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> Here is what I came up with during our discussion... You are looking for reasons where there is none. * Why Brazil speaks Portuguese? * Why do we speak Engl
by lcedp 13y ago
> Here is what I came up with during our discussion...
You are looking for reasons where there is none.
* Why Brazil speaks Portuguese?
* Why do we speak English now?
* Why do people in Ukraine speak Russian instead of
Ukrainian?
Not because Russian is more expressive. But because they were killed for doing otherwise.
It's not about language features, it's about politics, wars, colonization, economics.
- Sven7 13y agoWhen kids ask why, parents are at their creative best. The difference these days, is they blog about it.
- temp453463343 13y agoPeople primarily speak Russian in Ukraine not because they were afraid of being killed but because it was the lingua franca of the region and it was taught in Soviet schools. There was a lot less literature available in Ukrainian because Ukrainian was a language spoken primarily by serfs (educated people spoke a mixture of French and Russian).
- lcedp 13y agoMaya people in America primarily speak Spanish not because they were afraid of being killed but because it was the lingua franca of the region. Oh, wait...!
- vadman 13y agoSources? I'm really interested to learn who has been killed for speaking Ukrainian.
- lcedp 13y agoJust overall scope of history: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Ukrainian_language_bans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Ukrainian_langua... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDeujOxl3jc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDeujOxl3jc (they are talking about this in the video: [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bykivnia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bykivnia ) [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinnytsia_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinnytsia_massacre As the policies of Ukrainisation were halted (1931) and replaced by massive Russification approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite, intellectuals, writers, artists and clergy, had been "eliminated", executed or imprisoned, in the following decade. The term was coined for this - Executed renaissance. Many would argue that Holodomor (1932-33, 2-10 millions of Ukrainian speaking people died) was a part of Russification campaign.