[mova] [Fwd: Re: [Fwd: Yushchenko's command of Russian, as well as characteristics of his Ukrainian]]

[Max Pyziur]

fyi,

MP
pyz at brama.com

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Yushchenko's command of Russian, as well as
characteristics of his Ukrainian] From:    "Peter Voitsekhovsky"
<pvoitsekhovsky at gvpt.umd.edu>
Date:    Tue, April 19, 2005 2:24 pm
To:      pyz at brama.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr Pyziur -

I've got a few comments in answer to your question. I spent five months in
Ukraine during the election campaign and the revolution, and of course
heard Yushchenko on various occasions before,  including his appearance in
Washington in 2003 --  and this is what I have observed.

Yushchenko did say more than once in the course of the campaign that he is
not comfortable speaking Russian. I did not take this seriously,  until I
saw him talk with a Russian TV reporter - and he apparently had to make an
effort to switch from Ukrainian into Russian. He displayed what linguists
call a Ukrainian-Russian interference; a rather unusual phenomenon in Kyiv
and non-western Ukraine because with most U/R bilinguals it is the other
way round (their Russian interfering with their Ukrainian). (There are
certainly some bilinguals who speak both languages brilliantly, but those
would be well-educated language professionals for the most part.) In
Yushchenko's Russin speech, such interference can be seen in occasionally
incorrect grammar (borrowings of Ukrainian grammar patterns), as well as
the phonetic accent. Also he exhibits slightly more tension when he speaks
Russian.

My assumption is that he has had no Russian-speaking environment since he
married Kateryna, and perhaps for even a longer time than that. But as a
former Soviet government official, he certainly had to speak Russian a lot
in the past.   What's remarkable * and paradoxical in a way * is that his
"natural" Ukrainian does carry an imprint of  Russian in it, apparently it
reflects the way the speak in his native Horuzhivka near the Russian
border. This imprint is a dialectal use of Russian vocabulary instead of
"literary" Ukrainian words; at times, the impression it makes really gets
close to surzhyk; although in fact, in Yushchenko's case this is not
surzhyk, but simply dialectal use of separate words in a non-literary way.

Generally, Yushchenko's speech style has changed a great deal overthe last
year or so. In 2002 and 2003, journalists still used to mocked him for a
habit of speaking in very complicated language, some heavy
technocratic-scholarly jargon, with long sentences and a shortage of
simple words.  He also had a skill of speaking in a colorful "folk" style
* and he has been doing this a lot more often and more effectively now.
Some of the gems of that kind are his speech in the Rada after the
poisoning, as well as his recent speech in Dnipropetrivsk.

I do find Yushchenko's speaking traits to be an important personal
characteristic, which is why I have attempted to write this elaborate
answer.

Sincerely,










Peter Voitsekhovsky
Graduate Fellow
Department of Government and Politics
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: 301-405-4162
Fax: 301-314-9690
E-mail: pvoitsekhovsky at gvpt.umd.edu

>>> pyz at brama.com 4/19/2005 11:54:20 AM >>>
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Yushchenko's command of Russian, as well as characteristics of
his Ukrainian From: "Max Pyziur" < pyz at brama.com >
Date: Mon, April 18, 2005 12:15 pm
To: mova at brama.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Greetings,

On January 24th Yushchenko traveled to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin.
After their meeting, they held a joint news conference, standing
side-by-side (if anyone wants a copy of a video file of the news
conference I can email it to you - 11 MBs). During the conference I
couldn't help noticing a qualitative difference between Putin's Russian
and that of Yushchenko's. Not being at all fluent in Russian and just
resorting to some heuristics to comprehend it, I understand that Russian
as spoken in St. Petersburg is considered to be the de facto standard
(much as the English spoken by middle-class Chicagoans is taken to be the
example of the purest variant of American English). I would assume then,
that Putin's speech would be considered to fall in line with the standard.

However, I noticed that Yushchenko's use of Russian (unlike his Ukrainian
which strikes me as flowing very easily) was somewhat halting and stilted
by comparison to Putin's. Could someone with a better knowledge and
understanding of both Russian and Ukrainian comment Yushchenko's
knowledge/usage of Russian?

Further, are there aspects of Yushchenko's Ukrainian important to take
note - does he have any sort of notable social-class or regional accent? 
Does he resort to particular class or region-specific phrases or terms? 
(I always notice the usage of "shcho" coming out as "s'o", but can't
really assign any sort significance to it).


Much thanks.


Max Pyziur
pyz at brama.com


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