Ivan Uzhevych
Encyclopedia
Ivan Petrovych Uzhevych was a Ruthenia
n grammarian.
Very little is known about his biography: From 1637 he studied at Cracow
University
, then in 1643 he was a student of theology
at the Sorbonne
, Paris
. He wrote a Polish ode
on the occasion of the marriage of a certain Aleksander Przyłęcki with Ewa Rupniowa, which was printed in 1641. Uzhevych is well-known to historians of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages as the author of the first grammar
of an East Slavic language
.
His name in various languages: (Ivan Uzhevych), (Ivan Uzhevich), Polish
Jan Użewicz. He himself wrote his name Іωаннъ Ужевичъ Словянинъ (Ioann” Uzhevych” Slovyanyn”), Ioannes Usevicius Sclavonus, Ioannes Ugevicius Sclavonus, Jan Użewic; in the student register of Cracow University he is written Ioannes Petri Uzewicz.
manuscript from 1645, called so because of the place it is kept now; no place of writing is indicated on the cover page. Both have been published in a scholarly edition in 1970. Uzhevych’s work, which seems to be influenced by the Polish grammar Polonicae grammatices institutio (1568) by Piotr Stojeński (Petrus Statorius) and by Meletius Smotrytsky
’s Church Slavonic grammar Gramatiki slavenskija pravilnoje syntagma (1619), is the only grammar known of the Ruthenian language
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the predecessor of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian, which the author calls lingua popularis, “vulgar tongue”. It is the first grammar of an East Slavic language (and not of Church Slavonic, which Uzhevych calls lingua sacra, “sacred tongue”).
Both Belarusian and Ukrainian linguistics have been trying to show that Uzhevych’s grammar belongs to the history of their respective language and not the other one. Thus, Ivan Bilodid (1972), Mykhaylo Zhovtobryukh (1976), and Vasyl Nimchuk (1985) have stressed Ukrainian features of his language, whereas Aleksandr Sobolevskiy (1906), Vatroslav Jagić (1907), James Dingley (1972) and Yuriy Shevelov (1979) have pointed out its Belarusian aspects. Olexa Horbatsch (1967) assumes that Uzhevych came from the modern Ukrainian-Belarusian borderlands, which at that time, of course, were not a borderland at all. Uzhevych’s grammar includes a lot of parallel forms that have later been incorporated into either the modern Belarusian or the modern Ukrainian language. For example, for ‘what’ both що (ščo), as in modern Ukrainian, and што (što), as in modern Belarusian, appear. This shows that Uzhevych’s intention was to describe not his own dialect but a common, partially standardized, Ruthenian language (cf. History of the East Slavic languages).
Uzhevych’s grammar exhibits a distinctly comparative approach
. It is probably not a coincidence that its title is Grammatica sclavonica, not ruthenica. Much of what is written about Ruthenian seems to be meant for Church Slavonic, too, and where the two languages differ, Uzhevych often includes specific information on Church Slavonic. Apart from that, he comments on differences in Polish
, Czech
, Moravian
, and Croatian
, citing, for example, the Lord's Prayer in Church Slavonic, Ruthenian, and Croatian (in the Glagolitic alphabet
).
As usual at that time, the grammar shows the difficulties of superimposing the Latin grammatical system on a very different language. Thus, on the one hand there are long lists of constructed verb forms that are of no practical relevance for Ruthenian, e.g. the optative pluperfect бодай бымъ былъ ковáлъ (bodaj bym” byl” koval”) ‘oh would I have had cooked!’ (Arras, 452), but on the other hand the locative case is not reflected, and Uzhevych tries to explain the respective endings, which sometimes resemble the dative, sometimes the instrumental (ablative) endings, as casus vagabundi, “wandering cases” (Arras, 332-341).
at Paris. The manuscript is a parallel translation of the popular phrasebook by Noël de Berlaimont into Ruthenian and Church Slavonic. The left, Ruthenian column of each page (the Rozmova part) is titled “Popularis”, and the right, Church Slavonic one (the Besěda part) “Sacra”. Maybe the author wanted to demonstrate in practice the differences described in his grammar between the “vulgar” and the “sacred” tongue. Anyway, this phrasebook provides a lot of linguistic material to fill the gaps in the Grammatica sclavonica, which itself contains only little actual Ruthenian text, as it is written in Latin. Apart from that, the phrasebook consists of very straightforward, colloquial, every-day dialogues — those that made Berlaimont’s work the most popular phrasebook of all times (it was reprinted more than 150 times all over Europe between the beginning of the sixteenth and the end of the nineteenth century in versions from two to eight language columns!).
The manuscript was published in a scholarly edition in 2005 together with the Latin original from 1613 and a translation of the same text into Polish from a print of 1646.
Ruthenia
Ruthenia is the Latin word used onwards from the 13th century, describing lands of the Ancient Rus in European manuscripts. Its geographic and culturo-ethnic name at that time was applied to the parts of Eastern Europe. Essentially, the word is a false Latin rendering of the ancient place name Rus...
n grammarian.
Very little is known about his biography: From 1637 he studied at Cracow
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
University
Jagiellonian University
The Jagiellonian University was established in 1364 by Casimir III the Great in Kazimierz . It is the oldest university in Poland, the second oldest university in Central Europe and one of the oldest universities in the world....
, then in 1643 he was a student of theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at the Sorbonne
Collège de Sorbonne
The Collège de Sorbonne was a theological college of the University of Paris, founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon, after whom it is named. With the rest of the Paris colleges, it was suppressed during the French Revolution. It was restored in 1808 but finally closed in 1882. The name Sorbonne...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He wrote a Polish ode
Ode
Ode is a type of lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist...
on the occasion of the marriage of a certain Aleksander Przyłęcki with Ewa Rupniowa, which was printed in 1641. Uzhevych is well-known to historians of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages as the author of the first grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
of an East Slavic language
East Slavic languages
The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups. Current East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian,...
.
His name in various languages: (Ivan Uzhevych), (Ivan Uzhevich), Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
Jan Użewicz. He himself wrote his name Іωаннъ Ужевичъ Словянинъ (Ioann” Uzhevych” Slovyanyn”), Ioannes Usevicius Sclavonus, Ioannes Ugevicius Sclavonus, Jan Użewic; in the student register of Cracow University he is written Ioannes Petri Uzewicz.
The Grammatica sclavonica
Two manuscripts are known of Ivan Uzhevych’s Grammatica sclavonica, written in Latin: The Paris manuscript from 1643 and the ArrasArras
Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
manuscript from 1645, called so because of the place it is kept now; no place of writing is indicated on the cover page. Both have been published in a scholarly edition in 1970. Uzhevych’s work, which seems to be influenced by the Polish grammar Polonicae grammatices institutio (1568) by Piotr Stojeński (Petrus Statorius) and by Meletius Smotrytsky
Meletius Smotrytsky
Meletius Smotrytsky , né Maksym Herasymovytch was a Ruthenian linguist from Galicia, author and religious activist. Son of the famous Ukrainian religious and political activist Herasym Smotrytsky. He was educated in Ostroh and Vilnius, as well as Leipzig, Wittenberg and Nuremberg...
’s Church Slavonic grammar Gramatiki slavenskija pravilnoje syntagma (1619), is the only grammar known of the Ruthenian language
Ruthenian language
Ruthenian, or Old Ruthenian , is a term used for the varieties of Eastern Slavonic spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth....
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the predecessor of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian, which the author calls lingua popularis, “vulgar tongue”. It is the first grammar of an East Slavic language (and not of Church Slavonic, which Uzhevych calls lingua sacra, “sacred tongue”).
Both Belarusian and Ukrainian linguistics have been trying to show that Uzhevych’s grammar belongs to the history of their respective language and not the other one. Thus, Ivan Bilodid (1972), Mykhaylo Zhovtobryukh (1976), and Vasyl Nimchuk (1985) have stressed Ukrainian features of his language, whereas Aleksandr Sobolevskiy (1906), Vatroslav Jagić (1907), James Dingley (1972) and Yuriy Shevelov (1979) have pointed out its Belarusian aspects. Olexa Horbatsch (1967) assumes that Uzhevych came from the modern Ukrainian-Belarusian borderlands, which at that time, of course, were not a borderland at all. Uzhevych’s grammar includes a lot of parallel forms that have later been incorporated into either the modern Belarusian or the modern Ukrainian language. For example, for ‘what’ both що (ščo), as in modern Ukrainian, and што (što), as in modern Belarusian, appear. This shows that Uzhevych’s intention was to describe not his own dialect but a common, partially standardized, Ruthenian language (cf. History of the East Slavic languages).
Uzhevych’s grammar exhibits a distinctly comparative approach
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
. It is probably not a coincidence that its title is Grammatica sclavonica, not ruthenica. Much of what is written about Ruthenian seems to be meant for Church Slavonic, too, and where the two languages differ, Uzhevych often includes specific information on Church Slavonic. Apart from that, he comments on differences in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Moravian
Moravians (ethnic group)
Moravians are the modern West Slavic inhabitants of the historical land of Moravia, the easternmost part of the Czech Republic, which includes the Moravian Slovakia. They speak the two main groups of Moravian dialects , the transitional Bohemian-Moravian dialect subgroup and standard Czech...
, and Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
, citing, for example, the Lord's Prayer in Church Slavonic, Ruthenian, and Croatian (in the Glagolitic alphabet
Glagolitic alphabet
The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...
).
As usual at that time, the grammar shows the difficulties of superimposing the Latin grammatical system on a very different language. Thus, on the one hand there are long lists of constructed verb forms that are of no practical relevance for Ruthenian, e.g. the optative pluperfect бодай бымъ былъ ковáлъ (bodaj bym” byl” koval”) ‘oh would I have had cooked!’ (Arras, 452), but on the other hand the locative case is not reflected, and Uzhevych tries to explain the respective endings, which sometimes resemble the dative, sometimes the instrumental (ablative) endings, as casus vagabundi, “wandering cases” (Arras, 332-341).
Rozmova · Besěda
As Helmut Keipert (2001) has shown, the anonymous and undated manuscript titled Rozmova and Besěda (which linguists so far wrongly attributed to the end of the sixteenth century) is also an autograph by Ivan Uzhevych. Just like the first of the manuscripts of Uzhevych’s grammar, it is now kept in the French National LibraryBibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
at Paris. The manuscript is a parallel translation of the popular phrasebook by Noël de Berlaimont into Ruthenian and Church Slavonic. The left, Ruthenian column of each page (the Rozmova part) is titled “Popularis”, and the right, Church Slavonic one (the Besěda part) “Sacra”. Maybe the author wanted to demonstrate in practice the differences described in his grammar between the “vulgar” and the “sacred” tongue. Anyway, this phrasebook provides a lot of linguistic material to fill the gaps in the Grammatica sclavonica, which itself contains only little actual Ruthenian text, as it is written in Latin. Apart from that, the phrasebook consists of very straightforward, colloquial, every-day dialogues — those that made Berlaimont’s work the most popular phrasebook of all times (it was reprinted more than 150 times all over Europe between the beginning of the sixteenth and the end of the nineteenth century in versions from two to eight language columns!).
The manuscript was published in a scholarly edition in 2005 together with the Latin original from 1613 and a translation of the same text into Polish from a print of 1646.
Works
- Obraz cnoty y sławy w przezacney fámiliey Ich MM. PP. Przyłęckich, wiecznemi czásy nieodmiennie trwájący. Ná wesoło fortunny akt małżeński przezacnych małżonkow Jego Mośći P. Alexandra z Przyłęka Przyłęckiego, y Jey Mośći Panny Ewy z Rupniowa Rupniowskiey, Aońskim piorem odrysowány y ná ućiechę nowemu Stadłu ofiarowány przez Jana Użewica sławney Akademiey Krákowskiey Studenta (Kraków 1641).
- Grammatica sclavonica (Paris 1643; probably Paris 1645).
- Rozmova · Besěda (probably Paris, middle of 17th c.; ISBN 3-87690-892-2).
Further reading
- Lunt, Horace. Review: “Hramatyka slov’jans’ka I. Uževyča”. In: Recenzija 1.2 (1971), pp. 47–49.
- Dingley, James. “The two versions of the Gramatyka Slovenskaja of Ivan Uževič.” In: The Journal of Byelorussian Studies, 2.4 (1972), pp. 369–384.