Slavic microlanguages
Encyclopedia
Slavic microlanguages are literary and linguistic forms that exist alongside the better-known Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...

 of historically prominent nations. The term "literary microlanguages" was coined by Aleksandr Dulichenko
Aleksandr Dulichenko
Aleksandr Dmitrievich Dulichenko is a Russian Esperantist and linguist, and an expert in Slavic microlanguages. He carried also Kashubian studies...

 at the end of the 1970s and subsequently became a standard term in Slavistics
Slavistics
Slavic studies or Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, Slavic languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was primarily a linguist or philologist who researches Slavistics, a Slavic or Slavonic scholar...

.

Slavic microlanguages exist both as geographically and socially peripheral dialects of more well-established Slavic languages and as completely isolated speech forms. They often enjoy a written form, a certain degree of standardization
Standardization
Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....

 and are used in a variety of circumstances typical of literary languages, albeit in a limited fashion and always alongside a national literary language.

Insular and peripheral microlanguages

Native speakers (or users) of contemporary Slavic microlanguages either live among unrelated linguistic communities, thereby constituting an ethnic "island," or live on the geographical periphery of their historical ethnic group
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...

. Correspondingly, these microlanguages can be divided into insular and peripheral categories (the later of which can also be called "regional languages.") The principle insular forms are: Rusyn
Rusyn language
Rusyn , also known in English as Ruthenian, is an East Slavic language variety spoken by the Rusyns of Central Europe. Some linguists treat it as a distinct language and it has its own ISO 639-3 code; others treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian...

, Burgenland Croatian, Molise Croatian
Molise Croatian dialect
Molise Croatian dialect is a Croatian dialect spoken in the province of Campobasso, in the Molise Region of southern Italy, in the villages of Montemitro , Acquaviva Collecroce and San Felice del Molise...

, Resian dialect
Resian dialect
The Resian dialect is a distinct dialect of Slovene spoken in the Resia Valley, Province of Udine, Italy, close to the border with Slovenia...

 (which may also be characterized as "peninsular") and Banat Bulgarian. The main peripheral forms include Prekmurian
Prekmurje dialect
Prekmurian, also known as the Pannonian-Slovene, East-Slovene, or Wendish , is the easternmost separate dialect of Slovene, spoken in the Prekmurje region of Slovenia and by the Hungarian Slovenes in Vas county in western Hungary...

, East Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...

, Lachian
Lach dialects
The Lach dialects , are a group of dialects of Silesian language. They represent a hybrid or mix of the West Slavic languages.The Lach dialects are spoken in parts of Czech Silesia, the Hlučín region, and northeastern Moravia, as well as in some adjacent villages in Poland...

, Carpatho-Russian
Rusyn language
Rusyn , also known in English as Ruthenian, is an East Slavic language variety spoken by the Rusyns of Central Europe. Some linguists treat it as a distinct language and it has its own ISO 639-3 code; others treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian...

, West Polesian
West Polesian language
The West Polesian language or dialect is spoken in Southeastern Belarus, in Northwestern Ukraine and in the bordering regions of Poland. It is also considered as one of the Slavic microlanguages, in effect a transitional language between the Ukrainian and the Belarusian.West Polesian is mostly...

 and others.

Functional characteristics

The precise hierarchical relationship between national literary languages and microlanguages can be ascertained by examining internal attributes, such as the disparity between strictly enforced standardization
Standardization
Standardization is the process of developing and implementing technical standards.The goals of standardization can be to help with independence of single suppliers , compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality....

 in the case of the former and, in the case of the latter, a more relaxed standard. The national language often displays a standardized spoken form whereas such a regularity is absent from microlanguages (whose spoken form often consists of divergent dialects.) Likewise, the difference can be seen in external attributes such as extensive functionality and explored genres in the case of national languages, compared to the narrowness of genres and limited functional role of microlanguages.

As literary microlanguages are, in terms of functionality, more expansive than their corresponding dialects, they display a tendency toward standardized norms, which entails a significant enlargement of the lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...

 and a more systematized, codified grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...

, often by way of foreign borrowings, and recourse to a previous literary and linguistic tradition alien to dialects. In contrast to a dialect exploited for artistic purposes, every minor literary Slavic language is to a greater or lesser degree governed by an organized literary and linguistic process that provides for the establishment and development of a literary microlanguage, and which presents it as such.

In terms of location, Slavic microlanguages exist in both predominantly Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...

and non-Slavic areas, earning some the designation of linguistic "islands" resulting from a past migration, whereas others exist indigenously, having never been entirely separated from their genetic and geographic points of origin.
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