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Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language

Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language. "Ukraine" doesn't mean borderland, it's another Russian attitude with the aim to humiliate Ukrainian nation. You can also look at the map and see who is really a borderland of the civilized world.

azangru 4y ago
> Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language. This is an old and complicated argument. The Russians have their language. In that language, for several centuries, probably as long as the word Ukraine existed in it, it was governed by the preposition "на". There are other Russian toponyms that are governed by the same preposition — Cuba, Caucasus, Manhattan, "the West", Middle East, "the East", etc. It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.
- dandanua 4y ago
  It's not bizarre. It's one of the many factors that has led to the genocide of Ukrainians. Little things matter too. Surely, the main factor is that Russians disrespect everyone else too, including their own less lucky compatriots. Russia must be destroyed as a culture if they can't learn to behave as civilized humans, if they want to be enslavers only. Though, it looks like Putin is already succeeding in this task.
- trhway 4y ago
  > It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". No. There is no need to change language. If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". With Ukraine becoming independent country most semantic contexts though from the "region context" have naturally become "country context". The issue here is that Russians to intentionally demonstrate their unrecognition and disrespect to Ukraine use "на" (as in the "region context") when they really speak about Ukraine as a country and thus, by Russian language rules, must have used "в". >The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre. It isn't annoyance. It is tens (actually looks more like early hundred) of thousands people dead for the reason that that factoid demonstrate - Russian refusal to recognize Ukrainian right to exist and to exist independent of Russia.
  - azangru 4y ago
    > If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". There is no such semantic distinction between these two prepositions. You speak of a human language as if it were a programming language disregarding its history (while even for programming languages, history is important, which is why javascript or php are in the state they are currently in). Just as no-one was thinking of the troubled American past when they were using the word "master" as a name of their default git branch or of the primary database, so no Russian (at least none that I am aware of) relies on the preposition "на" to tell them that something is or is not a country. They do, however, rely on their vocabulary of linguistic collocations, developed through the years of using the language, that tells them that the word "Ukraine" wants the preposition "на".
    - trhway 4y ago
      Well, i'm a native Russian speaker (left the country at the age of 28). I can only hope that you're too.
      - azangru 4y ago
        > Well, i'm a native Russian speaker Were you bothered by the preposition "на"? Did you feel, back in secondary school, that saying "на Украине" somehow made it into something less than a country? Can you remember the time when it started bothering you?
- alkyon 4y ago
  This is plainly not true. As a Polish native speaker I could observe the same old custom of relating to Ukraine/Belarus/Lithuania as a territory by using similar preposition "na" in Polish. And yes, we also use "na" for islands (Cuba, Manhattan) but it's still deprecating. What happened when your country invaded Ukraine was that practically from Day 1, everyone in Poland switched to "w Ukrainie" - a preposition used normally for the country. Edit: "w Ukrainie" instead of "w" to make it more clear what I mean
  - azangru 4y ago
    > This is plainly not true. Which part isn't true? There's an online corpus of the Russian language [0], whose entries of usage of the word Urkaine date back to the 17th century — you can easily see which preposition that word took throughout centuries. If you search through books on Russian grammar on Google Books, you will find examples specifically prescribing the preposition "на" throughout the 20th century. The whole controversy about the preposition started somewhere around the year 2000, and quickly became political. For a disinterested Russian, who is not into politics, "на" would be a natural preposition to use with this word simply because he would have encountered it in classical literature, in the movies, or on TV. It was semantically charged only for those who were aware of the debate. The response from the linguists used to be that if Ukraine wants to use the preposition "в", it is free to do so for the Russian language spoken on its territory; but that it should have no say on how a language is used in another country. I understand that in the recent years the usage of this preposition has become a political shibboleth; but I am not speaking about it from a political angle. My points are that the usage of this preposition, with this word, in Russian, is 1) historical, and 2) to those who aren't making a political statement, semantically neutral (i.e. it does not, in itself, connote derision, imperial ambitions, or anything of the kind). I have not made any claims about the Polish language (other than that, to my knowledge, it doesn't have articles). [0] - https://ruscorpora.ru/ https://ruscorpora.ru/
    - alkyon 4y ago
      It's not the question of grammar but semantics. Wrong grammar is when you put the verb before the subject in English. The grammar does not decide whether you say "on a call" or "in a call". Wrong grammar would be if you used an incorrect case after the preposition, but the very choice of it involves the speaker and what semantics or meaning is meant by them. Okay - you would find "NA" in the Russian corpus from the 17th century - but it is totally meaningless because East Ukraine was annexed in 17th century by Russia. I would have bet that this particular preposition was preferred. I don't think any books on Russian grammar recommend a specific preposition - most likely you meant some stylistic compendium, but the style is something more subjective and even political in nature, isn't it? In a nutshell, it's not a grammatical or historical thing, it's just shameless linguistical colonialism in its purest form.

azangru 4y ago

> Russians refer to Ukraine as a territory in their language by using preposition "на" instead of "в". They don't respect sovereignty of Ukraine in their language. This is an old and complicated argument. The Russians have their language. In that language, for several centuries, probably as long as the word Ukraine existed in it, it was governed by the preposition "на". There are other Russian toponyms that are governed by the same preposition — Cuba, Caucasus, Manhattan, "the West", Middle East, "the East", etc. It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre.

dandanua 4y ago
It's not bizarre. It's one of the many factors that has led to the genocide of Ukrainians. Little things matter too. Surely, the main factor is that Russians disrespect everyone else too, including their own less lucky compatriots. Russia must be destroyed as a culture if they can't learn to behave as civilized humans, if they want to be enslavers only. Though, it looks like Putin is already succeeding in this task.
trhway 4y ago
> It really is a question of whether the language should change because of a new political status of Ukraine (and therefore all its speakers should change their linguistic habits); or whether this word should continue to be among the exceptions that take the preposition "на". No. There is no need to change language. If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". With Ukraine becoming independent country most semantic contexts though from the "region context" have naturally become "country context". The issue here is that Russians to intentionally demonstrate their unrecognition and disrespect to Ukraine use "на" (as in the "region context") when they really speak about Ukraine as a country and thus, by Russian language rules, must have used "в". >The whole situation, in which people get annoyed about a grammatical factoid of another people's language is just... bizarre. It isn't annoyance. It is tens (actually looks more like early hundred) of thousands people dead for the reason that that factoid demonstrate - Russian refusal to recognize Ukrainian right to exist and to exist independent of Russia.
- azangru 4y ago
  > If in any given phrase one means Ukraine as a region, like Caucasus, then it is "на", if one means Ukraine as country then it is "в". There is no such semantic distinction between these two prepositions. You speak of a human language as if it were a programming language disregarding its history (while even for programming languages, history is important, which is why javascript or php are in the state they are currently in). Just as no-one was thinking of the troubled American past when they were using the word "master" as a name of their default git branch or of the primary database, so no Russian (at least none that I am aware of) relies on the preposition "на" to tell them that something is or is not a country. They do, however, rely on their vocabulary of linguistic collocations, developed through the years of using the language, that tells them that the word "Ukraine" wants the preposition "на".
  - trhway 4y ago
    Well, i'm a native Russian speaker (left the country at the age of 28). I can only hope that you're too.
    - azangru 4y ago
      > Well, i'm a native Russian speaker Were you bothered by the preposition "на"? Did you feel, back in secondary school, that saying "на Украине" somehow made it into something less than a country? Can you remember the time when it started bothering you?
alkyon 4y ago
This is plainly not true. As a Polish native speaker I could observe the same old custom of relating to Ukraine/Belarus/Lithuania as a territory by using similar preposition "na" in Polish. And yes, we also use "na" for islands (Cuba, Manhattan) but it's still deprecating. What happened when your country invaded Ukraine was that practically from Day 1, everyone in Poland switched to "w Ukrainie" - a preposition used normally for the country. Edit: "w Ukrainie" instead of "w" to make it more clear what I mean
- azangru 4y ago
  > This is plainly not true. Which part isn't true? There's an online corpus of the Russian language [0], whose entries of usage of the word Urkaine date back to the 17th century — you can easily see which preposition that word took throughout centuries. If you search through books on Russian grammar on Google Books, you will find examples specifically prescribing the preposition "на" throughout the 20th century. The whole controversy about the preposition started somewhere around the year 2000, and quickly became political. For a disinterested Russian, who is not into politics, "на" would be a natural preposition to use with this word simply because he would have encountered it in classical literature, in the movies, or on TV. It was semantically charged only for those who were aware of the debate. The response from the linguists used to be that if Ukraine wants to use the preposition "в", it is free to do so for the Russian language spoken on its territory; but that it should have no say on how a language is used in another country. I understand that in the recent years the usage of this preposition has become a political shibboleth; but I am not speaking about it from a political angle. My points are that the usage of this preposition, with this word, in Russian, is 1) historical, and 2) to those who aren't making a political statement, semantically neutral (i.e. it does not, in itself, connote derision, imperial ambitions, or anything of the kind). I have not made any claims about the Polish language (other than that, to my knowledge, it doesn't have articles). [0] - https://ruscorpora.ru/ https://ruscorpora.ru/
  - alkyon 4y ago
    It's not the question of grammar but semantics. Wrong grammar is when you put the verb before the subject in English. The grammar does not decide whether you say "on a call" or "in a call". Wrong grammar would be if you used an incorrect case after the preposition, but the very choice of it involves the speaker and what semantics or meaning is meant by them. Okay - you would find "NA" in the Russian corpus from the 17th century - but it is totally meaningless because East Ukraine was annexed in 17th century by Russia. I would have bet that this particular preposition was preferred. I don't think any books on Russian grammar recommend a specific preposition - most likely you meant some stylistic compendium, but the style is something more subjective and even political in nature, isn't it? In a nutshell, it's not a grammatical or historical thing, it's just shameless linguistical colonialism in its purest form.