Ancient vocabulary of the Ukrainian language in the context of social changes

According to the materials of report at the meeting of the Presidium of the NAS of Ukraine, October 30, 2024

Abstract

The war has intensified purist tendencies aimed at overcoming the effects of Russian influence and distancing from Russian borrowings. They create and deepen the problem of biased attitudes toward ancient Ukrainian vocabulary. In many cases, such units are mistakenly classified as linguistic distortions and calques from Russian prototypes. This leads to a misjudgment of the linguistic and linguocultural heritage of the past. The proposed report is dedicated to the analysis of such linguistic units. The past imposition of Russian lexical, grammatical, phonetic and orthographic elements on the Ukrainian language, along with a lack of awareness about the development and standardization history of Ukrainian literary language, are the main reasons leading to the mistaken classification of native Ukrainian forms as Russian (or as surzhyk) and their removal from usage.