Rusyn

Written in Cyrillic, Rusyn is predominantly spoken by communities in the Carpathian region, particularly in Transcarpathian Ukraine, Eastern Slovakia and South Eastern Poland. The research reveals that language is not just merely a mode of communication but an image reflecting centuries of cultural exchange and historical interactions.

Language tree of Slavic languages

Documentation of linguistic diversity with a focus on varieties of Rusyn

Through transcribed corpus data, the researchers empirically investigate present day Rusyn speech. The complexities of the respective umbrella languages, namely standard Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Czech and Romanian exert considerable influence on the Rusyn vernacular.  In fact, the significant majority of Rusyn speakers were found to be bilingual.

Ukrainian is the language that is closest to Rusyn. This makes Rusyn a bridge between the East and West Slavic languages.

Language Change

Over the past hundred years, Rusyn speakers have found themselves in a constantly changing social and linguistic landscape. The research by the team explores how language variation occurred through changes in diverse environments and historical shifting of borders. As borders were redrawn, Rusyn communities became divided, and each region developed their own distinct dialect. These divisions not only influenced the geographical spread of the language but also its words, grammar, and sounds. For example, Rusyn spoken in Ukraine might have more Ukrainian words while in Hungary or Slovakia, it might sound more like Hungarian or Slovak.

Poster in Rusyn: ”Misery finds a person when the sun goes down”

The Corpus of Spoken Rusyn

With a detailed analysis conducted using the Corpus of Spoken Rusyn, available at www.russinisch.uni-freiburg.de/corpus, the research combines a range of statistical tools to analyze exciting patterns within speakers of different Rusyn varieties.

The map shows the distribution of the past tense system in Rusyn. For example, more past tense verbs are used in Poland and Slovakia, while relatively fewer are used in Zakarpattia Rusyn. Speakers of Lemko Rusyn (Carpathian region) speakers tend to favor the short form of the verb in past tense constructions (such as читала-м (chytala-m)) while Prešov Rusyn (Slovakia and Poland) speakers lean towards the long form (читала єм (chythala-jem)) and speakers of Zakarpattia Rusyn (Ukraine) tend to avoid those verb tenses altogether.

Guide to using the corpus

Those interested in using the Corpus of Spoken Rusyn, available at http://www.russinisch.uni-freiburg.de/, 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.

Project Information

More information about the project can be found here.