Authors

Discussion

The talk focusses on an influential new Western Ukrainian translation of the first five books of OT and the Gospel under the auspices of the Greek-Catholic cleric Yaroslav Levytskyi. It appeared in 1921 in Žovkva. The talk situates the translation in the rich tradition of Ukrainian Bible translations, which were of particular importance for the development of the standard language. It also submits the text to a linguistic and stylistic analysis, which shows that it reflects the state of standard Ukrainian in Galicia of the time. This is significant because, since 1905, there were renewed efforts under way to synthesize Galician-Bukovinian Ukrainian with the written and standard language of central and south-eastern Ukraine. The translation of 1921 testifies to continued reservations to these developments, in particular among members of the important Lviv-based Taras Shevchenko and ‘Prosvita‘ societies. The 1920s then saw continued efforts to overcome these reservations and create a uniform standard language, e.g. with the ‘All-Ukrainian Orthography Conference‘ in Kharkiv of 1927. The talk, thus, offers a telling case study from the 1920s in the evolving interplay of regional variation and the development of written / standard Ukrainian.