Old Ruthenian
| Ruthenian | |
|---|---|
| Old Ruthenian руска(я) моваruska(ja) mova |
|
| Native to | Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (language of administration of Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1699) |
| Era | developed into Belarusian, Ukrainian and Rusyn. |
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Indo-European
|
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| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
orv-olr |
|
| Glottolog | None |
Ruthenian (Old Ukrainian, or Old Belarusian, see other names) was the group of varieties of Eastern Slavonic spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The written form is also called Chancery Slavonic by Lithuanian linguists.
Scholars do not agree whether Ruthenian was a separate language, or a Western dialect or set of dialects of Old East Slavic, but it is agreed that Ruthenian has a close genetic relationship with it. Old East Slavic was the colloquial language used in Kyivan Rus' (10th–13th centuries). Ruthenian can be seen as a predecessor of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian. These languages, including even Old East Slavic, have all, at least at some point in their history, been labelled as Ruthenian (Ukrainian: рутенська мова, русинська мова). Furthermore, modern Ukrainian and Belarusian are sometimes classified into a so-called Ruthenian subgroup of East Slavic languages.
In modern texts, the language in question is sometimes called "Old Belarusian" or starabelaruskaya mova (Belarusian: “Старабеларуская мова”) and "Old Ukrainian" or staroukrayinsьka mova (Ukrainian: “Староукраїнська мова”). As Ruthenian was always in a kind of diglossic opposition to Church Slavonic, this vernacular language was and still is often called prosta(ya) mova (Cyrillic проста(я) мова), literally "simple language".
On the other hand, there exists a school of thought that Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian must be considered as separate historical languages.
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