231–240 of 422 posts
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> But it was almost a century ago The USSR colapsed less than 30 years ago.
I think their point is that the repression that you're discussing is largely pre-Krushchev; that's not quite a century ago, but it's a world away from what life in the USSR was like by the 1980s.
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It focuses on Kazakh. For general topic, see: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/handouts/ussr/soviet...
It doesn't say that either.
I'm ethnical Russian living in Kazakhstan and I think that it's not a very wise decision. As correctly written in the article, overwhelming majority of Kazakhstani citizens speak and write Russian well. I just don't see any point with this change, but costs are tremendous, you have to rewrite every single book including learning books, you have to replace every street plate. When overwhelming majority of people speak…
In Crimea and Georgia, Russia used the argument of defending Russian speaking populations to justify military intervention. Perhaps, they see the Russian language as a threat to their independence?
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It doesn't say that either.
Read #6 there if you missed it. It's not very detailed, but it references the topic. If you want detailed examples of national languages suppression, search for articles about Yevsektsiya.
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Visited Ukraine (Kyiv) last summer. I spoke a little Russian with them; nobody seemed to mind.
Honest question from a less than A1 level Russian student... Is there really a significant difference between the two? I have no doubt that there is different vocabulary etc. and of course that there are political reasons to count them as different languages but are they effectively mutually intelligible?
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Read #6 there if you missed it. It's not very detailed, but it references the topic. If you want detailed examples of national languages suppression, search for articles about Yevsektsiya.
I've read it. What you said is this "During Stalin, it was the general policy to suppress national languages.". This just isn't the case, especially given the duration and the complexity (and contradictions) of policies in use during his tenure. There was certainly Russification. It's hard to point at any period where there was a straightforward "general policy to suppress national languages".
It existed in general, but it was especially intense from 1930s until early 1950s. So during Stalin in particular a lot of damage was caused. It's not hard to point out at all.
See some references here: https://sh.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1164774/FULLTEXT0...
(from page 107).
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> People have easier time learning English, and it eases the communication a lot Is this really so? Are you sure having a different alphabet would make it harder for people to learn a western language? I am Russian, and I can safely say that pretty much every literate adult in Russia who has at least a basic school education can read Latin letters just fine, because there is no way around it; the alphabet is taught a…
The Cyrillic alphabet is a major barrier to learning Russian for Americans. I can only imagine it makes Kazakh even more daunting. I don't think Cyrillic letters pervade American culture in quite the same way that Latin letters pervade Russian culture, so it's not quite the same.
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Cyrillic is not hard to learn.
Neither is the basics of the Korean writing system (I memorized the writing and pronunciation system in about a day). However, if you want to look up what a word means, is it easier to type in the Latin alphabet or hunt and peck the Korean text? I expect that for most visitors to Korea, they are not going to spend the time to learn the Korean writing system, and rely on the faith that the basic English skills of the…
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Cyrillic is also a phonetic alphabet and you can pretty easily add a Cyrillic keyboard to your phone or laptop. These arguments seem like they belong in a discussion of Chinese script or something similar.
a cyrillic keyboard to my laptop that I'd have to memorize what latin key it replaces. My laptop flips to French fairly regularly (machine was created with an image containing French and English keyboards) and it is frustrating as it is only easier in the sense that it is poking around for the 1 key to find e with grave or the like vs playing with keystrokes until I land on alt+0232 on numpad. Phones with touchscreen…