The concept of “dialect” in the east Slavic tradition and in western European languages

The student or even the scholar without a specific background approaching for the first time, east Slavic (Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian) dialectology can encounter a series of conceptual and descriptive difficulties. The latter particularly concerns the basic terminological apparatus that is used and able to describe the dialectal differentiation within a certain country or region. The term dialect also in the west European tradition, i.e. English, German, French, Italian etc., implies a series of debatable issues. However the difference occurring between a dialect and a language is roughly known also by the layman. Such a differentiation is somehow more complex in the east Slavic dialectal tradition and, with the exception of a few professionals working on east Slavic dialectology, many concepts remain misleading, at least initially, for the majority of readers. Moreover, introductions to east Slavic dialects, with the exception of a few short overviews1, are not available in west European languages. For the reasons expressed above, I intend to discuss, in this contribution, the essential terminological issues concerning, primarily, Ukrainian but also Russian and Belarusian, with the aim of offering a useful working framework for the average English and west European student of dialectology. In the following sections, after some introductory lines devoted to some essential questions of the theory of dialectology, I will focus on the term "dialect" and its threefold corresponding equivalents in the East Slavic dialectological tradition.