Wiktionary talk:About Old East Slavic

Instead of inventing our own scheme we should follow the one established in the field (if there is one, I'm not sure that there is for OESl.). The biggest dictionary of OESl that exists appears to exist is Материалы для словаря древнерусского языка по письменным памятникам by Izmail_Sreznevsky, which is out of copyright and available online, , (which I haven't opened yet). Those OESl words that I've added are as listed in ESSJa and SP in their Early Cyrillic forms. Some of these suggestions - such as write etymological jers instead of е and о seem to go pretty far - these are not merely spelling variants, but actually deal with phonological development. At any case, I suggest that our Russian-speaking editors survey the literature first before we "normalize" anything. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:23, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I actually based part of it on the few entries we already have. My reason for distinguishing older forms is mainly that we never know which forms are attested and which are not. If we want to make declension tables, it would be a bit weird if the word stem represents one kind of phonology and the endings represent another. Like, what if we ended up with an accusative singular form like or ? That would just be silly, it should be either the etymologically original  or the later, but we shouldn't mix them. It would also be strange and maybe even confusing to users if we listed a derived term in a different spelling from the base word.  22:35, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes we know which forms are attested and which are not - we look them up in Old East Slavic dictionaries. Every inflected forms which is not attested should be marked as such. It is not up to us to guess which forms is "correct" or not - what where the motivations of the scribes (to conform to the tradition or the vernacular) is not up to us to judge. Potential users of Old East Slavic entries on Wiktionary are exactly the type of persons who would be interested not in some fake normalized scheme that was never written, but in actual attestations, whatever it looked like. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:53, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Sreznevsky uses exclusively ꙋ in headwords, while in citations additionally у and оу occur. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:49, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Old Ruthenian & co.
(Not really sure whom to ping, please feel free to ping others) : As of now, we have the yet unused etymology-only codes Old Belarusian, Old Ukrainian   and Old Russian  , all of which are not set as actual ancestors of Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian respectively (so a Russian term could be inherited from Old Belarusian). No "Old Rusyn" (perhaps it's thought to be Old Ukrainian?) is given. I don't see the point of all these, since they limit the possibility of documenting the well-established closeness of Ukrainian and Belarusian by a common ancestor different from Russian's (as shown by the recent edit at ), and I think that perhaps just merging Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian to (Old) Ruthenian and perhaps even delete Old Russian altogether may be a better approach. Any thoughts on this? Thadh (talk) 21:57, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * So after all, the prosta mova * is the book language of the of the 14-18 centuries. The dialectal basis of a particular text depends on the dialect of the author. Until the 17th century it was Belarus and northern Polesie, and from the 17th century in the Old Ukrainian monuments. Plus a bunch of Polonisms, in contrast to the Ukrainian-Belarusian Church Slavonic with the Bulgarisms. It is a relative ancestor of the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. It makes no sense if we use reality, and not what we want to see. Gnosandes (talk) 15:00, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
 * * Old Ruthenian
 * Sorry, you'll have to simplify what you mean: What precisely do you propose on the issue? Thadh (talk) 15:29, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
 * It may make some sense to have an, a descendant of the Old East Slavic. "Old Russian" (from "Rus", not from "Russia") is just another term for "Old East Slavic". Having separate "Old Belarusian" and "Old Ukrainian" has little sense, even if this idea is popular for a national pride of representatives of both Belarusians and Ukrainians. There are few documents, which can With Belarusian it's even more tragic than Ukrainian. From what I have read and listened to from Belarusian and Ukrainian linguists, the written "Ruthenian" in Belarus (or its Belarusian variety) was completely lost in Belarus and destroyed by tsars. The modern Belarusian was recreated from rural speakers in the 18th century and it's not clear that it even derived from "Ruthenian" but a mixture of Russian, Ukrainian and Polish with new Belarusian phonology, almost unrelated to what was considered for a very short time "Old Belarusian". It's considered that Belarusian language started its existence as an independent language only in the 18th century, before then it was Ruthenian.
 * This is the historical hierarchy supported by most linguists:
 * - Old East Slavic (Old Russian)
 * - Russian (East Russian, Great Russian) from Eastern dialects of Old East Slavic, heavily mixed with Old Church Slavonic
 * - Old Ruthenian (sometimes called "West Russian") from Western dialects of Old East Slavic mixed with Polish, minor dialectal difference between north (White Russian) and south (Little Russian)
 * - Belarusian from North Ruthenian
 * - Ukrainian from South Ruthenian
 * The split between Russian and Ruthenian (not yet formalised as Ukrainian or Belarusian) has become certain around the 15th century with the rise of Muscovy when it was clear, at least what Great Russian (of Muscovy) was, even if there may not be a distinct name for dialects spoken by western East Slavs (west of Muscovy) then.
 * I think "Old Belarusian" and "Old Ukrainian" are only used marginally. There will be very few terms where they differ from each other.
 * By the way, some of the historical terms may now be considered chauvinist (e.g. "Great Russian", "Little Russian" but that's what they were called in the past to make a clearer distinction). I don't want to offend anyone, especially because I consider myself half Ukrainian. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 13:10, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * PS There is much more written on the Ukrainian language compared to Belarusian and there are many theories that Ukrainian never belonged to Old East Slavic and "Old Ukrainian" started as early as 13th century. The desire to distance from Russia is understood, especially considering the aggression from the modern Russia but linguistically and historically it doesn't make sense. I want to state that I want to be objective on this. Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian (+ Rusyn) are all descendants of Old East Slavic, even though Russian (of Muscovy) separated earlier from the group and Belarusian/Ukrainian continued together as Ruthenian for some time. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 13:20, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the elaborate explanation. I think merging all the OES etym-only codes into Old Ruthenian (explicitly stating it's only to be used in Belarusian and Ukrainian inheritance etymologies) and setting it as a variety (so it can be given as a label) is the way forward, do you agree? Thadh (talk) 13:31, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I won't promise I will work towards this idea but I don't object to it. There are few resources, unfortunately. I have a question, though. How will descendants be affected from Old East Slavic? Will the intermediate step "Old Ruthenian" be required? Or Ukrainian/Belarusian can still derive from Old East Slavic? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 13:42, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Unless we want to create a full-fledged code for Ruthenian (which I think is a bad idea exactly for the reason there are few resources), the etym-only code would be used instead of Old East Slavic when referring to words that were formed after the Russian-Ruthenian split. Thadh (talk) 13:50, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Follow-up on the discussion on User:Atitarev's talkpage
I thought it may be a good idea to continue the discussion here, so as not to bombard Anatoli with messages. In how far - in your experience - do Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian differ from each other and from their modern variants? The question is as follows: in how far will we have duplicate entries for both OUK and OBE if we were to split them off? I also think creating a full-fledged Old Russian (maybe we can call it "Middle Russian" to avoid confusion with OES) might be a good idea, since the language is definitely quite distinct from modern Russian, but I'm not sure in how far it's different from OES. Thadh (talk) 12:25, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * , well, in my experience, if you compare the Old Belarusian dictionary and two Old Ukrainian dictionaries, then somewhere 85-90% of the words are the same. Only in some words characteristic Belarusian or Ukrainian features could already appear. Basically, the Old Belarusian language and the Old Ukrainian language were one language (14th-18th century), which (especially in the later stages) was divided into South Ruthenian dialect ("Old Ukrainian") and North Ruthenian dialect ("Old Belarusian"). --ZomBear (talk) 17:47, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * In that case I propose the following tree:

Old East Slavic (orv) |-- Middle Russian (zle-mru) |-- Russian (ru) |-- Old Ruthenian (zle-ort) |-- Belarusian (be) |-- Rusyn (rue) |-- Ukrainian (uk) |-- Old Belarusian (zle-obe) E  |-- Old Ukrainian (zle-ouk) E
 * Where Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian are etym-only codes and labels (akin to CAT:Vulgar Latin). I'm still wondering if making Old Russian a code on its own makes sense (since it would only comprise two centuries). Thadh (talk) 18:34, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * , it seems like the "Old Russian" (старорусский) period of the Russian language lasted from the 14th to the 17th century: Русский язык. For the "Old Russian", the etym-code must remain (this is at least). For example, the etymology of the words – 🇨🇬 < 🇨🇬 < earlier or 🇨🇬 < 🇨🇬 < earlier,.
 * I think something like this is best: --ZomBear (talk) 19:54, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Old East Slavic (orv) |-- Old Russian (zle-oru) E  |-- Russian (ru) |-- Old Ruthenian (zle-ort) |-- Belarusian (be) |-- Rusyn (rue) |-- Ukrainian (uk) |-- Old Belarusian (zle-obe) E  |-- Old Ukrainian (zle-ouk) E
 * In that case we would still have OES spanning until 17th century, which is less than ideal. We could make Old Russian an etym-only code for Russian, but that would mean expanding the Russian inflection tables and what not to include the 17th century grammar, which doesn't make sense either. No, after thinking about it, I think if we want to split off Old Ruthenian, we need to be consistent and split off Old Russian as well. It's going to take a lot of work making all the entries, but on the other hand we don't have a lot of OES pages either. Thadh (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * then, the option you originally proposed will be the best. I am interested in this and will take an active part in correcting all pages for the new language scheme in all Old East Slavic lemmas / Proto-Slavic lemmas and creating new pages for Old Ruthenian, based on information from the Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian dictionaries. --ZomBear (talk) 21:00, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * UPDATE #1: Regarding the source for Old Russian / старорусский ("Middle Russian"), in all the latest volumes of the ESSJa "Old Russian" word forms under the mark "ст.-рус.", are regularly indicated, which differ from Old East Slavic and Modern Russian. Also, the dictionaries of Anikin  & Shaposhnikov  can serve as a source of Old Russian forms, which also indicate "ст.-рус." (separately from "др.-рус."). --ZomBear (talk) 21:16, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
 * UPDATE #2: Also, Old Ruthenian an Middle Russian will have to use the Old Cyrillic font like OCS, OES & Old Novg. But at the same time, another translit module is needed, different from Module:Cyrs-Glag-translit. Some example: --ZomBear (talk) 07:26, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

(pinging anyone distantly related to the topic I could find) Does everyone agree to the above proposed changes? Thadh (talk) 10:23, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * This is only a test version. Feel free to comment on your suggestions for additions/corrections.
 * Also, Thadh (talk) 10:24, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Personaly, I'm against the use of unscientific terms like "Old Belarusian", "Old Ukrainian" etc. in general because these terms are not used anywhere else in the serious linguistic literature and one can't talk about Belarusian or Ukrainian before the XIX century, but anyway do how you please. Cheers. Ентусиастъ (talk) 14:34, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * And we don't plan on using these, so I'm a bit confused about what you want to say. Thadh (talk) 15:05, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * , I don't want to sound rude but I don't plan on reading the whole discussion. I saw that there is some debate about which OCS characters to be used and their phonetic values in Old Ruthenian or something. So, as I said, do what you please. :) Ентусиастъ (talk) 16:18, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit confused about this. Phonetically, Belarusian is much closer to Russian than to Ukrainian. There are changes in Belarusian/Russian such as е -> ё when not followed by a palatal sound that clearly predate the 18th century; likewise for Ukrainian-only changes like о -> і that I'm pretty sure date to the 14th century or earlier (I think this change, to the extent is predictable, is related to lost yers and Proto-Slavic accentual distinctions, which would place it in the 11th century or earlier). So I'm skeptical of creating an "Old Ruthenian" node and assigning it the range of 14th-18th century. It is true that Belarusian and Ukrainian share a good deal of vocabulary not in Russian as well as some grammatical features that distinguish them from Russian. This seems to suggest that the tree model may not be appropriate here, and a wave model would be better; but Wiktionary has no mechanism to model that. Benwing2 (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

The change о -> і in Ukrainian happened quite late... Given the dictionaries of the "Old Ukrainian" language. As an example, let's take the word 🇨🇬 < < 🇨🇬. What do we see in dictionaries: 14-15th century — 🇨🇬, , 16-17th century — 🇨🇬, , The word is just one example. With the rest of the Ukrainian words, where о -> і everything is the same. --ZomBear (talk) 21:58, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I found the section from The Slavonic Languages on this. It says this:
 * In addition to the coalescence of y and i in the specifically Ukrainian y, discussed above, and the overall change of ě into i (děti > ді́ти/díty 'children'), the most peculiar development in Ukrainian vocalism, one which is unique among the Slavonic languages as spoken nowadays, was the evolution of o and e in the position before a lost weak jer. For o in that position the following stages may be uncovered: o > ô (that is, close [o], since, at the latest, the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries; in some texts denoted by the Greek letter omega, ω) > u (attested since the fourteenth century) > ü (attested since 1600, spelled ю) > i (attested since 1653): kotъ > kωt > kut > küt (spelled кют/kjut) > кіт/kit 'cat'. For e the development was twofold, before a lost ь and before a lost ъ. Before the lost ь it was: e > ě (attested since 1161, the so-called 'new' ě´) > i (along with the original ě, in the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries): pečь > peč > піч/pič 'stove'. Before lost ъ, except in some western dialects, e did not undergo any changes, except possibly under retracted stress: medъ > мед/med 'honey', but uteklъ > уті́к/utík 'fled (м)', contrast утекло́/utekló 'fled (N)'.
 * All these developments of e and o occurred in southern dialects. In northern dialects, instead, o and e before the syllable which lost a jer developed into diphthongs. This diphthongization affected only stressed syllables.
 * Clearly there was something different about the u that developed from ô that distinguished it from other u; perhaps it was long, which is consistent with Polish, where loss of yer caused lengthening of preceding vowels. But in any case the point is that these changes were quite early. Benwing2 (talk) 22:31, 15 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think we can still make this work. After all, lexicon is the most problematic thing with how we handle East Slavic entries now. If we define Old Ruthenian (which definitely existed as a written language) as comprising over all non-Russian dialects we can mark dialectal forms accordingly. This would be similar to how most Germanic languages work (Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch...), because dialects generally develop separately from the written language (compare also the Turkish/Ottoman Turkish controversies we have). The point is, around the 14th century, the written language changed significantly and split into two new ones, so calling these one language doesn't really work. Thadh (talk) 12:25, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I wasn't able to participate for a few days.
 * I only support the introduction of a new code for Old Ruthenian ("West Russian") code for now, as the most obvious and easier to define and support. Old Ruthenian (also "Western Russian") would include both Old Ukrainian and Old Belarusian. This language, resulting from the split between Eastern Russian in Muscovy from Western Russian the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Principality of Moldavia. This definition is supported by both Western and Eastern linguists but the rest of proposed languages codes seem weak. I haven't seen any real evidence myself but I won't insist they don't exist.
 * My understanding is that Ukrainian o/i or e/i alterations are fairly recent and are related to early modern Ukrainian. The Old Ruthenian didn't feature that. @Benwing2, I am also trying to answer your question. The phonetic changes you described can be ascribed to (early) modern Belarusian and Ukrainian o/i or e/i didn't happen until maybe two-three centuries ago. The phonetic closeness of Belarusian is also a feature of modern Belarusian (also what it makes the spelling so different from mdoern Russian - ць, дзь, orthographic akanye and yakanye), even if it was defined/restored in 18th century. The only definite ancestor of Belarusian is Old Ruthenian but the phonetic and spelling changes were significant.
 * I don't think Russian needs a transitional code between Old East Slavic (= "Old Russian") and (modern) "Russian". --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 01:24, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Just so that we can compare all options, where do you think we should then draw the line between OES and Russian? 1600s? Thadh (talk) 01:29, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't want to be different from what linguists are saying. The earliest definition of "Russian" proper is the 15th century, as it seems. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Very well, something still seems off to me but I am fine with Anatoli's proposal. Benwing2 (talk) 01:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Was something contradictory in what I said or something else seems off? --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Just trying to square what you've said about the Ukrainian o/i and e/i and Belarusian ё changes with what I've read before; perhaps there are some differences in what different linguists say about the history of these sound changes. But if linguists are in agreement that Old Ruthenian is ancestral to modern Ukrainian and Belarusian, I am fine with that. Benwing2 (talk) 02:13, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * BTW a parallel exists in the "Old Italian" language, which on Wiktionary is an etymology-only language whose parent is Italian. The same could be done for Russian. Currently I don't think it's possible to inherit an Italian term from Old Italian, and if it's allowed it leads to wrong categorization in Category:Italian twice-borrowed terms, but I can fix this. Benwing2 (talk) 01:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * That might be a good solution, but we'd need to create specific inflection-table templates for Old/Middle/Early Modern (whatever we want to call it) Russian, because the grammar differed significantly in the 15th century from the modern one. Also, it seems we don't have any lemmas tagged as Old Italian... Thadh (talk) 01:42, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * True, I don't know why no one has tagged any such lemmas. Note there are other examples besides Old Italian, e.g. Old Tagalog and Classical Tagalog, Early Modern Czech, Classical Azerbaijani, Early Mandarin, Old Konkani, Middle Konkani, etc. For that matter we already have Old Russian as an etymology-only language whose parent is Old East Slavic, so we'd need something like Middle Russian. I don't have an issue with the idea of creating specific inflection-table templates for this language, although that would take significant time. Benwing2 (talk) 01:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I have implemented the "ancestral to parent" support so that it's possible to inherit from Italian to Old Italian. We can use this to implement Middle Russian as an etymology-only language whose parent is Russian. BTW this is what Britannica says:
 * Russian and the other East Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Belarusian) did not diverge noticeably from one another until the Middle Russian period (the late 13th to the 16th century). The term Old Russian is generally applied to the common East Slavic language in use before that time. Benwing2 (talk) 02:55, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * This link says Middle Russian is the 15th to 17th centuries, up to the beginning of the 18th century when the modern Russian literary language appeared, so take what Britannica says with a grain of salt. Benwing2 (talk) 03:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Guys, I'd like to say that I don't consider myself an expert on this matter. In 15th - 17th centuries Old Church Slavonic (with East Russian flavours) was dominating in Muscovy and Russia as a formal written language. Whether there was something definite between Old East Slavic and Pushkin's Russian I can't say with certainty. The informal writings and other non-religious and non-government documents are not so easy to get by. Perhaps I just don't have access to good Middle Russian, Old Ukrainian, etc. resources. You don't have to convince just me only, there are other Slavic editors and other knowledgeable and interested editors. Old Ruthenian is fairly easy to prove and there is some consensus, as for other intermediate languages, not so much. I don't want to act as a blocker either. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 10:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you'll find |The Russian corpus useful. (I've linked the Middle Russian one, but there's also OES, Church Slavic and Old Novgorodian ones linked on the left). Afaict, it handles Middle Russian as being 15th-17th century, but of course it's pretty arbitrary. Thadh (talk) 11:10, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

As for me, an excellent argument in favor of the "Middle Russian" (I mean in terms of the name). Pay attention to the link https://ruscorpora.ru/new/search-mid_rus.html — ZomBear (talk) 12:42, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I’d like to see how that filtered search helps the argument. The results are obvious early modern Russian to me. I’ve seen such examples of «старорусский», not sure how many people really believe it’s a different language. BTW, Shakespeare’s Early Modern English is way more different from modern English than 16th century Russian from modern Russian, IMO. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 13:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with assigning this to, as long as we're consistant with doing that. See also the proposal of Benwing about marking some forms accordingly. Thadh (talk) 13:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It's a good resource. However, if you get used to abbreviations, spellings and misspellings of that period, you'll find it hard to find words, which are not part of the modern Russian corpus (or not Old Church Slavonic forms) but there will be some words and grammar forms, I am sure. If you dig something solid, you can go ahead and create more language codes. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 22:18, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Anatoli T. > "...you can go ahead and create more language codes." – Nobody will reach the point of absurdity. Please note that the code for Taimyr Pidgin Russian  has been created, but it is only used for only 2 words. I do not insist on a completely independent Middle Russian language code. Quite possibly just an etym-code for Middle Russian ("старорусский") with a redirection to modern Russian. But I would like it to use the Old Cyrillic font. Given that there will be old letters like ꙗ, ѧ and others, that were abolished in 1708. --ZomBear (talk) 00:09, 18 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I meant that as well. An etymology only code. --Anatoli T. (обсудить/вклад) 02:08, 18 January 2022 (UTC)


 * There are dictionaries for Old Belarusian (1400?–1800?: HSBM) and Old Ukrainian (1300?–1800?: ISUJa) (1300–1500: SSUM) (1500–1650: SUM-28).
 * HSBM and SSUM separate Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian and list their features:
 * Old Ukrainian: 1) ы~и conflation, 2) ѣ~и conflation, 3) е⇒і, [о⇒і], [о⇒у] in [new] closed syllable
 * Old Belarusian: 1) akanye, 2) [ яканье ], 3) цеканье, 4) дзеканье
 * (if source does not show any feature, then they are divided by location/[author])
 * Unfortunately, they did not specify time when these changes occurred. HSBM: Belarusians and Ukrainians used same written language in 1400–1700 but it does not mean that they first started to be distinct after 1700. SSUM: Old Ukrainian is limited by 1300–1800 and 1300–1500 is intermediate time between Old East Slavic and Old Ukrainian.
 * So Old Ruthenian time range is vague, someone shall find time-specific references for Belarusian and Ukrainian features to determine later border of Old Ruthenian. —Игорь Тълкачь (talk) 11:39, 22 January 2022 (UTC)