a kind of comic poetry created according to the principle formulated by the then French-Latin proverb “ Qui nescit motos, forgere debet eos" - those who do not know words must create them. This is exactly how the words of the Little Russian dialect were created.

Inventor of the “Siberian language” Yaroslav Anatolyevich Zolotarev

The creation of artificial languages, as practice has shown, is accessible not only to philologists. So, in 2005, a Tomsk entrepreneur created the so-called Siberian language, “which has been around since the times of Velikovo Novgorod and reached our days in the dialects of the Siberian people”.

On October 1, 2006, an entire Wikipedia section was even created in this pseudo-language, which numbered more than five thousand pages and was deleted on November 5, 2007. In terms of content, the project was a mouthpiece for 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 created Centrosiberia, and then completely pushed Siberia to Russia”. All this was accompanied by poems by the first poet of the Siberian dialect, Zolotarev, with telling titles. "Moskal bastard" And “Moskalski vy..dki”. Using administrator rights, Zolotarev rolled back any edits as written “in a foreign language.”

If this activity had not been shut down in its infancy, then by now we would have had a movement of Siberian separatists instilling in Siberians that they are a separate people, that they should not feed Muscovites (non-Siberian Russians were called that way in this language), but should trade oil on their own and gas, for which it is necessary to establish an independent Siberian state under American patronage.

“Ukrov” was invented by Tadeusz Czatsky

The idea of creating a separate national language based on the language invented by Kotlyarevsky was first taken up by the Poles, the former masters of Ukrainian lands: A year after the appearance of Kotlyarevsky’s “Aeneid” Jan Potocki called for calling the lands of Volynsha and Podolia, which recently became part of Russia, the word “Ukraine”, and calling the people inhabiting them not Russians, but Ukrainians. Another Pole, Count Tadeusz Czatski, deprived of estates after the second partition of Poland, in his essay “O nazwiku Ukrajnj i poczatku kozakow” became the inventor of the term " Ukr" It was Chatsky who produced him from some unknown horde of “ancient Ukrainians” who allegedly came out from beyond 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 Alexey Pavlovsky“Grammar of the Little Russian dialect” was published, but in Ukraine itself this book was received with hostility. Pavlovsky was scolded for introducing Polish words, called a Lyakh, and in “Additions to the Grammar of the Little Russian dialect”, published in 1822, he specifically wrote: “I promise you that I am your fellow countryman”. Pavlovsky’s main innovation 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 blur.

But the biggest step in the propaganda of the so-called Ukrainian language was a major hoax associated with the artificially created image of Taras Shevchenko, who, being illiterate, actually wrote nothing, and all his works were the fruit of mystifying work at first Evgenia Grebenki, and then Panteleimon Kulish.

The Austrian authorities viewed the Russian population of Galicia as a natural counterweight 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 Ukrainianism could not be more convenient for them - an 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 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 Russian.

Help from the Austrian government to Mogilnitsky, the main theoretician of Ukrainianism Grushevsky, which also existed on Austrian grants, was justified 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 in social and cultural terms.”

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.

On December 8, 1868, in Lviv, under the auspices of the Austrian authorities, it 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 notice its poetic size; For this purpose, I tried not only to correct the text of the same in the internal part, but also in the external form, if possible, to restore the original poetic structure of the Word.”

Jews went further than ukrov

The society set out to promote the Ukrainian language among the Russian population of Chervona Rus. In 1886, a member of the society Evgeniy Zhelekhovsky invented Ukrainian writing without “ъ”, “е” and “ѣ”. In 1922, this Zhelikhovka script became the basis for the Radian Ukrainian alphabet.

Through the efforts of society, in the Russian gymnasiums of Lvov and Przemysl, teaching was transferred to the Ukrainian language, invented by Kotlyarsky for the sake of humor, and the ideas of Ukrainian identity began to be instilled in the students of these gymnasiums. The graduates of these gymnasiums began to train public school teachers who brought Ukrainianness to the masses. The result was not long in coming - before the collapse of Austria-Hungary, they managed to raise several generations of Ukrainian-speaking population.

This process took place before the eyes of 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, a language invented by Luzhkov’s Jew Lazar Perelman(better known as Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Hebrew ‏אֱלִיעֶזֶר בֶּן־יְהוּדָה).

In 1885, Hebrew was recognized as the only language of instruction for certain subjects at the Bible and Works School in Jerusalem. In 1904, the Hilfsverein Mutual Aid Union of German Jews was founded. Jerusalem's first teacher's seminary for Hebrew teachers. Hebrewization of first and last names was widely practiced. All Moses became Moshe, Solomon became Shlomo. Hebrew was not just intensively promoted. The propaganda was reinforced by the fact that from 1923 to 1936, the so-called language defense units of Gdut Meginei Khasafa (גדוד מגיני השפה) were snooping around British-mandated Palestine, beating the faces of everyone who spoke not Hebrew, but Yiddish. Particularly persistent muzzles were beaten to death. Borrowing words is not allowed in Hebrew. There's not even a computer in it קאמפיוטער , A מחשב , no umbrella שירעם (from the German der Schirm), and מטריה , but 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 Ukrainian site 7dniv.info)

1. The oldest mention of the Ukrainian language dates back to 858. Slavic enlightener Konstantin (Kirill) Philosopher, describing his stay in the Crimean city of Chersonese (Korsun) during the journey from Byzantium to the Khazars, notes that: “To curse the man with Russian conversation”. And for the first time, the Ukrainian language was equated to the level of a literary language at the end of the 18th century after the publication in 1798 of the first edition of the Aeneid, authored by Ivan Kotlyarevsky. It is he who is considered the founder of the new Ukrainian literary language.

2. The oldest grammar in Ukraine called “Grammar of the friendly Hellenic-Slovenian language” was published by the Stavropegian printing house of the Lviv Brotherhood in 1651.

3. In the 2nd half of the 19th century. The letters ы, ь, е, ъ have dropped from the civil alphabet in Ukraine; The letters and i were assigned different sounds.

4. The Byzantine traveler and historian Priscus of Pania in 448, while in the camp of the Hunnic leader Attila, on the territory of modern Ukraine, wrote down the words “honey” and “grass”, this is a mention of the very first Ukrainian words.

5. The basis of the modern spelling system was orthography, used by B. Grinchank in the “Dictionary of Ukrainian Language” in 1907 - 1909.

6. The “most Ukrainian” letter, that is, not used in the alphabets of other nations, is “g”. This breakthrough sound has been designated in various ways in Ukrainian writing since at least the 14th century, and the letter g in the Ukrainian alphabet dates back to 1619, which was first introduced by M. Smotrytsky as a variety of the Greek “scale” in his “Gramatitsa”.

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

“The language of padonkaff” or “he who does not know words must create them”

As we see, the Ukrainians themselves admit that the current “ridna mov” was invented at the end of the 18th century Ivan Kotlyarevsky, but they are silent about its humorous creation through deliberate distortion of common Slavic phonetics and clogging the language with heterodox borrowings and deliberately invented neologisms like brake pad.

Modern ukrophilologists also keep silent about the fact 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.

Nobody 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” solely for comic effect.

Eh, Ivan Petrovich knew what crap he had come up with... However, even during his lifetime he was horrified when he found out what his linguistic tricks had led to. The innocent joke of the Poltava nobleman became a nightmare in reality.

Ukraine is preparing to switch to the Latin alphabet

Sergey Mironovich Kvit

The Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, a member of Petro Poroshenko’s bloc and a member of the right-wing radical Ukrainian nationalist organization “Trident” named after S. Bandera, said in one of his private conversations that Ukraine will soon 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 there will be no need to change the interfaces of computers, mobile phones, smartphones and other equipment will not have to be modified to fit the Cyrillic alphabet.

Also, the introduction of the Latin alphabet in Ukraine will significantly 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.

It must be said that the project of switching 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 | pronunciation

a A a A [a]
b B b B [b]
in V v V [v]/[w]
g G gh Gh [γ]
ґ Ґ g G [g]
d D d D [d]
e E e E [e]
є Є je Je /[‘e]
f Zh Zh [h]
z Z z Z [z]
and And y Y [y]
і І i I [i]
ї Ї ji Ji
й И 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]
с С s S [s]
t T t T [t]
u У u U [u]
f Ф f F [f]
x X kh Kh [x]
ts ts c C
ch ch ch
sh Sh sh Sh [∫]

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

Galician nationalists, nurtured by the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, tried to write Latin in Ukrainian. However, even the creator of the Ukrainian Latin alphabet, the so-called “abetsadlo”, Joseph Lozinsky, later revised his position and completely broke with the Ukrainophile movement. In 1859, Czech Slavist Josef Jireček proposed his own version of the Ukrainian Latin alphabet, based on the Czech alphabet.

Overall material rating: 4.8

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Khokhol, Jew, Katsap, Moskal and others In Ukraine or in Ukraine. The issue has been resolved a long time ago