Yazychiie. The derogatory name for the bookish language in which the Galician, Bukovynian, and Transcarpathian Russophiles wrote in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Based on the earlier bookish Slavonic-Ruthenian language, the yazychiie was a combination of Church Slavonic and Russian that included Western Ukrainian vernacular elements and Polonisms and had a Ukrainian pronunciation. It was used in Lviv periodicals, such as Slovo (Lviv) (1861–87), Naukovyi sbornik (later called Literaturnyi sbornik) (1865–73, 1885–90, 1896–7), Vremennik Stavropigiiskogo instituta s mesiatsoslovom (1864–1915), and Věstnik Narodnoho doma (1882–1914), as well as in two Bukovyna periodicals: Pravoslavnaia Bukovina (1893–1904) and Bukovinski vědomosti (1895–1909). The Galician Populists and Radicals (eg, Ivan Franko) condemned its use.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]


Encyclopedia of Ukraine