Posted by Bohdan O. Yaremko on March 24, 2000 at 08:45:26:
In Reply to: Re: What are we afraid of? posted by Pavel on March 23, 2000 at 13:49:54:
: To be honest,we should admit,that the Ukrainian language itself is absolutely ARTIFICIAL.It's just a mixture of Russian and Polish and a kind of Polish legacy(due to their taking over the Western part of nowadays Ukraine in the Medeival).65% of the Ukrainian population(even ethnic Ukrainians) consider Russian to be their native.We should manage the way they do in Finland and Sweden(each of these countries does consider two languages to be official ones.
What the hell are you talking about, Pavel? You're either ignorant of the truth or a Russian sympathizer. Our Ukrainian language is NOWHERE NEAR being classified as "artificial" and as a 100% Ukrainian I do not like hearing other "Ukrainians" call it that! First of all, OUR language (and culture) existed more than a millenium before any real Russian language (and people) formulated. As for the mixtures, it's a natural process, which happens to every language. After all, we are all people and there is no way to deny interaction amongst us; interaction always leads to mixing of languages and cultures to certain extent. True, our language was Russified to a great extent, more than was desired. But so was the German language by the Nazis. What happened? A group of prominent authors like Gunther Grass and Gunther Eich formed a literary group called Gruppe '47 to de-Nazify it. That's what WE have to do to de-Russify our language. That does not make our language artificial. I think your reasoning to reach that conclusion is quite erroneous and unintelligible.