Stuck Halfway Between Ukrainian and Russian (On Modern State of Kuban Region Subdialects with Ukrainian Language Base)

This article examines modern state of language in stanitsas and khutors of Krasnodar region, where Kuban subdialects have been historically evolving from a Ukrainian base. Primary sources of examination are mostly data collected by the authors in the course of 2005–2018 field expeditions, as well as data from regional dictionaries containing subdialect vocabulary and phraseology of Kuban region. The article presents fragments of subdialect carriers’ speech in a form of illiterate letter reflecting special features of local vocalization. It demonstrates the effect of Russian literary language influence on Kuban subdialects, which have the Ukrainian base and which are distant from their mother tongue both in time and in space. The article substantiates a tendency that defines the modern state of Kuban subdialect – the gradual spread of grammatical, phonetical and lexical elements of Russian literary language. It proves relative stability of dialect phonetics and grammar, as well as lexical flexibility. The conclusions reached in the article take into account the attitude of villagers towards their mother tongue and to Russian literary language, as well as linguistic reflection, which manifests in evaluation of their own speech with its mixture of Ukrainian and Russian languages. The article provides a linguistic analysis of dialect units containing the “speech” seme in their meaning, discloses their emotional and evaluative characteristics.