Zarys gramatyczny dialektu Ormian polskich z Kut

Abstract

A GRAMMATICAL OUTLINE OF THE DIALECT OF THE POLISH ARMENIANS FROM KUTY

In the 1950s, the Armenian and Greek Catholic priest Kazimierz Roszko (1916- 1987), lector of the Armenian language at the Jagiellonian University, collected materials on a vanishing dialect of the Polish Armenians, which was spoken longest in the town of Kuty by the Czeremosz River. His doctoral thesis prepared on this subject is still a manuscript. The article includes its main fragments elaborated by Andrzej Pisowicz. As material for the doctoral dissertation of Roszko, texts collected by him and published in the journal “Folia Orientalia” were used, as well as materials published in the 19th century by Jan Hanusz and supplements of Bogdan Dawidowicz and Jerzy Kuryłowicz from the 1920s and 1930s. The native words of the Armenian dialect from Kuty constitute a continuation of the vocabulary of the Old Armenian language. Furthermore, the dialect of the Polish Armenians abounds with primarily Turkic borrowings (mainly from the Kipchak language), among which one can find words of the Arabic origin (Semitic words) and the Persian origin (Iranian, Indo-European words). The Armenians of Kuty also borrowed many words from the Romanian language, which they had spoken before arrival to the Czeremosz River. The newest borrowing layer of the dialect of the Armenians from Kuty includes Ruthenian and, of course, Polish words. The article discusses phonetics, morphology and syntax against the comparative background. A few texts which illustrate the dialect have been presented in the appendix.