Pannonian Rusyn (, ), also historically referred to as Yugoslav Rusyn, is a variety of the Rusyn language, spoken by the Pannonian Rusyns, primarily in the regions of Vojvodina (northern part of modern Serbia) and Slavonia (eastern part of modern Croatia), and also in the Pannonian Rusyn diaspora in the United States and Canada. Since Rusyns are officially recognized as a national minority both in Serbia and Croatia, their language is also recognized as a minority language, and in the provincial administration of Serbian province of Vojvodina is employed as one of six languages in official use.The Statue of the Autonomous Province of VojvodinaNational Council of the Rusyn National Minority (Serbia)Savez Rusina Republike Hrvatske
There are several scholarly debates on various linguistic issues related to this language, including the question of whether Pannonian Rusyn should be reclassified as a distinct microlanguage, a dialect of Eastern Slovak, or still considered to be just a specific variety of the common Rusyn language, which also has other varieties, spoken by Rusyns in northern (Carpathian) regions, mainly in southwestern Ukraine, northeastern Slovakia, southeastern Poland, and northern Romania.
Name
In some non-Slavic languages, Pannonian Rusyns may be referred to by somewhat archaic exonyms, such as Pannonian Ruthenes or Pannonian Ruthenians, and their language is thus labeled as Pannonian Ruthenian, but such terminology is not used in the native (Rusyn) language. Ruthenian exonyms are also viewed as imprecise, since they have several broader meanings, both in terms of their historical uses and ethnic scopes, that are encompassing various East Slavic groups and their languages. In English, Pannonian Rusyns generally refer to their language as simply "Ruthenian"; for instance, there exists a "Department of Ruthenian Studies" at the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Novi Sad, which teaches courses relating to Pannonian Rusyn.
Most commonly, native speakers refer to their language simply as Rusky (, ), that renders in English as Rusyn. Sometimes they also use the somewhat archaic term Rusnacky (, ), that renders in English as Rusnak. These terms are used both by laypersons in daily conversation, and by Pannonian-Rusyn linguists in native-language scholarly works.
Since those terms have historically been (and still are) used by Carpathian Rusyns and other East Slavs as endonyms for their own vernacular, a need emerged for an appropriate adjective to identify this particular linguistic variety. In this spirit, Gabriel Kostelnik proposed the term () to refer to the language spoken in the region of Bačka (modern-day Serbia).
Eventually, the more general term, (), was adopted by several scholars and thus also encompassed the varieties of the language spoken in the region of Syrmia (modern-day Serbia and Croatia). Terms such as Vojvodina Rusyn or Vojvodinian Rusyn were alternatively used to refer to all variants in the region of Vojvodina. Even wider term Yugoslav Rusyn was sometimes also used during the existence of former Yugoslavia.
Finally, during the 1970s and 1980s, Rusyn writer and artist Yulian Kolyesarov proposed the term Panonsko-Rusky () or Pannonian Rusyn.
In spite of all the aforementioned endonymic tems, some modern authors still opt to use those based on the exonymic term Ruthenian. Since native speakers do not use Ruthenian or related terms for self-identification in their own language, such terms are likewise not used in works written in the native language. Still, the terms are employed by some authors in various English-language and non-Slavic works; sometimes in a very general manner. For instance, instead of using regional identifiers (such as Pannonian Ruthenian, corresponding to Pannonian Rusyn), several of these authors have begun to simply designate that linguistic variety solely as Ruthenian, excluding any regional or other adjectives.
Thus, a peculiar terminological situation has emerged as the term Ruthenian language already has a specific and well-established meaning in both traditional and scientific contexts and primarily refers to late medieval and early modern varieties of East Slavic as were spoken in the regions of modern-day Ukraine, Belarus from the 15th until 18th centuries. More recently in the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the corresponding term () was employed until 1918 as the official exonymic term for the entire body of East Slavic languages within the borders of the Monarchy.
ISO 639-3 Identifier In 2022, the ISO 639-3 identifier, rsk, and language names, Rusyn and Ruthenian, were approved for Pannonian Rusyn by ISO. The change followed request in 2020 by a group of linguists (including Aleksandr Dulichenko) in which ISO was asked to recognize Pannonian Rusyn as distinct and separate from Carpathian Rusyn and to issue it the new ISO 639-3 identifier, Ruthenian language (with the additional name, Rusnak).ISO 639-3: Change Request Documentation: 2021-005
This ISO update is the latest development since a 2019 proposal from a smaller group of those same linguists which similarly requested suppression of the code, rue, and division of Rusyn language into two distinct languages: the East Rusyn language (Carpathian Rusyn) and the South Rusyn language (Pannonian Rusyn). However, in 2020, ISO authorities rejected the request.ISO 639-3: Change Request Documentation: 2019-016
As explained earlier, term Ruthenian language already has a specific and well-established meaning. However, the additional term, Rusnak, also has a wider connotation as it is a traditional endonym for all Rusyns (whether in Pannonia or Carpathian Rus'). The effects of the adoption of these terms for Pannonian Rusyn by ISO (if any) remain to be seen.
Classification Pannonian Rusyn has recently been treated as a separate language from Carpatho-Rusyn. By some scholars, mainly American scholars, Pannonian Rusyn has been treated as a West Slavic language, and Carpatho-Rusyn as an East Slavic language, which would make Pannonian Rusyn the only West Slavic language to use the Cyrillic script.
In the ISO 639-9 identifier application for Pannonian Rusyn (or "Ruthenian" as it is referred to in that document), the authors note that "Ruthenian is closest to [a] linguistic entity sometimes called [; ], ... (the speeches of Trebišov and Prešov [districts])."
Though Pannonian Rusyn shares most of its linguistic features with these Eastern Slovak dialects, it shares nine features which are exclusive to South-West Zemplin (Trebišov) Eastern Slovak varieties:
Reflexes *ĕ (e.g. ; ; ); Reflexes *ḷ (e.g. ; ; ); Distribution o < *ō/*ŏ (e.g. ; ; ); The distribution of e < *ē/*ě (e.g. ; ; ); Change of *s > š/ш and *z > ž/ж and the absence of phonemes ś and ź (e.g. ; ; ); The presence of hard consonant groups šč/щ and ždž/ждж (e.g. ; ; ); The dative and the locative singular forms of feminine nouns with the ending -a in the nominative singular form (e.g. ; ; ); Infinitive endings and final -čic/-чиц (; ); Lexical elements (e.g. ; kukovka/куковка "cuckoo", ; ).
Pannonian Rusyn also shares three features unique to South-East Šariš (Prešov) Eastern Slоvаk varieties:
The presence of certain forms of the auxiliary verb (e.g. ; ; etc.) and the formation of negative forms (e.g. ; ; etc.); Formation of masculine singular participle with the formant -l/-л for the verbs having the infinitive base in consonant (e.g. ) and forms in the final -nul/-нул (e.g. ; ); Lexical elements (e.g. ; ).
DulichenkoJugoslavo Ruthenica II, 2009, 129-132 аlsо states that East Slovak features predominate both on phonological and morphological level. He points to the following phonological features:
Stress in Ruthenian is always on penultimate syllable; Dulichenko connects this feature with Polish, although it is present in all Eastern Slovak speeches; Initial e > je/є (e.g. ; ; ); *i, *y > i/и (e.g. ; ; ; ) as in Slovak and Czech, while East Slavic languages and dialects rigorously differentiate between *i and *y, with most Carpathian Rusyn varieties even differentiating a third ŷ; dj > dz (e.g. ; ; ); tj > c (e.g. ; ; ); z' > (ź) > ž/ж (e.g. ; ; ); s' > (ś) > š/ш (e.g. ; ; ); The Proto-Slavic consonant groups *dl and *tl are preserved (e.g. ; ; ; ); gvi > hvi (e.g. ; ); kvi > kvi (e.g. ; ); Absence of epenthesis l'/л (е.g. ; ; ). Proto-Slavic groups -ort and -olt became groups rot- and lot- (e.g. ; ; ); The below Proto-Slavic groups changed in the same manner as in West and South Slavic languages. In contrast, these groups became torot, tolot, teret, tolot (e.g. boroda, poroch, korova; holova, boloto, holod; bereh, pered, vereteno; moloko, polot', polova) in East Slavic languages. tort became trat (e.g. ; ; ); tolt became tlat (e.g. ; ; ); tert became tret (e.g. ; ; ); telt became tlet (e.g. ; ; ).
Dulichenko also notes that Pannonian Rusyn shares the following morphological features with East Slovak dialects:
The nominative singular of nouns of neuter gender on a soft stem is formed by the ending -o (e.g. ; ; ), while East Slavic and standard Slovak generally use -e; The instrumental singular of nouns of feminine gender is formed by the ending -u/-у (e.g. ; ), whereas standard Slovak employs -ou; The genitive plural and locative plural (vocative plural for nouns pertaining to animate thing) of nouns are formed by the ending -och/-ох (e.g. , , ); The dative plural of nouns formed by the ending -om/-ом (e.g. , ); The instrumental plural ending: a) of adjectives (e.g.; ); b) of possessive, interrogative, demonstrative and personal pronouns of the third person plural (e.g. ; ; ); The nominative plural ending -o a) of possessive pronouns (e.g.); b) of possessive adjectives (e.g. ); The ending -m/-м for the first person singular of the Present Tense (e.g. ; ; ); The ending -me/-ме for the first person plural of the Present Tense (e.g. ; ; ); The endings -a, -ja, -u, -ju/-а, -я, -у, -ю for the third person plural of the Present Tense (e.g. ; ); The reflexive particle še/ше is weakly related to a verb and can proceed it (e.g. ); The system of forms of the auxiliary verb buc (som, ši, je, zme, sce, su)/буц (сом, ши, є, зме, сце, су); The conjunction že/же in the dependent clause (e.g. ).
Classification as West Slavic
Pannonian Rusyn and Carpathian Rusyn are claimed by some scholars to both be East Slavic languages. Pannonian Rusyn differs from Carpathian Rusyn in that the former has been influenced by the surrounding South Slavic languages (especially Serbian), whilst the latter has been influenced by the surrounding West Slavic languages (especially Polish and Slovak).
Among the West Slavic languages, Pannonian Rusyn has been especially influenced by the Eastern Slovak dialects. This influence occurred before the Rusyns emigrated to Pannonia from the northern Carpathian region, around the middle of the 18th century.
More recently, Pannonian Rusyn has been claimed, even by linguists and grammarians of Pannonian Rusyn origin, to be an inherit from Old Slovak, with extraneous East Slavic influence being derived from historically geographically proximate Carpathian Rusyn. This largely manifests in vocabulary, for example words displaying and .
In turn, Carpathian Rusyn has also been influenced by pre-migration Pannonian Rusyn, albeit to a smaller degree; for instance, the word for "spear" is , a feminine noun borrowed from Pannonian Rusyn , inherited from Old Slovak kopija. A native East Slavic inherit would have yielded a neuter noun; compare Russian .