Lemko Language

[cybrlee]

Hi,

I would like to learn the Lemko Language and would like to travel to the Lemko area in the distant future. My problem is finding resources to learn this language.


My thoughts are since other languages (Ukranian, Polish, and Slavic) are somewhat similar, should I try learning one of these languages and honing in on the language from that? If so, which one would be the closest?


Thanks for any input you may have to offer.

Karen

[cybrlee]

Thank you Kathy, somehow I knew that .. but wasn't sure. With your recommendation, I should learn Ukraine. Do you know of any good places to point me in the right direction?

[Zbyszek]

Greetings Kathy, I spent some time in the Oslava valley, in the Polish Carpathians last year and I spoke with many people on Lemkos.
Lemko people have relatively distinct identity, much more developed than Boykos. Being Ukrainian mountaineers, they keep the reasonable span of separation from more general national feelings.
Polish Communist government made a pretty bad move resettling Lemkos together with Boykos and other Ukrainians after WWII (1947). It was a blow for the Lemko culture. What's interesting the "lemko" word was considered as derogatory nickname in the beginning based on parrot copying of a popular expression used maybe too often by these people. At the same time, it should be mentioned that the mountainous Carpathian region was extremely poor and the resettled people were given a chance for better life because they often took houses abandoned by the Germans who were resettled from western Poland.
Boykos and Lemkos have been living peacefully for centuries without knowing who they really are. Only in the XIXth century of expanding nationalism, someone commanded them to determine their nationality. The worse, there were two commanders: Austrians who rather considered Lemkos and Boykos as Ukrainians, and Russians who claimed they they are Russians. This conflict was eventually won by the Ukrainians and the ironic epilogue took place in 1947 when Lemkos were resettled from eastern Poland together with all other Ukrainians and this deplorable decision made them sure that they were Ukrainians in fact. I do not think that Lemkos are naturally very Ukrainian - they are just Lemkos in the first place. Their identity was and still is a source of extensive etnographic research.
One of the best skansens in the world devoted to Lemko, Boyko and other eastern cultures is placed in Sanok (Poland). One can order an individual tour with the English-speaking guide and it is very inexpensive. A vast area of 2 hectares placed partly in the wood is a first-class tourist attraction! The guides are very good and they do not count every minute of touring.

[Edited by Zbyszek on 8th July 2003 at 10:57]

[Zbyszek]

Originally posted by Kathy
Greetings Zbyszek, and thank you for your informative post. ...

Hi Kathy, the history of the Carpathians is really interesting in general. People living there, Polish, Slovak or Ukrainian kept their strong identity and independence from the lowland people.
There is still very attractive and strong culture of Polish mountaineers (gurale) who do not spare somewhat critical remarks on the townspeople (ironic word "tsepry").
Lemko lived peacefully in their Polish mountains and they had many interesting habits. One of them was a regular trade of cattle with Hungarians across Slovakia. It was halted in 1918 because of new national borders.
History of this region was not so turbulent, not so bloody as in many other parts of Ukraine and Poland.
It is obvious that there were no major national conflicts there and the Polish kings respected the Orthodox/Greek Catholic population there. Ironically the worst happened not in the WWII but a little later. The UPA fighters pressed by the Soviet Army from the east, entered these territories and their very presence caused a lot of trouble in the previously so peaceful region.
UPA soldiers defended the local population from being resettled to the USSR. Unfortunately, it was without any chance of success. On the other hand, they used some nationalist practices like terror and bitter involvement into complex Polish-Ukrainian family ties. Vicious hatred and terrible fear was everyday practice. The worse, it was happening in the shade of recent butchery in Volhynia, 1943. Polish communists only histerically enlarged the problem, surely at the orders from Moscow. When the legendary communist general Karol Swierczewski, veteran of Spain civil war 1936 was killed by the UPA fighters in the Carpathians, a "sudden"(read deliberately predetermined) decision of resettling took place.
Almost all Ukrainians living within the new Polish borders including Lemkos many of whom lived near Cracow and had nothing to do with the fighting, were relocated to the north and west of new Poland.

Please note that resetlling had quite a different colour right after the war than it would have now. Poeple were used to all horrors of war and resettling of Germans was considered an a fully acceptable act of justice.
Resettling was considered as a reasonable alternative to butchery.

[LemkoRusyn]

Originally posted by cybrlee
Hi,

I would like to learn the Lemko Language and would like to travel to the Lemko area in the distant future. My problem is finding resources to learn this language.


My thoughts are since other languages (Ukranian, Polish, and Slavic) are somewhat similar, should I try learning one of these languages and honing in on the language from that? If so, which one would be the closest?

cybrlee / Karen,

Here are some links dealing with Lemkos (Rusyns from southeast Poland) and their language:

http://www.lemko.org
http://www.rusyn.org/index.php?root=rusyns&rusyns=lang
http://www.rutenika.pl/en/01/01.html
http://www.era.anthropology.ac.uk/Te.../chap25-1.html

You would do well to study any of Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, or Russian, as each of these is close to Rusyn/Lemko in its own way. Of course, Lemko uses the Cyrillic alphabet (a slightly different version than either Ukrainian or Russian), so Ukrainian or Russian study would assist in that, but of course to speak it, it's a toss-up. There is as yet no formal means for native English speakers to learn Lemko/Rusyn.

I have basically all the books and periodicals published since 1989 in Poland in Lemko/Rusyn language -- there are well over 100 of them.

[LemkoRusyn]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Kathy


There is no Lemko ethnographic territory in Ukraine, period. There is a small group of villages in northwestern Zakarpatska Oblast near the borders of Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine (esp. the village of Zarichovo near Perechyn and Velykyj Bereznyj) that like to refer to themselves as "Lemkos", but they are more like a mix of Bojkos and Lowlander Subcarpathian Rusyns (Dolynjane). Their dialect is not a Lemko dialect at all. North of them live Bojkos, whose territory crosses the Carpathians into the L'vivska Oblast.

Berezhany is in western Ukraine, former Austrian Galicia/Halychyna, in the region of Ternopil'
-- see any of the maps here:
Halychyna! Galicia! Gacsorszag! Galizien! Galicja! - Homeland Page with its history, maps and links!
or
MAPS OF UKRAINE, detailed maps of Ukrainian regions. Karte der Ukraine. De Kart av Ukraina. Karty Ukrajiny. Mapy Ukrainy. Mapa del Ucraina. Most of cities and main villages are covered by these maps. Comprehensive listing of Ukrainian cities and vill

At best, this region is Podillia or Pokuttia -- not even one of the "Ukrainian Carpathian ethnographic regions" (Lemko, Bojko, Hutsul).

The Lemko Region is hundreds of miles to the west, in present-day Poland. It was NEVER in a country called Ukraine. And probably half or more of Lemkos worldwide consider themselves to be other than Ukrainian.

[rus-ros]

I attended a very large Orthodox Church in New Jersey for 30 years in which the majority of congregants were Lemkos, including my extended family. NONE of them would have ever considered himself or herself a Ukrainian. They referred to themselves as Ruskies, Carpatho Rusyns, or usually simply Our People. They understood more spoken Russian than Ukrainian, but did not consider themselves Russians either. Don't even consider Polish, this notion would be about as far off as Portuguese - even if some may have lived over the border in what is today Poland. Although these folk knew they were "none of the above", if you forced them to make a choice, most would probably ascribe to Russian. We found this to be the case in many more locations as well. About half these people were former Greek Catholics (and thus former Orthodox generations before that), and the other half from Orthodox villages in the Lemko region. Time frame of immigration is roughly 1890 - 1910.