The Ukrainian Language
Language is not an absolutely necessary distinguishing characteristic of a nation, as is shown by the examples of the Swiss, the North Americans, and the Spanish and Portuguese daughter-nations in America. If the Ukrainians, [[168]]determining to be considered an independent nation, had the remaining characteristics of an independent nation, they would certainly be one even if their language were identical with the Russian, White Russian or Polish.
But, in this regard, the Ukrainians are in the favorable position of really calling an independent language their own. To be sure, the opinion has been to a great extent spread thruout Europe that the Ukrainian language is a rural dialect of the Polish language, and official Russia is still encouraging the view that there is only a “Little Russian dialect” of the Russian language; European science and publicism opened the doors to both the above-mentioned unity theories, and the Russian unity theory has become the solely dominating one even in German science.
Slavic philology passes a different judgment. With the exception of a few Pan-Russian philologists (Florinsky, etc.), who, as a matter of fact, are not capable philologists at all, the entire philological profession is decided on the point that the Ukrainian language is related to the Russian and the Polish only to the extent that the Serbian and Bulgarian are, for instance, or the Polish and Czechic. The investigations of Miklosich, Malinovsky, Dahl, Maksimovich, Potebnia, Zitetsky, Ohonovsky, Shakhmatov, Broch, Baudouin de Courtenay, Fortunatov, Korsh, Krimsky, Satotsky, and others, have proved beyond a doubt that the Ukrainian language is not a dialect of the Russian language, but an independent language of equal rank with the Russian. The same opinion has been expressed most forcibly by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in its famous official decision, “Concerning the Removal of the Restrictions on Little Russian Publications, St. Petersburg, 1905.” The Academy emphasized expressly that the Russian and Ukrainian languages are two independent languages of equal rank. The Russian written language is not built up on a general East Slavic, but only on a Great Russian [[169]]foundation. Hence, it cannot be forced upon the Ukrainians, since they have a completely developed written language at their command.
It is very likely that, in a far distant prehistoric time, all Eastern Slavic tribes, the ancestors of the present Ukrainians, White Russians and Russians, spoke a common tongue. But soon after the beginnings of historical life in Eastern Europe we see these Slavic races divided lingually into three groups. In the 11th Century, the differences between the language spoken in Kiev or Halich on the one hand, and Vladimir on the Klasma or Sugdal on the other, were already distinct. The political unification of all the Eastern Slavic tribes in the Kiev Empire could not eradicate these differences between North and South, and they are very evident in the literary monuments of that time. The disruption of the Empire of Kiev into loosely connected principalities, the formation of the Muscovite political center, the decline of Kiev—all went to strengthen the lingual antitheses between the ancestors of the Ukrainians and those of the Russians. The Tatar oppression finally separated the Muscovite group permanently from the Ukrainian, forcing each to lead a separate historical life. The Ukraine fell under Lithuanian, then Polish rule; Muscovy gradually developed into the Russian Empire. The differences in language, which in the 14th Century were already appreciable, increased so strongly thru the independent development of each language that in the 18th Century, when Russia received the greatest part of the Ukraine beneath her dominion, the Russian and Ukrainian languages confronted one another as entirely independent languages.
According to the investigations of Stotzky and Gartner, the Ukrainian language, from a philological point of view, is related to the Russian only to about the same extent that it is related to the Polish or Czechic. Of all Slavic [[170]]languages the nearest to the Ukrainian is the Serbo-Croatian. From this it follows that the Ukrainians must at one time have had a much closer community with the Serbo-Croations than with the Russians.
We see here a fine example of how relationship of languages goes hand in hand with anthropological relationship. (Incidentally, proof is herewith presented that the anthropological characteristics in the peoples of Eastern Europe have an entirely different significance from the same in Western and Central Europe). This coincidence of two sciences, entirely independent of one another, causes the Ukrainians to appear to us a very peculiar independent unit in the Slavic family of races. Only the restriction of the knowledge of Ukrainian among Slavists, the interpretation of Eastern European history always from the Russian point of view, the common church language, which, for a long time, was the basis of the written language as well, the unfortunate confusion due to the name Russ, Russki, which as ancient state designations for the Empire of Kiev were usurped by the Muscovite Empire and applied to all Eastern Slavic nations; these things have made it possible to conceal the real state of affairs from the eyes of European science and have helped establish the Russian unity theory.
That the Ukrainian language is independent and entirely different from Russian or Polish is known to every illiterate peasant from one end of the Ukraine to the other. He does not understand the Pole and the Russian; likewise his language is unintelligible to a Pole or Russian. Polish is the more easily understood by the uneducated Ukrainian, since the living together of the Poles and Ukrainians for centuries in the Polish-Lithuanian state resulted in important influences in both directions, especially in the vocabulary. But Russian, with its strange vocabulary and phonetic character, different manner of word-building, [[171]]declension and conjugation, is for a Ukrainian a difficult foreign language. How much trouble must the Ukrainian peasantry endure at every step because the unintelligible Russian language is used exclusively in administration, court, school and church! The educated Ukrainian who has been trained in Russian schools has had much trouble to learn his Russian, and he never has so complete a command of it that a Russian could not immediately recognize “the Khakhol in him.” For an educated Ukrainian trained outside of Russia, Russian is as hard to learn, if not more so, than the Polish, Czechic or Serbian. Such obvious facts convince us of the independence of the Ukrainian language, perhaps, more forcibly than the arguments of learned philologists.
The Ukrainian language, like every other great European language, is not uniform. Because of the great extent of the Ukrainian territory and the great population, favorable conditions have always been present for the formation of dialects and idioms. The Ukrainian language has four dialects,—the South Ukrainian, the North Ukrainian, the Galician (Red Ruthenian), and the Carpathian mountain dialect. The South Ukrainian dialect embraces the south of the region of Kiev, Kursk, Voroniz, the entire regions of Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Katerinoslav, Tauria, Don and Kuban. It possesses three idioms;—the northern, which constitutes the basis of the present Ukrainian literary language, the central, and the southern or steppe idiom. The North Ukrainian dialect includes the Chernihov country, the northern part of the Kiev district, Northern Volhynia, the Polissye along the Pripet, and the northern part of the Pidlassye. Its idioms are the Chernihov, the North Ukrainian proper, the Polissian, and the Black Ruthenian. The Galician or Ruthenian dialect takes in: Galicia (outside of the mountains), the Kholm region, Southern Volhynia and Western Podolia, and possesses [[172]]two idioms,—the Podolian-Volhynian and the Galician (Dniester) idiom. The Carpathian Mountain dialect includes the entire Ukrainian Carpathian country and has four idioms,—the Hutzulian, the Boikish, the Lemko idiom, and the Slovak-Ruthenian border-idiom.
The Ukrainian dialects and idioms differ very little from one another, as indeed is the case with all the dialects and idioms of all the Slavic languages. A comparison of the Ukrainian dialects and idioms with the German, for instance, is entirely impossible. The Kuban Cossack or the Boiko, an Ukrainian inhabitant of Polissye or of Bessarabia, understand one another without the slightest difficulty. Only the Lemko idiom and Ruthenian-Slovak border-idiom show greater differences than other Ukrainian idioms. Beyond that, a great uniformity of language prevails thruout the wide areas of the Ukraine. A popular tale taken on a phonograph in the Kuban sub-Caucasus country is heard with the same understanding in a peasants’ reading society in the neighborhood of Peremishl, as if it came from a neighboring village, instead of a border country of the Ukraine thousands of kilometers distant. The same folk-songs, proverbs and fairy tales are found in Pidlassye and along the Manich, at Chernihiv and Odessa, on the Don and on the Dniester.
The Ukrainian language is distinguished by advantages which insure it a high place among Slavic languages. The great wealth of vowels, the full tone, the softness and flexibility, the transition of many vowels to the i-sound, the absence of the massing of several consonants in one syllable, make Ukrainian the most melodious Slavic language. After the Italian language the Ukrainian is best adapted for singing. Most important, however, is the great richness of the Ukrainian language. This richness is all the more remarkable in that it did not come about thru centuries of development of the language in literature and science. [[173]]The common people have collected and preserved the treasures of the Ukrainian language. While the vocabulary of an English farmer, according to Ratzel, does not include more than three hundred words, the Ukrainian peasant uses as many thousands. And, incidentally, the purity of the language is remarkable. Barely a few borrowed words have been introduced into the language of the people thru the centuries of contact with neighboring peoples. They disappear entirely amid the wealth of pure Ukrainian words. What interests us geographers and natural scientists most of all is the wonderful wealth of the colloquial language in very striking names for surface forms, natural phenomena, plants and animals. The construction and codification of the Ukrainian terminology of natural sciences and geography was, therefore, very easy. The infant science of the Ukraine possesses a terminology which, for example, far surpasses the Russian.
The most important proofs of the independence of the Ukrainian language are Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian science. The Ukrainian language has given proof, thru its development of a thousand years, that it is capable of giving expression to the loftiest products of human feeling and human intellect.
Ukrainian national literature cannot possibly be compared with the literature of a Provençal or Low German dialect, which represents the daily life of a small group of people. Ukrainian Literature is the versatile literature of a great nation; a literature which looks back upon a history of a thousand years and continues to develop in spite of all obstacles. A strong foundation is furnished it in the remarkably rich, popular poetry, which has not a counterpart in the entire civilized world.
Ukrainian Literature holds a high place among Slavic literatures. Only Russian and Polish Literature surpass it in the number and greatness of their works. [[174]]
The history of almost a thousand years of Ukrainian Literature begins at the time of the fullest development of the Kiev Empire, when the so-called Chronicle of Nestor originated, the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, the powerful Epic of Igor and other important monuments of Ukrainian Literature (the works of Ilarion, Serapion, Kirilo Turivsky, etc.). Their language is built up upon the Church-Slavonic dialect, but presents great linguistic departures, as early as the 11th Century, from the literary works simultaneously produced in the Russian territory to the north.
This promising beginning of the old Ukrainian Literature was almost completely crushed by five centuries of Tatar barbarism. The continuous state of war, the loss of their independent political organization, the crushing foreign yoke, permitted only a weak vegetating of Ukrainian Literature for five centuries. Legal, theological, philosophical and polemic literary monuments and the beginnings of the drama, written in a Macaronic language made up of a mixture of Ukrainian and Church-Slavonic, can at the most be considered proof that the educated Ukrainians of that time had too little leisure and opportunity to devote themselves to artistic literature.
But these times of decline of the written literature are at once the times of the greatest flourishing of the unwritten literature of the people. The old pre-christian religious and secular songs and tales were not forgotten, and the active, warlike life of the nation created an immense mass of epic folk-lore dumy, which was sung by by wandering minstrels (kobzar, bandurist). Toward the end of the 18th Century, when the political and national destruction of the Ukrainian nation seemed inevitable, the Ukrainian popular literature reached such a high stage of development that it awoke the educated classes of the nation to new literary life.
Through the introduction of the pure popular speech [[175]]into Ukrainian Literature (by Kotlarevsky, in 1798), and thru the great influence of the popular literature, the foundation was laid for an unanticipated rise of Ukrainian Literature. In the course of the 19th Century the history of Ukrainian Literature has a number of great poets and prose writers to show, who would be a credit even to the greatest literatures of the world (Shevchenko, Vovchok, Kulish, Fedkovich, Franko, Mirni, Kotsiubinsky, Vinnichenko and others), as well as a considerable number of lesser poets. Great versatility characterizes the works of Ukrainian Literature in the 19th Century, and in the 20th Century its development in all directions is making giant strides.
The second half of the 19th Century was also marked by a very active study of the sciences, leading to the founding of two learned bodies very much along the plan of the so-called “Academies” (in Lemberg and Kiev). In every branch of human knowledge the Ukrainians can already point to publications, books and dissertations in their own language.
The versatility and richness of Ukrainian Literature assure it a prominent place among Slavonic literatures, thus furnishing proof, if any is needed, that the Ukrainian language is not a mere dialect, but a civilized language in every sense of the word; and the testimony of Ukrainian scholarship strengthens the case beyond a doubt. For surely nobody could discuss problems of higher mathematics, biology or geomorphology in a dialect analogous to the Provençal or Low German.
The rise of the Ukrainian literary language from the speech of the common people makes clear that it will be an admirable means of educating the race, in view of its well-known intelligence, into an enlightened and progressive nation. But the Russian government has been thoroughly aware of this, and for fear of national separatism, has left [[176]]no stone unturned in its efforts to stop the development of Ukrainian Literature and, finally, by the famous ukase of the Czar of the year 1876 has forbidden absolutely the publication of any writings in the Ukrainian language. None but a really living and significant literature could have survived these thirty years (1876–1905) of repression, and Ukrainian Literature has stood the test!