The Merja language is one of the quiet mysteries of Russian history. Scholars believe it may have survived until the 18th century. Ethnographer Orest Tkachenko described its unique features in his monograph, and as late as the 19th century, fishermen in the town of Galich were recorded using an argot that contained Merjan elements. My […]
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Layers of Identity: Language, Memory and the Forgotten Landscapes
Identity is never a single element: it is a mosaic of personal roots, cultural memory, and ancestral geography. In my own case, it is divided between two worlds: on my father’s side, I come from Meshchera; on my mother’s, from a family rooted in a village near Galich in Kostroma province. That Galich (historically known […]