Ryga, George, born 27 July 1932 in Deep Creek, Alberta; died 18 November 1987 in Summerland, British Columbia. Dramatist. The son of Ukrainian immigrant parents, Ryga is one of Canada’s most acclaimed playwrights. His best known work is The Ecstasy of Rita Joe (1971), a play dealing with the plight of Canada’s Indian peoples. His other plays include Indian (1967), Captives of the Faceless Drummer (1971), Letter to My Son (1984; on a Ukrainian theme and broadcast on Kiev State radio in 1985), and Paracelsus (1982). Among his novels are Hungry Hills (1963) and Ballad of a Stonepicker (1966) (both published in Ukrainian translation in Ukraine), Night Desk (1976) and In the Shadows of the Vulture (1985). Ryga wrote numerous television scripts and radio dramas, including ‘1927’, on Ukrainians in Canada, for the television series ‘The Newcomers’ (1979).

Volume IV, page 484

Kakhivka Reservoir. A huge reservoir created in 1956 after the dam of the Kakhivka Hydroelectric Station was build on the lower Dnieper River. It is 240 km long and up to 23 km wide and has a surface area of 2,155 sq. km. A volume of 18.2 cu. Km., and an average depth of 8.4 m. Its level varies from 3 to 26 m. Its waters supply hydroelectric stations, the Krasnoznamianka and Kakhivka irrigation systems, industrial plants, freshwater fish farms, and the North Crimean and Dnieper-Kryvyi Rih canals. The reservoir has created a deep-water route. Allowing sea ships to sail up the Dnieper.

Volume II, page 401

[Editor’s Note: The Kakhivka Reservoir is located along the Dnieper River just south of Zaporizhia.]

Germanisms. Words and expressions borrowed from the Germanic languages. The Ukrainian language inherited some Germanisms from Common Slavic, which had adopted some loan words from the Common German, Gothic, and Balkan-Germanic languages. These words are part of the vocabulary of military-political and trade relations, material culture, and partly Christian practice; for example mec (sword), polk (regiment), knjaz (prince), korol (king), lyxva(usury), cjata (a coin), xyza (hut), morkva (carrot) and pip (priest). Very few loan words from Old Swedish entered Ukrainian; they include scohla (mast) stjah (flag) and kodola (hawser). A large number of Germanisms from Low and High German were absorbed in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, some directly, but mostly via Polish. At that time German craftsmen emigrated in large numbers to Poland and settled in towns in western Ukraine. Some Germanisms were also introduced by Jewish settlers. The loan words of this period are mostly part of the vocabulary of the skilled trades, commerce, guilds, and municipal self-government. Some general and abstract terms were also adopted. These borrowings include sljusar (locksmith), druk (print), xutro (fur), cal (inch), rynok (market), vuxnal (horseshoe nail), ratusa (town hall), djakuvaty (to thank), rjatuvaty (to save), and smak (taste). From the 18^th to the 20^th century Germanisms became widespread in the Ukrainian spoken in Galicia and Bukovyna under Austrian rule. Some of them, for example, strajk (strike), muslja (shell), and tran (whale oil), and such calques as zlovzyvannja (misuse, based on Missbrauch), zabezpecennja (security, based on Versicherung) muzyka majbutn’oho ( a castle in the air, from Zukunftmuzik), made their way into the standard language. But most remained merely local expressions; for example, l’os (lottery ticket), fajnyj (fine), and such syntactic constructions as tikaty pered kym (to run away before one), dumaty na sco (to think on something). The quantity and choice of Germanisms in Ukrainian bring the language closer to the West Slavic languages.

Volume 2, page 43