Talk:Ukrainian language/Archive 3

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Contents

Current usage

The end of first paragraph dithe "current usage" chapter said:

"On the other hand, the vocabulary of Ukrainian is still limited and is not as extensive as that of more developed languages, like English, German or Russian. This can largely be attributed to the lack of a prolonged period of encouraged development. As a result, not as many linguists, poets and writers extended the vocabulary of the literary language."

This seems rather objective and neutral. Even if not particularly well written, it points out to a real situation. Some editors, who seem oversensitive in their feelings are now attacking this text. First, it was deleted without explanation by anon #1 (I restored it). Then anon #2 replaced it by this:

"Ukrainian language has one of the largest vocabulary in the world. The first Cybernetic dictionary was published in Ukrainian, first computer encyclopedia in USSR was in Ukrainian too. Ukrainian language now have modern base in all fields of science and life issues.

Guys, don't you see this is going well over the line??? And also in complete disconnect from the text around this. Info about computer science dictionary and encyclopedia, while true, does not prove or disprove the richness of the language. "...have modern base in all fields of science and life issues" is a POV at best.

--- No this is true --- if that statement above is yours - so this is your point of view - and this is point of view belonging to Ukrainian specialist. So why I'm going to see if this is true ? -
The statement above wasn't mine. However, it reflects historical contexts correctly (Ukrainian indeed was never encouraged in Ukraine by political powers that ruled the land and this is very unfortunate in my opinion). And it seems to reflect correctly the consequence of this for Ukrainian. I am not a linguist but I have a first-hand knowledge of the situation in Ukraine and the sentence seems objective to me. However, if you cite some sources that prove my own observations to be subjective and wrong, I will stand corrected.Irpen

Once I saw an article in the paper written by some new wave linguist proving that Sanskrit originated from Ukrainian. Should this WP article also address these views?

- So what ? Many people - many thoughts.
Diversity is good, no doubt. But this particular thought is too lunatic to be even mentioned in encyclopedia. Irpen
Russian is developed language? Fairy tales for children. Until XIXth century they were speaking French an German. This is free to edit encyclopedia don't bother others with your only POV. --
However harsh it sounds for some russophobes, Russian is the language of the world-class literature. And so are English and German mentioned in the text that anonymous users (or user) blanked three times in a week (twice with the whole chapter with lots of other information). This by no means makes Ukrainian or Ukrainians inferior. The development of history may have been unfair, but encyclopedia should reflect the real facts rather than wishful thinking. Irpen

I am going to revert for now and I don't mean to offend anyone's feelings. Just take editing a little more seriously. And please no flames. Irpen 23:22, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

First of all, 213.159.244.135, please care to write with some degree of civility and don't insert your responses in the middle of the text. This makes it difficult to follow the dialogue. Signing a response may also make the discussion easier to read but that's up to you. As for your edit, you just blanked a significant piece of an article and I am going to revert that blanking. You are free to propose an alternative text about current usage if you see this as wrong or biased but exercise some care to write encyclopedically and research the subject a little, if you are not already a specialist. I will be happy to see some real improvements you make to this article. So far all you did, you blanked out a piece you didn't like. Irpen 17:31, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

Hi anonymous user. I've been following the minor revert war between you and Irpen at Ukrainian language. Blanking an article section like this will usually not bring any constructive results, since usually several editors already have a stake in the material that's there. Also, even if you disagree with some facts or the section's point-of-view, it's clear that in this case you are removing a lot of factual information. It would be much better to edit, and add factual material supporting your point-of-view, rather than just deleting. —Michael Z. 2005-05-10 17:19 Z [also posted at User talk:213.159.245.38.]

Also, if you are not happy about something on the page but not sure how to improve it, please raise your objections at the talk page. Constructive edits, even if not universally agreeable to everyone, will certainly help improve the article. Multiple changes in some parts of the article, or even sometimes deletions, may be fully appropriate. Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages is a useful guide to read, particularly its section ...but don't be reckless. -Irpen 20:16, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Just drop "English, German or Russian" and the problem is gone. Gaidash 6 July 2005 00:11 (UTC)

I think such an action would make a point less illustrated though it may make an article more politically correct. Judging from what the anon user (now gone) was saying, I think s/he would have been satisfied with just "Russian" being removed. Anyway, there is no problem right now. That edit war have subsided. --Irpen July 6, 2005 02:50 (UTC)

This may benefit from a mention of the types of vocabulary that are underdeveloped (e.g., technical, scientific, business?). —Michael Z. 2005-07-6 05:02 Z


The phrase

On the other hand, Ukrainian vocabulary is still limited and is not as extensive as that of more developed languages, like English, German or Russian. This can largely be attributed to the lack of a prolonged period of encouraged development. As a result, not as many linguists, poets and writers extended the vocabulary of the literary language.

is very common among Russian chauvinists, but has nothing to do with the reality. I've translated a lot of texts from Russian into Ukrainian, but I never encountered any difficulties concerning ‘limitations of Ukrainian vocabulary’. Just in opposite, Ukrainian language in many cases is much more precise, while Russian has a lot of homonyms. Just a few examples:

For two different Ukrainian words

  • означення (definition) and
  • визначення (determination)

there is only one word in Russian vocabulary: определение.

Similarly, Ukrainian adjectives

  • кінцевий (terminal)
  • скінченний (finite)

have the same Russian equivalent конечный.

Both Ukrainian nones

  • точка (point) and
  • крапка (period)

are reduced to точка in Russian.

These are only three examples of hundreds. Please do not forget that only Wikipedia:Verifiability statements are allowed in the Wikipedia articles. Your “first-hand knowledge” is not a credible source. Please mention that you but (not your opponents) have to take care about verification, if you state something in the article. --AndriyK 06:53, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Andriy, thanks for explaining yourself. First to your examples, there are plenty of synonyms to both "definition" and "determination" in both languages. Not just "определение" in Russian and "означення" and "визначення" in Ukrainian. Same with point and period. The information you consider incorrect may be restated to make it sound better for people with strong sensitivities, but it is based on verifyable information. Please note that the comparison is made not just to Russian but to three languages of arguably the great world literatures. Feel free to modify it, but don't just delete. If you are a specialist, please take a look at the grammar section at the bottom of this talk. It was so pitiful, that it had to be removed from the article. If you or someone can rewrite it, we can start polishing of the article to bring it to WP:FA. Thanks again, --Irpen 07:08, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

If you'll continue reverting, I'll revert back. --AndriyK 07:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I only reverted because you did not post here for some time. I didn't know you were writing here at that time. --Irpen 07:08, 5 October 2005 (UTC)
I feel myself free to delete any part of the text that is not supproted by a credible source. There is nothing to edit there. It has to be removed. Everybody has to follow the Wikipedia policy. Please read these pages carefully. This will save a lot of your time. (As well as mine ;) ) --AndriyK 08:01, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with AndriyK. No sources, no facts, only your first-hand information. Ilya K 14:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)


I have read this discussion thread with interest. Just want to add a couple of considerations thay may be of interest:

- the comment about Ukrainian vocabulary not being well developed is not an objective one. It is clearly value laden and as such does not belong in the objective infosource, such as Wikipedia. Ukrainian is used on a dily basis as a prime method of communication in a number of medim to large urban centres in Ukraine and is just as well suited to describe complexities of modern city life as Polish, Slovak, or Romanian. This is an easily verifiable fact and can be done through perusal of newspapers, periodicals, and other media sources in the Ukrainian language. Brama.com is definitely a good site to start. University sites (Lviv Uni, Prykarpatsky Uni, etc) also indicate sufficient ability the Ukrainian language has in coping with challenges of scientific jargon.

- Using other languages, specifically Russian as a gauge of relative development is controversial. German, for example, has a better technical vocabualry than Russian and both languages had to adapt significant number of English terms describing new political and social phenomena. In both cases it would be incorrect to assert their "backwardness" and lack of development. I belive the same rings true for the Ukrainian language. There are two possible ways of handling it - either to mention relative underdevelopment of all languages against the universal yardstick (English) or just drop the passage in the Ukrainian language article. The latter I believe is reasonable and practical, even if somewhat deflating to the sense of the(misplaced)pride some Russian contributors may have. Buchik

Ukrainian language template to be used in other articles

Since there is no Ukrainian forum similar to Wikipedia talk:Russian Wikipedians' notice board, I am posting this here. Feel free to cross-post elsewhere. The {{lang-uk}} template has been created similar to {{lang-ru}} that I notice gaining usage. For the usage example, please see its Template_talk:lang-uk page (press "edit" and look at wikisyntax). I hope others will find it useful. BTW, if there are enough editors interested, maybe such a forum would be not a bad idea. Irpen 05:09, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Percentage of speakers.

The article says that according to the last census, it is 67% Ukr and 24% Rus. At the same time the article about Ukraine claims native Ukr. speakers are 67%, native Rus. are 29%, and it also says that the languages are "spoken by 55% and 45%" corespondingly. 24% of speakers (as the first language) is an understatement in my experience. Then there's Surzhik, which is spoken by 15%-20% according to the article Ukraine. May be 67% and 24% is obtained by dumping Surzhik into the category of "Ukrainian". I wonder, were's 24% coming from? Gaidash 6 July 2005 17:46 (UTC)

I have no idea who included it in the article but 24 or even 29% of Russian speakers in UA is an understatement even if one considers Surzhik speakers as Ukrainian speakers. Additionally, this whole thing is suspicious because the census usually asks for ethnicity rather than the primary language. The issue is very confusing in itself and the article just adds the confusion. The census usually asks for natsional'nist' (nationality), which in the contexts of the ex-USSR and other Eastern European countries usually means "ethninicity". It sounds credible that about 3/4 (or even more) of UA population are ethnic Ukrainians, hence they answered "Ukrainian" to the nationality question. Additional misnomer is that in local context, the "Native language" and "mother tongue" are not exactly the same things. The majority of those ethnic Ukrainians who lived in big cities of central/southern/eastern Ukraine for two generations or more speak Russian at home and a significant portion of 1st generation city dwellers speak Surzhik at home rather than Ukrainian. So, it is NOT correct to call them primary Ukrainian speakers. On the other hand, these people, and even some of the ethnic Russians who lived in UA for generations, would consider Ukrainian as a natural answer to "Ridna mova" (Native language) census question. Ukrainian language was studied at schools under the name "Ridna Mova" (all "Russian schools" in Ukraine taught Ukrainian at the Soviet times and the number of hours was close to the number of hours given to Russian in those schools. Admittedly, the attitude to the level of learning could be more or less liberal depending on the locality). Still, most people who went to "Russian schools" in Ukraine are fluent in Ukrainian and can speak it if they want to. The vast majority of primary Russian speakers in Ukraine have no aversion to Ukrainian at all, except when they feel that Ukrainian is being forced upon them by the government on by the "nationalists" (the latter issue sometimes appears but is still not the major concern even when politicians try to play this card. There is nothing even close to what people felt in Transnistria). So there is nothing unnatural for many people to call Ukrainian native and still use Russian as Primary. I don't know where and how to get an exact statistics, but the way the article has it needs to be modified. In the meantime, I think it is better to not have any numbers, than have the numbers that are unreliable. I would be interested to hear the thoughts from other editors. I've been accused in the past in both Russophobia and in Russian Imperialism by some short-tempered editors, and I am sure I am neither and having been accused in both is the proof in a sense. Cheers, -Irpen July 7, 2005 01:20 (UTC)
http://ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/results/general/language/ - The part of those whose mother tongue is Ukrainian totals 67.5% of the population of Ukraine, this is by 2.8 percentage points more than in 1989. The percentage of those whose mother tongue is Russian totals 29.6% of the population. Comparatively with the data of previous census this index has decreased by 3.2 percentage points. The part of other languages, specified like mother tongue, during the period that have passed since previous census has increased by 0.4 percentage points and accounts for 2.9%. Ilya K 8 July 2005 11:10 (UTC)
Ilya, thanks for the link. It is also interesting to check Ukrainian page of the census committee site [1] and as far as I can see the problem of ambiguity between Native (Ridna) and mother (used at home) tongues is still unresolved. The Ukrainian page with the same info you gave above probably simply reflects the census question, asked in Ukrainian: 'What "mova" (language) do you consider "ridna" (native)?'. As per I wrote above, the number of people who would write "Ukrainian" as "ridna", is likely to include most ethnic Ukrainians, including those who speak/read/think primarily in Russian (thus Russian is a "mother tongue" to them) but are still fluent in Ukrainian and I doubt the sensus allowed to check both Russian and Ukrainian as "Native" (Ridna) as many Ukrainian Wikieditors do on their user pages :). The writer of the English version of the census page chose to translate "ridna" as "mother", but this is imprecise, I think. Anyway, since we have the official statistics, I withdraw my objection to have this number included in the article, but what we would need is an explanation about the caveat between "native" and "primary" language in the context of modern Ukraine. The problem is that I don't know of any study on the matter and WP article should not include original research. On the other hand, my thoughts here seem to be a common knowledge, so maybe that still could be included. Do others agree? Thanks! --Irpen July 8, 2005 17:03 (UTC)
Since the statistic is kind of ambiguous, it makes sense to simply report it the way it was asked: "N% of Ukrainians reported XXXXish as their native language ("ridna mova"). The implications can be discussed, and this is more accurate than inferring an un-testable interpretation. —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 18:30 Z
I agree, but how best is it to discuss implications? Anyway, if you or anyone can propose the version, please do so. I might also try. "Implication" is too a subtle word for my untrained mind :). Regards, --Irpen July 8, 2005 18:50 (UTC)
Well, mostly it means that I was going to leave all the hard work to you.
But I mean general discussion, as you've already written above. The nature of the census question, how it is likely to be interpreted by respondents, some background about language education in Ukraine, rural-urban distribution, use of Surzhyk, etc., are all relevant to helping the reader interpret the nature of the statistics themselves. —Michael Z. 2005-07-8 20:38 Z
I will do that. I just wanted to make sure I understand your recommendation correctly. Now I think, I do. I will try within a couple of days. Cheers, --Irpen July 8, 2005 20:50 (UTC)
Done, the chapter is mostly rewritten. --Irpen 02:29, July 19, 2005 (UTC)

Recent edits by User:Mihnea_Tudoreanu

I restored previous version by User:BOfH, because the changes by User:Mihnea_Tudoreanu were incorrect or, at least, very questionable. It was very amusing to get to know that Lenin's government allowed for self-determination. It did allow for it, but to Finland, not Ukraine. In 1918-1921, Ukraine was invaded at least 3 times by the Red Army and the first two Soviet Ukraine governments in Kyiv were deposed.

In fact, the Ukrainization policy (aka "korenization") was most actively implemented under early Stalin's rule (1924-1928), when he formed various coalitions in the party against Trotsky. It abruptly ended in 1928/29 or, more precisely, when Mykola Skrypnyk was relieved of his party posts in Ukraine.

So, in short. Be bold, but don't be reckless. Sashazlv 03:21, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Sasha, we had edit conflicts right now (that prevented saving), but I dared to override your revert with my edit :), please forgive me. As for the above edit, I very well understand your and other editor's reversion. If after someone's edit, even with some valid and valuable points, the article seems "worse" or "less correct" as a whole, we often choose to revert, when we "don't have time" to work over the edit in detail. But all good editors do it with guilt (myself included) and we all know a better solution, we just not always have time.
I just tried to incorporate the older and the newer version as I saw fit to a compromise, which includes some, but not all, thoughts of Mihnea. I would be glad, if this finds a consensus, but I won't take it personally, if others find in necessary to go over this again. Regards, --Irpen 03:48, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
No problem. It may be a good idea to add a few dates. For instance, we could assume that the date when the Ukrainization policy was officially over was December, 1932. Stalin and Molotov sent a telegram to Ukraine directing the local authorities to stop Ukrainization and make all necessary changes by the fall of 1933. The reference I could find is [2]. Sashazlv 02:53, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Sure thing! We'll see who gets to doing this first. The most urgent thing (to keep the balanced approach) is more or less done, and there are many other possible improvements, including plain grammar. --Irpen 03:23, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I think I should explain myself. The purpose of my edit was to remove a lot of idle speculation that was in the article before. For example, the article said that the Bolsheviks wanted to do X or Y, or had a certain plan in mind. You can't really know that. We should just report the facts, not attempt to interpret them. Lenin did advocate self-determination and allowed it for certain countries (like Finland), though arguably not for Ukraine. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 00:21, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you. That was what I was thinking when editing the article after you. It now includes many of the things you added. You can go over the edits again and wait for responces. That's how WP works and I think the article is now somehwat better than it was before you got to it. --Irpen 00:31, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
I think you did a very good job. Thank you! I just went over the relevant sections of the article again, and made a few corrections of language, while preserving the same content. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 00:35, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Seems reasonable for now. Sashazlv 01:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I just modified two things slightly. There are two sides of the debate wether a sense of the ational identity Ukrainians experienced in 1917 was "new" or "old", so I changed it to "renewed", to which both sides agree. Another thing I did, was adding half-a-sentence about why Bolshevik encouraged national movements. I agree, we should not give our own analysis, but this line of thought is so widely accepted, that we don't need to reference it to any particular scholar. OTOH, the reader needs to know, why would the political force in the center of empire encourage the movements that may lead to the country's dissolution. --Irpen 02:00, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

Ukrainization red link

Besides, that could be made into an interesting article. Probably we should only concentrate on modern Ukrainization for now, and ommit the post-1917 events, Korenization as well as much earlier attempts under the Cossack rule. Some time ago, some Wikipedians discussed it and someone (where is he? :) ) was fascinated by the story of the sign evolution (street/subway signs in Kiev) I gave. I am glad no one pounced when I wrote a brief overview in the figure caption. I/We wanted this info here for months and never got to it. Then when Man vyi posted a pic, I new that was it! But seriously, this is a difficult but a fascinating article. Not that Russification in Ukraine could not make a good article too. --Irpen 03:23, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

I see your point. It may very well be an interesting article.

However, I think we should change the priorities. The problem is that there are too few people who contribute to "Ukrainian articles" on a more or less systematic basis. And few people seem to be interested in such articles, in general. We kind of keep creating stubs and seldom update or expand them. Those, who, by chance, get to such a stub will be frustrated and may never come back to any "Ukrainian article". First impression does matter a lot.

Here's a possible solution: 1. Switch effort from quantity to quality. 2. Try a few PR techniques. A good idea may be to try to push Kiev to an FA status.

This whole thing is a voluntary project. So, the only way to make people work is to make them interested. I hope quality + some PR would work out.

What do you think? Sashazlv 04:41, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Copied and will be replied at Wikipedia:Wikiportal/Ukraine/Ukraine-related Wikipedia notice board. --Irpen 05:43, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

'Scientific' transliteration?

"Cyrillic letters in this article are romanized using scientific transliteration."
From the "Comparative grammar" section of the article.

Just what exactly 'scientific transliteration' means, may one ask? Is it different from non-scientific transliteration or transcription? And according to what science? --barbatus 21:28, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

Strange term indeed. Should be corrected. Meanwhile, check a Romanization of Ukrainian article for more info.
It's a common name for the "International Scholarly system" of transliteration from Cyrillic, which is used for Slavic languages in many linguistics sources. —Michael Z. 2005-09-17 05:45 Z

Could this be brought to FAC now?

I am under impression that it is one of the better UA-related articles as of now and with the topic being able to generate a broad interest, we could submit it for the peer review. Active editors, please express here what you think. I can't judge for "Comparative grammar" and "Language structure" chapters because I am pretty ignorant in linguistics, but the history seems rather comprehensive and more or less balanced too. More illustrations would help, of course. Please take another look at the article as a whole, comment or should we just submit for peer review without waiting? --Irpen 02:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

"grammar" section

Pre-past and future simple

I've added another 2 tenses to 'Grammar' section:

'Ukrainian language has 5 tenses: present, past, pre-past, future complex and future simple'.

However I doubt, whether 'pre-past' is the correct definition.
This tense (давноминулий час) is formed by the verb 'бути' in a personal form and a main verb in past, and means an action taking place before another one. Pre-past is now used rarely in mass media and business, rather in literature and in spoken language (however, it has been used in the text of the Act of Independance, 1991). Future complex and future simple have the same meaning and are used equally. --Olexij 18:07, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I am a native Ukrainian speaker and I've never heard of such a tense (pre-past: був читав) or its usage. Can you please give concrete references from Ukrainian literature or other accessible sources where this tense is used? --Arteum

The section just looks odd. Discusses the verbs only, besides in a very confusing way. Also, "pre-past" it passingly introduces as if it is a common tense, is archaic and currently used only in dialects or coloquical language. For a discussion of tenses see this grammar textbook (http://www.vesna.org.ua/txt/grm/pidruchn/temps.html#teor_3). There is no hope that anyone will ever use the article to study Ukrainian. We either need a specialist to write a one-two paragraph review of peculiarities of UA-grammar or have nothing at all on the issue rather than this odd and incorrect discussion of verb tenses. Please comment and take an overall look whether we could bring this to FA. (Talk:Ukrainian_language#Could_this_be_brought_to_FAC_now?) Thanks! --Irpen 07:39, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

As per above, I moved this to talk. Even with my correction, this is an unacceptible presentation of Ukrainian grammar. If someone disagrees firecely, feel free to return it but, if possible, in an improved form. I would have done it myself, if I knew anything about linguistics. --Irpen 04:02, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Grammar

The Ukrainian language has the following tenses:

All verbs in Ukrainian fall in either of two grammatical aspects: perfect or imperfect. In order to express the idea that the action is finished one has to use a perfect verb, an imperfect verb does not have a perfect form and vice versa.

For example, the verb pysaty ("to write") is an imperfect verb. For the perfect form there exist a number of related verbs each expressing slightly different aspect of have written: napysaty ("to write down"), zapysaty ("to make note of"), perepysaty ("to rewrite"), prypysaty ("to prescribe"), dopysaty ("to append"), spysaty ("to list"), and so forth.

In the present and future tenses, verbs are conjugated according to the person and number. Like in Russian, however, the past tense does not indicate the person, but instead gender.

Ukrainophones were the minority

Ukrainophone?
The article uses the term "Ukrainophone" pretty often. The term itself redirects to this arcticle. I think the arcicle should explain what it means, because I'm Ukrainian and I've never heard of it.

It's analogous to Anglophone and Francophone. —Michael Z. 2005-05-15 16:55 Z
Thus, on the eve of Ukrainian independence, the Ukrainophones were the minority in the nation where many ethnic Ukrainians were russified.[3]

The linked poll results page says that in 2002, of 2019 respondents, 57.3% (37.5+19.8) reported using Ukrainian at home as much or more than Russian, 53.9% at work. And though the graph is confusing, if I'm interpreting it correctly the same poll also says that 91% reported being able to converse in Ukrainian. [4]

"Ukrainophones were the minority" doesn't seem to be a fair conclusion. —Michael Z. 2005-10-7 02:07 Z

Michael, the linked 2002 poll's result is the following.

Question: "What language you use at home more frequently".

Answer: Russian-42.2, Ukrainian-37.5, both-19.8.

You can of course add the Ukrainian and "both" and obtain that 57.3 % used Ukrainian at home to some extent. However, equally possible would be to say that 62% use Russian. This still shows that Ukrainian was less used by the people in Ukraine at homes than Russian. So, there were less Ukrainophones than Russophones in Ukraine at that time. Note that the situation changed slowly with years as per [5]. Actually, this gives a lot of other interesting data. Thanks to IlyaK for the links!

If you think that majority/minority doesn't stricly apply with only 5% difference, let's think how we can rephrase this. --Irpen 02:42, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear Irpen, I ask you once more: please switch to the facts, instead of spoiling the articles with inaccurate information. The question
What language you use at home more frequently?
sounds quite differently from the one
Are you Russophone or Ukrainophone?
I also use several languages at work an at home, but I did not autorize anybody to count me as Anglophone, Germanophone or Russophone.
One more point: have you got a reference to any poll results from "Gorbachev and perestroika" time?--AndriyK 07:16, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Andriy, I also use several languages even in my home. But as were raised, I was mostly using one language that my parents talked to me (see my user page) and therefore I consider myself "Russophone" and consider bot UA- and RU- native at the same time. Perhaps, it is just me. As I said this phrasing could be modified. Please suggest yours but please learn to push gently.

And no, I haven't seen a poll of Gorbachev's time. You are welcome to bring it in. I hope the rephrased version about the unfortunate consequences of lack of encouragement is acceptible now. If not, again, suggest yours but again, please push this gently. Thanks, --Irpen 07:28, 7 October 2005 (UTC) Oh, and please consider writing a section about Ukrainian grammar (see above) that was so pitiful, that it had to be moved to talk. The article needs it very much. --Irpen 07:33, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

You are free to consider yourself "Russophone" or whatelse, but please let other people enjoy this freedom as well. People provided us with the information about their mother languges in 1989 as well in 2001 (see the reference to the Cenus site), let's respect their selfindentification. --AndriyK 08:46, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Since 91% reported being able to converse in Ukrainian, I think it's safe to say that the majority is Ukrainophone (and the majority is also Russophone). Comparing the 57.3% to 62% doesn't really work, since many people are counted twice, and the total is more than 100%. All we can infer from that is that a majority (over 50%) routinely uses Russian and/or Ukrainian at home or in the office, many of them using both. —Michael Z. 2005-10-7 17:07 Z

Andriy, I think Ukrainophone simply means able to speak Ukrainian, without the implication of considering it one's native language. If you think more clarification is necessary, write something like "able to speak Ukrainian". The question of authorization is moot, since we're talking about reported poll results (the poll has a separate category for people who wouldn't or couldn't answer the question).
I think it's also important to say that a statistic is the result of a poll of 2,029 Ukrainians, rather than simply saying "so many Ukrainians...". —Michael Z. 2005-10-7 17:20 Z
It definitely would be better do not use the word Ukrainophone to avoid misinterpretations. Indeed, it could be interpreted as
  • a person who is able to speak Ukrainian
  • a person declaring Ukrainian as a native language
  • a person that uses Ukrainian more frequently than other languages

(the list might be not exhaustive)

So, it would be better to explain in every point what is exactly ment.
I will not start editing right now. Let us discuss this point a litle bit. --AndriyK 18:14, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

This is now avoided altogether. Just the fact is stated that many Ukrainians were russified. Saying that the "majority" were native speakers of Ukrainian is misleading because the English term "Native speaker" assumes that the person has the command of the language better than of any other. Many of those who called Ukrainian "Native" were less fluent in Ukrainian than in Russian as the surveys were showing and as explained in the article. It is correct to say that the majority were "ethnic Ukrainians" but this is less relevant than the language composition. What matters to estimate the degree of Russification is the percentage of people in general and ethnic Ukrainians in particular who uses Russian as a primary language of communication. That's exactly what the phrase and the link point to. --Irpen 05:56, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


Ukrainian language in Russian schools

Can you provide any source confirming that Ukrainian was tought in all Russian-language schools in the Ukrainian SSR? If not, please do not add this phrase again and again. Moreover it does not fit there from pure logical point of view. Think a bit on the sentence. --AndriyK 08:46, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, I haven't realized how young you are if you know so little about the Soviet times. In fact local language was studied in all Russian schools in republics. True enough, the attitude toward learning was liberal in some districts and the article just says so already. Nevertheless, after a good school in Ukraine (even where all subjects were taught in Russian) students graduated fluent in Ukrainian since it was tought almost as many hours as the Russian. There were some stupid exscuses like waivers for the children of military officers or even health-waivers but the fact that Ukrainian was tought in all school remains correct. --Irpen 07:57, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Could you read the folowing sentence once more? Can you provide any source confirming that Ukrainian was tought in all Russian-language schools in the Ukrainian SSR? If not, please do not add this phrase again and again. --AndriyK 08:55, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, everyone who I know that went to Russian school in Ukraine studied Ukrainian there as a second language starting from the second grade. The exams in Ukrainian were taken after the 6th, 8th and 10th (literature). And I am talking about the school with RU-L of instruction. If that is not enough for you and you are in Ukraine right now, go to any RONO and check old programs of Russian schools. Leave this alone. It is such a known fact that I am really surprized you refuse to accept it. And this fact is relevant. If the sentence doesn't sound good, fine. Rephrase it. --Irpen 09:02, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

As for Ukrainian in Russian schools, it was indeed tought there for sure. If Andriy is saying that there were schools where Ukrainian was not tought as a second language, please confirm that by showing some citations because it contradicts the Soviet practice that schools in republics were teaching local languages (I am not sure it was a law, bu possibly so). In any case I removed "all" to avoid a revertion taking AndriyK's word that there were exceptions until he finds proof. It is still indisputable that schools where Ukrainian was not tought at all were very few, if any at all. I also elaborated on what Russian and Ukrainian schools meant and added info on the waiver (like for those who had parents in the military). This is a factual info and should not be removed. How can this be irrelevant? --Irpen 06:06, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


Repression vs oppression

Also, if I am not mistaken, repression is oppressing people, but as for the language, suppression is more appropriate. One of ways of language suppressing the language is repression of the cultural elite. --Irpen 06:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Native language vs. mother tongue

The both terms are linked to the same page. The following sentence

It should be noted, though, that for many Ukrainians (of various ethnic descent), the native language may not necessarily mean the same thing as the mother tongue

sounds like a nonsence. I removed it.--AndriyK

Anonymous, it may be a good idea to add a note to some of the statistics, saying something to the effect that the precise interpretation of some statistics is clouded by the fact that the census and polls use terms such as native language and mother tongue, whose meaning is subject to interpretation, and has been controversial. —Michael Z. 2005-10-7 17:12 Z
This was my message. Sorry, I forgot to sign. I removed only this unclear sentence the rest of the text concerning census numbers vs. primary language usage is there. It's quite neutral and sources are cited.
If somebody can reformulate the above sentence, I would not object. But in its present for it looks like nonsence. Regards, --AndriyK 17:58, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I will then rephrase it to saying the Native and Primary language in the context of Ukraine is not one an the same. It is a rather rare situation and is notable. --Irpen 05:50, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

"Primary language" seems to be your personal invention. Please do not use this term unless you can reffer to a creadicle source providing its exact definition. Do you understand? I'll repeat it once more, just for the case. Please do not use this term unless you can reffer to a creadicle source providing its exact definition.--AndriyK 09:04, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Nope, primary language is a common term. Check the dictionary. --Irpen 09:33, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

This discussion is very confusing: Is it the case that the most people today living in the Ukraine are totally bilingual; or is it the case that for most the primary language, mother tongue that is, the language that a child would speak at, say three years old, before attending school for most people was Ukrainian? Or is that even at this early age a child is already bilingual in Ukrainian and Russian? - Les

I think in most cases now its the latter case, except now its more trilingual.--Kuban Cossack 00:39, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The issue is already outlined. Here is the summary. Most ethnic Ukrainians as well as some Russians living in Ukraine would call the Ukrainian language "native" and this is how they respond to surveys to the "native language" (Ukrainian: ridna mova) question. OTOH, if the survey question is formulated differently, like "what language do you use most at home", some of those people will answer Russian. At home people use the language they are most fluent of course in an overwhelming majority of cases. This creates a somewhat unique situation that some people are more fluent in a language different from the one they call native. There are two primary reasons of this. First and the most, is the consequence of Soviet russification policies that resulted in some Ukrainians being more fluent in Russian than in Ukrainian. Another reason is that in Soviet times Ukrainian was studied in all schools under the name "Ridna mova" (native language) as compared to another school subject "Russian language" also studied in all schools. This causes the difference between the percentage of people who consider Ukrainian "native" and percentage of people who speak Ukrainian at the native level. I hope my explanation is not confusing. I can bring up the refs to the surveys, if necessary. --Irpen 01:37, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Presidential promise

"In fact, this promise could not be kept. The President is not autorized to change the Constitution of Ukraine."

You must be kidding right. As if Kuchma cared about what he was authorized by the consitution. Tymoshenko called Kuchma's style to persuade the deputies "usind the nut-crackers (yaytserizky)". Should he wanted to implement Russian as the second state language he would have no doubt done so. Also, the published polls always showed the a slight majority of population favored and still favors having Russian as a second state language. So, he would really have little trouble. Anyway, this paragraph must be restored in its entirety. --Irpen 06:24, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

What I wrote is based upon Ukrainian Constitution. If you have a creadible source confirming your Should he wanted — he would have done you are free to add this information. Otherwise, it's your very personal judgement that you should better reserve for political chats or forums. --AndriyK 09:17, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Look, don't overshoot here. Requiring sources is a good thing but not for something that is such a common knowledge as Ukrainian in Russian schools or abuses of constitution by Kuchma. Just think about this yourself a little bit. --Irpen 09:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The common knowlege is that Ukrainian was tought far not in all Russian-language schools in Ukrainian SSR and Ukraine up to the year 2000. If you don't know this, it's you own problem, do not make it a problem of Wikipedia, please. If you are not agree, cite a source, please.
Abuses of Constitution by Kuchma is true (anyway, it not a bad thing to supporte it by sources).
It's two quite different things:
      • to abuse the Constitution and
      • to be able to change it.
What you are doing, you abuse the Wikipedia policies, but you do not try to change them, fortunatelly.
Would you further continue the revert war and abuse the Wikipedia policies like Kuchma did with the Constitution? ;) --AndriyK 11:16, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
This collaboration will work best if you stick to the subject and avoid expressing a negative opinion of other Wikipedians here. —Michael Z. 2005-10-8 16:14 Z

I will try ignoring the personal attacks and respond only to what's respondable. The discussion of the president's authority belongs to the Politics of Ukraine and the Government of Ukraine articles. The fact is that the promise was made by Kuchma and how it affected the polls, if at all. It was under the previous constituion BTW, that was indeed not just "changed" but dumped and replaced by new Kuchma's '96 consitution. After his second election it was again changed (if my memory serves me right) and again under his influence. Even legally speaking, the presidental has an authority to initiate laws to be presented to parliament and the parliament of UA of that time (late nineties) didn't dare much to challenge the presidential authority. In fact his powers was increased by the changes of constitutions . The perception clearly was that it was up to Kuchma. So, it is entirely valid. --Irpen 04:33, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your memory does not serve you right. Kuchma's attemts to push changes of Constitution failed several times. It would be better if you would use reliable sources instead of your memory. He could not do anything what he wanted. You may, however, mention that he never even tried to push language-related changes. It's true. --AndriyK 08:10, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Wait a minute, let's make sure we are talking about the same things. Kuchma became the president in '94 and he had what he wanted in the consitutiion of '96 (the new consitution created to his liking). Then he was re-elected in '99 and the Russian as a state language was not an issue in the second election. He also made another significant change in consitution that increased his authority. (I may be mistaken in further dates but I am pretty sure about '94, '96 and further increase of powers). What he failed to achieve was a reform unde the new parliament when Our Ukraine and Bloc Tymoshenko had enough deputies to fight it (that later still passed as a price for a re-run of the vote but he indeed didn't have it the way he wanted). So, when we a talking about times of his first term that he won with the help of his promise, he got pretty much all he wanted for the consitution. --Irpen 09:01, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

"He had what he wanted" is your personal jugement., which has nothing to do with the real facts. In fact, he didn't. Otherwise, why did he try to change something later?
You twisted some facts. Please check sources and only then return to edits. I'd suggest you [zakon.rada.gov.ua] --AndriyK 09:24, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

What exactly in the '96 constituiton was adopted against Kuchma's will. In fact it was adopted by Rada in the middle of the night under Kuchma's threat that he will otherwise take it to a referemdum. What facts did I twist? --Irpen 09:30, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Check sources and you'll see.--AndriyK 09:46, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

That's no answer. --Irpen 10:13, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

This is the answer that can solve most of the problems. You should work trough sources before you write something, or "Irpen не читатель, Irpen писатель."? ;) --AndriyK 10:51, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

No, you're wrong. I checked archives of the Mirror Weekly and that confirms my chronology. If you can show where I "twisted facts", please do so. Otherwise, consentrate on better confirmation of an alternative version of origin added through your persistence and on explaining why you kept removing the stuff from other section or substituting it by something irrelevant. --Irpen 14:13, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Then give precise references to the articles in "Mirror Weekly" You are going to stay something in the article, not me.--AndriyK 15:07, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I propose to move presidential promise to the article about Kuchma. I'm happy that Kuchma did not kept his promise ;). --Gutsul 10:09, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Untraditional version of origin

This version needs to be sourced. It is not in other encyclopedias and evennot in ua-wiki. Sounds like original research. If not, cite sources. --Irpen 07:48, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll do this. You do not let me finish.--AndriyK 08:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Sure and if you do, I will not object to including it. Also, I replaced "soviet" by "traditional" because it is not just Soviet. Take a look at Britannica for example. It doesn't make it right necessarily, but it is the most accepted among academics. You may argue that it is under the influence of Russian Imperialistic scholarship. May well be, but encyclopedias do not reflect "truth", they reflect the accepted "knowledge". As for the other edits, I explained them above. You are free to disagree and argue but do not revert ignoring the explanations. I explained the situation with schools in more detail.

This is indeed Soviet viewpoint. In Imperial Russia, the very existence of Ukrainian denied. So there was no need of theories concerning its evolution. Some Western encyclopedias may rely on Soviet sources. --AndriyK 08:32, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I expanded on the situation with schools and removed the word "all" as per your objection, but I am pretty sure this was correct. Please bring in some info on your claim that it was not so until 2000. If you have an article or something in a reputable paper (like Mirror Weekly or Kyiv Post not Vechirniy Kyiv or smth), I would be glad to see that. --Irpen 08:17, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

If I decide to put it to the article, I'll cite source, be sure. Now switch yourself to source-hunting. It would be much more productive.

Encyclopedias like Britannica are written by experts of the field (like of Ukraine) mostly from British/American Universities. They know how much credence to give to what schools of thought and write accordingly. They are aware of the problems of the Soviet and Russian schools. If they still use what you call an imperialist version, they beleive it is the best one we know. Now, you say they are wrong. That's "original research". If you still find alternative versions by some established specialists, not some crackpots, we may well include it. But still, this would have to be cited as an alternative, and the original should be called "traditional", not just "Soviet" as per above. --Irpen 08:39, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I am not an expert, but if the common Eastern-Slavic -&gt Ruthenian -&gt Uk+Be version is the only version sourced by Brittanica (and Soviet school texts as well), then we need some respectable sources before including the alternative versions abakharev 09:06, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
I added one reference and 'll for more.--AndriyK 09:25, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
OK, I think we should keep both versions. I have slightly modified AndriyK's version so to make it less POV

You ref is useful, I will add more to article from it. However if even in your ref the accepted version is called "traditional" (see chapter 6). You cannot then call it just "Soviet" or remove from the article. --Irpen 09:30, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Alex, please note that in addition to adding an alternative version, the user was deleting from other chapters some referenced and explained at talk info or substituting it by something irrelevant. I restored it. As for keeping both version, I agree. But we should make clear that one is "traditional" and almost universally acceoted (adding that this may be partly due to the influence of Russian scholars in the field) and another is developed recently and haven't gained much support yet. I did just that in my edit. --Irpen 12:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Good compromise, I like your edit. abakharev 13:56, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Recently? It more than hundred years old! You so ignorant in the field but always try argue!--AndriyK 12:48, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, you wrote yourself that it is from scholars of independent Ukraine. I am sorry what I learned reading your edit was only ignorance. --Irpen 12:51, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Two versions of the revert war

Please check this comparison of the two versions that are used in the ongoing revert war and check their differences. I would like quickly to elaborate in order to call for opinions to help find consensus. The differences (in the order from top to bottom of the article) are the following:

  1. inclusion of another version of origin of Ukrainian, whether to present it as simply "correct" dismissing the other as purely ideological, or accept the the original version from the article is more mainstream accepted by academics not only in the SU and the other is just an alternative (still worth mentioning) that is shared by some scholars who are a minority. The arguments for the preferred version between the differences are at this page above (Talk:Ukrainian_language#Untraditional_version_of_origin). Please read and respond in that section
    • Please do not lye! Both POV presented in my version as well. I've just mentioned that suppoters of one POV criticise another POV as being ideological. You are free to add referensies to the books supporting Soviet POV, find there how they criticise Ukrainian-Western POV and state this in the article. Plese note, there is no reference supporting Soviet POV! Do you have any evidence that this version is widelly supported in the West? Where are the referencies.--AndriyK 08:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
  2. A situation with the degree of Russification at the time of Perestroika. The discussion is also at this very page at Talk:Ukrainian_language#Ukrainophones_were_the_minority
    • I asked you whether you have a reference to any language-related sociology made at the time of Perestroyka. You answered "No"! Why do you put here the bullshit invented yourself? --AndriyK 08:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
  3. Next point of conflict conserns how to present the issue of the electoral promises by Kuchma and Yanukovych. Please see Talk:Ukrainian_language#Presidential_promise for it. I admit the ball is in my court here. What's presented in the article is rather obvious and well-known in my opinion, but I was asked to confirm the info by presenting a source. I will do that ASAP. OTOH, the replacement version proposes just a discussion about the Ukrainian law. Sourced or unsourced, it has very little relevance anyway. It belongs to the Politics of Ukraine and Government of Ukraine articles.
    • This is "rather obvious and well-know" only in your opinion. If you would like present your opinion, you are free to go to a political chats or forum. Wikipedia articles are intended to presentg facts, rather then personal opinions of ignorant people. Please add sources and only than modify the text. --AndriyK 08:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
  4. description of the rather unique and Ukraine-specific situation with people's answers to the census' "native language" question differing from the distribution of the languages that people actually speak. It is highly unusual that people call language X "native" but speak language Y better than language A. It is bery notable and explanation in the article is provided. It is discussed at this page at Talk:Ukrainian_language#Native_language_vs._mother_tongue.
    • There was a nonsence that I removed. I explaines why. The rest of stuff is remained in my version as well. The sociological survey you refere to studied the question how often one or another languge is used. Not which language is spoken batter. Please stop adding your fantasies.--AndriyK 08:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

The rest is a matter of English grammar and vocabulary correction and I don't know why they are also reverted but, anyway, please discuss issues at talk, edit accordingly and do not revert wholesale no matter how tempting it is to go an easy way. Thanks! --Irpen 06:45, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Please stop the edit war. Start from my version, which is based on creadible sources, add your referencies, then modify the text according to your referencies. If you do so, I'll see, that you indeed whant to learn something (which is extremely necessary in your case) and write an encyclopedia article instead of producing propaganda bullshit. Then our conflict, hopefully, will be over. --AndriyK 08:56, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

After all, the presidental promicies are not related to the Ukrainian language. They are related to Russian I think this paragraph can be safely removed from the article.--AndriyK 08:06, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

No, you're wrong. Further spreading of Russian is viewed in UA as the main threat to Ukrainian. This is the main reason why it was not allowed to become a state language yet despite the survey shows that the slight majority favors it. The issue is very related. --Irpen 16:43, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

It's even more related to Russian language. Please consider spoiling that article with you propaganda insertions.--AndriyK 17:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Why are you telling me which article should I write for? Maybe if you chose to stick to less controversial topics, there would be less of the revert wars either. OTOH, I do see some ideas that you are proposing making it into the articles, including this one, with my own support, BTW. (Just check, that my edits often included revised versions of yours). Anyway, pls let me finish the rewriting of your current version I am doing now and let's see whether we could proceed from there. I will remove "inuse" template promplty. --Irpen 17:26, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


I appreciate your efforts concerning polishing the English. But you destroyed the whole logic of the section and massed up the facts. If you did it on purpose, then we are going to have the next series of the edit war. If you did it just because of the lack of knowledge in the field, please read the literature and correct your mistakes. This will be a crucial test for your "good faith". I'll correct only the most odious mistakes.--AndriyK 08:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, go ahead with your corrections and we'll see what to make of it. Just understand please that if Britannica presents just one version of the origin, this is traditional and not "traditional" and B.'s writers do work free from ideological pressures and are respected scholars. The rest is said above by you an me not once. Please reread talk and proceed with your changes. But do reread first. Regards, --Irpen 08:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Britannica and Kostomarov

"Britanica" is not the Bible! In 2002 edition they assert that Ukrainian is more close to Russian than to Belarusian, while in older editions they asserted the opposite. They do make mistakes. Please look into other literature as well. It would be nice if you find the names and books/articles of the scientists who supported the version published by Britanica. I tried, but found nothing.--AndriyK 09:40, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

I never said that Britannica does not make mistakes. What I said is that it ususally represents a version of knowledge that is as close to the mainstream as one can possibly get. Yes, mainstream may be mistaken too (I think it is called systemic bias), so Britannica is not the ultimate truth. What one can do, is present other plausible versions in WP articles (attributing them). What one can't do is to dismiss the Britannica's version in toto. As you pointed out, as the knowledge evolves, Britannica is updated.

I appreciate your newer version of the origin. I modified it only a little bit. However, I am surprised you excluded the reference and the very mention of Kostomarov. His publications caused a furor at his time and his views influenced lots of future thinkers. Maybe you could add it back. There is more info in his WP article that was mostly written by two editors (anonymous and myself). As for the rest of my recent edits, I tried to achieve a compromise whenever possible as per my talk summaries. --Irpen 01:54, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't remove the version of Britanica. I just added other versions. In fact the version that assumes existance of the common East Slavic language has several subversions. In fact, what is described in Britanica is one of the subversions. I'll elaborate it when I have time.
What I pointed out is that Britanica made a mistake in the 2002 edition. In fact, Ukrainian is more close to Belarusian than to Russian. Older editions were more correct then the newer one.
I like the article by Kostomarov, but it has very little to do with liguistics. In fact, he does not criticise any theories of the origin of Ukrainian language. This is a nice article about Ukrainian and Russian history, national characters etc. Perhaps, it worth to be mentioned in other articles: Ukrainians, History of Ukraine etc.--AndriyK 07:55, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

You may be surprized to find out that 1911 Britannica denied the very existance of Ukrainian L calling it a Little Russian dialect of the Russian language. It was obviously mistaken. The point is that encyclopedias don't reflect "truth", they reflect "knowledge" and as such, Britannica more or less adequately, reflects the current state of the mainstream (there may be errors but on very rare cases).

As for Kostomarov, if you read his paper "Two Russian Nations" (I linked from his WP article), you will find him talking about two separate languages (he uses "narechiya", as far as I remember) and this was a pioneering thought of the time, highly unpopular in where he was. He is a profound figure not only for UA-history, but also for general Ukrainistics (Ukrayinoznavstvo) of which the UA-L is a major part. I am glad we are starting to have the productive discussions. Regards, --Irpen 08:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Please compare what you wrote about the Kostomarov work here and what in the article. Is it quite the same? What has it to do to the criticism of the "polonization" theory?
In fact, he was not the first who spoke about Ukrainian "narechie". There were linguistic an folcloristic studies several decades before him.
I can only repeat: this work has very little to do with linguistic. It is a nice work that perhaps can be mentioned in other articles of Wikipedia.--AndriyK 08:53, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Once more about the two versions

  1. However, many used Russian more than they used Ukrainian. You don't have any sociological or similar data from that time. So this phrase must be removed, if you stick to facts. What we have are the 1989 census data. The sociology you have is related to the later time. And they are mentioned in the corresponding section.
  2. Political issues. Please compare to the article Russian language. Do you see there mentioning of the Ems Ukaz? If I use your logic, Russian is related to this issue because Russian goverment considered Ukrainian as a main threat to in Ukrainian gubernias. And they whanted to replace Ukrainian by Russian.
    Do you see there any details about Russification? I think, if somebody would try to add this stuff, Russian users would protest. Not Russian nationalists. Complitely normal Russian users! I am sure! Aren't you agry?
    Can you consider Ukrainian and Russian on equel footings? In the case you cannot, the user that blamed you for Ukrainophobia was right. I hope, he wasn't.
    Let's do not mix linguistic and politics. This will save us one more edit war.
  3. Do you have any data concerning fluency of ukrainian population in Ukrainian and other languages? I did not see them. The data state merely which language is used more frequently. Please stick at facts.--AndriyK 08:34, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Ancient history

This article is supposed to be about Ukrainian language, not Russian. Who's interested in the latter, please move to the Russian section of Wikipedia. Thank you.
Quote:
"During the Khazar period, the territory of Ukraine, originally settled by Iranian (post-Scythian), Turkic (post-Hunnic, proto-Bulgarian), and Finno-Ugric (proto-Hungarian) tribes, was progressively Slavicized by several waves of migration from the Slavic north."

Who is responsible for this nonsense? What kind of migration? Any references?

Hi! If you see any noncence in the article, please do not hesitate to correct it.Be bold in updating pages.
The article is unsatisfactory in its present form. It contains too little linguistics and too much politics.(There were even more politics a week ago).
I suggest you register at Wikipedia. It's convenient. Hope to meet you again here.--AndriyK 15:11, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

The opening paragraph??

One of the sentences in the opening paragraph does not make very much sense the way it is written now. - "Ukrainian is considered one of the most melodic languages in Europe that has endured multiple bans by the rulers of Russia." Maybe somebody who has an idea of what is meant by this sentence can rewrite it. The current sentence seems to be adressing two seperate issues and neither one of them is clearly or fully expressed. (unsigned by anon)

Dear anonymous. What you noticed is just a smaller of several problems of the article that were introduced by two editors who lately took it upon themselves to tear it up. I have been puting off the repair of this article until those users calm down but it is too long and, perhaps, it is time for me and others to get back to it. Thanks for reminding. --Irpen 01:17, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Gentlemen, it is just strange to have such an emphasis on history in the lead paragraph of the language article. Additionally, the sentence "Ukrainian has survived mainly due to its.." is misleading. Ukrainian was never close to being extinct but that's a side note. It would be fine to have a sentence along these lines if it was a History of Ukrainian article but I see no reason to spin off the history yet even though the history is the only more or less detailed part of the article. We do need the linguist to write there about grammar, phonology, etc. But until this is the History of Ukrainian article, the stuff about the suppression doesn't belong to the lead. This is covered in appropriate sections and I myself wrote some of it. Please look the articles on other languages, including those also subject to suppression such as Catalan or Basque languages. The lead of the language article should be about the language and not about its history. --Irpen 22:09, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Literary language

By "breaks in the literary tradition" I was referring to the discontinuities in the literary language(s) of Ukraine, while the spoken language continued: the Mongol invasion of Kiev, and the decline of Ruthenian/Ukrainian language in the mid-1600s. "Persecution", on the other hand, referred to more recent events during the resurgence of Ukrainian cultural identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, under Russia, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and the USSR. I think the former are particularly important events in the history of the literary language, the latter are less monumental in scale, but closer to us. Perhaps these are important enough to be mentioned in a long summary introduction, but it's not only the negative events but also the development and accomplishments that define that history. But Ukrainian also has interesting relationships to Old Church Slavonic, Polish, and Slovak, and I think dwelling only on its relationship to Russian and on Russian Empire repression is much too limited.

I'm still reading and picking up all of the details of this history in bits and pieces, so I don't claim to speak with authority here. —Michael Z. 2005-11-14 04:57 Z

Mike, the reason there were no "breaks" is due to the Halych-Volynian Kingdom in the first case mentioned by you and that there was no break in the second case. Simply Old Ukrainian, or Ruthenian, was replaced by its vernacular modern form. Also, there was no persecution of Ukrainian by Austro-Hungaria. Ukrainian was one of the state languages. It's due to this that literary Ukrainian tradition was saved from extinction. It's well known that Lesya Ukrainka was publishing her works in the Western Ukraine, while in the East the language was banned. The persecution of Ukrainian in Poland was relatively mild comparing to Russia. It is in Russia and the Soviet Union that Ukrainian was attepmted to be truly eradicated. The action against the language there compares to the Ukrainian Genocide of 1933. It was at the grass root level, reeducating the simple folks on how they should communicate. There are very few languages that experienced a similar fate and are still freely spoken.--Andrew Alexander 02:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Andy, I'm aware that the situation was often much more dire in Russia and the USSR, but from the little I read I know that under the Austrian Empire Drahomanov moved to Switzerland instead of Galicia so he could publish freely, some of Franko's publications were confiscated in Lviv, and the local authorities Polonized the educational system and went as far as to try to mandate Latin over Cyrillic, although this effort was thwarted by public outcry. I think the worst part was the decade or two after Austria lost its constitution, in 1849. I wrote a bit about this in Ukrainian Latin alphabet, based on readings in a couple of my history books.
When I have some time, I'll get a more specific reference about the breaks in the literary language. What I've read treats it as rather different from the vernacular. —Michael Z. 2005-11-15 03:00 Z

The important factual data gets reverted by vandals!

Ukrainian traces its origins to the ancient state of Kievan Rus'. Ukrainian is considered one of the most melodic languages in Europe. The language has stoically persisted despite two bans and political persecution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ukrainian has survived mainly due to its broad base among the people of Ukraine, its popular folklore songs, kobzars, heroic poets like Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.

The above paragraph gets reverted time after time, which is simply ridiculous! Let's consider its parts:

Ukrainian traces its origins to the ancient state of Kievan Rus'.

This is a true statement: Ukrainian, Russian, and Belorussian are originated from the language spoken within the realm of Kievan Rus' (however one calls their ancestor). You will not probably find a single textbook stating anything contrary to that. And who is so authoritative around here to exclude the info from an introductory paragraph?

Ukrainian is considered one of the most melodic languages in Europe.

Again, this is a fact one learns about Ukrainian during the first lesson in the school (and that was true even for the soviet schools in Ukraine). And this does not belong in history or whatever, that's traditionally considered an intruductory material.

The language has stoically persisted despite two bans and political persecution during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ukrainian has survived mainly due to its broad base among the people of Ukraine, its popular folklore songs, kobzars, heroic poets like Taras Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka.

These are historical facts and the dates of the bans and the details of persecutions with references to the literature used can be looked up in the Ukrainian Wikipedia uk:Русифікація (I expect those judging what can and cannot be included in the article do read in Ukrainian!). Also the fact, Ukrainian is and was so called "folk language", is recognized as the major factor that influenced the language's evolution over the centuries and is specifically characteristic of Ukrainian proper as opposite to Russian, Church Slavonic, Polish, etc. And perhaps every introduction in every textbook on Ukrainian mentions Taras Shevchenko and his founding and cornerstone role in the development of literary Ukrainian (let alone his genius and the level of his social contribution) and often poets such as Lesya Ukrainka and Ivan Franko. You cannot omit the info from the introduction unless you want to look like totally profane! Jesus, these reverts are just silly. It's like forgetting to mention Mr. Pushkin in the introduction to "Russian language", the one who is by all accounts considered the founder of literary Russian. --ashapochka 15:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Please learn rules and traditions of wikipedia. First, the intro must be brief and to basic facts. Second, you cannot put opinionades statements at all. "Melodic" is nonverifiable and disputble. Third, you cannot use poetic wordings like "stoically". Also, it survived for many reasons, and it is your very limited opinion. Many peoples of the past had heroic songs and popular poets, but they perished. And many languages passed thru being endangered, including English itself, but no one is bragging about this. So I suggest you to go and read how other articles about languages are structured. It is a tradition to write similar articles in a similar fashion, to avoid chaotic mess. It is encyclopedia, not a bok of essays. mikka (t) 16:23, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Well, an encyclopedia is a book of essays, most of which usually have different experts' writing credits. A particular focus or a bit of individuality can be what makes a Wikipedia article interesting to read.
However, important statements like "survived because...", and subjective-sounding claims like "most melodic", should be supportable by some references. Questions of what is important enough to put in the intro have to go with editor consensus. Since the article is quite long, perhaps a longer summary-style introduction which mentions more aspects of the language, without placing undue importance on any particular one, would be appropriate here. —Michael Z. 2005-11-16 16:35 Z
Hi, Mikka! If you compare this article with other articles about languages, you'll see that the leading paragraph is not the only and even far not the major difference. The present article contains too much politics and too little linguistics. The fact that the language survived the ban is quite remarcable and this is one of very few issues that deserves to be mentioned in the article. There is much more completely unrelated political stuff there. I'd propose to stop the edit war and switch to less controversial edits. Regards,--AndriyK 16:38, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Mikka and Michael, I am sorry to say, you definitely seem not to have studied Ukrainian seriously. You see, I am a Ukrainian and I studied the language 9 years in school and two years (I do not count history of Ukraine, etnography, etc here) in the university including preparation for PhD and passing the corresponding exam on Ukrainian, I also actively use it in my daily life. So when I make any statements about it I rely on what professional linguists teach to their students in Ukraine and what they consider of importance in their lectures. Now I am really interested to find out what kind of experience with Ukrainian you have got under your belts. Because looking at your comments I am afraid you are in no position to have a say-so on what is subjective-sounding and what is not. And I suspect, erasing the simple and significant facts from the place they are rightfully belong to, you can only prove the presence of a certain political engagement in your judgements. I am very sorry to see this. --ashapochka 17:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I will respond to Ashapochka's first entry to clear something up for him. First of all, you just came here with an untarnished reputation. Treasure it! Calling good faith changes that seem reasonable to many editors a vandalism is unproductive and puts you in a certain light. Now, point to point. This is not an article called "History of Ukrainian". When the reader comes to a language article he expects to see basic facts in the intro, language group, relations, country where it is spoken. No one removes the facts of oppression from the history sections. In fact Mikka and myself added much of that. The point is that this doesn't belong to the intro. You are welcome to check how well or poorly it is presented within the article and improve that. Check articles on other languages and you will see that there aren't any articles with history summary in the intro. I repeat that this is the language, rather than a history article. On the side note, the fact is that most of non-history info in the article is dismal. Too bad and you are welcome to write on that. In fact I made a call for someone to rewrite a pity "Grammar" section a while ago (see talk)

"Melodic": yes, I have also heard that from my teacher of Ukrainian at school. Nevertheless, it is a POV as well as the opinion that the UA language is funny and belongs to uneducated people is a Russian chauvinist POV. POV can go to the article only referenced with whose POV this is. You can write that "Ukrainians consider their langiage one of the most melodic languages in Europe" but I guess this isn't what you want to see. --Irpen 17:07, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Ashapochka, there's no need to whip out our qualifications and compare 'em :-O. Everyone is welcome to contribute, and I'm glad that you have lots of formal study that will help with Ukrainian language articles. If the melodic characterization is so prevalent in the education about the language, I'm sure it won't be hard for you to find a citation in one of your textbooks. And I haven't deleted anything here lately, I'm just trying to help resolve this controversy with some observations on the relevant Wikipedia conventions. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2005-11-16 17:30 Z

History does belong to the enc. introduction for a language

OK, Mr. Irpen, let me proceed with my unstained reputation and simply quote (fair use) Britannica's article "Ukrainian Language" from its very start:

formerly called Ruthenian, or Little Russian, Ukrainian Ukraïns'ka Mova,East Slavic language spoken in Ukraine and in Ukrainian communities in neighbouring Belarus, Russia, Poland, and Slovakia. Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial languageused in Kievan Rus (10th–13th century). It is written in a form of the Cyrillic alphabet and isclosely related to Russian and Belarusian, from which it was indistinguishable until the 12th or 13th century. Ukrainian resembles Russian less closely than does Belarusian, though all three languages are in part mutually intelligible.
After the fall of Kievan Rus in the 13th century, the dialectal characteristics that distinguish Ukrainian from its sister languages emerged, but for many centuries thereafter the language had almost no literary expression owing to Ukraine's long political subordination. It was not until the end of the 18th century that modern literary Ukrainian emerged out of the colloquial Ukrainian tongue. Like Belarusian, the Ukrainian language contains a large number of words borrowed from Polish, but it has fewer borrowings from Church Slavonic than does Russian.

So you see I am not going to accept the requirement "no history in the introduction". Is Britanica an authority enough for you? By the way it also directly confirms the first reverted sentence.

Concerning Shevchenko (Britannica):

But Ukrainian national consciousness, though still confined to an educated minority, was growing, and nothing did more to crystallize Ukrainian as a literary language than Shevchenko's poetry.

So don't you think, it mught just be appropriate to point out a man who almost created literary language in the introduction to the article on it? How does it make a mess of the article?

As for the melodics, yes it is considered by many one of the most melodic tongues in Europe, you can check it out by googling on the corresponding words or talking to a ukrainist. The melodics is not my subject of study, and I already described the sources I had based my judgement on in this particular case. --ashapochka 18:42, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Dear Ashapochka, you didn't quote Britannica "from the very starts". What you did is you pasted an entire Britannica's UA L. article, which regretfully consists of just these two paragraphs. Of course, if you write an article about the Ukrainian at all, the suppression and Shevchenko have to be there. But note, that it is not "in the beginning". It's just in the article. Also, look at its first paragraph. What do you find? Linguistic family, relations, alphabet types and resemblances. Exactly what I've been telling you what belongs there and exactly what we have in our intro. The second paragraph there is a poor substitute for a rather long article we have. If we only had two paragraphs, we could have just not have the article as well and just a link "See Britannica". Please, also, give a thought to what Britannica is and what Britannica isn't. Britannica is a good check of the "mainstreamness", so to speak, of something. If something is presented there, you can be certain it is either a current prevailing view or it is one of the current prevailing view. Britannica's choice of the terms is also useful to consider when choosing the terms we use at Wiki. However, Britannica is not a Wikipedia manual of style. We have our own guidelines at wikipedia. There are traditions here too. Otherwise, we would not have needed WP if we were about to duplicate Britannica.

As for "melodics", please do the googling yourself if you want to bring it in. Once you find a respectable source, I would have no objection. It also seems melodic to me, but your or my opinion doesn't count since we are just pseudonymous Wikieditors who didn't establish ourselves in the field. If we find references, I would think that melodicity belongs to the "Phonology" section Rather than the intro. One user already said that he was considering to write about Ukrainian phonology for Wikipedia. Let me know if you are interested, and I will post you with more on the issue or get you in touch with him. Regards, --Irpen 19:18, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


"heroic poets"

Do you mean to say that they were heroes or is this a reference to their writing style? If the former, it's POV, if the latter it needs to be rewritten to clarify. --Ornil 01:16, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Omil, it's not "POV". Taras Shevchenko has spend only around 9 years of his life free. Despite that he managed to become the greatest Ukrainian poet that ever existed. Singlehandedly he riveved Ukrainian literature. There is not a single adult Ukrainian who hasn't read or heard Shevchenko's call to freedom, "Boritesia, poborete, vam Boh pomahaje! Za vas pravda, za vas syla, i volia sviataja!" --Andrew Alexander 04:14, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Tautology

The following sentence,

Ukrainian has survived mainly due to its broad base among the people of Ukraine

if you strip the high tone means simply that the language survived because people spoke this language. This so a trivial tautology, good for a political speech, but in the intro it is just waste of reader's time. mikka (t) 01:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. The "broad base" means that there were a lot of people who spoke it. It's a nontrivial fact. Ukraine is a large country and could not be swallowed too easily. The size and stubborness (famous Ukrainian feature) has saved it many times, otherwise it would be read about in Russian historical books as "Little Russia" if lucky enough.--Andrew Alexander 03:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Andrew Alexander, the Wikipedia articles were not written especially so that you can add your anti-Russian whining

I believe you're out of control with this abuse of civil discussion. Watch your language please. --Andrew Alexander 04:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

in all the most prominent places at the cost of the article's style and consistensy. There is an appropriate place for the info on suppression of Ukrainian by the Russian government and this place is called the article's history section. The info is already in the text in an appropriate place. Those who are interested in history will see it there. Those who came to check what the heck is the UA L in general, will read an intro and find what group it belongs to and what alphabet it is using. And those interested in your Russophobic views, will click "check his contributions" button and click on those of them that start with "talk:" (please remember to use talk and not edit summaries for this. That is of course if you cannot hold it to yourself). I hope there won't be any more confusion. --Irpen 05:26, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Again, you simply wish to erase some of the most important facts about the language. The double ban is a significant enough issue ot be mentioned in the intro. I can quote much less significant subjects from other language intros. Please find a better excuse. --Andrew Alexander 04:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't erase nothing. Facts are already in the article. Improve them! --Irpen 04:43, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Phonetics

The Ukrainian alphabet is based on the phonemic principal with the exception of the 'three' sounds

The two sounds are [ʣ] and [ʤ]. What ment to be the third? [w] ?

[jɪ]=йи

There is no "йи" in the standard Ukrainian. Should it be mentioned here. Ukrainian dialects are a different issue.

Is comparing with Russian really helpful here? Most English language readers have no idea about Russian. Comparing with English would be much more helpfull.--AndriyK 09:18, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Phonetics [v] and [w]

While is central and eastern Ukraine it is pronounced as in the Russian; that is [v], in Western Ukraine it is pronounced somewhat in between the [v] sound in "victory" and the [w] sound in "water". Кава ("coffee") would be pronounced closer to [kawa] in western Ukraine (especially in the Carpathian mountain districts), while in other regions as [kava].

This phrase wrong. In ukrainian word [кава] is pronounced [kawa] in all region. In the same way word Вовк ("Wolf") - [wowk]. Губний алофон /w/ губно-зубного сонорного приголосного / v\ / реалізується у позиції перед огубленими голосними звуками /O/, /u/, на початку слова перед приголосним, в середині та в кінці слова після голосного [6]. перед согласными и на конце слова /v/ любого происхождения фонетически реализуется как [w] [7] (Note: there is several mistakes in this article, some of which were copied in wikipedia) в українській та білоруській мовах є два подібні звуки [в] і [ў], які в білоруській мові пишемо двома різними буквами "в"[v], "ў"[w], а в українській лише однією буквою "в". У російській же мові є лише один звук [в], [v] і лише одна буква "в" [8] See also [9], [10] Thereby presence by different phonemes [w] and [v] there is typical difference ukrainian and belorussian from russian --Yakudza 19:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The allophone /w/ of the consonantal phoneme / v\ / appears before rounded vocalic phonemes /O/, /u/, at the beginning of the word before the consonant, in the middle of the word after the vowel and at the end of the word after vowel [11] --Yakudza 19:50, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

This doesn't sound right to me. Perhaps you are talking about rural accents and not urban (or perhaps the language has changed a lot in Ukraine). My family and many of my acquaintances are from inter-war Galicia, or their parents were, and в is normally pronounced [v], but turns to [w] or [ʋ] in many places depending on the context. To me, [kava] and [vowk] sound correct, also [lʲviw]; [kawa] and [wowk] sound like some of the descendants of Galician Ukrainian farmers who came to Canada before the First World War. —Michael Z. 2005-12-1 20:38 Z

I second Michael. Ukrainian is my second native language, I listened to UA TV/Radio much in my life (where they speak with the classical, rather than regional pronounciations). In school I attended, the UA language/literature was studied fully and seriously for 10 years, etc. No one ever brought up to me this "W" as "correct". Yes, I heard this in regional speaks. Yes, the UA L education in Soviet times might have been ideologically affected, but still, that's what people taught in schools. After the independence, the influence of the West Ukrainian and Ukrainian diaspora centered scholarship got more influence on the national one and I won't be surprized to found some linguist now writing that "V in KAVA is just another bad consequence of Ukraine's being under the Russian boot for XXX years". Whatever the reasons, do not exagerate the W. We should just document the usage rather than correct it. Let the media and the schools do the work on "correcting" and we, at WP, will document the changes when and if they succeed. --Irpen 18:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Whoever reads in Ukrainian, see also the article in Ukrayinska Pravda: Все ґеніяльне просто або українців можуть відучити розмовляти мовою Шевченка. --Irpen 18:56, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
So I updated Ukrainian language#Phonetics with some material which was uncontested at Ukrainian alphabet, based on my experience and not any source (although I do have a rather dense reference which I will consult later and try to expand). Please have a look and comment or revise if it's incomplete or incorrect. —Michael Z. 2005-12-15 19:10 Z


I'm reverting the passages of the article concerning the pronunciation of the Ukrainian letter в. Here are the reasons for this reverse:

1) The fact the Ukrainian sound represented by the letter в is bilabial and not labiodental is supported by the table from the reference book "Сучасна українська мова" by Л. Ю. Шевченко, В. В. Різун, Ю. В. Лисенко (Київ, "Либідь", 1993) you can see at http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%BE%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F:Ukrainian_consonants.jpg.

2) The bilabial realisation of the Ukrainian в in any position is supported by the fact native speakers of authentic Ukrainian normally experience a problem pronouncing the [f] sound and usually replace it with the хв combination. The Russian native speakers have no difficulty pronouncing the same sound. The reason is very simple: the Russian в stands for a labiodental consonant and is the voiced counterpart of ф. Moreover: the Russian speakers do actually pronounce в as [f] at the end of words or before another voiceless consonant. If the Ukrainian в stood for the labiodental consonant, too, like in Russian, Ukrainian native speakers could pronounce [f] just as easily. The fact they can't means they have no reference for this sound in their native phonetic system.

3) The fact quite a few public speakers (including those from the mass media) pronounce this sound as a labiodental consonant can by no means be seen as a proof it is to be pronounced this way in standard Ukrainian. After all, most of those people are Russian native speakers who tend to export their Russian linguistic habits in general and their phonetic habits in this particular case into Ukrainian. This phenomenon is known as linguistic interference.

62.194.8.235 13:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Brief answer point by point:

1)Wikipedia is not the source to cite in support of proposed ideas
2)HVastiv, etc. is often said in local speaks, but this is not standard Ukrainian.
3) Announcers of central TV channels is a way to check standards and it always a safe bet. Their speak conforms and always conformed the "classical Ukrainian pronunciation" (maybe not the best term but I can't come up with the better one off hand). While Kuchma and Tymoshenko may be the Russian native speakers, the professional announcers rarely are.

P.S. go to talk with your proposals first. Read Be bold guideline, particularly its "...but Don't be reckless" chapter. Don't stir the hornet's nest. Always check the history on complex subjects before editing and use talk for proposals. --Irpen 14:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

I've given you a sound proof of my statement from the source that's been officially approved by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education for philology students of higher education institutions. The source I've quoted stipulates unambigously the Ukrainian sound represented by the letter в is bilabial, and not labiodental. I can't but be surprised by your behaviour afterwards, especially as your professional interest is rather distant from linguistics. Concerning the Polish sound: the situation with [v] and [f] is identical to the Russian one. This is another proof you hardly have the qualifications to judge on linguistic matters.

62.194.8.235 15:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

From Kubijovyč, Volodymyr ed. (1963). Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopædia, Vol. 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-3105-6. :
"Ukrainian: Its Position Among the Slavic Languages" by J.B. Rudnyckyj, under "characteristics which it shares with some Slavic languages and which divide it from others", p. 447:
"12. The pronunciation of v as a non-syllabic u̯ [u with combining inverted breve below —MZ] at the end of a syllable; for example, krov (blood), lavka (bench), pravda (truth), (pronounced kroŭ, laŭka, praŭda). The interchange of the v and u of the type vdova–udova (widow), vže–uže (already) belongs here. This is also found in Belorussian."
"The Modern Ukrainian Literary Language" by D. Čiževsky and G. Shevelov, under "Consonants", p. 450:
". . . the labials p, b, f, v, m;. . . "
"The most important peculiarities in the pronunciation of the individual sounds are: v after a vowel but not followed by a vowel has a bilabial pronunciation, which usually creates a falling diphthong with a vowel (dav—gave [daŭ]), and between vowels it may optionally have a bilabial or labio-dental pronunciation; . . . "
P. 451:
"The consonants g, f occur chiefly in foreign words; in popular speech and sometimes even among the educated classes they are replaced by h, x(v). . . ."
under "Alternation of consonants", p. 450:
"Then there is a tendency in the vowels u, i to become "shortened" after a vowel into the corresponding consonants "ŭ, j" (if semantic or stylistic reasons do not forbid it) and, on the other hand, for the consonants v, j between consonants to become "lengthened" into the vowels u, i. These phenomena appear in spelling as the alternation of u : v, i : j (stav ity—stala ity 'he started going'—'she started going'; pišov u xatu—pišla v xatu 'he went into the cottage'—'she went into the cottage'). Such phenomena which are typical in the word-initial positions and are controlled by the rhythm of the phrase may even result in the complete loss of the sounds, v, u, i (ihra–hra—play, uves’–ves’—the whole, vuxo–uxo—ear)."
There's also discussion of v : u interchange in morphophonemics, but that's getting out of the scope of this discussion, and an article on Ukrainian dialects, and a history section which mentions Polish and Russian influence—these may have something relevant but I haven't looked at them yet. —Michael Z. 2005-12-16 18:32 Z
The way I interpret this, and the earlier citations provided by Yakudza, is that the phoneme is /v/, and this should be used in most general phonemic transcriptions of Ukrainian words.
Allophones of /v/ are [v], [w], [ʋ] (and possibly [β] and [β̞]?)—these occur based on position in the word, adjacent sounds in other words, regional accent, language register, individual speaker, etc. These can be used in narrower phonetic transcriptions, especially when demonstrating these particular features of Ukrainian language.
A general transcription is [vovk], regardless of our argument about whether I say [voʋk], or you say [wowk]. Likewise, we can't agree on [mova]/[mowa], so the general phonemic transcription, [ukraˈjinsʲka ˈmɔva] should be used at the top of this article. —Michael Z. 2005-12-16 21:18 Z
I suppose that it is necessary be based on knowledge specialist on phonologies. Support User:62.194.8.235. There is very good article of Tonya Belous IPA for Ukrainian. In article there is e-mail of the author and invitation to cooperation. Invite her for editing and Talk the sections to phonologies. In transcriptions of the cyrillics [кaˈва] - in IPA [kaʋa]. Allophone [v] no in ukrainian. For word wolf (in cyrillic transcriptions [воўк] ) - three variants to transcriptions [wou̞k], [wɔwk,] [ʋɔwk] , but [vovk] incorrect. (Тут не йдеться про розбіжність у вимові - "вовк" вимовляється всюди однаково, а якщо десь в Карпатах трохи інакше то це не тема для цього розрілу. Але є невеликі робіжності у передачі української транскрипції засобами IPA. Але розбіжностей, як правильно вимовляти слова, наприклад "кава" або "вовк", між фонологами чи лінгвістами нема.) Apropos, probably more it is correct - [ukraˈjinʲsʲka ˈmɔʋa] - (n palatalized) (if use allophones [ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ 'mɔʋɐ] )--Yakudza 23:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
You're saying the phoneme [v] is not present at all in Ukrainian? That certainly isn't true. [ˈmɔʋa] and [wɔwk] are not pronunciation that I'm familiar with. —Michael Z. 2005-12-19 15:26 Z

Please, more phonetics and grammar information

I was just going to ask for someone to explain a bit more clearly the situation regarding the phoneme represented by the letter "в", whether it's realised as [v], [ʋ], or [w] and in which positions. But this will have to be a more general complaint about the presentation of the phonetics and other aspects of the structure of the language: it is woefully inadequate at the moment.

I expected a lot more from an article on such an important subject. I'm finding very little information here about the actual language itself apart from its history and sociology. It is understandable that most people who edit here will be interested in those bits, but do keep in mind that many people who consult this article will be looking for information on the structure of the language itself. --Iceager 17:44, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I've been planning to slowly start adding some information. I'm no linguist, but I should be able to manage to start filling out some of the basics which are missing here. From your point of view, which aspects should be the highest priority? —Michael Z. 2005-12-1 20:17 Z

The article currently only has a comparative grammar section to deal with the grammar, so it is difficult to approach for those with limited familiarity with East Slavic languages. I propose that the comparative grammar section be incorporated into a more general grammar section that gives an independent treatment of the language, explaining the gender system; the declension of nouns, pronouns, etc.; verb conjugation; and syntax, with examples given, so that those with no prior knowledge about Slavic languages are given at least the basic descriptions of the grammar.

There should be a section on the sounds of Ukrainian, and it should at least have a complete sound inventory (which the article also currently lacks). Following most phonology articles on Wikipedia, the sounds should be organised around phonemes. I've seen Ukrainian sounds analysed into about 30 distinct phonemes, and they could be presented here. I think the phonemes have been analysed differently though (the orthography section talks about thirty-eight phonemes), and I don't know which system if any is the currently agreed upon, so we should take a decision about that. The description of the phonemes should include IPA info, names of the sounds (e.g. voiceless bilabial plosive), allophones, and how they are written.

There already is a separate article on the Ukrainian alphabet, so any further elaboration on the writing system should mainly take place there.

These are preliminary suggestions only, as I am no linguist and I don't know how much attention each aspect of the Ukrainian language would require in an overview treatment. I feel a bit stupid to be making all these grand suggestions knowing perfectly well that I know almost nothing about the subject and can't contribute to the actual writing of the article, but I hope I can at least encourage those who are qualified to expand the article in these directions to do so. Thanks! --Iceager 05:33, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

No worries; you shouldn't have to be a linguist to be able to learn something from this. I don't think I even have to be a linguist to contribute to it!
I think I would start with the sound inventory. Off the top of my head, I think there are about 30 basic consonant and vowel sounds in the alphabet, but some of the consonants can be palatalized, and there are two phonemes written with digraphs—that's probably around 38. And as I was writing this, I noticed that iopq started Ukrainian phonology. It's too late now, but in the next few days I'll look that over and see how I can contribute there and summarize here.
I know less about grammar terminology, but I have a couple of references, and should be able to expand that section a bit later on. Thanks for the input. —Michael Z. 2005-12-2 06:50 Z

Cyrillic in Wikipedia

Please see the new page at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at

  1. Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
  2. Discussing potential revision of current practices

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:41 Z

Simple Future Tense

Hi, i speak Russian and i want to understand the Ukrainian tense system better. Here's what i understand about the tenses:

This tenses are similar to Russian:

  1. Imperfective present - пишу, пишеш, пише, пишемо etc.
  2. Perfective future - напишу, напишеш, напише, напишемо etc.
  3. Complex imperfective future - буду писати, будеш писати, буде писати, будемо писати etc.
  4. Past perfective and imperfective - (на)писав, (на)писала, (на)писалo, (на)писали

However can anyone explain the future simple tense? It doesn't exist in Russian at all. Is it used with both perfective and imperfective? For example, is it possible to say both:

  • Imperfective: писатиму, писатимеш, писатиме, писатимемо, писатимете, писатимуть

and

  • Perfective: написатиму, написатимеш, написатиме, написатимемо, написатимете, написатимуть

Or is it a terrible mistake to use future simple with the perfective?

Also, can someone clarify once and for all, is the pre-past (or whatever its name) like був читав is used in modern language?

Thank you very much for answering.--Amir E. Aharoni 08:56, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Давноминулий час - pluperfect (Plusquamperfectum) It Is Used in modern language, but seldom.
Вказує на те, що одна дія передувала іншій. “Спершу був криком напустився на них, але вгамували його одразу” [12] See also: [13]--Yakudza 22:43, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. And what about the future tense? Is it possible to write both написатиму and писатиму or is only one of them correct?--Amir E. Aharoni 09:46, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
писатиму and буду писати are equivalent translations of "will be writing". напишу is equivalent to "will write".--NightOnEarth 14:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Pysaty is "to write", napysaty "to write down". —Michael Z. 2005-12-15 18:09 Z
I know Russian, so i understand the difference between the meanings of the two verbs. My question is: Is it possible to say "написатиму" in the Future tense or is it just wrong?--Amir E. Aharoni 18:33, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
just wrong --Yakudza 20:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
The correct form "напишу".--AndriyK 20:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Accents and Dialects

I purpose we give this area more attention. I added about Volynian and our Kuban balachka. Any more suggestions. -- Kuban kazak 22:50, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

The Categorization Dialects in this section is unscientific and random. Surzhyk is not Dialect (Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken, see Russian language), Standard language is also not Dialect. Ukrainian language has three base Dialect (наріччя): North (Polissya), South-East and South-West. And several subdialects (говори): до північного наріччя входять: східнополіський, середньополіський, західнополіський діалекти; до південно-східного наріччя — середньонаддніпрянський, слобожанський, степовий діалекти; до південно-західного наріччя — лемківський, надсянський, закарпатський, покутсько-буковинський, гуцульський, бойківський, наддністрянський, волинський, подільський діалекти. Ukrainian language. Encyclopedia. Kiev. 2000.
So, Volynian dialect not include polissian, Galician - incorrect ter, rusyn - too amorphous term. (Темін русин в різні часи означав не одне й те саме. Колись русинами себе називали фактично всі українці та білоруси, у середині 19 ст. тільки галичани, а сьогодні русинами себе називають тільки українці (русини) Пряшивщини (Словаччина) та Воєводини (Сербія та Чорногорія). Ні гуцули, ні бойки зараз себе русинами не вважають, і тільки невелика частина лемків вважає себе русинами. Тому не варто його надто розширено вживати) --Yakudza 20:47, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
Here are two maps to prove it: [14] and [15]. The latter map bases its data on the 1897 census (which although treated Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians as same people, Russkiye, destinguished them by their language Great, Small and White respectively), results for which can be found here. Now having lived in Volyn and been to Pollesia several times I can honestely say that the spoken languages are identical. One can consider Polessian to be the most Ukrainian Belarusian dialect and Volynian the most Belarusian Ukrainian dialect. Here is a site on Ukrainian dialects with a map. Feel free to input these sources into the article.
This Map with personal page of some student shows only part South-West Dialects. Your observations for Volynian dialects more interesting, can you their will publish in other place. Wikipedia is not place for original studies --Yakudza 11:56, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Original study as it may be, I would still like to know the difference between Volynian and your so-called "Westpolessian" dialect. My wife (native Volynian) knows of no difference between the two tongues. -- Kuban kazak 14:41, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Dear Kuban kazak, please read carefully the WP:Verifyability policy. All you edits should be supported by creadible sources. I'll remove your POV's from the article. You are free to return them back, provided that creadible sources are cited.--AndriyK 21:02, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

"Balachka"

Are there any sources confirming that Kuban dialect is called "Balachka" in scientific literature?--AndriyK 13:21, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Here is a map of Russian dialects explaining that the Kuban is a direct mixture of the two.
And a bit more info from here (page 148) [16]
By the way the site that you keep on giving is I am sorry to say incorrect. Where have you herd Ukrainian in Crimea or Volynian in Ternopol --Kuban kazak 16:03, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I did not find the word "Balachka" in the sources you cited. I cite the encyclopaedia "Українська мова"("Ukrainian language"). If you do not like the site, you could try to to find this book in the library :).--AndriyK 16:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

It is not about the book, it is about the map which states that the Russophone Southeast and Crimea speak some Southern and Southwestern dialect, which contradicts a number of facts. Like the one that Crimea has never been Ukrainophone. Balachka is what we call it, I am not sure myself if that is the official name of the dialect, the source does say that the Kuban dialect is a mix of Ukrainian and Russian. -- Kuban kazak 17:29, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

The map is not intended to give the information about the percentage of people speaking Ukrainian or Russian. This is a map of dialects. It merely states that those in Crimea who speak Ukrainian speak mostly steppe (rather than, for example, Hutsul or Podillia) dialect. The percentage of this people in the total population of the region is another question which is also addressed in the article but in another paragraph.

Hmm very interesting, but from what I heard in announcements in Simferopol airport it sounded more what you call "standard" Ukrainian. (BTW that's the only time you'll hear Ukrainian there) Cosidering that the Ukrainian minority in Crimea is mostly Urban and migrated in the latter half of 20th century I am not sure of that. What makes you think they came from the steppes and not from all over the republic? -- Kuban kazak 17:59, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Concerning Kuban dialect, I think if no academic sources use "balachka", we should not use it either. So far, we found two viewpoints in the scientific literature on the Kuban dialect:

  1. a part of Steppe dialect of Ukrainian
Not surprising considering where my ancestors Zaporozhian Cossacks lived, I put that yet someone chose to remove that. -- Kuban kazak 17:59, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
  1. a dialect formed as junktion of Ukrainian and Russian. I think both viewpoint should be presented in the article.--AndriyK 17:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I agree as well, I mean when we came to the Kuban none of us spoke Galician, for example. Yet as junction as it may be I think the fact that all of the rural schools in Krasnodar Krai use teach Russian grammar speaking in a dialect which although might sound Ukrainian-like is perfectly coinciding with the language taught. I put that down as well. Yet someone did not like the pharases "Uses Russian grammar". -- Kuban kazak 17:59, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Verifiability

Please pay attention that your edits should be supported by verifiable sources, including your recent edits and reverts of Ukrainian language. --AndriyK 11:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC) Could you please explaine the reasons for the tags you added?--AndriyK 11:45, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, I object to your flooding my talk page with your trollish comments. Use the article's talk page to jot down your sparse thoughts. Secondly, if you want refs, you are welcome to go to Russia and find a single person speaking Ukrainian language in the areas you refer to. I've been to Ukraine and even to Kiev a couple of times and haven't seen anyone speaking Ukrainian, actually. Therefore, your attempts at reversing the actual situation and misinforming the readers are absurd. --Ghirla | talk 12:14, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Mate with all my previous support, I have to oppose here. If anything then I must tell you that the dialect in question is not as much as percentage spoken (I mean the steppe dialect is non-existant as the whole south and east of Ukraine speak Russian), but geographical. First of all the dialects which you challenge are considered to be as Russian as they are Ukrainian. If you go village by village from Poltava to Kursk you will yourself not notice how the Ukrainian transforms into Russian. Because there is no linguistical border (as there is between Galician and Volynian dialect for example) it is more correct to assume the questioned tongue as a separate dialect and consider this transition as both a Russian and Ukrainian. You are more than welcome to add these dialects to the article Russian Language. -- Kuban kazak 14:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Verifiability carefully. Your personal impression and original research like "haven't seen anyone speaking Ukrainian" are not apropriate for WP articles. The info you do not like is based on the academic source. The references are given in the article. As far as sources are already there, there are no reasons to retain the tags. If you can find sources stating the opposite then we can mention the disagreement between the sources in the article. But so far we have only one viewpoint confirmed by references.--AndriyK 12:47, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I haven't seen any of your "sources" as yet. An old map - taken from where? drawn by yourself? - is hardly a source. They write many interesting things on toilet walls as well. As for another "source" - litopys.org.ua - the website is a notorious stronghold of ukrainian nationalism and pseudoscience. Unless you provide *reputable* and *neutral* sources for your allegations, I have to rephrase them along the lines of "Kuban dialect of the Russian language", etc. --Ghirla | talk 13:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

As I already explained above, the source cited is the Енциклопедія "Українська мова"(Encyclopaedia "Ukrainian language"). The map is also from there. The reference to the site are given for convenience. If you do not like the site, you can go to the library and find the book there. :) Do you have any other objections?--AndriyK 14:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have. Please put a notice that the dialects in question: a) spoken in rural areas only; b) may be considered as much Russian as they are Ukrainian, per Kuban kazak's comment above. Thanks, Ghirla | talk 15:05, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

The available sources do not confirm what you says. (Athough (a) is likely true). Concerning (b), this may be true for Kuban dialect (two sources disagree).--AndriyK 15:13, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

And my map? Or the fact that Kuban never wrote in Ukrainian? Bryansk, Kharkov, Belgorod dialects are as Russian as Ukrainian. -- Kuban kazak 15:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Your map says nothing about Slobozhanskyi dialect and its relation to Russian. What it sais is related to Kuban dialect only. If I am mistakin, let's discuss it in details.
Please read a bit a bout the history of your home region [17]. You will see that there were Ukrainian schools, Ukrainian newspapers, Ukrainian books were printed before 1933.
Well there are books printed in Ukrainian in Russia now. I mean Ukrainian press still exists in the Kuban, especially nowadays when we have so much gastarbaiterov working (4 on ataman's roof alone). But what does this article say? About some random Union of Kuban and Ukraine, which I am sorry to say none seem to have heard of, moreover more than half of the man's sources, whose books I could not find in any of our Cossack libraries, are his own previous works, as well as BS... like
  • Панченко О. Розгром українського вiдродження на Кубанi. — Лос-Анжелос, 1973. — 92 с
Published in America in 1973, which I am sorry to say I cannot comment (just reading how they portray some of the non-US history is a direct insult to all nations of the International community). Finally in terms of schools...It is true that some of the urban schools taught (and still teach Ukrainian language) but they have special Ukrainian status. I mean in Kiev you have schools with emphasis on ballet, arts, music...languages. Those schools still exist. Also there are dedicated Ukrainian schools, where teaching is done in Ukrainian compleately, just like you have schools which teach in Russian, but their proportion of other schools in Krasnodar Krai is not greater as it is in Moscow or Tatarstan or in Khanty-Mansiyskiy Avtonomnyi Okrug (Although unlike in Ukraine, nobody threatens their closure). So I do not understand the argument of your article. -- Kuban kazak 00:40, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Indeed, you did not understand the article. Did you read it.
This article does not assert that Ukrainian is widelly used in Kuban region at present. Just in oposite, it was used there in the past but was nearly eliminated by repressions, genocide (Holodomor) and a strong Russification policy.--AndriyK 14:28, 31 December 2005 (UTC)
Read my thing again. It says there were a group of people of whom nobody seems to have heard (otherwise they can be called significant) that got shot and repressed. Does it say that Ukrainian was the main language of Kuban at any point? No. In terms of genocide I must say that all fingers coming to Holodmor in Kuban are either from Ukraine or the west. Don on the other hand officially commemorates the famine, which is indisputed. And there are memorials in Novocherkassk, Rostov, Volgodonsk, Taganrog to the victims of it. Here it is very likely that in most rural households to find people >80 that will speak perfect Balachka, yet claim to be 100% Russian, and will remember the genocide of the 1918-1924 (Razkazachivan'e). About 1932-1933 most will say it was a bad crop, and remember how they went to the Don steppes in relief missions. As for Russification? How can you make us Cossacks more Russian? --Kuban kazak 19:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
What's the point of providing detailed explanations for AndriyK? He knows the truth better than yourself. Trolls will be trolls. --Ghirla | talk 11:30, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Bryansk and Belgorod dialects are Russian, but there are Ukrainian villages in the corresponding Bryansk and Belgorod regions. In Kharkiv more people speak Russian than Ukrainian, but in Kharkiv region Ukrainian (Slobozhanskyi dialect) is very common.--AndriyK 16:06, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Which "sources"? --Ghirla | talk 15:15, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I explained you above. Please read carefully.--AndriyK 16:06, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I think most linguistics mapping, by its nature, considers the vernacular speech; ie, what's spoken in the village. In the case of Ukraine, what's spoken in the cities may be very different. Of course this should be noted. There are a couple more maps linked from user talk:Robin Hood#Slavic languages map.

By the way, yet another map based on F. Zhylko appears as fig. 339 in Kubijovyc's Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopædia (1963:472). —Michael Z. 2005-12-29 19:20 Z

Article Tags

The current tag has been removed until there is a clear statement of the dispute on this page. Once the dispute is outlined, it would allow going to specific sentences and tagging them instead of the whole article, which is fairly well referenced. Once the references are found or disputed senteces removed, all the web links need to be changed into actual footnote references. This is important since many references link to some maps, the origin of which is not clear without addition research. Also, web links may dissappear with time. Please use a footnote mechanism to write a few words of description for each link.--Andrew Alexander 19:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Usually, if there is a dispute over a page, it is a bad idea to remove tags put by the other side unless there was an RfC process that had clearly shown consensus about the removing tag. As I understand from the above section Ghirlandajo's objects with the statement that a significant part of the Russian Federation (especially, Kursk, Voronezh and Bryansk Oblasts) are ukrainophonic. He might also object to the number of 4.3 millions ukrainophones in the Russian Federation. This number is not in the references provided http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ukr . I believe the number was based on the assumption that all people classified by the old Soviet passport as Ukrainians are Ukrainophones, that is simply not true. I personally think that the tag Original research applied to the whole article is too strong, so I will put Sectfact over the Current usage section. I am speaking only for myself, so Ghirlandajo is free to restore the original research tag, but as a common courtesy, I would expect him to explain the tag on the talkpage.
Where did you see "the statement that a significant part of the Russian Federation (especially, Kursk, Voronezh and Bryansk Oblasts) are ukrainophoni"? There is no such statement in the article. The article is just reproduce the info from the cited academic source that there are people in the corresponding regions speaking dialects of Ukrainian. The question concerning the number of these people in each region and their their share in the total population is not addressed at all. Usually the tag fact/sectfact is used if the info is not confirmed by sources. This is not obviosly the case.
Concerning the total number of Ukrainophones in Russia, Ghirlandajo did not mantion any his objections about this number. You (or anybody else) are free to find another source and correct the number. If somebody would object against your number, then there would be reason to put the "disputed" tag. But there is no such a dispute at present.--AndriyK 22:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Well the only source provided says nothing about 4 milliones ukrainophones in Russia. It only said that there are 31 mln unrainophones in Ukraine, 150thousands in Poland and 100 thousand in Slovakia, I have no idea there the rest of the numbers in the table came from. abakharev 22:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


There is a map of Russian dialects provided on the article page by Kuban kazak that shows some regions in Russia around Kursk having Ukrainian dialects. So that seems to be referenced. Regarding the numbers of Ukrainian speakers, this needs to be confirmed.--Andrew Alexander 04:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Dear Alex, if you doubt a single number there is no reason to tag the whole section. The {{fact}} template is sufficient in this case.--AndriyK 13:21, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Sacondary language???

What means "secondary" language? As far as I know unrecognized Transnistria has three oficial languages. If you can prove that some of them are "primary" and some are "secondary", please provide reference.--AndriyK 14:19, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Well official Tiraspol (parliament hearings, courts etc) uses Russian [18], [19]. And preatty much all the signposts, adverts are in Russian as well. So... -- Kuban kazak 16:39, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Is there any source calling Ukrainian as "secondary" language in nrecognized Transnistria or this is your personal judgement?--AndriyK 21:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Voicing assimilation

Does anyone have information about voicing assimilation in Ukrainian? From the little information I have gathered, Ukrainian, unlike other major living Slavic languages excluding Serbian/Croation, does not feature end devoicing (although there might be dialectal variation in this). Also, I've seen examples of where an unvoiced consonant is followed by a voiced one, the whole cluster becomes voiced (eg: vokzal->vogzal), but where a voiced consonant is followed by an unvoiced one, neither is affected. Does this always hold true? If not, which consonant clusters are affected? And if anyone could actually give examples of consonant clusters to show these rules, I think it would be a useful addition to the article. --Iceager 14:19, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Russian Empire census

Since AA is offended by the "Little Russian" table heading, it's reasonable to assume that other readers may also be. The current state, with an explanation in the text and modernized table headers is perfectly clear, so I suggest we stick with it. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 03:34 Z

If A.A. is also "offended" my common English name of the capital of Ukraine, I see no reason to move the article just because of that. "Little Russia" is a historically correct term and is used in academic historic literature in the proper context. Proper context is the key here and no one is using the term in Wikipedia for the modern-day Ukraine, its language and its people. I wrote an article devoted to the term which others improved. The term would not have been used by academics should it have been offensive, just like ethnic slurs, commonly used in 19th century are not used in today's academic literature. That fact that unlike the N-word, the term is being used today, means that it is appropriate. We cannot modify articles and deviate from the terminology accepted in academia just because Andrew Alexander choose to take an offence in this or that word. --Irpen 04:16, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Would it be better to put the quotes around the Little Russia word like "Little Russia", to show that Wikipedia does not promote the word but that was the actual term used in the census (that may have a slighly different meaning from the modern word Ukraine)? abakharev 04:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Fine with me. Please note that I explained the term and the fact that some take an offence with it in the Little Russia article I wrote a while ago. While, in proper historical context I do not consider it offensive, it is certainly inappropriate as a replacement of the word "Ukraine" in the mdoern context. The historic context is a different matter. --Irpen 04:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

But "Little Russian" is not used exclusively or overwhelmingly to describe 19th-century Ukrainians in history works—for our purposes it's a direct translation of "Ukrainian", which is used throughout this article. I would say that if we're directly quoting the census, for example, duplicating its own summary tables, then using "Little Russian" may be more appropriate. If we're offering our own summary of their data, then labelling it with the term is a bit of an unnecessary anachronism. Furthermore, by the time of this census, the term was not universally accepted, and reflects a certain attitude towards the language, perhaps analogous to the use of Negro in 1960s or '70s USA.
The term is important, as an indicator of the changing status of the language, and it may be a good idea to review the entire article with an eye on how the different names for Ukrainian and Ukrainians are explained and used. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 17:19 Z
Thanks Michael. This is reasonable and objective. Unfortunately I don't expect much reason from a genocide denier like Ipren. --Andrew Alexander 02:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Very well, Andrew Alexander, than leave "summary tables" alone, as Michael suggested. Terms are explained in their appropriate articles. We cannot change the article because you happen to take offence in this or that term. If you want to see only Ukrainian names, I suggest you stick with Ukrainian wiki. I do not suggest that you leave and go there, but since you are interested in English Wikipedia, learn to accept the term used in En-language academic literature. --Irpen 02:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Michael, BTW it is already done in the way you suggested. The original terminology is left in the summary tables but the preceeding paragraph says: "the census recorded the Ukrainian language as Malorusskiy, 'Little Russian' and the Russian language as Velikorusskiy, 'Great Russian'."

If I understood Michael correctly, using the old terminology would be reasonable if we would reproduce any original tables. The table in the article is not original, it was compiled from from the census data. So I do not see any reason for using the old terminology (altough the fact of its usage can be mentioned).--AndriyK 16:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, regarding A.A. editing this phrase, please note that this term was used not only by the "Russian Imperialists" at the time, but in the world historiography. The example of 1911 EB comes of course to everyone's head. Now, again, this may reflect the influence of the Russian scholarship at the time, but we cannot do anything about it. Encyclopedias is not the place to correct systemic bias. It should be first done in the scholarly literature, and after that, find its way to an encyclopedias. This is exactly what happened. Now, that no serious scholar view Ukrainian as the "Little Russian or Southern Russian dialect of the Russian language, we do not include such silly views in Wikipedia. --Irpen 02:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Only the fact that this term was used by the authorities of the imperial Russia is relevant at that point. The definition "prevailing terminology" is not correct. The term "Little Russian" was not used in Austrian Empire, it was not very popular among Ukrainian intelligencia, etc.--AndriyK 20:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
And like I said, the census proved to the Russian Imperial authorities that Ukrainian was a different language and seven years later it would be officialy recognised and unbanned from publishing. --Kuban kazak 13:42, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

AndriyK, the Austrian Empire didn't use English. The term is used in 1911 Britannica. That makes it prevailing in English terminology. And, FYI, in case you don't know, the original meaning of the term simply referred to the fact that the territory of the modern-day Ukraine was the heartland of Rus and what was in the north were the outskirts, hence the names Μικρα Ρωσία and Μακρα Ρωσία (the large one with the outskirts included). It was not meant to be offensive and that some like yourself and your buddy choose to pretend being offended in order to change the content of the article is ridiculous. But in any case, this was a contemporary term and should be used in the context but with explanation that the modern term is "Ukrainians". We are doing exactly that. Now, if someone used the term in reference to the modern day Ukraine, I would be first to change it. Now, please don't bring your buddies to new revert wars. This article was warred over long enough. --Irpen 23:23, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I added "now obsolete" to the term's description. As for the ban in Russia, it is already described in this very article and Andrew Alexander's repetitions of his favorite theses everywhere in the article, including the intro, doesn't make the article better. The term was indeed prevailing not only in the Imperial Russia as explained above along with its etymology. I replaced a "fact" template about favorable conditions in Bukovina with the link to the Chapter in Subtelny (in Ukrainian). The English version isn't available online. I would welcome and respond to any reasonable comments. --Irpen 02:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Why not split the difference and say that the term was used (including in English) at that time, AND was the official policy of the Russian Empire? Or maybe people should be re-directed to the article Little Russian to learn more about the naming policy. Kevlar67 10:29, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
I think that the that times prevailing terminology passage is misleading, contradicting to the article's context and offensive. You know, Russia was (and is[citation needed]) a totalitarian state without press[citation needed] and thought[citation needed] freedom. So there simply coudn't be prevailing and less spread terminologies - but only official one. Moreover, this and other articles directly state that Imperial govt. was banning Ukrainian. So why hiding this fact few lines below under prevailing propaganda term?
I will insist on this edition of the paragraph. Gentlemen, one more changing of it - and the page will be POV-tagged again and demanded for protection. I think this extensive and fierce discussion page is just another reason for it. Ukrained 10:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Sorry but is this Russophobic bullshit about modern Russia relevant at all? And in that case is Ukraine at all that better? Please do not politise the dicussion more than necessary. --Kuban kazak 13:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Now enough with OT, the Imperial government did not ban the language because it wanted to repress Ukrainians, it banned it because the people reffered to it as Ruthenian (which they misinterpreted as Russian) and thus saw it as a polonised, ruined dialect of Russian [citation needed]. They called it little Russian not due to some way of making Ukrainians feel little, but out of geographical and historical senses. (There are areas in other countries wich are also called little Poland etc.). However the census (first one in Russia, even a medal was devised to the census takers for the scale of the works that were required), showed that most of the respondends referred to their home language not as Ruthenian (ie Russian in Empire's eyes) as during previous times, but as Malorussian. Also the term Ukrainian was only begining to overtake Ukrainian in Autsro-Hungary and it is wrong to assume that the term was used by Ukrainians in Russian Empire [citation needed]. Regardless as a result the language in 1904 (when the result of the census were finally processed and made public) Malorussian, as was Belorussian, as was many other languages, were officialy recognised as separate linguistic entities and rural schools in those areas bagan to convert to the native laguage [citation needed].--Kuban kazak 13:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Also we must remember the census took some of the dialects that were formed from mixtures of Ukrainian and Belarusian, and Russian and Ukrainian as Malorussian. Example is the west-polessian group of tongues and our Cossack Balachka, as well as the border area between Russia and Ukraine. In both cases the dialects show only influnces of the language (some strong enough for Ukrainian grammar to apply eg. Polessian, some not eg. our Balachka). In that case the census is only an indication of the maximum spread of Ukrainian linguistic influences, from which maps such as these originate [citation needed].The maps do not show the spread of ethnic Ukrainians, but only the spread of maximum areal of Ukrainian linguistic influence [citation needed]. Whilst this map, which Russian nationalists try to base their arguments for shows the minimum ethnocentric Ukrainian territory. For the lands in between means that they have been colonised by Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian and many other speakers alike. The imperial census labeled all of these mixed accents as Malorussian [citation needed]. In this case Malorussian is a much more historical word and does necessary equal modern Ukrainian, hence it stays.--Kuban kazak 13:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
You're quite right to stick to discussing the historical facts, but I question a number of the assertions you make.
The Empire banned the language in publications, public performances, and imported books, because they saw Ukrainian national self-identity as a threat to the Empire, not out of some aesthetic principle. The word Ukrainian became accepted as a self-appelation in Dnieper Ukraine in the nineteenth century, before it became widely used by Ukrainians in Galicia in the early twentieth.
The first map is from Magocsi's Ukraine: a historical atlas (1985). I assume you are referring to the region on the map labelled "Ukrainian ethnolinguistic boundary, 1930". Reinterpreting Magocsi's work is quite a stretch of original research, unless you can back it up. —Michael Z. 2006-01-28 16:27 Z

I quite agree with Michael, that the reason of the ban was the perceived threat to the concept of "unified and indivisible Russia" seen from the possibility of an increased drive towards Ukrainian (or Ruthenian or whatever you call it) self-determination. Now that said, how does it contradict that the official terminology of the Imperial Russia was prevalent in the English language at that time? We all know that it was so. The term "Ukrainians" was not widely used at the time not only by the world or the Empire, but even by the Ukrainians themselves, where it was re-introduced by the Kostomarov's circle only in the mid-19th century and has gained much usage yet. See Name of Ukraine article Michael wrote. BTW, Kostomarov himself in his bombshell letter that contradicted the official concept of the "united Russia" and later caused his exile wrote about "Northern Russian and Southern or Little Russian nation". The letter was entitled "Two Russian Nationalities" ("ДВЕ РУССКИЕ НАРОДНОСТИ"). For more, please see the Name of Ukraine, Little Russia and Kostomarov articles and links thereof.

Now the threat of user:Ukrained that he will implement this or that action after "one more changing of this paragraph" is out of place here. Anyone has a right to question the neutrality of anything in the beginning but the fact that that's time Russian Imperial terminology was prevailing in English language literature is a solid one and explained above more than once. I added "now obsolete" there to satisfy those who dislike it in the modern days (I am among them) but personal tastes is no reason to alter the article. If anyone tags the section, it would be a pity but so be it. Readers are not stupid and referred to this discussion by the "disputed" tag will be able to figure out for themselves.

Finally, I call on all parties not to throw everything together here and further complicate the issue by throwing their thoughts on, perhaps related, but different problems into this section. The oppression of Ukrainian in the Empire is a fact, this is discussed in the article at length and we can devoted time to discuss its coverage, but the discussion belongs to a different paragraph and even different section of this talk page. --Irpen 19:51, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I officially request this page to be protected. Ukrained 21:14, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead, but your request would be more likely reviewed if you provide an explanation and answer to my posts above. --Irpen 21:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Ukrained, it wouldn't be proper for me to protect this page because I've been actively involved in editing and discussion. Official requests for a neutral admin should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Given the recent edit history of this article, I anticipate that an admin would protect the page to give time for consensus to be reached.
Kuban Kazak, I suggest once more that you temper your spurious accusations of vandalism, inflammatory remarks, and name-calling in discussion and edit summaries. Don't bother with back-handed "apologies" which further insult other editors. Others aren't free of guilt either, but in the course of a few months of editing I've seen you lose your sense of humour, and become crusty and abusive—to the detriment of the atmosphere here. Stick to the facts, and get them right, or else learn to live with another version of the article.
I'm going to give it one try at an acceptable edit later tonight. If that's not accepted, then it's time to do a request for comment, and get some disinterested opinions here. The question is simple, so get your references and justifications ready, folks. Keep it brief and to the point. —Michael Z. 2006-01-29 00:53 Z


You asked for some citations here they come:

In that case the census is only an indication of the maximum spread of Ukrainian linguistic influences, from which maps such as these originate [citation needed]

Have a look at the spread of the Belarusian dialects and the population of Belarusian Guberniyas in 1897, a clear overlap is shown for Polessia. Since Polessian Belarusian is a Belarusian dialect it is fair to assume that other areas such as Voronezh or Kuban fall under the same criteria (see my map of Russian dialects), thus the term Little Russian was used to include all regions which had Ukrainian influences in dialects.

Whilst this map clearely matches the current spread of Ukrainophone population in rural Ukraine and it shows areas where dialects spoken are most Ukrainian. Those areas even in the census of 1897 had a clear majority and hence this combined with the evidence above proves that indeed the term Little Russian is a historical version of calling languages and dialects which had Ukrainophone influences. --Kuban kazak 21:47, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

You're making lots of your own inferences, based on your own interpretations of maps from different sources. You don't even know the methodology behind the compilation of those maps, nor even their dates of publication. Is the big Belarusian map a reprint or republication of an old map, or newly-compiled in 1993? What is the publication date of the map after Zhylkov, and to what period does it refer? Your inferences are original research.
To support your thesis, please cite a verifiable source which says that "Little Russian" means something other than "Ukrainian", or one which says Magocsi's "Ukrainian ethnolinguistic boundary" doesn't represent where Ukrainians live but only influenced by the language, or one which says that the 1904–5 relaxation of the ban was a result of the 1897 census figures. —Michael Z. 2006-01-29 22:11 Z
Well Magocsi's map can easily destroyed with the fact that in those territories Ukrainians currentely form all but a minority of mostly late 20th century economic migrants (gastarbaiters we call them). Moreover recentely a genetic study has been released of all the Russian and post-USSR provinces. One of its clear consenquences is that the gene pool of Russians Ukrainians and Belarusians is although slavic yet nevertheless has strong differences to satisfy them as different people. However Eastern Ukrainians, it states show quite a close genetical relation to Russians, at the same time on the opposite Ukrainian genetic spectrum, western Ukrainians show similarities to Tatars. Russians also show similarities with Finnourgic groups such as Mari, Komi-Zyryans, Komi-Permyaks and Chuvashians. Howver the most startling factor is that given the facts above, the most purest territory of Russian blood is in rural Kuban, ie us Cossacks. That coupled with that most purest Ukrainian blood can be found in the north-central part of Ukraine shows that ethnic Kuban people and ethnic Chernigovians are different people by right.
Now how can we speak a Malorusian tongue? Well people here admit that there are ethnic Ukrainians who have Russian as their native tongue. Likewise why can't you have ethnic Russians having a mixed Russo/Ukrainian dialect as a native toungue?
I think if anything then these border dialects which are classified as both Ukrainian and Belarusian; and Ukrainian and Russian prove that Little Russian in 1897 was used to refer to all dialects of Ukrainian influence. --Kuban kazak 22:32, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
Then why does the 1897 census have a separate Belorusskij category, which you left off of this table? Have you read the genetic study, or just the web article which was harshly criticized by the study's own author? If Magocsi's map can be so easily destroyed, then why don't you cite a source which does so, instead of writing another paragraph of your own anecdotal evidence and suppositions?
Sorry, I'm confused by your comment. When you write "Ukrainians currentely form all but a minority", do you mean those territories have mostly Ukrainian inhabitants? Or did you mean to write "Ukrainians currently form only a minority"? —Michael Z. 2006-01-29 22:43 Z

Ukrainian speakers in Russia

Regarding the figures in the list at Ukrainian language#Ukrainophone population: Ethnologue says 4,363,000 Ukrainian-speakers in Russia, 2.4× the figure cited. And the reference leads to a Russian-language site that's unreadable in my browser—not because it's in Russian, but because the layout is so broken that I can't read it, and I can't scroll the page properly. It says "undefined undefined undefined Численность лиц, владеющих соответствующим языком undefined Указавшие владение языком:", but when I try to scroll, the labels disappear and an unlabelled column of number appears. What is this site, and why should we use its figures instead of Ethnologue? —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 03:45 Z

My advice - get Firefox, then you will never have to worry about anything not reading. The data comes from the 2002 Russian census. --Kuban kazak 13:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. Is this the official census site?
Is there any info about what the statistics actually represent? Eg, were multiple responses allowed, or does this list only each respondents first language? If we can get some info about the methodologies used by both Ethnologue and the census, we may get more insight into how to compare the figures, and why there is such a discrepancy.
I use Safari as my main browser, arguably as standards-compliant as Firefox. I don't know the cause of the breakdown on this site, but such severe breakage has been very rare in the last few months—it used to be found mostly on sites built specifically to accommodate MSIE-specific features. Oh well; I do have the full complement of other browsers to fall back on, but I get lazy about it. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 16:25 Z
Hm—just tried the site in Firefox 1.5/Mac. Identical results to Safari. The site fails HTML validation, badly [20]. I could get on a Windows XP system if I really had to. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 16:34 Z
Here is the Main page of the census. Here is the segment about Ethnical makeup of the Population - [ http://www.perepis2002.ru/index.html?id=17 Ethnical Makeup and Language fluency, citizenship]. Point 4 is about the Spread of the language fluency (except Russian). It also gives a zip and an xls format of the file.--Kuban kazak 17:01, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Those pages work fine—but I don't read Russian. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2006-01-24 17:07 Z