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<DIV><FONT size=3>Mr Pyziur -<BR><BR>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. <BR><BR>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. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3>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. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3>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. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3>I do find Yushchenko's speaking traits to be an important personal characteristic, which is why I have attempted to write this elaborate answer.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3>Sincerely,</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>Peter Voitsekhovsky<BR>Graduate Fellow<BR>Department of Government and Politics<BR>University of Maryland<BR>College Park, MD 20742<BR>Phone: 301-405-4162<BR>Fax: 301-314-9690<BR>E-mail: <A href="mailto:pvoitsekhovsky@gvpt.umd.edu">pvoitsekhovsky@gvpt.umd.edu</A><BR><BR>>>> pyz@brama.com 4/19/2005 11:54:20 AM >>><BR>---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------<BR>Subject: Yushchenko's command of Russian, as well as characteristics<BR>of his Ukrainian From: "Max Pyziur" <<U> <A href="mailto:pyz@brama.com">pyz@brama.com</A></U> ><BR>Date: Mon, April 18, 2005 12:15 pm<BR>To: <U><A href="mailto:mova@brama.com">mova@brama.com</A></U> <BR>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR><BR>Greetings,<BR><BR>On January 24th Yushchenko traveled to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin.<BR>After their meeting, they held a joint news conference, standing<BR>side-by-side (if anyone wants a copy of a video file of the news<BR>conference I can email it to you - 11 MBs). During the conference I<BR>couldn't help noticing a qualitative difference between Putin's Russian<BR>and that of Yushchenko's. Not being at all fluent in Russian and just<BR>resorting to some heuristics to comprehend it, I understand that Russian<BR>as spoken in St. Petersburg is considered to be the de facto standard<BR>(much as the English spoken by middle-class Chicagoans is taken to be the<BR>example of the purest variant of American English). I would assume then,<BR>that Putin's speech would be considered to fall in line with the standard.<BR><BR>However, I noticed that Yushchenko's use of Russian (unlike his Ukrainian<BR>which strikes me as flowing very easily) was somewhat halting and stilted<BR>by comparison to Putin's. Could someone with a better knowledge and<BR>understanding of both Russian and Ukrainian comment Yushchenko's<BR>knowledge/usage of Russian?<BR><BR>Further, are there aspects of Yushchenko's Ukrainian important to take<BR>note - does he have !
any sort
of notable social-class or regional accent? <BR>Does he resort to particular class or region-specific phrases or terms? <BR>(I always notice the usage of "shcho" coming out as "s'o", but can't<BR>really assign any sort significance to it).<BR><BR><BR>Much thanks.</FONT><BR><BR><BR>Max Pyziur<BR><U><A href="mailto:pyz@brama.com">pyz@brama.com</A></U> <BR><BR><BR>-++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==<BR>This message was posted through the Stanford campus mailing list<BR>server. If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the<BR>message body of "unsubscribe ukrainians" to <U><A href="mailto:majordomo@lists.stanford.edu">majordomo@lists.stanford.edu</A></U> <BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>