Maybe in Germany/Norway/etc you can find construction workers who speak english, But in Russia/Ukraine, that would be plain weird for these people be able to speak english.
As with Ukrainian, you don't know anything about the language and perhaps less about Estonian than Ukrainian. I was in Tallinn over a year ago, and I found it easier to speak English with the locals than Russian. You could hear both Estonian and English spoken everywhere. Those who spoke Russian tended to be in the ethnic minority of Russian speakers, and they were quite happy to speak Russian with me. The reason for this is simple. Estonian is a vastly different language from Russian, whereas the neighboring Baltic states have languages more similar in vocabulary and structure to Russian. Estonian children no longer have to learn Russian, and parents would rather their children learned a second language that gave them greater opportunities for employment in the future. While it might make sense to consider Russian, the Russian economy does not offer the best opportunities for good jobs in the future. English offers more possibilities internationally, so it is becoming the essential second language for young people everywhere, not just in countries that have broken away from the Soviet orbit. Learning a second language is hard enough, so, if a parent needs to choose between English and Russian for their child's education, English will probably win more often than Russian these days.
I completely understand why Estonia, Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet-dominated countries might have a grudge against Russia and the use of Russian. If they don't want to let guest workers use Russian, then they should allow English as an acceptable alternative.
I told you, guest workers is only a part of the problem, estonian bosses themselves talk russian
Barbos, you are working from some story that you read or saw somewhere and to which I have no access. So we only have your account, which may well just present a one-sided perspective of that story. However, I would actually expect ethnic Estonians to use Russian with workers who didn't speak Estonian, and I can also understand why that would be controversial in Estonia, where the official policy is to promote the Estonian language and culture, which is still felt to be under threat from its rather large, aggressive neighbor. If my opinion were asked about what Estonian policy should be (and it certainly wouldn't be), I would tend to favor the Estonian bosses using Russian. Unless they are dealing with Russian-speaking long term residents, it is unrealistic and counterproductive to expect workers from Ukraine to learn Estonian. If the bosses weren't comfortable with Russian, then English would be the next logical choice.
Unless guest workers are visiting for an extended period of time, it is unreasonable to expect them to learn Estonian, unless they agree to learn it as a condition for residence.
You don't say. I have got this popup add with Germany/Netherlands inviting programmers and don't require german.
Well, I apologize for saying something that you agreed with. I didn't mean to annoy you.
... Yes, it is called the "Balto-Slavic branch" of Indo-European. As for your comment about those languages being "much more widespread in the past than Slavic", where do you come up with such nonsense?
Nonsense is what you post. I posted a known fun fact, that baltic branch of balto-slavic group was spread well into modern day Russia.
A well known fact (among those who know what Indo-European is) would be that there is a Balto-Slavic branch of Indo-European, but you did not post what you just said. Instead, you posted this very weird claim:
"In fact, baltic languages were much more widespread in the past than slavic, covering most of Ancient Russia."
The Baltic languages were never widespread enough to cover "most of Ancient Russia". And I don't really know what you think "ancient Russia" was. It only dates back to the principality founded by Alexander Nevsky in the 13th century that eventually grew to absorb its parent state and neighbors. Russian itself arose as a language under the domination of the Mongol-Tatar empire. That is what led to the historical split between the Ruthenian and Russian languages. By the time Russian became a regional language, the Baltic languages had already split well off from the Slavic languages.
It is not much of a mystery why Slavic languages spread as much as they did. (War chariots apparently played a major role in prehistoric times.) Russian split off from the Belarussian and Ukrainian languages while they were essentially part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
You confuse slavic with russian. Or you could not help it but to blame Russia for slavic languages of Eastern Europe.
What are you trying to say here? I am not blaming the Russian language for anything. Ukrainian, Belarussian, and Russian all descend from a common ancestor language that gave rise to the Eastern Slavic branch of Slavic languages. It was the way that the Mongol-Tatar hordes disintegrated into internecine warring groups which led to the linguistic divisions. Ukraine and Belarus became part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Russian branch remained politically separate. Polish, Czech, and Slovak are Western Slavic languages. Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, etc., are part of the Southern Slavic branch. Russian was always just one language that descended from common Proto-Slavic.
Russia ultimately came to dominate the region by military conquest. So there is absolutely no mystery about how Russian got to where it is today. That is part of recorded history.
Again I was not talking about russian, so stop playing your "Russia bad" broken record. I merely pointed out interesting linguistic fact about slavic (not russian specifically) languages.
Maybe you were trying to make some point that I didn't catch, but what you actually posted sounded barely sensible. You have no background in Slavic languages, so you probably ought to do a little more research on the subject before posting. Lots of good information out there in Wikipedia, not to mention the Russian version. It seems that your standard tactic is to try to blame every disagreement I have with you as motivated by some kind of hatred of Russia. I wouldn't have spent decades learning about the Russian language, culture, and history, if I hated it. Quite the opposite. My criticisms of Russia have more to do with current events than dislike of the country. The US has a past that in many respects is just as checkered as Russia's. After all, we've invaded both of our neighboring countries in the past, and the US also has a lot of domestic issues with linguistic diversity and nativism in its politics. We could spend all day bashing each other's country, but that doesn't really interest me.
