Perpetual Change

Language

I had written a very nice explanatory piece about the situation here with Russian and Ukrainian languages. The article really showed the current situation (which I now feel the news in America wasn’t doing) with a brief historical outlook, but unfortunately, through a computing error, the article was lost. Suffice it to say that many areas are Russian speaking, by preference and practice, including Kyiv; and many are Ukrainian including L’viv, but this distinction is more between cities and villages than between East and West. The reason is that Russian influence was not originally a bad thing, in fact it came about to protect the Ukrainians from the Polish and Latvian Monarchs. In fact, at least at the outset and maybe even now, Russian was seen as the international language. People quite simply compare the USSR to the United States of American in the respect that they were 10 very different republics that shared a united government and language. Russian was the tongue of the learned, the worldy. Then the pendulum swung back, and now only Ukrainian is the official language (but pressure exists from the Russian speakers for the pendulum to swing again).

So don’t believe all you here about the great East/West divide. In practice it is truly a bilingual country, more so than anywhere else I have seen (such as Wales or the USA). In fact, everyone understands both. Television is mostly in Russian, commercials mostly in Ukrainian. Most can speak either fluently (although a decidedly uneducated conglomeration of the two, called Surgic, is common). Many people have no preference at all. And all, although often pessimistic about their neighbors and critical of their fellow countrymen, are very proud to be ethnicly, and nationally, Ukrainian. That fact comes first.

P.S. English has no adjective form for the word interest/interesting; only a participle. How interesting! In Ukrainian there is no good way to say "I am mad", but there are lots of ways to say "I am indifferent."

P.P.S. Finding movies in English is easier than in Ukrainian. They are all dubbed or produced in Russian, but I had to see Star Wars: Episode III on the big screen, so I went yesterday. It was something to see the prologue floating through space in Russian; it was even better to hear Yoda speaking Russian. Unfortunately, his unique syntax doesn't translate well because it is possible in Russian.

And I understood a lot but not really from the language. I do have a few questions if someone that saw it in their native language would like to explain (don't read of if you haven't seen it). Do they every say anything more about Aniken's father, or the situation of his birth? When there is the fight with the Counsellor and Aniken is turned, he originally chops off Samuel L. Jackson's hand because he wants to kill the Counsellor and that is not the Jedi way, right? So how then does he fall so quickly to the influence? What is the counsellors speech to the other counsellors that leaves Princess Amadala so aghast? Aniken has a conversation with Amadala after the scene with the young Jedi trainees, what is it about? I didn't understand but it seemed like a turning point. And finally, do they fake Amadala's death, or just that she is still pregnant when she dies so that no one looks for the kids? How did she die?

Oh, and at the movies they sell you a ticket for a particular seat like at a play, and then the movie starts as soon as everyone takes their seats, and at the end they don't let the credits play because the people for the next movie are waiting to come in.

posted by jjs @ 5:53 AM