Language in Russia and Ukraine - political implications (derail from Russia-Gate in US Poli forum)

[Gun Nut]

As to Russian vs. Ukrainian, I get the impression that the two languages are partially mutually intelligible, much like Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

So it ought to be easy for Ukrainians to borrow words from Russian or else do calques (loan translations). Both are common ways of transmitting technical vocabulary.

They are close, but Ukrainian is much softer and prettier....

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orXcBF-MJ_A[/youtube]

 

[barbos]

As to Russian vs. Ukrainian, I get the impression that the two languages are partially mutually intelligible, much like Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.

So it ought to be easy for Ukrainians to borrow words from Russian or else do calques (loan translations). Both are common ways of transmitting technical vocabulary.

They are close, but Ukrainian is much softer and prettier....

True, but russian is handsomier

 

[barbos]

To me, most non-russian slavic languages sounds archaic. Polish sounds distinctly polish.
I think of all slavic languages russian diverged the most from the origin.
I heard that to english speakers Russian sounds similar to Portuguese. I have to agree, Portuguese does have similar phonetics and cadence.

Anyway, good luck with translating all these books to ukrainian.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I thought it was interesting how two and three sound like they do in non-Slavic Indo-European languages.

 

[Gun Nut]

I thought it was interesting how two and three sound like they do in non-Slavic Indo-European languages.

That actually made me chuckle for some reason... an english sounding word in the middle of a foreign phrase always does that to me for some strange reason. Did you notice the Ukrainian word for Eight? Sounded like "Shit" to me.

True, but russian is handsomier

If he's your type, then have at it. But "handsomier" isn't a word in any language.

 

[lpetrich]

I don't know where barbos gets his ideas about the Russian and Ukrainian languages. He seems to think that they are totally different.

Look at the Swadesh lists for Russian and Ukrainian. In the 1940's and 1950's, linguist Morris Swadesh made a list of words whose forms have a high degree of continuity over the documented history of language change.
Appendix:Slavic Swadesh lists - Wiktionary

 Dolgopolsky list In 1964, linguist Aharon Dolgopolsky found 15 words with very highly-conserved forms (very low probability of replacement over their known history). His list, with Swadesh-list numbers:

1 (1): I/me, 2 (23): two/pair, 3 (2): you (sg, inf), 4 (11,12): who/what, 5 (78): tongue, 6 (207): name, 7 (74): eye, 8 (90): heart, 9 (77): tooth, 10 (16): no/not, 11 (79): nail (finger-nail), 12 (48): louse/nit, 13 (): tear/teardrop, 14 (150): water, 15 (109): dead (to die)

I've put them into Swadesh-list order:

1 (1): I, 2 (3): you (sg, inf), 11 (4): who, 12 (4): what, 16 (10): no/not, 23 (2): two, 48 (12): louse, 74 (7): eye, 77 (9): tooth, 78 (5): tongue, 79 (11): fingernail, 90 (8): heart, 109 (15): to die, 150 (14): water, 207 (6): name

English, Russian, Ukrainian:
I ja ja, you ty ty, who kto xto, what chto shcho, not ne ne, two dva dva, louse vosh' vosha, eye glaz/oko oko, tooth zub zub, tongue jazyk jazyk, fingernail nogot' nohit', heart serdtse sertse, to die umeret' vmyraty, water voda voda, name imja im'ja

j = y-sound, x = kh-sound like German ch

The Russian and Ukrainian words look almost identical, with a few sound changes here and there.

 

[lpetrich]

To me, most non-russian slavic languages sounds archaic. Polish sounds distinctly polish.
I think of all slavic languages russian diverged the most from the origin.

 Linguistic conservatism - how little a language has changed over its history

Of present-day Romance languages, Sardinian is the most conservative, especially its Nuorese dialects.

Of present-day Germanic languages, Icelandic is the most conservative, being more like Old Norse than Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish.

A language may be conservative in one respect while simultaneously innovative in another. Bulgarian and Macedonian, closely related Slavic languages, are innovative in the grammar of their nouns, having dropped nearly all vestiges of the complex Slavic case system; at the same time, they are highly conservative in their verbal system, which has been greatly simplified in most other Slavic languages.

This conclusion is shared by commenters in
What is the most highly-conserved Slavic Language? : asklinguistics
Which Slavic language is the closest to proto-Slavic? | WordReference Forums
Which living language or dialect is closest to the proto-slavic language? - Quora

I'll quote Brian Collins's answer in the Quora page:

None?

In Slavic languages, at least in my experience, there is an inverse relationship between how conservative a Slavic language is with vowels, and how conservative it is with consonants.

This same inverse relation also holds between Nouns-Adjectives, and Verbs-Adverbs. The more conservative a Slavic language is with nominal morphology, the more liberal it is with verbal morphology.

Additionally, Bulgarian, while somewhat conservative with both vowels and consonants, is on the extreme end of being innovative with nominal morphology. Bulgarian has developed articles and now has virtually no case declensions.

Polish is likely one of the most conservative with the Slavic vowels. It has (probably) lost the Proto-Slavic Yers (like all Slavic languages except Bulgarian), but has conserved the nasal vowels as nasal diphthongs ę [ɛ̃w] and [ɔ̃w] and, along with Kashubian, is the only living Slavic language that has.

Polish however is probably the most innovative with the consonants. The only palatal stops Polish has conserved are /pj/ /bj/ /mj/ /nj/ /fj/ /vj/. It has lost all of the coronal palatal stops and all instances of dark-L have become [w]. */rj/ has become a retroflex fricative [ʐ].

Russian on the other hand has conserved all of the Late Common Slavic Palatal contrasts, but has lost all the nasal vowels, lost the Yers, and really the contrast between /ɨ/ and /i/; they now exist in purely allophonic variation.

Ukrainian is a bit more conservative than Russian, but has still undergone all of the East Slavic changes and lost its nasal vowels.

In terms of supersegmentals, the Balkans are the only region that have conserved the Proto-Slavic tonal system. In many other ways however, Balkan languages have diverged.

 

[barbos]

If he's your type, then have at it. But "handsomier" isn't a word in any language.

It went right over your head.

 

[barbos]

I don't know where barbos gets his ideas about the Russian and Ukrainian languages. He seems to think that they are totally different.

Where did you get this idea? I merely pointed out the known facts - difficulties of getting rid of russian in Ukraine and how it does not stop them.

 

[KeepTalking]

If he's your type, then have at it. But "handsomier" isn't a word in any language.

It went right over your head.

Linguistic jokes are the wurst.

 

[Swammerdami]

Linguistic jokes are the wurst.

I asked my phonaesthetician about cuneiform linguism, but she said that wasn't included in the basic vocabulary.

 

[Copernicus]

Copernicus, what's up with your constant calling me ignorant?
Are you trolling me? cause I suspect you know you are talking BS.

Barbos, you have a bad case of Dunning-Kruger when it comes to languages, especially Slavic languages. I probably ought not to be so hard on you, but I keep thinking that your skull is so thick on this subject that a little rhetorical brutality is called for. Sorry if it comes off as trolling. You do know that I am a professional linguist, don't you? Slavic languages have always been a special area of interest to me, and I have studied them extensively. So I spent some time in my last post explaining in some detail why I disagreed with your statements about Ukrainian or thought they were just completely misguided. I can see that it was probably overkill, and that the only real effect was to make you dig in your heels more. I've known you online long enough to know that you don't usually back down, and you aren't really going to try to seriously refute the things I post. Usually, you just ignore most of what I post rather than acknowledge that maybe I have told you something that you hadn't really known.

Oh, what a surprise. Georgian is a Caucasian language--not even in the Indo-European family--and both countries had been absorbed into the Russian-dominated Soviet empire. What do you think this proves?

Answer the damn question. Guess the language they switched to?

Sorry, but it should be obvious that I would expect any people in that region to speak Russian, since that was the standard language within the Soviet Empire. Ukrainian was largely confined to Ukrainian territory, and mainly spoken widely in the western portion of that country. So what other option would the speakers have had? English would be possible, but everyone would feel more comfortable with Russian, basically the regional trade language in Eastern Europe and throughout the former Soviet Union. I didn't think I needed to say that explicitly, but I doubt you were paying a lot of attention to the content of what I posted.

Yes, that is because Bulgaria and Lithuania, like Ukraine, did not have large empires that included populations that they could force to learn their languages.

Yeah, damn Germany forced me to learn german in school, right?
You see this "Russia bad" virtually everywhere, don't you?

Not at all. I have admired the Russian language and Russian culture all of my life, but I am not going to ignore Russians behaving badly any more than I ignore Americans behaving badly. I understand that the consequences of ignoring bad Russian behavior may be more serious for you, but I think you've already admitted that you tend to be more critical of Russian politics when talking to Russians. When engaging with a bunch of Westerners in and internet forum, you obviously tend to feel more defensive of Russia (and Putin, sad to say).

 

[Copernicus]

Oh, what a surprise. Georgian is a Caucasian language--not even in the Indo-European family-- ...

Nitpick: Georgian is a Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language. The "Caucasian language family" generally refers to North Caucasian, a language family completely unrelated to Kartvelian.

It is no coincidence that these small, almost vestigial, language families are spoken in the mountainous Caucasus. Basque is the last vestige of its family and is spoken in the mountains of Northern Spain; Burushaski and the Nuristani branch of Indo-Iranian are vestigial families spoken in the Hindu Kush; and so on. Ancient cultures are relatively difficult to dislodge from mountains.

Yes, the Caucasian language "family" is not strictly speaking a coherent family of languages in the same sense that Indo-European is, but it is not a well-researched language family outside of the former Soviet Union. Linguists typically call Georgian a "Caucasian language" when using it in technical literature and exercises, even though that opens them up to the kind of nitpicking that you just did. Proving that two separate languages belong to the same "family" is a very complex process, so it really isn't important here. What is important is that it isn't remotely related to Indo-European languages in the Slavic branch.

 

[barbos]

Dunning-Kruger is all yours, in fact Dunning-Kruger is uniquely american effect.
You keep lecturing me about russian language. It's a textbook example of Dunning-Kruger.

Sorry, but it should be obvious that I would expect any people in that region to speak Russian

Still no answer, what was the language they switched to?

Not at all. I have admired the Russian language and Russian culture all of my life,

Dejavu all over again. We have had this conversation before.
I don't care how much you admire the russian language. I want you to understand my english and be able to follow a discussion without contorting everything into this crap you keep spewing.

I repeat, I was surprised how well people from former soviet block spoke russian, and you started with "Russia bad" crap.
The fact that russian as a foreign language was more less mandatory in their schools is not surprising. The russian was "english" of Eastern block. Surprising would have been choosing ..... Albanian for common language.

A can tell you even funnier factoid. Finnish Air Force had to learn russian, imagine that.

 

[Swammerdami]

Oh, what a surprise. Georgian is a Caucasian language--not even in the Indo-European family-- ...

Nitpick: Georgian is a Kartvelian (South Caucasian) language. The "Caucasian language family" generally refers to North Caucasian, a language family completely unrelated to Kartvelian.

It is no coincidence that these small, almost vestigial, language families are spoken in the mountainous Caucasus. Basque is the last vestige of its family and is spoken in the mountains of Northern Spain; Burushaski and the Nuristani branch of Indo-Iranian are vestigial families spoken in the Hindu Kush; and so on. Ancient cultures are relatively difficult to dislodge from mountains.

Yes, the Caucasian language "family" is not strictly speaking a coherent family of languages in the same sense that Indo-European is, but it is not a well-researched language family outside of the former Soviet Union. Linguists typically call Georgian a "Caucasian language" when using it in technical literature and exercises, even though that opens them up to the kind of nitpicking that you just did. Proving that two separate languages belong to the same "family" is a very complex process, so it really isn't important here. What is important is that it isn't remotely related to Indo-European languages in the Slavic branch.

This whole nitpick is tangential of course, but still your reply reads as though you missed my whole point.

The North Caucasian language family is controversial: some linguists want to split it up into 2 or 3 separate families. It probably includes the now-extinct Hurrian language but even this is uncertain.

But the tiny "South Caucasian" (Kartvelian) language family is NOT controversial at all: It is unanimously agreed that Kartvelian has ZERO genetic relationship to North Caucasian. There are some similarities due to areal borrowing.

Even "lumpers" who try to reduce the world's language to a small number of macro-families do not postulate genetic links between North Caucasian (which they place in the giant Dene-Caucasian macrofamily) and Kartvelian (which some place in the giant Nostratic macro-family).

 

[Copernicus]

Swammerdami, my discussion with barbos is already enough of a derail, so I don't really want to pursue a discussion of Caucasian languages. Not being an expert in that subject, I don't think that any comment I made about what other linguists say would be helpful. I haven't looked at the subject in any depth since graduate school--half a century ago.

 

[Copernicus]

Dunning-Kruger is all yours, in fact Dunning-Kruger is uniquely american effect.
You keep lecturing me about russian language. It's a textbook example of Dunning-Kruger.

Oh, barbos, you would have to pay me for a lecture on the Russian language! Other people have, and I was even asked to deliver a paper on the subject to a roomful of Russian linguistics students once in Yasnaya Polyana. Oh, well, I'm not expecting you to acknowledge that I might know a few things about your language that you don't. Your ego wouldn't allow it. I am not lecturing you on Russian, just trying without much success to educate you on the subject of language, something that I am fully qualified to talk about.

Sorry, but it should be obvious that I would expect any people in that region to speak Russian

Still no answer, what was the language they switched to?

You have my answer in the very text that you are replying to. I think that you understand English well enough to read it. This is just typical ad nauseam rhetoric from you that attempts to cover for your lack of an intelligent response.

Not at all. I have admired the Russian language and Russian culture all of my life,

Dejavu all over again. We have had this conversation before.
I don't care how much you admire the russian language. I want you to understand my english and be able to follow a discussion without contorting everything into this crap you keep spewing.

I repeat, I was surprised how well people from former soviet block spoke russian, and you started with "Russia bad" crap.
The fact that russian as a foreign language was more less mandatory in their schools is not surprising. The russian was "english" of Eastern block. Surprising would have been choosing ..... Albanian for common language.

A can tell you even funnier factoid. Finnish Air Force had to learn russian, imagine that.

Again, none of this has anything to do with the Ukrainian language, which you clearly know nothing about. It is only logical that people who don't speak the same native language will use a language that they have in common to communicate with. Given Russia's past history of aggression and successful empire-building, it is no mystery that Russian would be the language of choice in Eurasian countries that were part of Russia's past imperial conquests. English is more often used as a common language elsewhere, because England had a more aggressive and successful imperial impact on the world. The fact that you think this is relevant to the discussion only underscores how little you know about languages in general or this subject in particular.

 

[barbos]

Oh, barbos, you would have to pay me for a lecture on the Russian language!

It looks the opposite, I have to pay to shut you up.

Other people have, and I was even asked to deliver a paper on the subject to a roomful of Russian linguistics students once in Yasnaya Polyana. Oh, well, I'm not expecting you to acknowledge that I might know a few things about your language that you don't. Your ego wouldn't allow it. I am not lecturing you on Russian, just trying without much success to educate you on the subject of language, something that I am fully qualified to talk about.

Again, it looks opposite. You constant lecturing suggest that you feel inadequate.

Still no answer, what was the language they switched to?

You have my answer in the very text that you are replying to. I think that you understand English well enough to read it. This is just typical ad nauseam rhetoric from you that attempts to cover for your lack of an intelligent response.

So your "answer", my guess, is "russian". Well, that's a wrong answer, it was not russian. So much for your superior linguistic skills.

Not at all. I have admired the Russian language and Russian culture all of my life,

Dejavu all over again. We have had this conversation before.
I don't care how much you admire the russian language. I want you to understand my english and be able to follow a discussion without contorting everything into this crap you keep spewing.

I repeat, I was surprised how well people from former soviet block spoke russian, and you started with "Russia bad" crap.
The fact that russian as a foreign language was more less mandatory in their schools is not surprising. The russian was "english" of Eastern block. Surprising would have been choosing ..... Albanian for common language.

A can tell you even funnier factoid. Finnish Air Force had to learn russian, imagine that.

Again, none of this has anything to do with the Ukrainian language,

Since when it became about ukrainian language?

which you clearly know nothing about. It is only logical that people who don't speak the same native language will use a language that they have in common to communicate with. Given Russia's past history of aggression and successful empire-building, it is no mystery that Russian would be the language of choice in Eurasian countries that were part of Russia's past imperial conquests.

I heard you the first million times. Is there a point to it somewhere?

English is more often used as a common language elsewhere, because England had a more aggressive and successful imperial impact on the world. The fact that you think this is relevant to the discussion only underscores how little you know about languages in general or this subject in particular.

Now, you blame me?

 

[Copernicus]

Barbos, it really isn't worth the few remaining heartbeats I have left to pursue this pointless back-and-forth with you. I stand by what I've posted so far. You presented me with an anecdote about some interaction between Ukrainians and Georgians that you claimed to know about and then asked me what language they chose to interact with. The natural guess would have been Russian, and that is what I answered, but you still pretended that I hadn't adequately responded. Now you appear ready to acknowledge my guess. Here is what you said:

So your "answer", my guess, is "russian". Well, that's a wrong answer, it was not russian. So much for your superior linguistic skills.

OK, so you are still playing coy about some conversation between Georgians and Ukrainians, which you now claim wasn't in Russian. OK. Why would you think that a linguist would normally guess any other language? If I had to pick a language other than Russian, I would say English. However, this is your story, so enlighten us. What language, if not Russian?

 

[barbos]

You keep bringing up your stupid linguistic derails.
This thread is about RussiaGate. And the latest round started with my remark about how Media talking heads fail to mention that certain russian agent is actually ukrainian.

And my anecdote was to illustrate how ridiculous these people are in their war on russian language. The fact that you guessed it wrong illustrates your ignorance in this subject which has nothing to do with linguistics, instead everything to do with politics.
Yes, these dumb-asses switched to english. Georgians there understood english, and one ukrainian (the speaker) spoke it well too, but the rest of ukrainians did not. One would ask why all georgians and only one ukrainian speak english? I know you don't know why so I will tell you why. Because all of the georgian government consisted/consists of US "educated" georgians - lawyers and business degrees from US universities. Same with the ukrainian speaker.
The rest did not speak any english. The next question, why would pretty much everyone in georgian government have US degrees? The answer - because Georgia is US's puppet regime. Same with Ukraine now.
It has nothing to do with linguistics.

You're welcome.