Talk:Ruthenian language

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Old Belarusian was a historic East Slavic language, written and spoken at least in the 14th–17th century, and reported spoken as late as the very beginning of the 19th century, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, probably in the part of Grand Duchy of Moscow.

The denotation "Old Belarusian" for this entity is of academic origin and was introduced by Karskiy in 1893, and was based on its genetical identity with the vernacular Belarusian, as it existed in the 19th century. No reliably known native contemporary name for the language is known, and there were many different denotations used by contemporaries, some of them ambiguously (see nomenclature).

In the Western linguistics nomenclature, the Old Belarusian, together with Old Ukrainian, is regarded as a part of a single umbrella entity "Ruthenian language" which denotes the literary language of all of the East Slavic (and not distinctly Old Church Slavonic) texts coming from the Grand Duchy and Commonwealth in 14th—18th century (see formation).


 * Formation ==

After the breakup of Proto-Slavic about the half of the 1st millennium and after the subsequent development of the East Slavic tribes' dialects, the major event in their post-10th century development was the Baptism and the subsequent establishment of the Old Church Slavonic as the chancellery, clerical and literary language.

Subsequently, two principal processes were taking place in these lands. One was the continued development of the clerical literature in the Old Church Slavonic. Another was the evolution of the vernacular (including office and business) literacy in Cyrillic script.

Traditionally, the existence of Old East Slavic (formerly, Ancient Russian or Proto-Russian, also Common East Slavic ) vernacular literary language, common for all East Slavs in c.10th—14th centuries, is postulated, after the breakup of which in c.14th century three East Slavic literary languages emerged, Old Belarusian, Old Ukrainian and Old Russian.
 * Common East Slavic ===

Some authors, especially in the Russian and later Soviet scientific schools, extend the concept of the Old East Slavic to the existence of the spoken language, common for all East Slavs, beginning to form in the 8th—9th centuries and surviving as a sufficiently uniform entity to as far as the 13th century.

Also, the terms "Ancient Russian" (древнерусский) as synonym of Old East Slavic and "Old Russian" (старорусский) as product of breakup of Old East Slavic, were virtually merged by the Russian scholars after the publishing of the "Vocabulary of Russian language in 11th—17th centuries" ("Словарь русского языка 11—17 вв."; supervised by the USSR academic S. G. Barkhudarov).

Other authors, while supporting the concept of pre-14th century Old East Slavic, introduce the concept of Old East Slavic literary language breaking up in 14th century into two parts, Ruthenian and Old Russian, with East Slavic spoken languages on the Belarusian and Ukrainian lands existing as a multitude of dialects until the end 18th — 19th centuries.

However, there exists a school of thought rejecting the concept of spoken Common East Slavic stage, and, by implication, the concept of existence of common literary language, too.
 * No Common East Slavic ===

These authors postulate, when referring to the concept of West, East and South Slavic proto-languages in general, that "...there's no scientific need to introduce that kind of concept" and consider spoken Belarusian in the Middle Ages to be developed directly from dialects of broken up Proto-Slavic. They point out that phonological and morphological specifics, which are common for East Slavic, and are absent from other Slavic languages, are too few, and even possibly come directly from Proto-Slavic. Also they point out that modern Belarusian contains many Proto-Slavic features absent in Russian and Ukrainian.

The emergence of the Old Belarusian literary language as a separate linguistic entity and beginning of its documented development as such, are dated back to the 14th century, with further development taking place in 15th, and the "pinnacle of the development" reached in 16th century. In the 2nd half 16th — 1st half 17th century, several attempts of codification of the Old Belarusian language were made. The most notable of them were grammar and elementary reading by Ivan Fyodorov (1574, 1578), grammar by Lavrentiy Zizaniy (1596) and grammar by Ivan Uzhevich (1645).
 * Development ==

However, the characteristically Belarusian phonological influences are noted in local Old Church Slavonic texts dating back to mid. 11th century, and the earliest known literacy artifact, showing the distinctive features of the Old Belarusian language, is the Charters of Smolensk (Belarusian: «Смаленскія граматы»), dating back to 1229.

The formation of the Old Belarusian took effect under the powerful influence of the Old Church Slavonic literary tradition, and was based on the local East Slavonic dialects ("Western branch of Middle Russian dialects", as put by Karskiy), initially chiefly on those of the Polatsk—Smolensk region, with center of influence subsequently moving westwards, to the Middle Belarusian dialects, then to the dialects of Vilnia (Vilnius) region.

While the literary language had gradually become, to an extent, artificial, still the vernacular language had been preserving the relative purity, with the literary language permanently drawing upon the vernacular.

The major factor in the Old Belarusian development after the end 14th century was the Polonization, developing in the Grand Duchy lands, and spreading from the upper toward the middle classes, and taking strong hold in the mid. 15th century, already. The Latin and German influences were also prominent in the vocabulary of the literary language. In the 1st half 17th century, certain Ukrainian influence was noticed after the Polonisation successes in Belarusian lands, and center of Orthodox printing moving to Kiev in the early 17th century

The phonology and morphology of the Old Belarusian reached stabilisation in the 16th century, including such features, which were both absent before and characteristic to the Belarusian. Among the most prominent phonological were "akanye", developed c. 14th century, and "shortening of u", developed c. early 13th century. The morphology developed sporadic Old Belarusian particularities in the 14th – 15th cent already.

The syntax and lexics continued changing after the 16th century, with the literary language being strongly influenced by the Polish language, especially in the 16th–17th centuries. It is considered that the vernacular language was relatively free in that aspect, and differed in its syntax and, especially, in its lexicon.

The Western linguistics nomenclature and historiographies, esp. Lithuanian and Polish, routinely refer to the Old Belarusian as a part of a collective entity named Ruthenian or Old Ruthenian. Historically, there existed many names for the Old Belarusian, some of them ambiguous:
 * Nomenclature ==


 * Names both in contemporary (14th—18th century) and modern (post-18th century) use
 * Belarusian (language) — rarely in contemporary Muscovy. Also Kryzhanich. The denotation Belarusian (language) (белорусский (язык)) when referring both to the 19th century language and to the Medieval language had been used in works of the 19th century Russian researchers Buslayev, Ogonovskiy, Zhitetskiy, Sobolevskiy, Nedeshev, Vladimirov and had served as a basis for the Karskiy's denotation.


 * Names in modern use
 * (Old) West Russian, language or dialect ((Древний) западнорусский язык, (Древнее) западнорусское наречие) — chiefly by the supporters of the concept of the Proto-Russian phase, esp. since the end of the 19th century, e.g., by Karskiy, Shakhmatov.
 * Lithuanian-Russian (литовско-русский) — by the 19th century Russian researchers Keppen, archbishop Filaret, Sakharov, Karatayev.
 * Lithuanian-Slavonic (литово-славянский) — by the 19th century Russian researcher Baranovskiy.
 * Russian-Polish or even Polish dialect — Shtritter, Polish researcher Samuel Bogumił Linde, Polish writer Wisniewski. Notably, the definition had been used even when referencing to Skaryna's translation of Bible.


 * Names in contemporary use
 * Ruthenian (Old Belarusian: руски езыкъ) — by the contemporaries, but, generally, not in contemporary Muscovy. This is an ambiguous term, which may pertain either to Old Belarusian, or to Old Ukrainian, and even to local Old Church Slavonic text.
 * Simple Ruthenian or simple talk (Old Belarusian: простый руский (язык) or простая молва) — variant of the preceding, e.g., by publisher Grigoriy Khodkevich (16th century)
 * Lithuanian (Литовский язык) — possibly, exclusive reference to it in the contemporary Muscovy. Also by Zizaniy (end 16th century), Pamva Berinda (1653).

In the 14th century, the emerging Old Belarusian language had already been enjoying the wide-scale ubiquity of use in the GDL, being spoken and written from the lower classes to the nobility, non-Slavonic included, to the Grand Dukes of Lithuania themselves, from the vernacular to the state documents.
 * Rise and decline ==

In the 15th—16th century, and partially in the 17th century, the Old Belarusian in the GDL had been the prevalent language of the state, diplomatic, business and private letters, the documents of the town, land, castle offices, town halls, magistrates, magdeburgies, the inventories and revisions of the estates, the indexes of the armed forces, even in the ethnic Lithuanian lands of the GDL. The major part of the documents of the Lithuanian Metrica of the 15th – 16th century had been composed in Old Belarusian (see also: Denomination of office language, Languages of Lithuanian Metrica). The Royal Chancelleries of Krakow and Warsaw had been composing the official correspondence to the GDL in Old Belarusian. The Codes of Law of the GDL had been written in the Old Belarusian.

The Old Belarusian became the 3rd Slavonic language, after the Czech and Polish, in which the printing had begun. The first book in Old Belarusian had been printed by Skaryna in Prague (1517). Later in the 16th century, the center of the printing activity done in the Old Belarusian had moved to the Vilnia.

The Old Belarusian had been the language of the belletrists, publicists, memoirists, religious polemics, hamiletics, angiography, etc. The Old Belarusian had seen the translations of the Western knight novels, historical chronicles and apocryphal works.

After the political changes happening during the end 14th—15th century, the general decline of the Old Belarusian culture in the GDL in favour of Polish had been progressing throughout the 16th and 17th century, despite being decried and lamented by various publicists, like, e.g., by Tyapinski in the foreword to his «Scriptures» (1570) The events had taken the especially unfavourable turn in the 1570s, with the beginning and progressing of the Counter-Reformation in Commonwealth, as the Orthodox and Protestants had constituted the major part of the Old Belarusian language userbase. The Commonwealth Inquisition’s «Index of Books Forbidden» (issued since 1603) had included many of the Old Belarusian and Lithuanian publications.

The 16th—17th century political opposition to the ongoing Polonisation manifested itself, e.g., in the article in the 1566 Code of Law (Statute), declaring the Old Belarusian. as the only allowed language of the office in the GDL. The article had been maintained in the 1588 edition, and even in Statute's re-publication in Polish language (1614). See also: Golden age of Belarusian history.

As more and more of the upper and, following them, middle classes had been embracing the Polonisation, the effective usage of the Old Belarusian had been dwindling. By the middle of the 17th century, the only significant amount of printing in the Old Belarusian was done by Orthodox church. However, even the language of the Orthodox-written texts, in a pursuit of «attractiveness» had been by then heavily infested with Polonisms, diverting considerably not only from the vernacular language, but from the earlier Old Belarusian literary tradition as well. Notably, since 1626 all of the anti-Greek-Catholic Orthodox polemic had been published completely in Polish language.

By the 2nd quarter 17th century, the Old Belarusian (literary) language had effectively incorporated the multitude of the Polish language’s elements, and therefore had become highly artificial and partially just unfit for the real live use, losing the connection with its live vernacular foundations. The literary language of the epoch, especially after the transfer of the center of the Orthodox printing to Kiev (c.1610s), could not even be considered truly Old Belarusian anymore.

In 1696, the General Confederation of Estates had decreed the cancellation of the use of the Old Belarusian language in the role of the language of office and court.

While surviving among smaller nobility and urban dwellers even in the beginning of the 19th century, effectively Old Belarusian was relegated to the role of plebes vernacular talk, with almost no printing in it happening, and with only schools using it in education being the schools run by the Basilian order.

In the 19th century, the remnants of Old Belarusian served as the basis for the developing of the Modern Belarusian language.

The appearance of the Belarusian specifics in the clerical Old Church Slavonic texts dates back to the 15th century, and some authors notice Belarusian phonological specifics in the local Old Church Slavonic texts of the 11th century, with prominent examples of "Chetya" (copied by "cleric's son Byarozka of Navahradak" in 1489), collection of Books of Bible, translated into Old Belarusian from Yiddish in the beginning of the 16th century, Psaltir of the 16th century and others. Skaryna, while retaining the Old Church Slavonic basis in the language of his books, had introduced so much of the Old Belarusian lexics, that the language of his books had diverted considerably from the traditional Old Church Slavonic.
 * Clerical literature ===

Further steps in the closing of the gap between the language of the religious literature and the vernacular had been attempted by Budny and Tyapinskiy. The publishing of the Scriptures (1580) translated by Tyapinskiy marked the virtual supplanting of the Old Church Slavonic with Old Belarusian in the clerical literature.

Summarily, in the 16th – beginning of the 17th century, the Old Belarusian had, to a great extent, become the language of the liturgical literature printed in the GDL, in place of the Old Church Slavonic.

Of somewhat separate nature is the question of classification of the office, chancellery language and its variations in Great Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). Generally, there exists a cardinal disagreement among the Slavists studying Medieval East Slavonics, whether to consider Medieval office literacy the manifestation of the appropriate literary language. In the case of Old Belarusian, Karskiy in 1900s (later, F. P. Filin in 1970s, L. M. Shakun in 1960s) had proved the sufficient extent of identity between the Old Belarusian literary language and the language of the office literacy of the GDL. However, later, various researchers (S. Kutrzeba (1914), J. Jakubowski (1912), A. Martel (1938), I. I. Lappo (1936)) had contended the thesis of Karskiy and either played up the Church Slavonic component in the language of the office literacy of the Great Duchy, or just moved the thesis of the office language just being Church Slavonic.
 * Office language ===

The propagation of such views is generally attributed to the insufficient knowledge of the foreign researchers of the live Belarusian language, overlap of the areals of the Medieval Church Slavonic and Old Belarusian, identical graphical systems, close relations in the grammars and lexics.

The research of Slavist Christian Stang (1935) had distinguished several types of the office language of the Great Duchy:
 * In the 14th and early 15th century, the Southern-Volhynian, Northern-Volhynian, Polatsk-Vitsyebsk-Smalyensk types.
 * By the half 15th century ("King Casimir period" [sic]), the Southern-Belarusian and Northern-Volhynian types, with the Belarusian type prevailing, also token presence of the Southern-Volhynian type.
 * By the beginning of the 16th century, the office language (and language generally) had been reaching its more stabilised and normed, form.
 * By the half 16th century, the office language had been identical with the literary Old Belarusian, and had been closely related with the Belarusian dialects of contemporary Vilnia area, and the Polatsk type merged by then. The Southern types of office language had disappeared completely

The issue of denomination of state, official and business language of Great Duchy of Lithuania remains unresolved by linguists, as of by 2000s. There exist nominations of:
 * "chancellery language of Great Duchy" (by Stang), limited to the chancellery and office documents written down in the Great Duchy, and not pertaining to all Old Belarusian literacy;
 * "simple language" ("prostaya mova", by B. A. Uspenskiy), which may, however, also pertain to the local dialect of some North-West Belarusian talks;
 * "rus'ka mova", which is very unprecise, especially because in overwhelming majority of Belarusian literacy artifacts lexeme "ruskiy" is written with no "soft sign", reflecting the phonological process completed in 12th—13th century Additionally, term "ruskiy" is very ambiguous in its use in literacy artifacts and may also pertain to text which is "East Slavic in general" or "of Orthodox persuasion" or "in Cyrillic script" or, indeed, Old Belarusian. The ambiguity of use of the term is corroborated, in a way, by the existence of the term "simple Russian language" ("prostaya ruskaya mova" );
 * "Old Belarusian literary language", which by 2000s was considered commonly accepted, although hotly contended by some non-Belarusian linguistic schools.

These ambiguities in the literacy artifacts provided for the ongoing disputes concerned with the Belarusian — Ukrainian delimitation of the literacy artifacts of the period, denoted as written in "simple language" ("prostaya mova"), exposed, e.g., in much-quoted work of Ukrainian I. I. Ogiyenko (1935).


 * Notes ==


 * Sources ==
 * [Anichenka, Zhurawski 1988] Анічэнка У. В., Жураўскі А. І. Беларуская лексіка ў выданнях Ф. Скарыны // Францыск Скарына і яго час. Энцыклапед. даведнік. – Мн. : БелЭн, 1988. ISBN 5-85700-003-3.
 * [Halyenchanka 1988] Галенчанка Г. Я. Кнігадрукаванне ў Польшчы // Францыск Скарына і яго час. Энцыклапед. даведнік. – Мн. : БелЭн, 1988. ISBN 5-85700-003-3.
 * [Karskiy 1893] Карский Е. Ф. Что такое древнее западнорусское наречие? // «Труды Девятого археологического съезда в Вильне, 1893», под ред. графини Уваровой и С. С. Слуцкого, т. II – М., 1897. – с. 62 – 70. In edition: Карский Е. Ф. Белорусы: 3 т. Т. 1 / Е. Ф. Карский / Уступны артыкул М. Г. Булахава, прадмова да першага тома і каментарыі В. М. Курцовай, А. У. Унучака, І. У. Чаквіна . – Мн. : БелЭн, 2006. – с. 495 – 504. ISBN 985-11-0360-8 (T.1), ISBN 985-11-0359-4.
 * [Karskiy 1903] Карский, Е. Ф. Белорусы: 3 т. Т. 1 / Уступны артыкул М. Г. Булахава, прадмова да першага тома і каментарыі В. М. Курцовай, А. У. Унучака, І. У. Чаквіна. ; [Карскій. Бѣлоруссы. Т. I – Вильна, 1903] – Мн. : БелЭн, 2006. ISBN 985-11-0360-8 (Т.1), ISBN 985-11-0359-4.
 * [Stankyevich 1927] Ян Станкевіч. Беларуская Акадэмічная Конфэрэнцыя 14.—21.XI.1926 і яе працы дзеля рэформы беларускае абэцэды й правапісу (агульны агляд) [1927] // Станкевіч Я. Збор твораў у двух тамах. Т.1. — Мн. : Энцыклапедыкс, 2002. — 552 с. ISBN 985-6599-45-8 (т.1) С.223—235.
 * [Stankyevich 1930] Ян Станкевіч. Месца беларускага языка сярод іншых славянскіх языкоў і час яго ўзьніку [Вільня, 1930] // Станкевіч Я. Збор твораў у двух тамах. Т.1. — Мн. : Энцыклапедыкс, 2002. — 552 с. ISBN 985-6599-45-8 (т.1) С.223—235.
 * [Stankyevich 1939] Ян Станкевіч. Гісторыя беларускага языка [Вільня, 1939] // Станкевіч Я. Збор твораў у двух тамах. Т.1. — Мн. : Энцыклапедыкс, 2002. — 552 с. ISBN 985-6599-45-8 (т.1) С.373—375.
 * [Stankyevich 1954] Доля мовы беларускае (яе вонкашная гісторыя) у розныя пэрыяды гісторыі Беларусі [Нью-Йорк, 1954] // Станкевіч Я. Збор твораў у двух тамах. Т.2. — Мн. : Энцыклапедыкс, 2002. — 586 с. ISBN 985-6599-46-6 (т.2). С.48—60.
 * [StStankyevich 1962] Станкевіч С. Русіфікацыя беларускае мовы ў БССР і супраціў русіфікацыйнаму працэсу [1962] / Прадмова В. Вячоркі. – Мн. : Навука і тэхніка, 1994. ISBN 5-343-01645-6.
 * [Yaskyevich 2001] Яскевіч А. А. Старабеларускія граматыкі: да праблемы агульнафілалагічнай цэласнасці. – 2-е выд. – Мн. : Беларуская навука, 2001. ISBN 985-08-0451-3.
 * [Zhurawski 1978] А. И. Журавский. Деловая письменность в системе старобелорусского литературного языка // Восточнославянское и общее языкознание. – М., 1978. – С. 185-191.
 * [Zhurawski 1993] Жураўскі А. І. Беларуская мова // Энцыклапедыя гісторыі Беларусі. У 6 т. Т. 1. - Мн.: БелЭн, 1993.

What a mess...
''Two of them started to collect the East Slavic territories: one in Moscow and one in Halych. These activities resulted in two separate mainly East Slavic states, the Grand Duchy of Moscow, which eventually evolved into the Russian Empire, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,'' - that is not even close. Halych was a capital of Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia and it was not a "former" of Grand Duchy of Lithuania but "falled" under it (partly). Volhynia became a part of Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Galicia became part of Kingdom of Poland. (English is not my native so I won't correct main text, but such mistakes must be removed). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Galicia%E2%80%93Volhynia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.44.30.18 (talk) 09:19, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree. The heading "Divergence between literary Ruthenian and literary Russian" is particularly egregious, given that literary Russian did not emerge until the 19th century, as stated in a related article! Thus the implication that Ruthenian diverged somehow from Russian is ridiculous. The entire linguistic history presented is unsubstantiated and tendentious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.148.12.125 (talk) 04:29, 9 November 2015 (UTC)


 * As stated in History of the Russian language: "Much annalistic, hagiographic, and poetic material survives from the early Muscovite period. Nonetheless, a significant amount of philosophic and secular literature is known to have been destroyed after being proclaimed heretical... Modern Russian literature is considered to have begun in the 17th century, with the autobiography of Avvakum and a corpus of chronique scandaleuse short stories from Moscow." So the modern literature began in the 17th century, but many written Russian sources exist from the earlier times. --Off-shell (talk) 07:32, 10 November 2015 (UTC)


 * "Literary" typically means standardized, and the Russian language was not standardized in the 17th century.Faustian (talk) 21:26, 10 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Literary language: "A literary language is a register or dialect of a language that is used in literary writing...The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others." And according to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/literary "literary" means "Of, relating to, or dealing with literature" or "Appropriate to literature rather than everyday speech or writing". The latter meaning usually implies "formal", but the former meaning is also applicable, i.e. simply "the language used in literature". --Off-shell (talk) 22:32, 10 November 2015 (UTC)


 * You are confusing "modern Russian literature" with "literary language." Russian language states "The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language (современный русский литературный язык). It arose in the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter the Great, and developed from the Moscow (Middle or Central Russian) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancellery language." So while literature was produced in the 17th century, it was not written in the literary language, which did not yet exist, but presumably in the colloquial language.Faustian (talk) 04:42, 12 November 2015 (UTC)


 * The key word in your quote is modern. Yes, the modern Russian literary language arose in the 18th century. Whether the language of the medieval Russian literature was the same as the colloquial one, this I don't know. In any case, to avoid confusion, I think one can replace "literary language" by "written language" in this section. --Off-shell (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

The British Annals of Education
page 81:

1362. The Slavonic languages, so far as is at present known, may be regarded as forming three branches: 1. The Russo-Illyrian. 2. The Bohemo-Polish. 3. The Wendo-Lithuanian.

So, I delete:

"In some other sources, mainly from 18-19th centuries. F.e. in The British Annals of Education, 1844, Wendo-Ruthenian, Wendo-Lithuanian, Germano-Slavic (Germano-Slavonic) language".

— Yuriy Dzyаdyk (t•c), 18:50, 27 September 2016 (UTC).

Alphabet
Let's get an alphabet into the article, along with the one for Old East Slavic, while we're at it.

It's inconvenient for readers to have to circle back to the Old Cyrillic Alphabet page, especially when it definitely would've changed by this point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by UkrainianSavior1 (talk • contribs) 05:33, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Smal-Stotsky's Ruthenian
I'm not a specialist in this but can somebody confirm that Stotsky's work is really relevant to this article? It seems to me that what he calls Ruthenian, is simply the spoken Galician Ukrainian of his time, not the "Chancery Slavic" of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Russian and Ukrainian versions of the article don't even mention his name

The ISO process
The material in this new section can be mentioned herein, but it rightly belongs to the subject of the article Rusyn language. —Michael Z. 19:41, 20 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, that information is quite relevant for the article on Rusyn language. I was expecting to find some more information on those processes (ISO), but in any case, I could add the presently available information in that article too. Sorabino (talk) 02:07, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * I’m suggesting you delete the section and move the text there since this article is about a different subject. Their names have been applied different ways in different periods, but the respective articles’ subjects are clear and distinct. —Michael Z. 18:35, 21 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Ok, now I understand your suggestion. The way you formulated your first (initial) remark did not indicate such reduction, but I guess that some clarification should be made. Since the ISO process in question is related to the term Ruthenian language, it seems to me that some information related to that process is relevant for this article too. I would agree that some aspects of that ISO process are not directly relevant to the main subject of the article on Ruthenian language, but it seems to me that other (terminological) aspects of the same process, that are relevant (proposal from November 2020), should not be removed from this article? Sorabino (talk) 23:57, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

rsk and Ruthenian
Currently Template:Lang points to Ruthenian language when used with the ISO code rsk. However rsk stands for the language described in the article Pannonian Rusyn. The ISO 639-3 Change Request 2021-005 does not mention the possible confusion in "Ruthenian" and it uses "Rusyn" for a different language. Can you help decide where rsk should point to? What is the proper title for what is now Pannonian Rusyn? --Error (talk) 21:58, 6 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Code rsk is defined as a living language (with the names Rusnak/Rusyn/Ruthenian), so definitely not this language but Pannonian Rusyn. Code rue is Rusyn, and it makes sense that it means Carpathian Rusyn (not sure I can prove it). This language doesn’t have an ISO standard code, but a third-party extension code orv-olr from the Linguist List. It is based on code orv, “Old Russian” in the standard, but MultiTree gives better info on it (but presumably has not yet been updated for code rsk).
 * I’m no expert. Hope that’s helpful. Can Template:Lang work with this? —Michael Z. 02:48, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Looks like Pannonian Rusyn also/previously has the extension code rue-par. See the child dialects of Rusyn listed at MultiTree. —Michael Z. 02:52, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Foreign map labels
reverted my edit with “I believe these translations provide insight into the context of the map.” The map is presented as a map, not as a historical artifact. The Russian labels and glosses from the map, without explanation, don’t provide insight into the Ruthenian language, which is the subject of the article. And WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary: perhaps this material belongs in Wiktionary. —Michael Z. 20:20, 2 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking this to Talk. The map is in Russian. In my opinion, it makes sense to provide a literal translation as the English description provided differs from a stricter translation. If you still disagree, feel free to revert. KaerbaqianRen 💬 21:21, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Well, starorusskii could be translated as Old Russian—as opposed to the Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian—but that might be confusing because the term is also used, incorrectly, for the Old East Slavic language overall (see Old East Slavic). Be that as it may, zapadnorusskii is simply the Russian word for the Ruthenian language, and there is no “West Russian” language, and the map is not showing western Russian. If we want to talk about the etymology of the name in different languages, we could do that in the article, but just literally calquing the Russian name from a map without explanation is not insightful but potentially confusing. The map caption is there to explain the map content to our English-speaking readers, and the fact that it is in Russian is already a hindrance without using unfamiliar names.
 * So at your invitation, I will go ahead and revert to the previous version. If you think it can be improved, go ahead and do so. —Michael Z. 00:05, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

language periodization of George Shevelov, linguist, philologist
dear Mzajac, there is no mention of linguist, philologist George Shevelov anywhere in the main article anymore, although he is in the references. should his language periodization be re-included? thanks ~ Johnfreez (talk) 10:48, 10 November 2023 (UTC)


 * This is the periodization of the Ukrainian language as a whole, not Ruthenian specifically. It makes more sense to mention this periodization in the Ukrainian language article (as it covers 11th century to the present). Why did you not directly ask the person who removed it? After all, you are still following their edits. Mellk (talk) 11:03, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It’s a periodization of this subject language, in a particular context. It’s certainly not “irrelevant.” —Michael Z. 13:55, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * George Shevelov gives a chronology for Ukrainian. The subject is Ruthenian language. Ukrainian and Ruthenian are not the same. It is only relevant for Ukrainian language history. Mellk (talk) 13:58, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Please read the article more carefully. Ruthenian represents an important historical phase of both Belarusian and Ukrainian. —Michael Z. 14:10, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This does not mean that anything about the Belarusian or Ukrainian languages should be mentioned in this particular article. What is the relevance of these phases from pre-11th century or present day here? It would be good to have an expansion of the article on the dialects, but we do not need the entire history of either modern language mentioned. Mellk (talk) 14:20, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Patent nonsense. Of course things about Ukrainian should be mentioned in the article about Ruthenian or Middle Ukrainian. It is a historical phase of the same language. And the actual passage concerns this language, its ancestors, and its descendants. —Michael Z. 19:14, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * This article is not about "Middle Ukrainian". The redaction found in Lithuanian statutes and chronicles for example was closer to modern Belarusian, hence they are often called Lithuanian-Belarusian. This article is not about a historical phase of Ukrainian specifically (or Ukrainian as a whole), hence the passage does not belong to the section about the periodization of Ruthenian (15 c. to 18 c.) and only makes sense in limited contexts about Ukrainian specifically. Mellk (talk) 19:40, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * So in your opinion this article is about historical Belarusian and Lithuanian language and not Ukrainian? Or what? I disagree. I believe its subject includes the ancestor language, including all of its dialects, of Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian languages. If you want to change its scope, please call an RFC. —Michael Z. 20:45, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I am not arguing that Ukrainian is not related. I am saying that mentioning one periodization of the entire history of the Ukrainian language out of context in this article should be removed. If one periodization of the history of the Belarusian language was also added, this would create even more confusion, as neither cover Ruthenian specifically and therefore look contradictory without proper context. A periodization such as what is given by Daniel Bunčić for example (which is specifically about Ruthenian as a whole) is what can be included. Mellk (talk) 08:27, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Adding context to information about the subject seems a better way to improve this start-class article than deleting relevant information that places the subject within its academic context (specifically, relating it to a parent subject). I agree it looks unbalanced, but that’s because so much more is still missing too. —Michael Z. 14:02, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
 * "Old Ukrainian" is also the typical term for specific dialects during this time period. Mellk (talk) 19:42, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * For a specific dialect of Ruthenian? Okay. Please cite this as it would be another valuable addition to the article. —Michael Z. 20:33, 10 November 2023 (UTC)