The Bicentennial year has fostered a new interest in the historical past of the United States. This concern with history has also given a great impetus to ethnic studies, which in turn have emphasized the contributions of many immigrant cultures to the development of our country. Numerous Bicentennial books, records, television programs, and local and national celebrations have stimulated many individuals to want to know more about their ancestors and, in a deeper sense, more about themselves. The key to those "old world" cultures is language, and it is with this in mind that Let's Speak Rusyn was undertaken.

Carpatho-Rusyns (Ruthenians) came to the United States from several counties in northeastern Hungary. They were largely part of the second great wave of immigration that arrived during the two decades preceding the outbreak of the First World War. Today, the first generation immigrants and their descendants number close to 850,000. Both in this country and in Europe Carpatho-Rusyns were known by many names, among the more common being Rusyn, Rusnak, Lemko, Carpatho-Russian, and Carpatho-Ukrainian. Their dialects have been classified as belonging to the Ukrainian language, yet despite this linguistic affinity they have not, especially in the United States, identified themselves as Ukrainians.

Let's Speak Rusyn is intended primarily as a guide for Rusyn-Americans who want to learn the language of their ancestors, but it can also be effectively used by other interested individuals. It is the first phrasebook that reveals the living, spoken language of Carpatho-Rusyns. Some attempts at writing phrasebooks were made in Europe during the 1940's; however, the result was not a text that reflected spoken Carpatho-Rusyn, but rather the unsuccessful efforts of certain authors to write literary Great Russian. Similarly, the few grammars and readers published in the United States during the 1920's and 1930's followed this same principle. In contrast, Let's Speak Rusyn reveals actual speech patterns, not some artificial written language.

Several methodological problems arose in the course of preparing this text. First of all, Carpatho-Rusyn does not have a standard literary form as do, for instance, English, German, or French. Rather, Carpatho-Rusyn is composed of a series of dialects which although mutually understandable still differ somewhat from each other in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary, and syntax. For instance, various Carpatho-Rusyn dialects have been influenced by the Slovak, Magyar, Galician-Ukrainian, Polish, or Rumanian languages, depending on the degree of contact individuals have had with these various neighbors. Such interrelations with other languages in areas that are transitional border zones is quite natural, and as one might expect, Carpatho-Rusyn dialects have in turn influenced substantially the speech of Slovaks, Magyars, Poles, and Rumanians who live nearby.

In the preparation of this phrasebook our first problem was to determine which dialect was to be used. The main Carpatho-Rusyn dialects are broadly grouped as: (1) Lemkian, which is spoken in an area popularly known as the Presov Region in present-day northeastern Slovakia and in the Lemko Region of southeastern Poland; and (2) Transcarpathian, which is spoken in the western and central portions of the Transcarpathian Oblasf (formerly Subcarpathian Ruthenia) of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Since the geographical mid-point of both areas is Uzhhorod, the administrative capital of the Transcarpathian Oblasf, one might expect that the Transcarpathian dialect would have been chosen. However, it happens that the majority of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants in the United States came from the northern portions of the old Hungarian counties of Szepes (Spis), Saros (Sarys) and Zemplen (Zemplin), areas of Lemkian speech in the Presov Region of present-day northeastern Slovakia. Considering this situation, it was decided to prepare two editions of this phrasebook, that is, a Lemkian or Presov Region version and a Transcarpathian version.

The next question arose as to which Presov Region and Transcarpathian dialectal varieties would be used. Was this author to create a kind of Lemkian and Transcarpathian dialectal amalgam, or was he to choose one single village in each area and transcribe the speech of its inhabitants? For various reasons, he chose the second alternative. Thus, each version of Let's Speak Rusyn represents the language of a single village in the Presov Region and one in the Transcarpathian Oblast'.

The village chosen for the Presov Region edition was Vysna Jablonka, located in northeastern Czechoslovakia, just on the Polish border and about 20 miles north of the city of Humenne and 17 miles east of Medzilaborce. Although Vysna Jablonka is not located in the center of the Presov Region and in fact is within a linguistic transitional zone between the Lemkian and Transcarpathian dialectal varieties, it nonetheless has the advantage of being completely within Carpatho-Rusyn linguistic territory and hence not greatly influenced by neighboring Slovak dialects.

In the fall of 1975, the author interviewed and transcribed, over a three-week period, Mr. Jan Cuvan (sixty-six years old) and his wife, Mrs. Anna Sijka Cuvanova (sixty-four years old). Persons of the older generation were deliberately chosen because the language of younger people has been heavily Slovakized or in some cases Ukrainianized. The complete text was later reviewed by their daughter, Mrs. Maria Cuvanova Magocsi (thirty-three years old), a recent immigrant to the United States, and by a former professor of linguistics at the Pavel J. Safarik University in Presov. The chapter on health was reviewed by Pavel Komanicky, M.D. (thirty-one years old), of Boston University Hospital, a recent immigrant from Habura, a village near Medzilaborce. The excellent illustrations were drawn by Fedor Vico of Presov, one of Czechoslovakia's best-known contemporary caricaturists.

Let's Speak Rusyn is divided into twenty-six chapters, each including a series of phrases dealing with a given subject. Beginning with chapter six, supplementary word lists have been added to allow the reader to broaden his vocabulary. Chapter twenty-six includes a few of the lexical mistakes most frequently made in the heavily Americanized speech of Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants. Finally, brief grammatical notes have been appended which provide charts of the basic declensional and conjugational patterns as well as lists of the most frequently used adjectives, verbs, and prepositions. These grammatical notes will help the student to form many more sentences and phrases than are offered in the preceding chapters.

With regard to orthography (the writing system), Carpatho-Rusyn has never been standardized. For the Cyrillic script, it was decided to adopt basically the system used today in the Presov Region dialectal publications, such as several works on folklore and the dialect page in the weekly newspaper, Nove zhyttia. The only exceptions made here are: the addition of r -g to distinguish it from r - h, and NI instead of i . As for the Latin script, I have tried to maintain the Slovak-based Latin alphabet used in most Rusyn newspapers, almanacs, and other publications in the United States. However, these have not always used a consistent system, and usually do not make a distinction between i - i and H - y. Further, the distinct Carpatho-Rusyn vowel u has been rendered in Latin script as y. Like other Eastern Slavic languages, Carpatho-Rusyn does not have fixed stress. This means that it is impossible for the student to determine which syllable in a given word is accented. For this reason, accent marks have been provided for each word appearing in the Cyrillic and Latin script Rusyn text.

Whereas English has only one form of the second person pronoun "you," Carpatho-Rusyn, like most other modern European languages has two: the informal Tbl - ty and the formal BbL - vy. Tbl - ty is usually used when speaking with children or with close friends, in most cases among peers (brother and sister, workers of the same age, young girls and boys, friends, etc.). Bbl - vy is used when speaking with elders, officials, and with all persons to whom the speaker defers some kind of respect, as well as with strangers. In most cases, the Bbl - vy form has been given here. The student may substitute Tbl - ty in conversations where he deems the familiar form more appropriate.

A word about the text in general seems in order. Carpatho-Rusyn society is basically a rural, agricultural one that lacks modern urban centers. This circumstance, combined with the fact that a sociologically complete language (replete with all modern and technological vocabulary) has never been developed, caused the author one more difficulty. Could this phrasebook be one that revealed the richness of Carpatho-Rusyn, and hence be filled with descriptions of numerous farm implements and agricultural practices? Obviously not in the context of the highly industrialized United States where Let's Speak Rusyn is to be used. In short, while the linguistic forms are Rusyn, the situations, concepts, and ways of thinking are in many instances American. For example, Carpatho-Rusyn society does not yet have a drug or parking problem (although traffic violation tickets are sometimes issued even in the smallest villages), but both exist in this country and thus are some of the subjects treated here.

In conclusion, the author wishes to express his deep appreciation for the linguistic expertise and criticism offered by Dr. Michael Bourke, a graduate of the Department of Slavic Languages at Brown University, who caught many mistakes and inconsistencies in the text. Finally, I must salute the stamina, patience, and above all efficiency of my Cyrillic script typist, Mrs. Olga Kavochka Mayo, and Latin script typist, Mrs. Dorothea Donker. Cambridge, Massachusetts

Paul R. Magocsi

The Bicentennial Year

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