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On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:11:00 -0400, "Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
yp11 wrote:
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:53:14 -0400, "Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Rostyslaw J. Lewyckyj wrote:
yp11 wrote:
The status of Russian language in Ukraine is tragic, tragic! What a joy. If the Russkies don't like it, Russia is just over the border. No one forces them to stay in Ukraine.
In Canada, even though Quebec is just a province, it's only official language is French, and if someone wants to live in Quebec, he/she better learn French. But Russians living in Ukraine and other CIS countries or in the Baltics think that they should be entitled to use their own language. They should realize that the time of Imperial Russia and of the Evil Soviet Empire are over.
Yuri
http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/363/10964_language.html
Oh how tragic. :) I would recommend that in the CIS and former sattelite countries there should be an official effort to teach the history of Russian as it relates to that country. I.e. the history of policies wrt. Russification in the country. In Ukraine it would be the history of the various anti Ukrainian language UKASES. In some of the Caucasian countries, it would be the forced adoption of the Cyrilic alphabet replacing the previous either latin or arabic. In addition in Ukraine the students should be taught the history of the formation of the Russian language and the several reforms of Russian carried out with the aid of Ukrainian scholars.
Oh one more item which I forgot in the previous post. Each of the CIS countries should negotiate reciprocal language rights with Russia. i.e If say Ukraine were to make Russian an official language, then Russia makes Ukrainian an official language, without any weasle clauses or restrictions. Any such reciprocity to be subject to cancelation for non compliance. Thus Russia might be faced with having multiple country wide official languages.
-- Rostyk
Have you noticed, Rostyk, that the Russian members of this newsgroup
appear to have no defense as to this position of the Putin government.
It is really undefensible in a democratic society.
Yuri
Well I hadn't really expected them to defend it.
They probably fully agree with the spirit and see nothing in it that needs defending. :(. That is my reading of their psyche.
But anyway, what does it have to do with democracy or a democratic
society?
I don't think that the U.S., as a democratic society, has a policy of
teaching the American language (although it is basically English,
there is also the so called "idiomatic" American), for example in
Mexico, or ever in Iraq. They have voted to spend $20 billion for
Iraqi reconstruction, etc., but nothing there for spreading the
American language. I don't think that the French or the Germans are
providing policies and financing for spreading their language to
neighboring countries which don't speak it. In fact the EU documents
are presently being translated in some 15 languages and this will soon
increase with the addition of new members. That is what I meant by
"democratic society".
In how many languages do you think the CIS documents are being translated?
Yuri
Oh, I don't know. How many different official national languages are there in the countries that belong to CIS? I would expect the documents to be translated into each of them. But I still disagree with you that a nations external language policy has any logical cause-effect connection with whether a country has a democratic or undemocratic regime. I think that Russia is the exception counter example. Officially it is a democracy. Yet its' government is espousing an imperialist (expansionist) foreign policy with regard to the Russian language. Further I believe that a referendum on this point in Russia, just might show all the Russian areas voting in support of the policy. -- Rostyk
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