Let's Speak Rusyn. Бісїдуйме по русинськы. Bisyiduime po rusyn'skŷ by Magocsi Paul Robert Let's Speak Rusyn. Говорьме по русинськы. Hovor'me po rusyn'skŷ by Magocsi Paul Robert Let's Speak Lemko Rusyn. Бесідуйме по лемківскы. Besiduime po lemkivskŷ by Magocsi Paul Robert (review)

Abstract

Slavonic and East European Review, 97, 3, 2019 Reviews Magocsi, Paul Robert. Let’s Speak Rusyn. Бісїдуйме по русинськы. Bisyiduime po rusyn’skŷ. Prešov Region edition, revised and expanded. Illustrations by Fedor Vico. Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center and Academy of Rusyn Culture in the Slovak Republic, New York and Prešov, 2015. xi + 115 pp. Maps. Illustrations. $15.00 (paperback). Magocsi, Paul Robert. Let’s Speak Rusyn. Говорьме по русинськы. Hovor’me po rusyn’skŷ. Transcarpathian Region edition, revised and expanded. Illustrations by Fedor Vico. Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center, New York, 2017. xi + 115 pp. Maps. Illustrations. $15.00 (paperback). Magocsi, Paul Robert. Let’s Speak Lemko Rusyn. Бесідуйме по лемківскы. Besiduime po lemkivskŷ. Lemko Region edition. Illustrations by Fedor Vico. Carpatho-Rusyn Research Center, New York, 2018. xi + 115 pp. Maps. Illustrations. $15.00 (paperback). The reviewed Rusyn-English phrasebooks, conventionally abbreviated throughout this text as PR (Prešov Rusyn), TR (Transcarpathian Rusyn) and LR (Lemko Risyn), are designed for students of Rusyn as spoken in the Prešov region of Slovakia, the Transcarpathian region in Ukraine and the Lemko region in Poland. The first two phrasebooks are revised and expanded 1976 and 1979 editions of PR and TR respectively, while the third phrasebook, following the same format, was prepared by Magocsi under the auspices of the CarpathoRusyn Research Center in 2018. Structurally, the three phrasebooks are identical, consisting of twenty-three situational chapters including ‘Greetings and Well Wishes’, ‘Introductions and Visits’, ‘Food and Meals’, ‘Church and Ceremonies’ and so on, with English and Rusyn (Cyrillic- and Roman-alphabet) phrases followed by supplemental vocabulary; three brief chapters containing common first names, language used with children and colloquial expressions; grammatical notes; and two maps depicting the dialectal and ethnographic divisions in the CarpathoRusyn homeland. The Romanization largely follows the system adopted for Rusyn by the Library of Congress. Exceptionally, the author uses y instead of i in the following letters for PR and TR: є = ye, ї = yi, ю = yu, я = ya and ё = yo (p. viii). The original text of PR and TR has been revised in two ways. First, the author has added a new chapter dealing with the natural world and provided new phrasesandvocabulary.Second,sincedifferentvariantsofRusynweredeclared standard literary languages in the beginning of the twenty-first century, it was decided to revise the texts in accordance with the new standards adopted by the advocates of ‘a new Slavic people known as Carpatho-Rusyns’ (PR, TR, LR, p. vii). The revisions for PR were carried out by Anna Pliškova, for TR by SEER, 97, 3, JULY 2019 530 Valerii Padiak and Elena Boudovskaya; the new phrasebook of LR was edited by Helena Duć-Fajfer (LR, p. vii). In the remainder, I briefly assess the revised contents as to the novelty of ‘new phrases and vocabulary’ and then focus on the linguistic aspect of the text and grammatical notes viewed through the prism of corpus planning and codification. To begin with, the phrasebooks retained a number of obsolete concepts and phenomena which can hardly be factored into everyday communication. Suffice it to cite the following phrase in chapter fifteen, ‘Relaxation and Entertainment’: ‘Dukhnovych, who is called the “national awakener of the Carpatho-Rusyn people”, also wrote the national hymn, elementary grammar books, and several plays’ (PR, TR, LR, p. 48), and another one in chapter twenty-three, ‘Civic Affairs’: ‘The Communist Party was the most important party in Czechoslovakia until the Revolution of 1989’, followed by ‘Not every citizen was a member of the Communist party’ (PR, TR, LR, p. 85). The prestige of the newly declared Rusyn language seems to be unwittingly downgraded to the ethnographic level as reflected in the phase, ‘Herd the cows back from the pasture because they need to be milked’ (PR, TR, p. 68) and the like. At the same time, terms reflecting ‘the evolution of Rusyn and English over the last four decades’ (PR, p. vii) of the type cell or computer, are nowhere to find in the revised editions of PR and TR and the new edition of LR. The purported level of codification of Rusyn is not presented convincingly both methodologically and didactically. The author claims that Rusyn has been accorded the status of one of the fourteen recognized distinct Slavic languages...