Чеські запозичення в старобілоруській та староукраїнській писемних мовах

The article assesses the role of the Old Belarusian and the Old Ukrainian languages in the development of Czech-Eastern Slavonic linguistic relations in the 14th–18th centuries. There were both direct and indirect ways of Czech language influence on the Old Belarusian and the Old Ukrainian written languages. The 15th century saw favourable conditions for military-political alliance between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Bohemia. The emergence and development of these relations was accompanied by diplomatic activity: for instance, Grand Dukes Vitovt and Svidryhailo had correspondence in Latin and Old Czech with the Czech Hussites. Contacts in the military-political, socio-religious and cultural-educational spheres contributed to the development of Czech-East Slavic language ties. Translations of the Czech written texts into Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian («The Life of Alexei the Man of God», «The Story of Apollo of Tyre», «Lucidarius», «The Song of Songs», «The Tale of Toadal», «The Tale of the Prophetess Sibylline», «The Trojan Story»), use of the Czech legal texts in writing Galicia-Volyn letters in the 14th and early 15th centuries. The use of Czech legal texts in Galicia-Volyn monuments (Norman Statute of 1438–1439, Statutes of 1529, 1566, 1588, Lithuanian Metric Acts) contributed to the direct penetration of Bohemianisms into the Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian writing. Although there were channels through which Czech linguistic elements could be directly borrowed into Old-Belarusian and Old-Ukrainian, the main channel for their penetration was Polish. Through the Polish mediation Bohemian loanwords were borrowed from various lexical-semantic groups, mainly from religious, military, socio-political and economic, everyday life vocabulary. The similar conditions of borrowing of Bohemianisms in Old Belarusian and Old Ukrainian are obviously the main reason why Bohemianisms in both languages are close in number and chronology of written fixation. This similarity is especially noticeable against the background of Old Russian data, where bohemisms were recorded later and in smaller numbers.