Meaning of Belorussianism | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An expression or characteristic peculiar to the Belarusian language.
   countable, uncountable
2. Alternative spelling of Belorussianism.
   alt-of, alternative, countable, uncountable
3. Support for hegemony of Belorussian identity.
   countable, uncountable

Examples

“KUL 378 is early among Burcev manuscripts (see Appendix, no. A-1). Variation is largely expected to be restricted to phonetic and orthographic Ukrainianisms and Belorussianisms such as […]”

“Belorussian thus constitutes a unique phenomenon among the Slavic literary languages: here is a language in a perpetual state of diglosso-schizoglossia involving three related Slavic languages (and two simultaneously – Polish and Russian). The result ofthese conditions was that the first literary language in the Belorussian lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania shared the scene with a variant of Church Slavic saturated to varying degrees with belorussianisms, while the modern Belorussian literary language, based, to be sure, on native dialects with a varying number of isoglosses extending into Russian territory, with or without a flood of elements from Polish and/or Russian in its spoken and written forms, had to compete with Russian and Polish for written functions.”

“In fact, however, almost all neologisms originally came into the literary Soviet Yiddish from Russian rather than Ukrainian or Belorussian. Ukrainian and, especially even less developed (in terms of modern termonology) Belorussian, played a negligible role as donor languages. Thus the Yiddish verb derkenen zikh, a loan translation of the Belorussian spaznatstsa (to meet), is a rare example of modern Belorussianisms (listed in Plavnik and Rubinshtejn 1932 and in Rokhkind and Shkljar 1940).”

“As long as Belorussianism had been a movement away from Russia, it was welcome. But as soon as it had become a movement away from Poland, it could not be tolerated. […] the Soviets had been up against men, and not against symbols of Belorussianism.”

CEFR level