Khakhlatska language in Podlasie

Hryhoryi  Arkushyn
Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of History and Culture of Ukrainian, Lesya Ukrainka Eastern European National University
30-А Vinnichenko St., Lutsk 43021, Ukraine
E-mail: hryhor@ukr.net

Heading: Researches
Language: Ukrainian

Abstract: Podlasie subdialects, which exist in the territory of the two voivodships of the Republic of Poland – the northeastern part of Lublin Voivodship and the southeastern part of  Podlaskie (formerly Bialystok) one, have been studied by the researchers since the middle of the 19th century but, in spite of that, there still have been remaining a lot of white gaps. First of all, let us mention that, even now, for ordinary dialect carriers it is unclear to which language – Ukrainian or Byelorussian – their subdialects belong. Pidlyashuky themselves define their speech as: our language православна, мішана, нормальна, ми говоримопо-свойому, по-нашому, по-простому, по-тутейшому, по-давнішому and even невідомо по-якому. But the most common definition for Podlaskie subdialects – хахлацька мова – is used without any negative connotations. This relative adjective originates from the nomen хахли, which was used to denote the indigenous people (this name, according to M. Lesiv, was brought from the royal army by the demobilized boys, who were defined so according to the peculiarities of their Ukrainian speech because malorosy are the same as khakhly).

The dialect carriers divide  хахлацьку мову  into “hard” (ходити, носили, але)  and “soft” (ходиті ǀǀ ходіті, носилі ǀǀ носілі, алі ǀǀ алє) ones.

The analysis of the dialect carriers’ modern speech, in particular – the continuates *ē(^ǀлʹіто, дʹ͜іед) and *о in the newly closed syllables (в’ік, в’ін, дв’ір, к’інʹ, к’іт, пист, р͜уік), testifies that Podlaskie reflex actions are the most typical phonetic features of the Ukrainian language, which unite Podlaskie subdialects with the speech of the inhabitants of Western and Middle Polissia and Volyn. Due to the fact that Podlasie was not involved in the process of nationalization during the 20th century, not all the modern indigenous inhabitants of the region consider themselves to be Ukrainians.

Keywords: Podlasie, Podlaskie subdialects, peculiarities of vocalism and consonantism, khakhlatska  “hard” and “soft” language.

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