"God Is a Rusyn": Anthology of Contemporary Carpatho-Rusyn Literature

Appendix: Selected Original Texts, Sources, and Language Resources

APPENDIX Selected Original Texts, Sources, and Language Resources Over its long history, Rusyn literature has been written in many languages, including various forms of uncodified Rusyn vernacular. As a minority without an ethnic state, Rusyns experienced political and economic problems that made it difficult to standardize their written language. No version of the Rusyn language was codified until the early twentieth century, when the Vojvodinian Rusyns were the first to achieve a literary standard and later enjoyed official recognition under Communist rule in Yugoslavia. Rusyns in other Communist countries were not as fortunate. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, they were administratively declared to be Ukrainian, their own language was proscribed, and they were compelled to use Ukrainian. It was not until after the fall of Communism that a Rusyn national revival took place, which resulted in concentrated attempts at the codification of a Rusyn literary standard. In 1992 the First Congress of the Rusyn Language, attended by Rusyn and international scholars, was held in eastern Slovakia to plan the standardization of Rusyn. The Congress resolved to create three literary variants for the Prešov Region of Slovakia, the Transcarpathian Region of Ukraine, and the Lemko Region of Poland, based on local dialects. (The Vojvodinian Rusyn standard was established in 1923.) The participants agreed to meet periodically to exchange views on the progress in each region, as well as to coordinate their work toward the creation of a koiné that would serve as the basis for a single common Rusyn literary language. In 2004, a book entitled The Rusyn Language (Rusyn´skŷi iazŷk) was published in the fourteen-volume series called “A Modern History of Slavonic Languages,” under the auspices of an international commission of Slavists. Each chapter of the book is devoted to an individual variant of Rusyn and is written in that variant of the language. The book’s appearance in this prestigious series was an indication of the recognition of Rusyn by the international scholarly community. Subsequent language congresses were held in 1999 and 2007 to deal with theoretical and practical issues, especially focusing on the status of Rusyn in 260 APPENDIX education and the development of a Rusyn koiné. The first proposal toward an inter-regional standard was the text Narod nyvŷdkŷ (2007), a Rusyn-language translation of Paul Robert Magocsi’s The People from Nowhere by Uzhhorod publisher Valerii Padiak. For specific developments in each region and relevant linguistic resources , see below. SELECTED GENERAL RESOURCES Duć-Fajfer, Helena. “II Międzynarodowe Seminarium / Kongres Języka Rusińskiego, Preszów, 16–17 kwietnia 1999 r.,” Slavia Orientalis 48.4 (Warsaw, 1999): 661–63. Dulichenko, Aleksandr, ed. Pis´mennost´ i literaturnye iazyki Karpatskoi Rusi, XV-XXvv. Uzhhorod: V. Padiak, 2008. Il´chenko, Larysa, and Mariia Lendiel. Bibliografiia rusyns´koiazŷchnŷkh vŷdan´: 1989–2004. Uzhhorod: V. Padiak, 2007. Kushko, Nadiya. “Literary Standards of the Rusyn Language: The Historical Context and Contemporary Situation.” Slavic and East European Journal 51, no. 1 (2007): 111–32. Magocsi, Paul Robert. Narod nyvŷdkŷ. Translated by Valerii Padiak. Uzhhorod: V. Padiak, 2007. , ed. Rusyn´skiŷ iazŷk. Opole: Uniwersytet Opolski, Instytut Filologii Polskiej, 2004. Rev. ed., 2007. Magocsi, Paul Robert, and Joshua Fishman. “Scholarly Seminar on the Codification of the Rusyn Language.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 104 (1996): 119–25. Magocsi, Paul Robert, and Ivan Pop. Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture, rev. ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Michna, Ewa. “Pomiędzy gwarą a językiem standardowym: kodyfikacja gwar Rusinów Karpackich.” Socjolingwistyka (Krakow) 18 (2004): 57–86. Požun, Brian J. “The Carpatho-Rusyn Media in the Context of Minority Language Media Studies.” In Committing Community: Carpatho-Rusyn Studies as an Emerging Scholarly Discipline, edited by Elaine Rusinko, 368–93. New York: Columbia UP / East European Monographs, 2009. Rusinko, Elaine. Straddling Borders: Literature and Identity in Subcarpathian Rus´. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Stegherr, Marc. Das Russinische: kulturhistorische und sociolinguistische Aspekte. Munich: Otto Sagner, 2003. UKRAINE In Ukraine, Rusyns are not recognized by the state as a distinct people, and their language is officially considered a dialect of Ukrainian. This, along with the fragmentation of the Rusyn movement in Transcarpathia, has made codification difficult. Currently there are no fewer than three proposed standards. The first variant was created in 1992 and announced at the First Congress of the Rusyn Language. It was revised and published in 1999...