Languages of the Kyivan Rus’ as an object of information war and linguistic reconstruction

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the Kyivan Rus’ language situation (e.g., oral and literary languages) and the ideological struggle over this heritage. The oral epic and cultic languages were reconstructed for the first time.

Not only now, but during several centuries brutal moscovite agressors attempt to took, to deform, to destroy all signs of Ukrainian identity: language, literature, folklore, history, church, other manifestations of culture. The Kyivan Rus’ is among many objects of linguistic, historical, and other falsifications. Intentionally, the russian language has no distinctions between “of Rus’” and “of russia”: both these terms have one designations – to underline the falsified “transition” from the Kyivan Rus’ (true Ukraine) to moscovia (politically renamed as “russia”, from the Byzantine name of Ukraine Rosia).

The origin of the Ukrainian language is a key problem of Ukrainian linguistics, but it is also a historical, political, and defensive question. However, only several Ukrainian linguists focuse their attention on this important and difficult interdisciplinary problem. One aspects of it is prehistory and history of the Ukrainian poetic (especially epic) language, partially reflected in the medieval chronicles and the Tale of Ihor’s Campaign. The proposed model of the linguistic situation in the Kyivan Rus’ is a close contact between the Ukrainian version of the Church Slavonic language (only literary initially) and the native Ukrainian epic language (folklore, interdialectal, only oral initially).

Also, the linguistic reconstructions of rhymed epic poetry in the chronicles are proposed. The Tale of Ihor’s Campaign is reconstructed as a series of related songs. Every song has common rhyme (monorhyme), whereas many lines of the poem in general represent holorhyme (pantorhyme), known in contemporary European (e.g., German) poetry.

Therefore, the language(s) of the Kyivan Rus’ reflect(s) very high level of development, manifested by the rhymed epic languafe of the folklore origin. Now the history and pre-history of the Ukrainian language need a re-interpretation to defend from the moscovite falsifications, spread in the information space.

Information about the author:

Svitlana Shevchuk – PhD, Prof., Mykhailo Drahomanov Ukrainian State University (Ukraine).

E-mail: s.v.shevchuk@npu.edu.ua

Iurii Mosenkis – Dr Hab, Prof. of the Department of the Ukrainian Language and Applied Linguistics; Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology; Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv; honorary member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine (Ukraine).

E-mail: guasileus@gmail.com

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