How do lexical borrowings differ across Ukrainian dialects

Lexical borrowings in Ukrainian dialects differ based on geographic, historical, and cultural factors that shaped the contact with other languages, leading to diverse sources and adaptation processes.

Regional Borrowing Patterns

• Western Ukrainian dialects, especially those in the Carpathian and Bukovina regions, show significant borrowings from German, Romanian, Polish, and to some extent Turkic and Greek. For example, the Boyko dialect includes many German lexical units influenced by long-term contact with German-speaking populations, often featuring phonetic and semantic changes to adapt the borrowings to dialect norms. ^{1, 2, 3}
• Ukrainian dialects in the Carpathian region also contain borrowings that reflect the influence of neighboring Slavic and non-Slavic languages, contributing to unique semantic models, such as for the designation of time, which may differ from standard Ukrainian. ^{4, 5}
• Southeastern borderland dialects, shared by Ukrainian and Polish speakers, have mutual lexical influences due to centuries of bilingual contact, leading to shared vocabulary with variations in meaning and phonetics. ^{6, 7}

Types and Adaptations of Borrowings

• Borrowed words can keep their original meanings or undergo semantic shifts and phonetic adaptation to fit the dialect’s phonology and morphology, as illustrated by Germanisms in southwestern Ukrainian dialects or Romanian influences in dialects of Moldovan and Bukovina Ukrainians. ^{3, 8}
• Some borrowings are old and deeply integrated, losing obvious ties to their source language and being perceived as native by the dialect speakers. ³
• Differences in borrowings also manifest in changes in meaning, stress, and usage depending on the specific dialectal context. ⁸

Socio-Historical Factors

• The degree and nature of borrowing in Ukrainian dialects often reflect historical geopolitical shifts, population movements, and cultural contacts. For example, the Bukovinian dialects carry traces of Romanian, Polish, German, and other influences due to the region’s diverse historical rulers and population mix. ^{2, 9}
• Borrowings are indicators of interethnic contact and cultural exchange, with some borrowings representing specialized vocabulary related to agriculture, crafts, and economic activities specific to the dialect areas. ³

In summary, lexical borrowings across Ukrainian dialects vary by region in terms of source languages, adaptation processes, and semantic changes, reflecting complex historical and cultural interactions that uniquely shape each dialect’s lexicon. ^{9, 1, 2, 8, 3}

References

• GERMAN LEXICAL BORROWINGS IN THE WEST-UKRAINIAN DIALECTS

• BORROWINGS IN THE LEXICAL SYSTEM OF YUZHINETS DIALECT OF THE KITZMAN DISTRICT OF CHERNOVTSI REGION

• Germanisms in the South-Western Ukrainian Dialect of the Central Boyko Region

• Lexical and Semantic Features of the Designation of Time in the Ukrainian Dialects of the Carpathians

• LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC PARALLELS IN THE DESIGNATION OF TIME IN THE BULGARIAN DIALECTS AND THE SLAVIC DIALECTS OF THE CARPATHIANS

• O kilku formalnie podobnych wyrazach w mowie Polaków zamieszkałych w obwodzie lwowskim

• Bohemizm czy rutenizm – o wyrazie huba, hubka 1. bot. ‘grzyb na drzewach, Polyporus’, 2. ‘wysuszona huba do rozniecania ognia’, 3. ‘grzyby’

• A comparative analysis of Eastern Romanian lexical borrowings in Bulaeshti and Prut-Bukovina Ukrainians’ dialects: parallels and differences

• Lexical peculiarities of bukovinian dialects (on the material of the Yuzhynets dialect of Kitsman region of Chernivetska oblast’)

• Borrowings from closely related languages in bryansk dialect (on the basis of people’s names)

• O warstwach leksyki pochodzenia litewskiego na obszarze ignalińsko-jezioroskim

• BORROWINGS IN THE LEXICON OF THE MODERN UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

• Eastern Romance borrowings in Ukrainian dialects (Indo-European retrospective)

• METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPING THE STRUCTURE OF A DICTIONARY ENTRY FOR A “DICTIONARY OF THE LANGUAGE OF ORAL FOLKLORE” (STABLE AND TEXTUAL AND FIGURATIVE UNITS)

• THE SYNTACTIC UNIT (FROM DEFINITION TO MODELLING)

• LANGUAGE LOCALIZATION OF UKRAINIAN OUTDATED VOCABULARY VIA AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH

• Ordering preferences in Ukrainian multiple wh-fronting

• Representation of the formal structure of the adverbial equivalents of the word with prepositional-case forms

• Media Phraseology and the Dynamics of the Ukrainian Language: The Psycholinguistic and Stylistic Paradoxes

• Unsupervised Induction of Ukrainian Morphological Paradigms for the New Lexicon: Extending Coverage for Named Entities and Neologisms using Inflection Tables and Unannotated Corpora

• Ukrainian and Russian in the lexicon of Ukrainian Suržyk: reduced variation and stabilisation in central Ukraine and on the Black Sea coast

• The causality of borrowing: Lexical loans in Eurasian languages

• More than a signboard: the name of a store in the speaker’s mental lexicon

• Between Three Languages, Dialects and Forms of Mixed Speech: Dialect and Language Contacts in Ukrainian-Belarusian Transitional Area

• Culture-Specific Information Encoded in Lacunae: The Author’s and Translators’ Strategies of Representation

• New Bulgarian, Polish, and Ukrainian phraseology and language corpora