Help: Detailed Standards

Most people shouldn't care about these. It's much more important to add content in some form than to nitpick every little detail. These details are mainly for editors and other pedantic folks.

What to Include?

WikiSpiv's primary goal is the preservation and furtherment of music in the Ukrainian diaspora. While inclusion criteria is very subjective, we follow these basic principals. The more checkmarks a song has, the more strongly you should consider including it. The inverse applies as well, as we want to avoid saturating the site with songs from outside our main objective.

• Written in the diaspora (e.g. Вогов)
• Mostly unique to the diaspora, even if written abroad (e.g. Конику ґальоп)
• Popularly sung in the diaspora with traditional instruments, by zabava bands, or at bonfires (e.g. Червона рута)
  • Counterexample: PLAKALA - KAZKA. While a popular song in the diaspora, it is a very modern song which is not commonly sung in the aforementioned areas. A recording might be played at a zabava, but not usually by a live band. As such, it should be omitted.
• Written about the diaspora, even if written abroad (e.g.  Гоп, стоп, Канада)
• Popular in Plast, CYM, or other large "diaspora" organizations, even if only popular in the Ukraine branch (e.g. Отаман)
• Difficult to find lyrics elsewhere (e.g. Село)

Musical Notation

We exclusively use American-style notation. It is common to see the German notation in external sources - replace B with Bb and any Hs with Bs (e.g. H-->B, H7-->B7) to convert from German to American notation when contributing to this site. It is also common to see Italian note notation in Ukraine (до,ре,мі,фа,соль,ля,сі,до). Use C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C instead.

Official Language

The official language of WikiSpiv is Ukrainian-Canadian half-на-пів, as this site is primarily aimed at the English speaking Ukrainian diaspora. The bulk of any explanatory text should generally use Canadian English (yes: colour, not color), but you can assume people reading the site understand Ukrainian and should write titles and lyrics in Cyrillic.

Ukrainian

• Prefer the 1928 Ukrainian Academy of Sciences orthography, which is the most commonly used for the Canadian-Ukrainian dialect.
  • e.g. діяспора, not діаспора
  • Ґ is a letter
• Use the modern Ukrainian orthography when the more modern pronunciation is important.
• Within lyrics (but not titles) you should almost always spell out numbers so it's obvious what language they're in and what declension to use. For example, write "Ю-two", not "Ю2" in lyrics. In titles, Ю2 would still be preferred.

Half-на-пів

• In half-на-пів songs, generally write English words in English and Ukrainian words in Cyrillic.
• Prefer writing macaronic words as their constituent parts (e.g. "fun"-у, not фону; "cop"-и, not капи). Exception if the macaronic word has taken on a new pronunciation in Ukrainian (e.g. use ґару, not "car"-у; use Йорктону not "Yorktown"-у), but a note must be made in the addendum.

Lemko/Rusyn

• Generally render using the 1928 Ukrainian orthography, except when historical context is important in any attached materials. Do not use Rusyn orthography within the main lyrics body, but it is acceptable in any addendums.
• ы should generally be replaced with и or the equivalent letter in the Ukrainian cognate (e.g. была --> була). Generally add an addendum (e.g. "било=было=було") under a "Словник" header.
• Prefer using Ukrainian "сь", "ся", etc. When an authentic Rusyn pronunciation is important, "шь", "шя", etc is acceptable.
• Prefer Ukrainian equivalent of л/в switches. When an authentic Rusyn pronunciation is important, use Belarusian "Ў/ў" within the Cyrillic text (e.g. "сеўо"). This should be used extremely sparingly, and a note must be made in the addendum. Exceptions (on the basis that they are very common Lemko words and should be understood): горівка not горілка
• Apostrophes can be omitted before я, ю, ї, є. Maintain consistency within a song.
• Preserve softened sounds (e.g. use "льоґіка", not "лоґіка")
• Do not use reflexive pronoun dashes, either append the word or treat it as a separate word ("сподіваме ся" and "сподівамеся" are both fine, "сподіваме-ся" is not).
• Тhere is no need to include both -ов and -ом variants of words in the "Варіянт" heading. Almost every song which includes those endings can be sung in either variant and it should just be assumed as such. For example, Тиха вода should not list both "Як я з тобов" and "Як я з тобом" as alternate lyrics, just list one and let the other be assumed. There is a slight preference for the -ов endings unless there's a good reason not to (e.g. rhyming, song flow, very popular rendition uses -ом, almost everybody sings it -ом, or this is an original composition and we are preserving the original lyrics).

Prairie Dialects

• Replace "се" with "це" unless the "се" pronunciation is necessary (e.g. to maintain rhyming structure)
• Slight preference for maintaining diasporic -и endings in -і→-и shifts (e.g. use "ночи" instead of "ночі" if that's what they sing). Maintain consistency within a song.
• Maintain diasporic "него" (instead of modern "нього")
• Replace diasporic "сего" with diasporic "цего" (but not modern "цього")
• Maintain -ов endings. Do not replace with -ою.

Punctuation

• Only use straight quotes (""). Never use Ukrainian quotes («»). Never use curly quotes (“”).
• Only use hyphens ( - ). Never use en ( – ) or em ( — ) dashes, instead replacing them with a single hyphen.
• Use the Oxford comma in lists. I know, Ukrainian normally doesn't use it. We do.

Authorship Labels

• The author of the lyrics should be prefixed with "Слова:"
• If the song is an original composition, the music composer should be prefixed with "Музика:"
• If the song reuses another melody, follow the pattern 'Мелодія: "Song Title" - Author'
• When the authors' names are in Latin, use this format: "Name 1, Name 2, & Name 3"
• When the authors' names are in Cyrillic, use this format: "Name 1, Name 2, і Name 3"
  • Yes, use an Oxford comma in Ukrainian even though that's literally not used in any Ukrainian standard.
• If the song has a version in another language and the direction of transfer is unclear, state just the language and the song (e.g. "Польска: 'Haniś, moja Haniś"')
• Do NOT include Plast fraternity/sorority abbreviations after names. This is common in Plast songbooks (e.g. "Слова: Данило Сенторе, ЗГ"). Instead, just write the name without the abbreviation and in the "Історія" addendum write something like "Written by Данило Сенторе, a member of the Зелені Гуски Plast fraternity/sorority"

Which version: Стрілець, Козак, УПА?

Many songs exist in multiple versions, most commonly where the word "стрілець" is replaced with "козак". Generally we prefer the oldest version of a song (when it doubt, "стрілець" is usually the oldest, with the "козак" replacement likely occurring to avoid Soviet censorship). An exception to this is that we almost always prefer non-UPA versions when available.

Multiple versions?

We almost always prefer merging many versions of a single song into a single page. Rare exceptions exist when a song has several "main" versions which massively differ from each other, with most renditions neatly being assignable to one or the other. A good example of this is Ой на горі, пень сосновий / Гора, гора і долина, where the former is the version typical to the diaspora and the latter is more common in Lemkovyna. We should generally try very hard to avoid splitting songs. Split songs must link to each other, either in the credits or under a "Варіянти" header.