Ruthenian language

Ruthenian was a written language used from the 14th and the 18th centuries within the East Slavic-speaking regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Literary Ruthenian is considered to be a historical precursor to the modern Belarusian and Ukrainian languages, although neither standard language directly continues the Ruthenian written tradition.
Several linguistic issues are debated among linguists: various questions related to classification of literary and vernacular varieties of this language; issues related to meanings and proper uses of various endonymic and exonymic glottonyms ; questions on its relation to modern East Slavic languages, and its relation to Old East Slavic.

Nomenclature

Since the term Ruthenian language was exonymic, its use was very complex, both in historical and modern scholarly terminology.

Names in historical use

Contemporary names, that were used for this language from the 15th to 18th centuries, can be divided into two basic linguistic categories, the first being endonyms, and the second exonyms.
Common endonyms:

, written in various ways, as: , and also as: .
, also written in various ways, as: проста мова or простй ѧзыкъ – publisher Hryhorii Khodkevych. Those terms for simple vernacular speech were designating its diglossic opposition to literary Church Slavonic.
It was sometimes also referred to as . Also by Zizaniy, Pamvo Berynda.

Common exonyms:

in, or lingua ruthena, which is rendered in English as: Ruthenian or Ruthene language.
in, derived from the Latin exonym for this language.
in, also derived from the Latin exonym.
Names in modern use

Modern names of this language and its varieties, that are used by scholars, can also be divided in two basic categories, the first including those that are derived from endonymic names, and the second encompassing those that are derived from exonymic names.
Names derived from endonymic terms:

One "s" terms: Rus’ian, Rusian, Rusky or Ruski, employed explicitly with only one letter "s" in order to distinguish this name from terms that are designating modern Russian.
West Russian or Western Rus language or dialect – terms used mainly by supporters of the concept of the Proto-Russian phase, especially since the end of the 19th century. Employed by authors such as Karskiy and Shakhmatov. Outside Russia, these terms are no longer commonly used, and regarded as pejorative or even imperialist, particularly in Belarus and Ukraine. A noticeable shift already occurred in the late Soviet period, when the Lithuanian Chronicles, still called Western Rus Chronicles in PSRL Volume 17, were rebranded Belarusian–Lithuanian Chronicles in PSRL Volumes 32 and 35.
Old Belarusian language – term used by various Belarusian and some Russian scholars, and also by Kryzhanich. The denotation Belarusian when referring both to the post-19th-century language and to the older language had been used in works of the 19th-century Russian researchers Fyodor Buslayev, Ogonovskiy, Zhitetskiy, Sobolevskiy, Nedeshev, Vladimirov and Belarusian researchers, such as Karskiy.
Old Ukrainian language – term used by various Ukrainian and some other scholars.
Lithuanian-Rus language – regionally oriented designation, used by some 19th-century Russian researchers such as: Keppen, archbishop Filaret, Sakharov, Karatayev.
Lithuanian-Slavic language – another regionally oriented designation, used by 19th-century Russian researcher Baranovskiy.
Chancery Slavonic, or Chancery Slavic – a term used for the written form, based on Old Church Slavonic, but influenced by various local dialects and used in the chancery of Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Names derived from exonymic terms:

Ruthenian or Ruthene language – modern scholarly terms, derived from older Latin exonyms, commonly used by scholars who are writing in English and other western languages, and also by various Lithuanian and Polish scholars.
Ruthenian literary language, or Literary Ruthenian language – terms used by the same groups of scholars in order to designate more precisely the literary variety of this language.
Ruthenian chancery language, or Chancery Ruthenian language – terms used by the same groups of scholars in order to designate more precisely the chancery variety of this language, used in official and legal documents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Ruthenian common language, or Common Ruthenian language – terms used by the same groups of scholars in order to designate more precisely the vernacular variety of this language.
North Ruthenian dialect or language – a term used by some scholars as designation for northern varieties, that gave rise to modern Belarusian language, that is also designated as White Ruthenian.
South Ruthenian dialect or language – a term used by some scholars as designation for southern varieties, that gave rise to modern Ukrainian language, that is also designated as Red Ruthenian.

Terminological dichotomy, embodied in parallel uses of various endoymic and exonymic terms, resulted in a vast variety of ambiguous, overlapping or even contrary meanings, that were applied to particular terms by different scholars. That complex situation is addressed by most English and other western scholars by preferring the exonymic Ruthenian designations.

Periodization

Daniel Bunčić suggested a periodization of the literary language into:

Early Ruthenian, dating from the separation of Lithuanian and Muscovite chancery languages to the early 16th century
High Ruthenian, from Francysk Skaryna, to Ivan Uzhevych
Late Ruthenian, from 1648 to the establishment of the Ukrainian and Belarusian standard languages at the end of the 18th century
Development

Early Ruthenian ( 1300–1550)

According to linguist Andrii Danylenko, what is now called 'Ruthenian' first arose as a primarily administrative language in the 14th and 15th centuries, shaped by the chancery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Vilnius. He identified the Polissian dialect spoken on both sides of the modern Belarusian–Ukrainian border as the basis of both written Ruthenian and spoken dialects of Ruthenian мова ''prosta, which he called 'two stylistically differentiated varieties of one secular vernacular standard'.
From the second half of the 15th century through the 16th century, when present-day Ukraine and Belarus were part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Renaissance had a major impact on shifting culture, art and literature away from Byzantine Christian theocentrism as expressed in Church Slavonic. Instead, they moved towards humanist anthropocentrism, which in writing was increasingly expressed by taking the vernacular language of the common people as the basis of texts. New literary genres developed that were closer to secular topics, such as poetry, polemical literature, and scientific literature, while Church Slavonic works of previous times were translated into what became known as Ruthenian, Chancery Slavonic, or Old Ukrainian. It is virtually impossible to differentiate Ruthenian texts into "Ukrainian" and "Belarusian" subgroups until the 16th century; with some variety, these were all functionally one language between the 14th and 16th century.

High Ruthenian ( 1550–1650)

The vernacular Ruthenian "official/business speech" of the 16th century would spread to most other domains of everyday communication in the 17th century, with an influx of words, expressions and style from Polish and other European languages, while the usage of Church Slavonic became more restricted to the affairs of religion, the church, hagiography, and some forms of art and science.
The 1569 Union of Lublin establishing the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had significant linguistic implications: the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland had previously used Latin for administration, but switched to Middle Polish , while the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gave up Chancery Slavonic and also switched to Middle Polish. Much of the Polish and Ruthenian nobility briefly converted to various kinds of Protestantism during the Reformation, but in the end all of them either returned or converted to Catholicism and increasingly used the Polish language; while Ukrainian nobles thus Polonised, most Ukrainian peasants remained Orthodox-believing and Ruthenian-speaking.

Late Ruthenian ( 1650–1800)

When the Cossack Hetmanate arose in the mid-17th century, Polish remained a language of administration in the Hetmanate, and most Cossack officers and Polish nobles still communicated with each other using a combination of Latin, Polish and Ruthenian. On the other hand, the language barrier between Cossack officers and Muscovite officials had become so great that they needed translators to understand each other during negotiations, and hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky 'had letters in Muscovite dialect translated into Latin, so that he could read them.'
The 17th century witnessed the standardisation of the Ruthenian language that would later split into modern Ukrainian and Belarusian. From the 16th century onwards, two regional variations of spoken Ruthenian began to emerge as written Ruthenian gradually lost its prestige to Polish in administration. The spoken prosta mova disappeared in the early 18th century, to be replaced by a more Polonised early Belarusian variety and a more Slavonicised early Ukrainian variety. Meanwhile, Church Slavonic remained the literary and administrative standard in Russia until the late 18th century.

Literature

Pivtorak, Hryhorij. “Do pytannja pro ukrajins’ko-bilorus’ku vzajemodiju donacional’noho periodu ”. In: Movoznavstvo 1978.3, p. 31–40.