In Memory of the Forgotten
"...small epitaphs to the often overlooked bits of history that lie rotting all around us."
The Vanishing Galician Accent and How it Lingers in the Diaspora
The vocabulary (which I wrote about here and more recently here) and accent of the diaspora community in North
America (specifically the community that descended from the third wave of
immigration (1940s-50s), many of which came from Galicia) differs somewhat from
the vocabulary and accent heard today in western Ukraine. In the diaspora this vocabulary
and accent remained rather stagnant while in Ukraine due to various factors
(such as Russification and just due to the natural evolution of languages), the
language, both its vocabulary and the sound, has changed. Thus the language
spoken in Galicia before WWII has been better preserved in the diaspora than it
has in Ukraine (in western Ukraine it can be heard only a little in rural
areas/from the oldest generation.)
The Ukrainian Historical and Educational Center of New Jersey has on its website historical audio recordings where the early 20th century Galician dialect and accent can be heard very well, for example, in a lecture by a n…
The Ukrainian Historical and Educational Center of New Jersey has on its website historical audio recordings where the early 20th century Galician dialect and accent can be heard very well, for example, in a lecture by a n…
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