Volodymyr Navroc’kyj

Abstract

Galicia in the second half of the 19th century was home to two main groups which differed in their attitudes toward the composition of the Ukrainian literary language: one group (the West Ukrainian Russophiles) favoured the use of a standard language heavily influenced by Russian and Church Slavic elements, the second one took attempts to create a modern Ukrainian (“Ruthenian”) language prevalently on the basis of the folk language. Volodymyr Navroc’kyj, who was one of the founders of the Galician Ukrainian national movement and took an active part in the development of the national idea among the “narodovci”, realised the obligation of participating in the process of national building as well as in the formation of Ukrainian terminologies, particularly terminologies of natural sciences. A detailed analysis of his morphology, his grammar, and his lexical base, particularly his contribution to the development of Ukrainian terminologies, reflects the will to create the Galician variant of the Modern Ukrainian standard language and shows how this variant of the Ukrainian language was heterogeneous and complex.