2014
There's a lot of 'counterfactual' stuff about Ukraine - for example, what is written on Wikipedia in Ukrainian, Russian, German or whatever has a very different 'perspective' on the same thing, for example, what happened in 2014 in Crimea:
Jay Doubleyou: alternative wikipedias
Back in 2014, there were also very different perspectives on 'the news', with media on all sides giving very different accounts to an international audience in English:
Jay Doubleyou: english language media as propaganda in the ukraine
There was also a lot of politicking around 'official languages' at the time - with Russia Today saying one thing, and others another:
Canceled language law in Ukraine sparks concern among Russian and EU diplomats — RT World News
PolitiFact | Russia-backed American news network offers its own facts on Ukraine situationJay Doubleyou: the politics of language
2022
If we compare with what's happening now in Ukraine when it comes to 'the politics of language'...
Three months ago, the main English language newspaper closed down:
Sudden Closure of Kyiv English-Language Newspaper Worries Ukraine Media
‘Kyiv Post’ team announces launch of new English-language media outlet | Ukraine news - # Bukvy
This is the new show in town:
The Kyiv Independent - News from Ukraine, Eastern Europe
Meanwhile, from Russia:
News and analytical materials - PravdaReport
But here's an independent voice coming from Russia:
What Are Russian State Media Saying About Ukraine? | Feb. 21 - The Moscow Times
For a fairly impartial view, there's always Al Jazeera:
Then there is the issue of what is the official language.
A new law was brought in in 2019:
Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences | openDemocracy
Things went further last month:
Lawmakers in 2019 passed legislation to cement Ukrainian as the country's primary language, ordering middle schools that taught in Russian and other minority languages to make the switch and mandating Ukrainian versions of online stores.An article of the laws that entered into force in January goes further, obliging shops, restaurants and the service industry to engage customers in Ukrainian unless clients specifically ask to switch.
New law stokes Ukraine language tensions - France 24
Human Rights Watch reports:
The issue of the language is highly politicized, especially in light of Russia’s ongoing military action against Ukraine.The Ukrainian government has every right to promote its state language and strengthen its national identity. But it should ensure a balance in its language policy, to avoid discrimination against linguistic minorities.
New Language Requirement Raises Concerns in Ukraine | Human Rights Watch
Finally, a this is from an excellent, balanced report from the Washington Post from earlier this month:
War or no war, Andrii Shymanovskiy believes he wields one of the most powerful weapons against Moscow: the Ukrainian language. Just over a year ago, the 23-year-old Lviv-based actor and Ukrainian-language instructor began to post TikTok videos explaining the nuances of his mother tongue, once largely secondary to Russian in Ukrainian life but increasingly a centerpiece of efforts to emphasize a distinct Ukrainian identity and culture. The videos attract millions of views with their breezy style and comic riffs on Ukrainian life. They also, however, touch one of the core complexities in the struggles with Russia and within Ukraine itself.Moscow, however, has used the language issue to paint the Kyiv government as ethnocentric “fascists” bent on tyrannizing Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population. That view is widely rejected in Ukraine, including among many in Russian-speaking areas. Still, a Ukrainian law aimed to increase the use of Ukrainian has given the Kremlin further fodder for its propaganda campaign.
Meanwhile, the amount of Ukrainian heard on the streets of Russian-speaking bastions such as the capital, Kyiv, and Kharkiv in the east appears to be steadily rising.
“I think that at this time, the only weapon I have is the language itself,” Shymanovskiy said. “I help to preserve at least our identity, the identity of our people.” Shymanovskiy describes his work as a counterweight to centuries of Russian domination in Ukraine, during which the Ukrainian language was suppressed or pushed to the margins.
But Russian President Vladimir Putin says the reverse is true, claiming it’s the Russian language being suppressed and Russian speakers becoming marginalized in Ukraine. Russian is hardly under threat, though. Russian speakers still make up a large portion of the population, and the Russian language continues to heavily influence popular culture.
Yet the allegations of a linguistic siege played a central role in Moscow’s justification of its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, where the majority of the population is Russian-speaking. It was also a cornerstone of the Kremlin’s narrative at the start of the conflict between Russian-backed militants and Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine, which has lasted nearly eight years and killed close to 14,000 people.
In recent months, Russian officials have returned to lambasting the Ukrainians’ language policies. “They are simply pushing out Russians and the Russian-speaking population from their historical territories,” Putin said at his annual news conference in Moscow in December. At the heart of Russia’s criticisms are a claim that all Russian speakers belong to a “Russian world” of shared language, culture and history, and should be defended by Moscow. Putin also wrote in an extensive essay last year that Russians and Ukrainians are “one nation.”
The article also mentions this:
Most Ukrainians are bilingual in everyday life. Language also doesn’t necessarily determine one’s political loyalties: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is standing against Putin, is a native Russian speaker.Here's a comment from two years ago about the president:
Russian is his first language but his Ukrainian is fluent. Much more fluent than I heard from any other Ukrainian politician whose native language is Russian. And it's a real, “school book” Ukrainian, with the correct pronunciation and all. No Russian accent.Actually that was one thing that caught me a bit off guard when watching Zelensky's campaign. He freely switches between the two languages. One notices that he is more comfortable with Russian, but if one didn't have his Russian for comparison, one would think he grew up with Ukrainian. I think this is one of the reason why even highly nationalist Ukrainians didn't mind him leading his campaign in both languages and at least partially voted for him. He clearly distanced himself from Russia, calling it an aggressor, yet by speaking both languages he united both Russian and Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians. Zelensky managed what no presidential candidate managed before him - to unite East and West, Russian and Ukrainian speakers, of the entire political spectrum, behind himself.
If you read Ukrainian social media, you'll see lots of hopes being put in him. Let's see if he can deliver. Ukrainian population is unforgiving to bad presidents - in the entire history of the independent Ukraine, only one president was elected for a second term.
Finally, we should not actually be saying 'the' Ukraine:
“The Ukrainian people were denied their unalienable right to statehood for centuries and ‘the Ukraine’ was used as a name for a region of the empires that subjugated Ukraine,” Paul Grod, the president of the Ukrainian World Congress, once said. “In the case of Ukraine, a unitary state, using ‘the’ is inappropriate and incorrect. The continued use of the definite article in front of the name of an independent state — Ukraine — is therefore an indirect (although often unintentional) denial of statehood.”The English usage of the definite article in relation to Ukraine occurred mainly because of the country’s history as a part of the Russian Empire, and then as part of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union. Peter Dickinson, a nonresident fellow of the Atlantic Council explains that the term “the Ukraine” first entered popular usage during the Soviet era, at a time when the Kremlin was particularly eager to counter perceptions of Ukraine as being a separate and distinct nation. Between 1922 and 1991, Ukraine was officially known in English as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Olena Goncharova: Ukraine is not 'the Ukraine' and why it matters now
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment