Yazychiie

Yazychiie. The derogatory name for the bookish language in which the Galician, Bukovynian, and Transcarpathian Russophiles wrote in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Based on the earlier bookish Slavonic-Ruthenian language, the yazychiie was a combination of Church Slavonic and Russian that included Western Ukrainian vernacular elements and Polonisms and had a Ukrainian pronunciation. It was used in Lviv periodicals, such as Slovo (Lviv) (1861–87), Naukovyi sbornik (later called Literaturnyi sbornik) (1865–73, 1885–90, 1896–7), Vremennik Stavropigiiskogo instituta s mesiatsoslovom (1864–1915), and Věstnik Narodnoho doma (1882–1914), as well as in two Bukovyna periodicals: Pravoslavnaia Bukovina (1893–1904) and Bukovinski vědomosti (1895–1909). The Galician Populists and Radicals (eg, Ivan Franko) condemned its use.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]