Ebook: Notes on the Rusin language of Yugoslavia and its East Slovak origins

International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics XLII, 1998, 42 p. A well informed paper about Rusyn (Rusin) by the famous American Slavist Horace Gray Lunt (1918-2010). Lunt insists on the fact that the Rusyn language is actually an East Slovak dialect even though its speakers consider themselves Ruthenians or western Ukrainians. It is an interesting case of a contradiction between linguistic reality and ethnic identity, probably justified by a religious background (Rusyns are Uniates, Catholics of Byzantine liturgy). The paper is focused on the Bačka Rusyn spoken in Vojvodina (former Yugoslavia, now Serbia) where Rusyn families migrated to in the fifth decade of the 18th century.