Graphic presentation of dialect-ethnographic texts of Western Polissia

Abstract

Western Polessia is a region divided after World War II by the state borders between Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. This was reflected not only in the languages of education, the general cultural background, but also, in particular, on the principles of presentation of dialectethnographic texts. When compiling and editing the volume “Ethnographic Image of Ukrainians Abroad. Corpus of expeditionary folklore and ethnographic materials” (part 1, 2019), we encountered different graphic design of dialectal and ethnographic texts of Western Polissia in publications from different countries. The volume contains texts from the territory of Brest region (Belarus) and Northern Podlasie (Poland), recorded by the staff of the Rylsky Institute of Art Studies, Folklore and Ethnology, as well as kindly provided by other researchers’ published and unpublished materials, collected since the early 1970s. As this volume is adjacent to the 10-volume collection of field materials “Ethnographic Image of Ukraine”, it became necessary to unify the graphic presentation of Western Polissia texts from different regions and different scientific schools. The developed algorithms for metagraphing of texts from the phonetic transcription of AUM and the special system of F. Klimchuk made it possible to present them in a unified and accessible way for non-philological readers. This emphasizes the unity of the Western Polissian dialect and the cultural continuum.