The Ukrainian Language in Documents and in Reality (original) (raw)
Related papers
The first post-revolutionary decades became decisive for the development of the Ukrainian language, national culture and identity. The Ukrainian language, previously subject to a number of bans, finally entered the stage of intensive status and corpus planning. Thanks to this, it became a decisive factor in the rivalry between different forms of statehood vying on the Ukrainian territory after 1917. At the same time, the status upgrade and broader public use called for the standardisation of the language. The first practical steps towards the unification of different orthographic traditions were undertaken from 1918 to 1921. The turbulence of civil war, however, determined the failure of comprehensive language reform. Calls for linguistic unification gained new force in the second half of the 1920s: with the introduction of Ukrainizacija, the local variant of the all-Union nationalities policy of korenizacija introduced in 1923, the Ukrainian language was acknowledged as the means to the republic’s Sovietisation. This was part and parcel of the Soviet “affirmative action empire” (Terry Martin) which had to contain the 1917-1921 rise of nationalism of the empire’s minorities. Locally, the elites had to negotiate their own interests and the centre’s demands. How exactly do the debates on the “correct” codification of the language and the actual steps towards different ideals reflect the changing power dynamic between the centre and the republics in the interbellum USSR? This is the problem this study sets out to tackle using the example of Soviet Ukraine. The paper explores the link between language and politics in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s. While examining the political preconditions for the language policies in Ukraine, significant attention will also be devoted to the specifics of the 1928 spelling reform and its reception by the general public in Ukraine and abroad. In general, it will be argued that in the Soviet Union language was often used as a tool of political consolidation, and the power struggle between different visions of the future of the republics can be seen in debates and reforms of language. Hence, the correlation between Soviet language policies and the subsequent Sovietisation (or Russification) will be highlighted. The subsequent debates around the status of the Ukrainian language, its orthography and vocabulary, exposed the unbridgeable differences between the political elites in the republic and central powers in Moscow. The draft of the new orthography was thoroughly discussed by academics and linguists, representing different parts of Ukraine and the final draft was publicly discussed republic-wide. The spelling reform, adopted in 1929, can rightly be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of Ukrainizatsiia. This newly-acquired status was significantly challenged by the centralisation drive of the Moscow party leadership. This orthography, widely known as ‘skrypnykivka’ (after the then Commissar for Education Mykola Skrypnyk) or ‘Charkiv orthography’ was attacked for its attempts to dissociate the Ukrainian language from Russian and ‘westernise’ the language. After 1933, the main principles of the spelling reform were labelled ‘nationalistic’. The reform was quickly abandoned. Furthermore, after 1937, all the corpus planning attempts were geared towards ‘purifying’ the Ukrainian language from foreign influence, when Russian equivalents and cognates were introduced or prioritised.
Last But Not Least: On the New Encyclopedia of Ukrainian (in Ukrainian - по-українськи)
Український гуманітарний огляд Випуск 6, 2001
V[italii] M[akarovych] Rusanivsky, O[leksandr] O[nysymovych] Taranenko, et al., eds. Ukrainska mova: Entsyklopediia. Kyiv: Ukrainska entsyklopediia im. M. P. Bazhana, 2000. 752 pp. Iu[rii] N[ikolaevich] Karaulov, ed. Russkii iazyk: Entsiklopediia, 2d ed. Moscow: Bolshaia rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, 1997. 703 pp. A[rnold] Ia[fimavich] Mikhnevich, ed. Belaruskaia mova: Entsyklapediia. Minsk: Belaruskaia entsyklapediia imia Petrusia Brouki, 1994. 655 pp.
The impact of ideologies on the standardization of modern Ukrainian
International Journal of The Sociology of Language, 2010
The contemporary trends in the processes of codification of Ukrainian are influenced by numerous di¤erent factors. Today's rise of activity in the sphere of language reform is an attempt to resolve rather old cultural and ideological conflicts. Ukrainian linguistic purism mostly manifests itself not in the elimination of lexical borrowings, but in a negative attitude toward bookish elements on a stylistic level. At the same time, in orthography, the struggle for language purity is concentrated on the transliteration of borrowings from Greek, Latin, and other European languages. Whether they focus on the redistribution of stylistic variants or variants of loanword spelling, the language ideologies discussed in this article symbolically underscore cultural distances. An analysis of cultural models and language ideologies associated with them bears witness to the particular role of the romantic and European models in the history of Standard Ukrainian. These models are aimed at rea‰rming and consolidating the separatist, divergent function of Standard Ukrainian as one of the fundamental means of supporting the Ukrainian national identity.
Studi Slavistici, 2017
The first post-revolutionary decades became decisive for the development of the Ukrainian language, national culture and identity. The Ukrainian language, previously subject to a number of bans, finally entered the stage of intensive status and corpus planning. Thanks to this, it became a decisive factor in the rivalry between different forms of statehood vying on the Ukrainian territory after 1917. At the same time, the status upgrade and broader public use called for the standardisation of the language. The first practical steps towards the unification of different orthographic traditions were undertaken from 1918 to 1921. The turbulence of civil war, however, determined the failure of comprehensive language reform. Calls for linguistic unification gained new force in the second half of the 1920s: with the introduction of Ukrainizacija, the local variant of the all-Union nationalities policy of korenizacija introduced in 1923, the Ukrainian language was acknowledged as the means to the republic’s Sovietisation. This was part and parcel of the Soviet “affirmative action empire” (Terry Martin) which had to contain the 1917-1921 rise of nationalism of the empire’s minorities. Locally, the elites had to negotiate their own interests and the centre’s demands. How exactly do the debates on the “correct” codification of the language and the actual steps towards different ideals reflect the changing power dynamic between the centre and the republics in the interbellum USSR? This is the problem this study sets out to tackle using the example of Soviet Ukraine. The paper explores the link between language and politics in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s. While examining the political preconditions for the language policies in Ukraine, significant attention will also be devoted to the specifics of the 1928 spelling reform and its reception by the general public in Ukraine and abroad. In general, it will be argued that in the Soviet Union language was often used as a tool of political consolidation, and the power struggle between different visions of the future of the republics can be seen in debates and reforms of language. Hence, the correlation between Soviet language policies and the subsequent Sovietisation (or Russification) will be highlighted. The subsequent debates around the status of the Ukrainian language, its orthography and vocabulary, exposed the unbridgeable differences between the political elites in the republic and central powers in Moscow. The draft of the new orthography was thoroughly discussed by academics and linguists, representing different parts of Ukraine and the final draft was publicly discussed republic-wide. The spelling reform, adopted in 1929, can rightly be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of Ukrainizatsiia. This newly-acquired status was significantly challenged by the centralisation drive of the Moscow party leadership. This orthography, widely known as ‘skrypnykivka’ (after the then Commissar for Education Mykola Skrypnyk) or ‘Charkiv orthography’ was attacked for its attempts to dissociate the Ukrainian language from Russian and ‘westernise’ the language. After 1933, the main principles of the spelling reform were labelled ‘nationalistic’. The reform was quickly abandoned. Furthermore, after 1937, all the corpus planning attempts were geared towards ‘purifying’ the Ukrainian language from foreign influence, when Russian equivalents and cognates were introduced or prioritised.
Anxious, inexperienced authors obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers, break rules. Artists master the form. (Robert McKee) The author seeks to shed light on the current debate on passive vs. active voice in modern English, to give some of its history and rationale, and to explain why there will and always should be such a debate. We emphasize the importance of the passive voice in general (lay) English and in the language of science. The study applied mixed methods to reveal several specific cases of passive vs. active voice preference and the combination of both. Finally, we discuss relevant editing techniques and make recommendations for improving teaching the category of voice in EFL classroom. У статті зроблено спробу розгляду деяких спірних питань функціонування пасивного стану порівняно з активним у сучасній англійській мові. Надано побіжний огляд історії питання та з'ясовано причини такого стану справ. Увага акцентується на важливості пасивного стану як у загальнонародній мові, так і у мові науки. Проаналізовано конкретні складні випадки переважного вживання пасивного або активного стану та їх комбінування. Запропоновано відповідні прийоми редагування та шляхи поліпшення викладання категорії стану тим, хто вивчає англійську як іноземну. В статье предпринимается попытка рассмотрения некоторых спорных вопросов функционирования страдательного залога в сравнении с действительным в современном английском языке. Дается беглый обзор истории вопроса и выясняются причины такого положения дел. Внимание концентрируется на значимости страдательного залога как в общенародном языке, так и в языке науки. Проанализированы конкретные сложные случаи предпочтительного употребления действительного или страдательного залога, а также их комбинирование. Предложены соответствующие приемы редактирования и пути улучшения преподавания категории залога тем, кто изучает английский язык как иностранный.
2015
In the article, the borrowings in Ukrainian as a linguistic and terminological problem are studied on the basis of etymological, comparative, morphosemantic, and acoustic phonetic analysis. It is shown that one of the most prevalent modifications that foreign words undergo in Ukrainian is a shift of values that can lead sometimes to the breach of motivation ties with the etymon meaning, and to irregularities or distortions of lexical semantic relations and to unwanted connotations. Therefore, normalization of foreign words usage is extremely important. In addition, excess of foreign words in Ukrainian – as in many European languages – often causes orthoepic and orthographic difficulties in their mastering. It is expedient therefore to intensify use of native units, minimizing the number of unnecessary borrowings. Relevant spelling propositions are formulated, including the use of the Ukrainian “и” and “г” and expediency of some simplifications in the loanwords. Key words: borrowings, language interference, semantic shifts, etymology, phonetic characteristics, process of adaptation in Ukrainian, Ukrainian orthography, spelling irregularities