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« 2026. # 3 (189)

The Ethnology Notebooks. 2026. № 3 (189), 864—875

UDK811.161.2’28(091):398.2:39

DOI https://doi.org/10.15407/

DOCUMENTING THE MASHEVE VILLAGE DIALECT, CHORNOBYL DISTRICT: A STUDY IN THE HISTORY OF SALVAGE DIALECTOLOGY AND ETHNOLINGUISTIC

BIDNOSHYIA Yurii

  • ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000­0003­1368­7297
  • Research fellow at the Ethnology Department
  • of the State Scientific Center for Protection
  •  of Cultural Heritage from Technogenic Disasters,
  • 56, Beresteiskyi Avenue, 03057, Kyiv, Ukraine,
  • Contacts: e­-mail: biyuri2@gmail.com

Abstract. The article analyzes the history of comprehensive research into the archaic Lower Pripyat dialect of the village of Masheve, located in the former Chornobyl district, covering the period from 1950 to 2024. The relevance of the study is driven by the necessity to preserve and systematize the unique linguistic and cultural material of the Chornobyl Polissia region, which suffered as a result of the technological catastrophe. The author provides a detailed review of the representation of the Masheve dialect in fundamental scholarly works, including the «Atlas of the Ukrainian Language,» the academic reader «Dialects of the Ukrainian Language», T. Nazarova’s «Linguistic Atlas of the Lower Pripyat» and P. Lysenko’s «Dictionary of Polissian Dialects». Special attention is given to Yu. Shevelov’s concept regarding the reflection of unstressed vocalism, known as the «Masheve­type okannya». The article highlights the stages of implementing the unique dialectological and ethnolinguistic project of 1997—2005, which resulted in the publication of the four­volume monograph «The Dialect of the Village of Masheve, Chornobyl District». The author describes the methodology of parallel text presentation (phonetic transcription and simplified transliteration) and outlines the distribution of work on lexical and ethnolinguistic materials among members of the research team, following the programs of the «Lexical Atlas of the Ukrainian Language» and the «Polissian Ethnolinguistic Atlas». A particular emphasis is placed on the interdisciplinary nature of the research, which integrates methods from linguistics, ethnology, and oral history. This approach allows linguistic data to be integrated into a broader cultural and historical context. The analysis of autobiographical and oral­historical memorates of displaced persons demonstrates how the dialect’s linguistic system serves as a tool for reconstructing mentality and collective memory, turning the linguistic corpus into a complex resource for studying the traditional culture of Polissia.

The research methodology is based on a combination of a descriptive­analytical method with a comparative­historical analysis of collected field materials.

Keywords: Chornobyl Polissia, Lower Pripyat dialects, Masheve dialect, salvage dialectology, ethnolinguistics, interdisciplinarity, narrative memorates.

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