Ukrainian and Russian Languages

April 2024 Forums General discussion Ukrainian and Russian Languages

  • This topic has 18 replies, 7 voices, and was last updated 2 years ago by ALB.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)
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  • #227483
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    Just out of passing interest, the difference in the language

    #227498
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Why is the SPGB exclusively paying attention to the Ukrainian and Russian languages now?

    #227499
    ALB
    Keymaster

    That explains why the Russians spell it Lugansk in Roman alphabet and the Ukrainians spell it Luhansk. I hadn’t realised that the Ukrainian and Russian alphabets weren’t exactly the same. Beyond that that talk was all Greek to me.

    #227500
    DJP
    Participant

    Reminds me of the line about the difference between a dialect and a language. A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy

    #227567
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Why are we being told to write and say Kviv, Lviv and now Odesa instead of the long-standing and well-established English names and spellings for these places: Kiev, Lvov and Odessa?

    This recalls the biblical story and may yet come to it:

    “The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, “Let me cross over,” the men of Gilead asked him, “Are you an Ephraimite?” If he replied, “No,” they said, “All right, say ‘Shibboleth.’” If he said, “Sibboleth,” because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand Ephraimites were killed at that time.“

    And if it is not Russophobia or Ukrainomania, why don’t we write and say Moskva, Warszawa or, for that matter, Roma, Lisboa or Athena?

    #227642
    sshenfield
    Participant

    I haven’t studied Ukrainian but I can partly understand Ukrainian texts and videos. Russian and Ukrainian are about as close as Italian and Spanish. Both belong to the eastern branch of the Slavic subgroup of Indo-European languages. I think this helps explain why many Russians perceive Ukrainian as an odd sort of Russian rather than as a separate language.

    #227661
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    This party should have more articles in other languages besides English, most of the leftwing organizations are publishing articles in several languages, the ICC is publishing their articles in twelves languages.

    The WSPUS should face the reality and see that there are millions of Spanish speaking workers in the USA, and many of them have been members of leftist organizations including the Puerto Ricans, the SLP of America had a branch in Puerto Rico

    In New York, there were hundred of Marxist Leninists organizations from Latin America who had branches in Manhattan and none of them knew about the existence of the WSPUS until I opened a public forum

    During the fervour of Maoism and Hoxhaism, several USA Marxist Leninist organizations were working along with the Spanish speaking workers and they formed many committees, and they had bilingual newspapers, and some articles were published in Chinese too, and there was a Chinese ML organization in Chinatown

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Communist_Current.
    I had two forums in Spanish and Matt was the only member of this party who provided support to my forum I can see that in the SOYMB all other blogs are published, this is a Euro centre organization, we have two Spanish members and they have been abandoned and one of them was a member of the ICC.

    There are many social events taking place in Latin America and we do not talk about them in this forum, but we have hundreds of messages dedicated to the Russian/Ukraine conflict. We are going thru the same path of the SLP of America

    #227687
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I still prefer old forms of spelling and place-names which were current when I was studying history and geography: Burma, Peking, Chungking, Nanking, Sian, Bombay, Formosa.
    Today we’re not consistent anyway, because we say Lyons in French, but we don’t say “paree” for Paris.

    #227691
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    MS, if you can send me the blog details of your Spanish-language blog sites will be my pleasure to include them in our SOYMB links and WSM page.

    Indeed the WSPUS should recognise Spanish being a frequently used language in the US and the website could do as the Canadian comrades have done with French and add Sopanish articles

    #227910
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Some Ukrainian nationalists have advocated that the language should be written in the Roman rather than the Cyrillic alphabet:

    https://euromaidanpress.com/2016/03/23/ukraine-should-shift-from-cyrillic-to-latin-script-former-verkhovna-rada-deputy-says/

    #227915
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Ukraine was once part, I believe, of the massive Poland-Lithuania kingdom, a huge swathe of Catholic territory occupying half of European Russia. So maybe they have a point that their language would have been written using Roman script. I don’t know.

    #227919
    Anonymous
    Inactive
    #227937
    ZJW
    Participant

    Just be glad that a Irish government has not (yet) decided that ‘Dublin’ is a foreign term and the city should be called ‘Baile Átha Cliath’ (pronounced blah-KLEE-uh), or at the very least ‘Duibhlinn’ (DIVV-lin).

    #227980
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Alan.

    A new discussion forum has been started too on groups IO. I started to invite organizations and individuals

    #228041
    alanjjohnstone
    Keymaster

    The local colloquial name for Bangkok (a name derived from the French) is Krung Thep.

    The full proper name is however:
    “Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit”,

    Which means “City of angels, great city of immortals, magnificent city of the nine gems, seat of the king, city of royal palaces, home of gods incarnate, erected by Vishvakarman at Indra’s behest”

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