Carriage Curbs in Lviv

In many of Lviv’s old buildings there is a porte-cochère, a passageway through a building designed to let carriages pass from the street to an interior courtyard. Along the sides of the porte-cochère is an elevated platform, which functioned as a sort of sidewalk for people to be able to walk past a carriage or other vehicle in the driveway. It also served as a curb for the carriage to prevent it from bumping into the walls, holding a similar purpose as the guard stones, which often flank the doorways. Maybe it could have also been used as a carriage step.

Most are stone, but I have come across a few wooden ones.

4 thoughts on “Carriage Curbs in Lviv

  1. Really interesting project! I’m in western Canada, descended from First Wave immigrants, and I am intrigued that your lexicon is much like my lexicon! It seems that this dialect might reach as far back as the late 19th century immigrants, and has been preserved in the rural communities of the prairies. Have you had an opportunity to look into that at all? Seems like you might have a REALLY big project on your hands here! LOL Kudos though, very interesting…I’ve always wondered why I have a different vocabulary compared to people I meet from modern Ukraine. Thanks for sharing this! I’ll be following 🙂

    1. As all three major waves of immigration before the fall of the Soviet Union originated in Galicia or Subcarpathia, it probably expains why your dialect is similar. Unfortunately, I’ve never visited the communities in western Canada, but was recently sent digital versions of some old Ukrainian books from the region, and have been noticing quite a lot of similarities. Very interesting 🙂

  2. Thanks for your interesting compilation of the language differences as well as the explanation of the origins of the differences. I likewise grew up in NY, hearing and speaking the Galician lexicon pretty much as you describe it.
    Two comments:
    I’ve always referred to my Holoskevych Language Dictionary as the go-to authority. Having done some recent on-line searching to see if there is now a newer official version, I found that this is still the only officially accepted and government-endorsed guide. This was prompted mostly by some discussions with fourth-wave church choir members about whether the word “прийняли” should be accented on the last syllable (as per Holosk.) or on the second. Your one table references three more recent guides, and I’m curious what they are, and have they officially replaced Holoskevych.
    Secondly, back to turning lights on and off, my understanding of the word “включити” is more of “plug in” (which I rarely do) rather than “turn on”. So not clear to me that it’s a better choice, for what it’s worth.

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