Transcarpathian dialects

Transcarpathian dialects. Archaic variants of the Boiko dialect spoken in Transcarpathia. The dialects are divided into four groups: Uzh, Borzhava, Maramureş, and Highland (Verkhovyna). The Highland subdialects, which are spoken as far south as the line Velykyi Bereznyi–Mizhhiria–Synevyr, are transitional to the Boiko dialect. In the west, along the Laborets River, the dialects border on the southern Lemko dialects, whose southeasterly expansion in the 16th to 18th centuries created transitional belts along the Tsirokha River and the Uzh River. In the east, along the Shopurka River, they border on the Hutsul dialect, whose 17th- to 18th-century expansion resulted in mixed dialects along the Ruskova River and Hutsul features as far west as the Teresva River. West of Uzhhorod, as a result of Slovak expansion, mixed ‘Sotak’ dialects (named after the pronunciation of shcho ‘what, who’ as so), which are transitional to the East Slovak dialects, evolved (see Slovak-Ukrainian linguistic relations).

The features of the Transcarpathian dialects are: (1) retention of dž < dj (eg, molódžyj [Standard Ukrainian (SU) molódšyj] ‘younger’); (2) retention of soft r’ before a consonant and at the end of a word (eg, ver’x, pýsar’ [SU verx, pýsar] ‘top, scribe’); (3) retention of the difference between ы and y (eg, rыba, nytkы [SU rýba, nytký] ‘fish, threads’); (4) hardened š, ž; (5) softened dž’ west of the Liatorytsia River and softened č’ west of the Borzhava River, accompanied by the mixing of the groups č’k and šk (eg, káš’ka, dóč’ká, č’kóda [SU káčka, dóška, škóda] ‘duck, board, harm’); (6) appearance of the tense-positional variants ô, ê of the phonemes o, je before a palatal consonant and before i, u, ŭ, ô, ê (eg, cêr’kôu, na dôrô’zi, dên’ [SU cérkva, na dorózi, den’] ‘church, on the road, day’, in which ê can change to y); (7) in newly closed syllables the change of ō, ē into û, ’û/jû between the Laborets River and the Liatorytsia River and between the Rika River and the Shopurka River (eg, kûn, n’ûs, vjûx [SU kin’, nis, viv] ‘horse, nose, he led’, in which -x < -f/-v), or into ü, ’ü/jü between the Liatorytsia River and the Rika River (eg, kün’, n’üs, vjüx), or into i, ’i in the Highland dialects (eg, kin’, n’is, viv/viŭ); (8) forms of the type yrstýty, kýrve, jáblyko, žыt’a, z’íl’a, tôŭ dôbrôŭ rukôŭ, má(v)u [SU xrystýty, króvy, jábluko, žyttjá, zíllja, tóju dóbroju rukóju, máju] ‘to christen, of the blood, apple, life, herbs, with that good hand, I have’); (9) stress peculiarities, ie, frequent stress on the prefix (eg, názad, zácvyte, nájstaršyj, né znaje [SU nazád, zacvité, najstáršyj, ne znáje] ‘back [adverb], will bloom, oldest, does not know’), but also stresses such as veselýj, pêr’šá, idó mni (SU vesélyj, pérša, do méne) ‘happy, the first, to me’; (10) frequent archaic endings in nouns (eg brýtôŭ, z cêr’kve, u cêr’kvy, na zemlý, vôŭcy, dvóme majstróve, vôlum/-lým/lыm, z týma malýma psóma, v l’isóx, na kôn’ox, dva séla [west of the Uzh River], dvi séla [east of the Uzh River], trijé/četыré brát’a [SU brýtva, z cérkvy, u cérkvi, na zemlí, vovký, dva májstry, volám, z týmy malýmy psámy, v lisáx, na kónjax, dva selá, try/čotýry bráty] ‘razor, from church, in church, on land, wolves, two masters, oxen (dat), with those little dogs, in forests, on horses, two villages, three/four brothers’); (11) influence of hard-declension endings on the soft (eg, kôn’óvy, kôn’óm, pôl’om, vôlós’om, zêml’ôŭ, cér’kôŭl’ôŭ, môjéŭ [SU konévi, koném, pólem, volossjam, zemléju, cerkvoju, mojeju] ‘horse (dative and instrumental), field, hair, land, church, my (instrumental)’; (12) adjectival endings such as nыn’išn’yj, nášoje, dóbroje, dóbroj (in the west), tótы (SU nýnišnij, náše, dóbre, dóbryj, ti) ‘today's, our, good (neuter), good (masculine), those’; (13) enclitic pronominal forms, eg, (m)n’a, t’a, s’a, ho, ju/ji, mn’i, ty/t’i, sy, mu, jûj/jüj, na n’um/n’üm, oná, n’ôŭ/nêŭ, na n’ûŭ/n’ýŭ (SU mené, tebé, sebé, johó, jijí, mení, tobí, sobí, jomú, jij, na n’omú, voná, néju, na níj) ‘me, you, oneself, him, her (accusative), me, you, oneself, him, her (dative), on him, she, with her, on her’; (14) numeral forms such as dvásto, šíst’sto, samodrúhыj, piŭdrúha (SU dvístá, šistsót, vdvox, pivtorá) ‘two hundred, six hundred, two (both), one and a half’; (15) verb forms such as močý, veréčy, môhú, môhut’, čýtam, -aš, -at(‘), -ame, -ate, -ávut(‘), kupíju/-ýju'-ыju, nós’u, xodýŭjem, -jês’, xodýlys’me, -s’te, ož jem ukráŭ, pl’ûx, vjûx, mjûx, mu čytaty, ja bыx maŭ, id’, id’ím(e) (SU mohtý, kýnuty, móžu, móžut’, čytáju, -ješ, -je, -jemo, -jete, -jut’, kupúju, nošú, ja xodýv, ty xodýv, my xodýly, vy xodýly, ščo ja vkrav, pliv, viv, miv, búdu čytáty, ja mav by, idý, idímo) ‘to be able to throw, I can, they can, I read, you (singular) read, he reads, we read, you (plural) read, they read, I buy, I carry, I went, you (singular) went, we went, you (plural) went, what I stole, I wove, I led, I could, I will read, I should have, go (2nd singular imperative), let us go’; (16) word forms such as môrkôŭ, jablýnča [SU mórkva, jáblunja] ‘carrot, apple tree’; (17) many lexical archaisms and Hungarian (see Hungarian loan words), Romanian (see Romanianisms), German (see Germanisms), and Slovak (see Slovak-Ukrainian linguistic relations) loanwords.

The dialects have been studied by Sándor Bonkáló, Olaf Broch, Nikolai Durnovo, Georgii Gerovsky, Volodymyr Hnatiuk, P. Lyzanets, Ivan Pankevych, Ivan Verkhratsky, Yosyp Dzendzelivsky, and others.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pan’kevych, Ivan. Ukraïns’ki hovory Pidkarpats’koï Rusy i sumezhnykh oblastei z prylozhenniam 5 diialektolohichnykh map, I, Zvuchnia i morfolohiia (Prague 1938)
Dzendzelivs’kyi, Iosyp. Linhvistychnyi atlas ukraïns’kykh narodnykh hovoriv Zakarpats’koï oblasti URSR (leksyka), 2 vols (Uzhhorod 1958, 1960)
Pan’kevych, Ivan. ‘Narys istoriï ukraïns’kykh zakarpats’kykh hovoriv, Chastyna I: Fonetyka,’ Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Philologica, 1 (1958)
Dezső, László. Ocherki po istorii zakarpatskikh govorov (Budapest 1967)
Pan’kevych, Ivan. Materialy do istoriï movy pivdennokarpats’kykh ukraïntsiv, vol 4, bk 2 of Naukovyi zbirnyk Muzeiu ukraïns’koï kul’tury v Svydnyku (Svydnyk 1970)
Lizanets, Pavel. Vengerskie zaimstvovaniia v ukrainskikh govorakh Zakarpat’ia: Vengersko-ukrainskie mezhφiazykovye sviazi (Budapest 1976)

Oleksa Horbach

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