by Lucy Pakhnyuk Many people probably wouldn’t be able to answer this question, and the people who have tried to answer it haven’t really come to a consensus. If you ask a Ukrainian this question, they’ll simply say that Rusyns are a sub-group of Ukrainians, and their language is nothing more than a Ukrainian dialect. But don’t call a Rusyn Ukrainian unless you’re looking for a fight. Rusyns consider themselves to be a distinct ethnic group, and they believe that their language is a distinct language, not a Ukrainian dialect. The question of Rusyn identity is fairly complicated, to say the least. Rusyns, also known as Ruthenians or Carpatho-Rusyns, are a Slavic ethnic group that lives mostly around the Carpathian Mountains. Their language, Rusyn or Ruthene, is an East Slavic language that’s closely related to Ukrainian and Russian and uses the Cyrillic script (although Rusyns in Slovakia use the Latin script). There are about 623,940 Rusyns in the world, 560,000 of which live in Uk...