The Non-ukrainian world in the Ukrainian dialect space: a view through the prism of proper names

The article examines the proper names of other countries (mostly European) and their inhabitants in the dialect picture of the world of Ukrainians. The purpose of the study is to trace the peculiarities of Ukrainian dialect speakers’ perception of the non-Ukrainian world, which appears within the conceptual opposition of “own” – “alien”. It has been found that the corresponding nominations, often as part of phraseological units, exist in the different dialects of the Ukrainian language and are verbal evidence of Ukrainians’ contact with other peoples in various historical periods. It has been established that the nominations of other countries and peoples are characterized by connotation, variability, and potential for formal and semantic derivation, which continues the Old Ukrainian linguistic tradition. The semantic space of the concept of Europe is made up of the semantic fields “History” (mentions in dialect speech of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Polish rule in Ukraine, as well as the German occupation in World War II), “Climate” (observations of Ukrainian immigrants over the climatic features of other countries), “Man and society” (typical features of the foreigners’ character that formed their ethnic stereotypes), “Diseases” (diseases that came from Europe), “Material culture” (products names of other countries). The analyzed material demonstrates the openness of the Ukrainian language to wide contacts with other languages. At the same time, the identified linguistic units testify to the vitality of Ukrainian dialects, which were not only not destroyed by borrowings but also underwent development through formal adaptation of borrowed lexemes. Thus, Ukrainians retain their identity in interlingual and intercultural interference conditions, which becomes especially relevant in the context of Ukraine’s European integration. Keywords: concept, Europe, verbalization, dialect picture of the world, Ukrainian dialects, proper names of foreign origin.