BRAMA, Dec. 13, 1999, 12:00am EST

NEW YORK - On Saturday afternoon December 11th, the Shevchenko Scientific Society of America in New York City presented a lecture entitled, "The New Proposal for Ukrainian Orthography". The presenter was Professor Vasyl Nimchuk, Director of the Ukrainian Language Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. His presentation was one of several he was making throughout North America discussing the progress which has been made towards developing a new standard orthography for the Ukrainian Language.

FREE Download Real Audio Player (use v.5 or higher)

Listen to Professor Nimchuk's presentation in Realaudio: Part I (~30 minutes) Part II (~30 minutes)

The current work on the new orthography is motivated by several things, including:

1. the need for a set of uniform guidelines in drafting government documents
2. the last edition of the orthography was published in the late 20s and given the vast political and social changes which have taken place since then, it is in dire need of revision;
3. since Ukraine's independence there has been an influx of Ukrainian literature published abroad; consequently, by some estimation there are over forty conflicting variants or standards in Ukrainian language usage.

In his presentation, Professor Nimchuk outlined various issues addressed by the new orthography. Some of these include:

1. deciding and developing a system determining the proper spelling of words of foreign origin;
2. making distinctions in the usage of the letters «Ґ» and «Г»
3. proper usage of the vocative case
4. determining whether certain sounds in the Ukrainian language are unique phonemes or simply variants (as in whether «И» іs a variant «І»)
5. determining proper usage of prefixes such as «пів» and their appropriate spellings used with other words

Professor Nimchuk also outlined the operating modalities of the committee preparing the new Orthography. He named several of the members, the regions of Ukraine from which they come, and their academic backgrounds (he did mention that there were a few academics in the Diaspora who were occasionally consulted). In addition, he discussed decision-making procedures used by the committee to ratify parallel and singular standards.

Lastly, he addressed several questions presented by the audience which, needless to say, proved to be challenging and often opinionated.

More Community Press Releases -- Click Here
Comments and observations about this article and other news
may be posted to the Press Comment Board