Speakers
Description
Due to the policy of Russification in the 20th century, the Ukrainian language underwent an influx of Russianisms, among other forms of interference with its structure. Today, many Ukrainians require guidance regarding non-Russified usage, and a Large Electronic Dictionary of Ukrainian (VESUM, vesum.nlp.net.ua) is designed to meet this need. With a register of over 430,000 lemmas, it is the most comprehensive morphological dictionary of Ukrainian. VESUM contains over 9,300 Russianisms, listed alongside their non-Russified equivalents. The decisions on what counts as a Russified item in need of replacement are based on multiple reputable sources, including dictionaries on the r2u.org.ua dictionary portal.
VESUM is the centerpiece of Pravopysnyk, the Ukrainian module of the LanguageTool text checker (check.nlp.net.ua, languagetool.org/uk). The role of VESUM is threefold. First, it supplies single-word Russified items and their replacements. Second, as a machine-readable dictionary, it serves as the source of data for lemmatization and morphological tagging, which are necessary for advanced text checking. Finally, VESUM can also be consulted as a stand-alone online dictionary via a web interface with flexible search options. As part of the Pravopysnyk tool, this electronic dictionary provides users with guidance on derussification when and where such advice is needed.
