Rusyn Language

[Olekander]

Hey All,

I wanted to share a story that happened today that was a real joy for me, as a situation like this is so rare.
At the school I teach at, I had a very unusual situation where I had 4 lessons in a row not happen because literally everyone cancels. I usually teach 34 lessons a week and out of all of them one or two MIGHT not happen. But to have 4 in a row on the same day, I'll probably never have that chance again in my life. What's the point of this you ask? well It gave me and my students some time to actually chat to each other outside of the classroom setting. Today I got a chance to speak to a student of ours called Vladimir.

Vladimir is from Ukraine and works in Moscow but returns every two weekends to see his family. He approached me and we chatted and I answered some grammar questions, and then the conversation moved to his own language experience. He told me he spoke 4 languages fluently, so I asked which ones, and he said "Ukrainian, Russian, Czech and Slovak", I said ok, very interesting, but what is your native language, and he replied, ahhhh sorry, I forgot about that one, I actually speak 5 languages, my native language is Rusyn! At this point my heart leapt because not only was he not expecting me to have heard of it, I was not expecting to ever meet anyone who spoke it! I excitingly told him that I knew there was a paper in the US called Karpatska Rus which served / serves the great many expats who moved there in the previous century and that I had very much heard of it, and had dreamt of hearing it spoken in Real life. I asked if he could kindly introduce himself in Rusyn, and he said he could do one better.....

So he called his old childhood friend and business partner and put him on loud speaker, and without telling him the purpose of the call proceeded to chat for 10 minutes for all to hear! He's one of only six thousand native speakers left in Ukraine so I really felt like I had hit the jackpot. What made it all the more fun was seeing the looks of the smattering of Russian students in the school today who were wondering what on earth he was speaking.

Not so much a discussion but a story, but just wanted to share a golden moment !

[Cèid Donn]

Wow. Very nice story! I've met some Rusyn speakers, all elderly at the time, but this was back when I was in grad school many years ago, so sadly they are likely all deceased by now. This was in Houston, Texas, here in the US, part of one of the strange little adventures in my life.

When I was in grad school, as part of the theology portion of my dual theology/philosophy degree and partly because I'm a musician and was very interested in liturgical music, I attended Sunday mass at a Byzantine Catholic church for a few months. At the time, they mostly did the Ruthenian rite, which was actually done in English with some Old Church Slavonic. But there were a few elderly folk there who were Rusyn speakers and spoke Rusyn among themselves. So I have heard the language before and know what it is, but sadly I do not recall if they ever mentioned to me where they came from originally (they might have even been from Ukraine, since Houston has a sizable Ukrainian enclave). But it's been so long, I have only faded memories of attending mass there and of those people, and mostly I remember the amazing choir they had and how their singing (almost always in Old Church Slavonic) would completely fill that modest little church.