Ivan Uzhevych

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Ivan Petrovych Uzhevych (born 1610s, perhaps North Volhynia – after 1645) was a Ruthenian grammarian.

Very little is known about his biography: From 1637 he studied at

East Slavic language historians as the author of the first grammar of the Ruthenian language
.

He wrote his name Іωаннъ Ужевичъ Словянинъ (Ioann Uzhevych Slovyanyn), Ioannes Usevicius Sclavonus, Ioannes Ugevicius Sclavonus, Jan Użewic; in the student register of Cracow University he is written Ioannes Petri Uzewicz, but is today best known as: Belarusian: Іван Ужэвіч (Ivan Uzhevich), Polish: Jan Użewicz, Ukrainian: Іва́н Петро́вич Уже́вич (Ivan Uzhevych).

Life

Very little is known about his biography: From 1637 he studied at

Sorbonne
, writing is indicated on the cover page.

The Grammatica sclavonica

Two manuscripts are known of Ivan Uzhevych’s Grammatica sclavonica, written in

Church Slavonic grammar Gramatiki slavenskija pravilnoje syntagma (1619), is the only grammar known of the Ruthenian language
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the predecessor of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian, which the author calls lingua popularis, “vulgar tongue”. It is the first grammar of an East Slavic language (and not of Church Slavonic, which Uzhevych calls lingua sacra, “sacred tongue”).

Both Belarusian and Ukrainian linguistics have been trying to show that Uzhevych's grammar belongs to the history of their respective language and not the other one. Thus, Ivan Bilodid (1972), Mykhaylo Zhovtobryukh (1976), and Vasyl Nimchuk (1985) have stressed Ukrainian features of his language, whereas Aleksandr Sobolevskiy (1906), Vatroslav Jagić (1907), James Dingley (1972) and

modern Ukrainian language. For example, for ‘what’ both що (ščo), as in modern Ukrainian, and што (što), as in modern Belarusian, appear. This shows that Uzhevych's intention was to describe not his own dialect but a common, partially standardized, Ruthenian language (cf. History of the East Slavic languages
).

Uzhevych's grammar exhibits a distinctly

Glagolitic alphabet
).

As usual at that time, the grammar shows the difficulties of superimposing the Latin grammatical system on a very different language. Thus, on the one hand there are long lists of constructed verb forms that are of no practical relevance for Ruthenian, e.g. the optative pluperfect бодай бымъ былъ ковáлъ (bodaj bym” byl” koval”) ‘oh would I have had cooked!’ (Arras, 452), but on the other hand the locative case is not reflected, and Uzhevych tries to explain the respective endings, which sometimes resemble the dative, sometimes the instrumental (ablative) endings, as casus vagabundi, “wandering cases” (Arras, 332-341).

Rozmova · Besěda

As

phrasebook by Noël de Berlaimont
into Ruthenian and Church Slavonic. The left, Ruthenian column of each page (the Rozmova part) is titled “Popularis”, and the right, Church Slavonic one (the Besěda part) “Sacra”. Maybe the author wanted to demonstrate in practice the differences described in his grammar between the “vulgar” and the “sacred” tongue. Anyway, this phrasebook provides a lot of linguistic material to fill the gaps in the Grammatica sclavonica, which itself contains only little actual Ruthenian text, as it is written in Latin. Apart from that, the phrasebook consists of very straightforward, colloquial, every-day dialogues — those that made Berlaimont's work the most popular phrasebook of all times. It was reprinted more than 150 times all over Europe between the beginning of the 16th and the end of the 19th century in versions with from two to eight language columns.

The manuscript was published in a scholarly edition in 2005 together with the Latin original from 1613 and a translation of the same text into Polish from a print of 1646.

Works

Further reading

  • Lunt, Horace. Review: “Hramatyka slov’jans’ka I. Uževyča”. In: Recenzija 1.2 (1971), pp. 47–49.
  • Dingley, James. “The two versions of the Gramatyka Slovenskaja of Ivan Uževič.” In: The Journal of Byelorussian Studies, 2.4 (1972), pp. 369–384.

References

  • Bilodid 1972 — Білоді́д (Белодед), Іва́н Костянти́нович. “«Славянская грамматика» Ивана Ужевича 1643 г.” In: Известия Академии Наук СССР. Серия литературы и языка. Vol. 31.1, pp. 32-40.
  • ISBN 3-87690-932-5. English abstract.
  • Daiber 1992 - Thomas Daiber. "Die Darstellung des Zeitworts in ostslavischen Grammatiken von den Anfängen bis zum ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert". Freiburg i. Br. 1992 (= "Monumenta Linguae Slavicae Dialecti Veteris tomus XXXII)
  • Dingley 1972 — James Dingley. “The two versions of the Gramatyka Slovenskaja of Ivan Uževič.” In: The Journal of Byelorussian Studies, 2.4 (1972), pp. 369–384.
  • Horbatsch 1967 — Горбач, Олекса Теодорович. “Рукописна «Граматыка словенская» Івана Ужевича з 1643 й 1645 років.” In: Наукові Записки Українського Технічно-Господарського Інституту (Мюнхен), 16 (17), pp. 3-22. — Reprinted in: Olexa Horbatsch. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Vol. IV. München 1993, pp. 59-77.
  • Jagić 1907 — Vatroslav Jagić. “Johannes Uževič, ein Grammatiker des 17. Jh.” In: Archiv für slavische Philologie 29 (1907), pp. 154–160.
  • Keipert 2001 — Helmut Keipert. “‘Rozmova/Besěda’: Das Gesprächsbuch Slav. No. 7 der Bibliothèque nationale de France.” In: Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 60.1, pp. 9-40.
  • Nimchuk 1985 — Німчу́к, Васи́ль Васи́льович. Мовознавство на Україні в XIV-XVII ст. Київ 1985, pp. 155-198.
  • George Y. Shevelov
    . A historical phonology of the Ukrainian language. Heidelberg 1979.
  • Sobolevskiy 1906 — Соболевский, Алексей Иванович. “Грамматика И. Ужевича.” In: Чтенія въ Историческомъ обществѣ Нестора Лѣтописца. Vol. 19.V.2 (1906), pp. 3–7.
  • Zhovtobryukh 1976 — Жовто́брюх, Миха́йло Андрі́йович. “«Граматика словенская» Івана Ужевича — пам’ятка староукраїнської літературної мови." In: Слово і труд: До сімдесятиріччя академіка Івана Костянтиновича Білодіда. Київ 1976, pp. 167–179.
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