Re: OT: Russian and Ukrainian (was: Re: semi-OT: bilingual communication)

Mangiat scripsit:

<<I wonder how much Russian and Ukrainian differ.>>

See the thread. Enough to be considered separate languages.

<<I'm taking my first year of
Russian language (ja uc^u inostrannye jazyki i literatury v milanskom
universitete, v severnoj Italii;-)>>

Oc^en' choros^o! Napisano bez os^ibok!

<<and I've come across an interesting
passage in Lermontov's "Geroj nas^ego vremeni" where the dialogue is held
half in Russian, and half in a language I can't recognize. Here's the
passage (from Z^urnal Pec^orina, c^ast' pervaja):>>

It's Ukrainian recorded by a Russian-speaking author :-)

<<A *bis* ego znaet!>>

A correct Ukrainian here should be "A bis joho znaje!"

<<I really can't figure out wether this is Ukrainian or simply a Southern
Russian dialect.>>

No wonder. When it was written, Russians indeed considered Ukrainian to be a
dialect of Russian...

<<The passage is set in Taman', which I suppose to be a
Russian speaking region of Ukraina (not far from Kerc^, IIRC), but I'm not
sure.>>

Vice versa. Taman' was a Ukrainian speaking region in the territory that now
belongs to Russia. It's a district of Kuban' territory "Krasnodarskij Kraj".

<<I knew Ukrainian shifts Russian /O/ to /i/ (or /M/, perhaps)>>

No-no. It's clear /i/. In contrast to other kinds of /i/, in some dialects (for
instance, in my wife's Poltava d.), it doesn't cause palatalization of the
preceding consonant. It was a literary norm till 1930's when it started being
treated as "counterrevolutionary" and was abandoned.
Compare Ru. [sok] "juice" :: Uk. [s_jik] :: Uk.(Polt.d.) [sik] in contrast to
Ru. [s_jok] "he lashed" :: Uk. [s_jik].

<<under
certain conditions I fail to remember: Ru.: nos, Uk.: nis, >>

In closed stressed syllables (plus a lot of minor other factors). It's already
a dead phonetic law since, I suppose, mid-19th century, and later borrowings
from Russian show no sound change: Ru.&Uk. |narod| "nation".

<<whereas the text
above shows lots of /E/ > /i/ going on (_sovsem_ vs. _sovsim_, _net_ vs.
_ni_, _bes_ vs. _bis_).>>

Another source for /i/ was old Russian (and Common Slavic) phoneme /e^/ (jat').
It gave different reflexes in different Slavic languages and dialects. In
Russian of Lomonosov times it was [e], now it completely merged with /E/. In
Ukrainian it gave /i/. It didn't make confusion, since CSl. /i/ in most cases
gave /I/.
Oops, I'm not sure I can pin this sound to the map :-( In my ears, it's
somewhere on the middle of diagonal between [E] and [i\] (X-SAMPA's [1]).

<<Where exactly do you live and study, Isaac?>>

I live and *work* in Kiev, I teach English and Basic Hebrew. If you need more
info about Ukrainian, contact me privately at isaacp(at)ukr(dot)net.

> Luca
Yitzik
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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