This seminar aims to present the major structural features of the Rusyn language – phonological and morphological – that make it what it is: it is East Slavic, related to but not the same as Ukrainian, and also something special, almost a bridge between East and West Slavic. That ‘something special’ is in great part attributable to long contact with other languages and their speakers, but also to certain linguistic innovations that are not identifiable simply as the result of borrowing from other languages.