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Let's speak Rusyn =: Bicidyme no-pycky = Bisidujme po-rusky

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Paul Magocsi's LET'S SPEAK RUSYN (Presov Edition) is a guide to the little-known Slavonic language spoken in the Carpathian mountains of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Ukraine. The work is mainly geared towards children or grandchildren of emigres who wish to know something of their ancestral language. Published in 1976, it is based mainly on the author's transcriptions of the speech of a couple in their 60s, since the speech of the younger generations has become too influenced by Slovakian or Ukrainian.

The bulk of LET'S SPEAK RUSYN is a collection of phrases organized according to topic, such as Weather, Time, Meals, and so forth. Since the work is meant for those in contact with emigres, topics which did not play a big role in Carpathian life at the time of writing, such as drug use and parking problems. Grammar is not treated in the main portion of the work, and all the reader gets of morphology is a short appendix, will the issue of aspect treated in a single paragraph. As a result, readers must know at least one other Slavonic language before coming to this textbook, ideally one with complex nominal morphology like Russian, Ukrainian, or Serbian.

Resources on Rusyn are few, and this is worth checking out if your studies bring you to this obscure language. But be warned that some prior experience with the Slavonic languages will be necessary.

I enjoy studying the "smaller" languages of Europe. That might be due partly to my family background - my father was born in Italy's Friuli-Venezia-Giulia province, which is the home of the Friulan language, a Latin-based language closely related to Switzerland's 4th language, Rumantsch.

This particular book, written by Professor Paul Magocsi of Toronto University, is suited to those readers who have some previous experience with another Slavic language, preferably Ukrainian, Russian, Slovak or Polish. The phrases are presented in English, and Rusyn in both Cyrillic and Latin scripts. The Cyrillic scripts may vary a bit from the spelling conventions used in Rusyn publications in Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, and Romania, but this will not prevent a serious student from being able to read other materials after having gone through this book.

Until a "koine" or "lingua franca" form of Rusyn has been agreed upon by linguists, teachers, and writers in the language, one will be confronted with variations in the language. This book itself was published in two versions - one reflecting the speech of eastern Slovakia, and another reflecting the speech of the Transcarpathian Oblast' of Ukraine. There are more speakers of the language in Ukraine, but the parents of most Americans of Rusyn origin came from what is now eastern Slovakia.

If you'd like to come across more material in Rusyn and hear some Rusyn folk music, be sure to look for the term "Rusyn Academy" online and look under the term "Rusyn" on YouTube.