Rusyn is a minority language written in Cyrillic and predominantly spoken by communities in the Carpathian region. It is particularly prevalent in Transcarpathian Ukraine, Eastern Slovakia, and Southeastern Poland. The language showcases significant diversity across its varieties, reflecting centuries of cultural exchange and historical interactions.

The complexities of the surrounding umbrella languages, such as Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech, and Romanian, exert considerable influence on the Rusyn vernacular. This influence results in regional variations where the Rusyn spoken in Ukraine might have more Ukrainian words, while in Hungary or Slovakia, it might incorporate more Hungarian or Slovak elements.

Information for this language profile was provided by Prof. Dr. Achim Rabus and his assistant Ms. Beata Gerhardt, who are both working on this language at the University of Freiburg.

Language family

Rusyn is a Indo-European language. In the following website you can find its detailed phylogenetic tree.

Linguistic Structures and Some Examples of the Language

One of the most notable features of Rusyn is its significant linguistic diversity. The majority of Rusyn speakers are bilingual, navigating between Rusyn and the dominant languages of their respective regions. Over the past hundred years, the social and linguistic landscape for Rusyn speakers has been dynamic, with changes in political borders and diverse environments leading to distinct dialects. These variations affect not only the vocabulary but also the grammar and phonology.

To showcase an example in the table below you can see the word ‘meeting’ in three different varieties of Rusyn.

There is a YouTube channel dedicated to the Rusyn community. One of its videos discusses the differences and similarities between Rusyns and Slovaks, particularly in terms of their language. You can find the video below.

The Corpus of Spoken Rusyn

Those interested in using the Corpus of Spoken Rusyn can log in as guest users. By searching for “.*” in the Token field (without xxx), the search returns a list of all Rusyn words spoken within the corpus. You can further filter this information by clicking on “Show Metadata” to look at results categorised by Rusyn variety or the gender, age, or location of speakers. An additional “Show Map” function can show these results as plotted on a map.

The corpus also allows for searches for specific words, such as “хыжа”. The search function allows for targeted searching of variation in spoken Rusyn. The results include audio recordings which can be listened to directly on the website and results from searches can be downloaded for further analysis in a spreadsheet format.

Furthermore, the anonymised audio data can be used for phonetic analyses. The various filters enable targeted searches for speakers, location, and variant, which can then be used for later analysis.