Southwestern Ukrainian dialects

Southwestern Ukrainian dialects
Південно-західне наріччя
RegionWestern and Central Ukraine
Indo-European
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottologsout2604
Modern Ukrainian dialects. Southwestern Ukrainian is shown in red.

Volhynian-Podolian group:

  Volhynian (7)
  Podolian (8)

Galician–Bukovinian group:

  Dniestrian (9)
  Upper Sannian (10)
  Hutsul (12)

Carpathian group:

  Boyko (13)
Lemko (in rhombuses)

The Southwestern Ukrainian dialects (Ukrainian: Південно-західне наріччя, romanizedPivdenno-zakhidne narichchia) are, together with the Northern and Southeastern groups, one of the three main dialect groups of the Ukrainian language. In contrast to Southeastern, which is the literary standard of Ukrainian within Ukraine, Southwestern is common within the Ukrainian diaspora, much of which comes from Western Ukraine.[1]

The Southwestern dialects contain more archaisms than the Southeastern dialects, but do not use the same archaic vowel system as the Northern dialects. Among the speakers of the Carpathian dialect group, regardless of stress, historic vowel sounds ō and ē become і, ě becomes , and ę becomes . In the Galician–Bukovinian dialect group, ě becomes or 'y, and ę becomes .[2]

Historically, the Southwestern dialects also separated foreign loanwords from native Ukrainian words by usage of the /ɡ/ sound for "г" rather than the /ɦ/ typically used for the sound in non-loanwords. This practice ended following the Ukrainian orthography of 1933 and the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia.[3]

  1. ^ Hull, Geoffrey; Koscharsky, Halyna (2006). "Contours and Consequences of the Lexical Divide in Ukrainian" (PDF). ASEES. 20 (1–2): 139–140.
  2. ^ "Southwestern dialects". Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Retrieved 10 March 2024.
  3. ^ Danylenko, Andrii (January 2005). "From g to h and again to g in Ukrainian between the West European and Byzantine tradition?". Die Welt der Slaven. 50 (1): 36 – via ResearchGate.