part one

I came across Rusyns several times in Macedonia. Once directly, when I was chatting with a local (Ohrid) Catholic priest, a biritualist (which means that he celebrates services in both the Western and Eastern rite (or rather the other way around, he is descended from Macedonian Uniates, who once in the nineteenth century accepted the union with Rome (i.e. became Catholics – of the Eastern rite). After the mass I pointedly launched “Slava Isusu Christu” at him, as if we were in eastern Slovakia among the Ruthenians, and he caught on. After his ordination he had worked for a few years among the Serbian Rusyns, in Vojvodina, and he knows their language. So he answered me, I tried to speak pure Slovak, and somehow we got along. Slovak and Vojvodina Ruthenian are two different things, but they are not that far apart.

See for example here:

Some words are different, for example instead of Slovak “use” they use “chasnovac”, a village is called “valal”. Some words are a bit Slovak, others a bit more from the East, and otherwise it’s overall heavily influenced by Serbian, which they’ve been living among for 300 years.

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• ENGLISH