No Ukrainian Language in 1911 British Encyclopaedia, but There Is the Little Russian Dialect

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ

12th April, 2016

Varjag-2007

Taken from zhenziyou [Another Livejournal blogger - O.R.] in "Ukrainian dialect of the Russian language and the New Russia - Encyclopaedia Britannica 1911, New York, USA"

"The Russian dialects are divided into two main groups - large (Velikorusskij), including White (Belorusskij) Russian language and Little Russian (Malorusskij). The latter is spoken in a belt reaching from Galicia and the Northern Carpathians (see Ruthenians) through Podolia and Volhynia and the governments of Kiev, Chernigov, Poltava, Kharkov and the southern part of Voronezh to the Don and the Kuban, upon which Dnepr Cossacks were settled. To the south of this belt in "New Russia" the population is very mixed, but Little Russians on the whole predominate. In all there must be about 30,000,000 Little Russians."

PS. In the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica the following was written:

"The Little Russian dialect claims to be a literary language; it has established this claim in Galicia (see Ruthenians), but its use as such is much restricted in Russia. The Little Russians differ from the Great Russians not only in language but in physical type, customs, domestic architecture and folk-lore; but though Russophobes have tried to prove that this is due to the Finnish element in the Great Russians, it cannot be substantiated, and the Little Russians, especially the descendants of the Cossacks, have no small Tatar element in them. For the last three centuries they have been under strong Polish influence, and this has had great effect upon the vocabulary but not much on phonetics or morphology..."

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