Sotak

[Dennis Ragan]

A distant relative of mine whose mother's ancestors are from the same area of Slovakia as my ancestors -- the area north of Humenne (towns of Turcovce, C~ernina, Lukac~ovce, etc) -- asked me the other day what I could tell her about the Sotaks.  I found this interesting because I had tried to find something about the Sotaks a few years back. I did see an interesting map of dialects placed on Pitt's web site by Dr. Joe Armata -- http://www.pitt.edu/~armata/dialects.htm . It shows my ancestors' villages to be in or very close to the area labeled Sotaks.  

Does anyone know anything about the Sotaks? Is it a small ethnic group, a dialect, both?  Are they Slovaks, Rusyns or a separate group?  One small thing I did find online about the Sotaks was from a message posted close to 10 years ago on a genealogy discussion group (shown below). 

Dennis     

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Message Board Post:

Tom,

You may already know that the word "sotak" in Slovakia refers to a member of a mini-ethnic group defined by their dialect of Eastern Slovak (with strong Rusyn influence) that uses the word "so" to mean "what," rather than the standard Slovak word, "c'o." The Sotak dialect is spoken in the areas once settled under the auspices of the Drugeth family, who lived mainly in the town of Humenne from about the year 1300 on. That area is mostly along the river valleys (of the Laborec, Udava, and Circhoa Rivers) radiating to the north east east of Humenne, as far as Papin and Snina, as well as an area toward the southeast, near Sobrance.

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[Martin]

the Sotaks? Is it a small ethnic group, a dialect, both?

As often with small groups' regional/ethnic/linguistic identities, it is difficult to boil it down to a clear-cut answer, even more so in the past. To use just regional identities as an example, there is no obvious answer whether the Liptáci, the inhabitants of the historical Liptov County in north-central Slovakia, have more in common than the area where they grew up, but the name exists. So with that caveat...

From a strictly linguistic point of view, the dialect(s) spoken in the region you bring up, Dennis, is originally West Slavic (Slovak), with numerous East Slavic (Rusyn), features that were adopted later. BTW, their name may have come from their pronunciation of "what": so (as opposed to the Standard Slovak čo [tsho] and regional co [tso]). From a historical perspective, there are records of some of the villages in existence in the period before Rusyn immigration is assumed.

The oldest record of who the people of the area considered themselves to be comes from a survey by the Habsburgs in 1773, when all of the villages of the region were marked as predominantly Slovak with the exception of Hažín, Maškovce, Porúbka, Ptičie (possibly Paul Newman's mother's ancestral village), and Zubné, which were marked as predominantly Rusyn. The perception of someone being a Soták might have existed then, though, but not be seen, namely not by the Royal and Imperial authorities, as at the same overriding level as Slovak and Rusyn language and ethnicity.

An early known record of Soták identity comes from an 1820 article on ethnology by Slovak nobleman (zeman) Johann Csaplovics, who saw them as "a kind of interlink among the Slovaks, Rusyns, and Poles," most of whom were "Roman Catholics, fewer Greek Catholics, also a few Lutherans." According to him, a characteristic feature of their way of life was that they would buy sheep in what's Romania and Moldova today in the spring, graze them in the summer, and sell them as far as Moravia, Silesia, Bohemia in the fall. Many were expert carters, apparently a main source of income in the area besides farming, who would transport wine and other goods to Russia (which bordered the Habsburg lands then), Poland, Austria, Moravia, Bohemia, and Prussia.

According to Csaplovics, the Sotáks preferred to marry other Sotáks rather than Rusyns or Slovaks, and multiplied "like potatoes," so whenever the weather got better, "swarms of little ones crawl out of each house." But the number of the inhabitants in the villages traditionally seen as Soták remained low, barely 20 thousand by the mid-20th century.

[Dennis Ragan]

That's really interesting information, Martin.  D'akujem. This is far more than I've seen about the Sotaks anywhere else. You wrote that mostly Slovaks and Rusyns lived in this area around 1773 with the possible Sotak subgroup. Would the language of the those Slovaks there have been noticeably different that the Sotak dialec --- and do you think that villages were pretty much all one group versus several group living in a village?  I remember an old family friend, who was from Trebis~ov, would kid my father (from Turcovce in what appears to be the Sotak area) as speaking hillbilly Slovak. I wonder if that would have been the Sotak dialect he was referring to, especially if other Slovaks in the area spoke a dialect closer to what was spoken in Trebis~ov? Of course I also remember that there are something like 35 different dialects spoken in Slovakia.

Up until now, I also thought that the dialect my grandparents spoke was closer to the S~aris~ dialect, but something tells me that the S~aris~ dialect may not have been very close to the Sotak dialect. One anecdote I'll share is when I was in Slovakia in 1994 and a great-aunt of mine was speaking to me in dialect and her grand-daughter stopped her and told her she need to speak to me po slovenksy, "in "Slovak."  Until recently, I had thought the dialect was "hutorec," if I'm spelling that correctly.   

One last question -- do you think Slovaks with Sotak origins identify themselves as Sotaks and if so, would they consider a negative thing (as "hillbilly" is seen as negative in this country)?

Dennis           

[Martin]

mostly Slovaks and Rusyns lived in this area around 1773 with the possible Sotak subgroup. Would the language of the those Slovaks there have been noticeably different that the Sotak dialec

There is no doubt that there was a recognizable Soták dialect then, a few hundred years old already. It is also highly likely that calling the speakers of that dialect Sotáks had long been common. Labeling people by a distinguishing feature of their vocabulary or pronunciation has been common in human history. Based on the 1773 survey, it is fairly safe to assume they were seen as Slovaks then, and that their dialect was as a sub-identifying feature (just as Kysučania were Slovaks from Kysuce, Liptáci were Slovaks from Liptov, i.e., both groups were subsets of the Slovaks with geographic attributes; or the Hutoráks, Hutoráci, were the subset of the Slovaks who said hutoric for "speak," a verb not used by other Slovaks, i.e., a subset of the Slovaks with a linguistic attribute -- as to your note, Dennis, it can be either hutoric or hutorec, both forms are used in the region).

villages were pretty much all one group versus several group living in a village

On the whole, the inhabitants of one village would speak the same dialect. Those from other dialect areas who married or moved into the village, namely their children, would acquire the dialect of the village. But larger villages with more substantial numbers of, say, traditional Slovaks and immigrant Rusyns could exist as bi-lingual for periods of time, especially if the Slovaks and the Rusyns, in this example, inhabited distinct parts of the village and the number of the immigrants was relatively substantial.

In larger villages with very different languages (Slovak, German) or in towns, there was more of a chance to have 2-3 languages coexist for extended periods of time. For instance, a number of Slovak towns were German hundreds of years ago, but Slovaks immigrated and their language eventually prevailed because it was the majority language in the surrounding areas.

who was from Trebis~ov, would kid my father (from Turcovce in what appears to be the Sotak area) as speaking hillbilly Slovak

Looking down on inhabitants of smaller settlements (which often comes hand-in-hand with "poorer" and less "worldly") than where one comes from is a universal trait of human societies. Any way of speaking or another attribute (e.g., the type of clothes) could be potentially singled out the way you describe it, Dennis.

For instance, while the pronunciation of [ľ] is supposed to be "perfect Slovak," the "soft ľ," as the Slovaks call such sounds, has traditionally been weaker or non-existent in the speech of the larger Central Slovak towns, whose inhabitants would say with the same disdain you note that the villagers ľaľákajú, "say ľ all the time."

do you think Slovaks with Sotak origins identify themselves as Sotaks

Most likely with "Soták" as an attribute secondary to "Slovak," like people add territorial or linguistic attributes to the basic "Slovak" in the examples above.

would they consider a negative thing (as "hillbilly" is seen as negative in this country)

Again, doubtless like any non-standard linguistic attribute that is not associated with wealth, urban life, another source of admiration or prestige.

• E.g., Vilo's Záhoráci are proud to be that, but the educated among them avoid speaking po záhorácky outside of their area (as does most anyone who can), or even in suave company in Záhorie, and the dialect has been used repeatedly on TV shows for nothing but comedic effect.
• On the other hand, the noticeable non-standard features in the pronunciation of many in Bratislava have a degree of acceptance, because they carry the attribute "the (mis)pronunciation of the capital" and creep into the language of TV, all of whose channels are headquartered there.

[Dennis Ragan]

This is really excellent information. Thank you, Martin.