Anthropological History of Mariupol Greeks

Journal of Greek Linguistics, 2011

Th is volume is the fi rst in what will be a series on the language, literature, and culture of ethnic Greeks in Southern Ukraine by the Hellenic Institute of St. Petersburg (Series Title: Язык и Kультура Mариупольских Греков [Th e Language and Culture of Mariupol Greeks]). Th is volume presents fi ndings from fi eldwork conducted between 2001 and 2004 by students pursuing the "Ethnolinguistics and Field Research" concentration off ered by the Department of Linguistics at St. Petersburg State University under the direction of faculty from the Department of General Linguistics, Mathematical Linguistics, Russian, English and German Philology and the Department of Ethnography. Th e data were collected in seventeen villages populated by ethnic Greeks to the west and north of the city of Mariupol in Southern Ukraine on the coast of the Azov Sea, where ethnic Greeks relocated from Crimea in 1778-1779. 2 Th e Azov Greeks Approximately 120,000 ethnic Greeks reside currently in the city of Marioupol and 32 villages in the surrounding area (Pappou-Zouravliova, 1999 : 129). Th ey represent the largest Greek community in the former Soviet Union and have preserved Greek traditions and customs. However, this population of diaspora Greeks is linguistically diverse. In 14 villages, Greek settlers and their descendants speak Urum, a Turkic language. In 18 villages, they speak Rumeika, a dialect of Modern Greek (Pappou-Zouravliova, 1999 : 129). Rumeika itself is not structurally uniform, so recognizing a number of diff erent varieties of Rumeika has been proposed (Pappou-Zouravliova, 1999 : 137).

The goal of this report is to show that Rumeika (the dialect of Azov Greeks) is neither Pontic nor Nothern Greek dialect, though many features from the both may be found

Proceedings of the 5th Patras international conference of graduate students in linguistics (PICGL5), 2019

Greek settlers came to the Azov Sea region from the Crimea in the late 18th century. They founded the city of Mariupol and numerous villages around it. In the Crimea, urban Greeks spoke Greek-Tatar (so-called Urum), a dialect of Crimean Tatar, while Greeks from the villages could speak both Urum and their native Greek dialect Ruméjka. There were Urum and Ruméjka speakers among the migrants to the Azov Sea region. It seems that they never lived together in the Crimea, and they kept this tradition after they moved to the Azov Sea as well. Greek dialect of the Azov Sea region (Ruméjka or Azov Greek) gathered much attention both from Russian/Soviet and European (mostly German and Greek) scholars. Perhaps, the most discussed problem was the origin of Ruméjka. There are two well-known hypotheses that usually migrate from paper to paper when Ruméjka is mentioned: this dialect is considered either a Pontic or a Northern Greek one. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate that Ruméjka should be described from a typological point of view and may be easily compared with other Modern Greek dialects. There is no doubt that Azov Greek will provide valuable information for linguistic cartography and classification of Modern Greek dialects. This paper is based on field research data which were collected in various Greek-speaking villages around the city of Mariupol (Ukraine) in 2003–2005.

Journal of Refugee Studies 4, 1991

The majority of ethnic Greeks who are leaving the Soviet Union in order to settle in Greece are Pontians. These people originate from the eastern half of the southern shores of the Black Sea. This article attempts to deal briefly (a) with the relationship of their dialect with other varieties of Greek and (b) with the question whether Pontic is a dialect of Greek or a separate language. The conclusion drawn is that Pontic is a modern Greek dialect, albeit far removed from today's standard language, and that those who are involved in teaching standard Greek to Soviet Pontian immigrants in Greece would be assisted in their task if they bore in mind the similarities and differences between these two versions of Greek rather than teaching the standard language as if it were a totally foreign language.

2016

The paper is devoted to the ethnic and linguistic composition of Ukrainian urban population of the Russian empire. It deals with the statistical data, including the results of both Imperial census of 1897 and the local censuses, which were held in some Ukrainian towns during the 1870s. This comparison is important for understanding the consequences of the cultural assimilation policy pursued by the Imperial authorities as well as the social and political causes of the urban population structure transformation. The author discusses reasons why the percent of Ukrainians in the total amount of the urban population decreased significantly by the end of the 19th century. Published in: Codrul Cosminului. 2016. Vol.XXII.2 http://atlas.usv.ro/www/codru_net/CC22/2/urban.pdf

International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2019

This article presents observations and findings from an ongoing research on language revival among Italian new speakers in Crimea. Victim of Stalin's mass deportations of minorities in the 1940s, the community experienced severe physical, demographic, social and cultural dislocation that led inexorably to language shift towards Russian. Through the use of ethnographic research methods, including participant observations and in-depth, semi-struc-tured interviews, the study explores the participants' motivations, learning experiences and language use as they are involved in the project of reviving the Italian community.

The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast – Ukrainian, Russian and Suržyk as “native language”, “primary code”, frequently used codes and codes of linguistic socialization during childhood, 2022

The study analyses the linguistic situation in the three Ukrainian oblasts on the Black Sea coast using survey data collected from 1,200 respondents before the Russian attack on Ukraine. At the end of the 18th century, this region was the core of a "new Russian" governate during Tsarist times. Previously, the region had been ruled by Tatars and there were neither Russian nor Ukrainian settlements. From the 19th century onwards, the Ukrainian and Russian population dominated. Since the annexation of the Crimea, these oblasts represent a crucial part of the Kremlin's plan to establish an "expanded New Russia (Novorossiya)" under Moscow's control-extending along the Ukrainian-Russian border and the northern Black Sea coast, reaching from Xarkiv to Odesa. This area is clearly at the forefront of Russia's current war goals since controlling it would allow them to establish the strategically important land bridge to Crimea. Linguistically, the area undoubtedly belongs to those regions of Ukraine where Russian was prominent, although apart from the Crimea at no time was there an ethnic Russian majority on the Black Sea coast-neither during Soviet times nor since Ukraine's independence. This means that the population with Ukrainian "nationality" also made strong use of Russian. This situation is being instrumentalized by Moscow as an argument for its military intervention to protect the Russian or Russian-speaking population. The study firstly describes the linguistic situation in the region, differentiating between the so-called mother tongue, the first language acquired and the principally-used language. It can be shown that the traditionally assumed dominance of Russian is actually far weaker when the population's "multicodality", including the mixed variety Suržyk, is included in the analysis. A differentiation is made between respondents with Ukrainian and Russian nationality throughout the analysis. Using statistical procedures such as principal component analysis and cluster analysis, the interdependencies between stated mother tongue, first language and multicodality are presented. Different motives for claiming a certain mother tongue can be identified among subgroups of respondents. The analysis focuses particularly on the questions of the extent to which central government measures to strengthen the position of Ukrainian since Ukraine's independence have changed respondents' preferences when choosing a code, and whether respondents have perceived social pressure for any form We are grateful to Dr. Katherine Bird for her help with the English text. Remaining errors are ours.