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Ukrainian vs Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| paparaciii Diglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6334 days ago 204 posts - 223 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, Russian Studies: English | Message 1 of 44 11 June 2009 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just very quick question.
Can these two be considered dialects of the same language? I'm having quite heated discussion with one guy on this subject and he is trying to convince me that Ukrainian isn't separate language, that it is just a dialect of Russian. Personally I couldn't disagree more. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chelovek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6085 days ago 413 posts - 461 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 44 11 June 2009 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that's basically a pretty simple matter of whether Ukrainian was the offspring of Russian, or whether they just have a shared "ancestor" language.
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| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6773 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 44 12 June 2009 at 12:05am | IP Logged | ||
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It depends on how you look at it. Ukrainian isn't a dialect of Russian, but there is some dialectical continuity: Russian-->Ukrainized Russian-->Russianized Ukrainian-->Ukrainian: it is hard to draw a line where on of those ends and the other begins. One can go west from a village in south Russia towards Ukraine, and while every village's language would be mutually intelligible with neighbor villages, the very easternmost and the westernmost villages will not understand one another -at least not too well- at some point. So if those intermediate forms were considered the "standard", a case could be made that both Russian and Ukrainian are dialects of this intermediate language. But since noone - neither Russian nor Ukrainian language authorities- considers these so called intermediate forms the standard, Russian and Ukrainian are usually considered to be separate languages.
P.S. Besides, they HAVE to be separate languages, otherwise, I'd be demoted from a triglot to a diglot :) Edited by Russianbear on 12 June 2009 at 12:19am 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| paparaciii Diglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6334 days ago 204 posts - 223 votes Speaks: Latvian*, Russian Studies: English | Message 4 of 44 12 June 2009 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Is your native language Ukrainian or Russian?
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| Nadav3 Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6313 days ago 13 posts - 12 votes Studies: Ukrainian*, English | Message 5 of 44 26 April 2010 at 11:05am | IP Logged | ||
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No! Ukrainian IS a language! I am proud of my language, though forgot most of it and replaced it with Russian, but still it is a language and not dialect of russian.
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| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6260 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 44 26 April 2010 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is a language... and there really is no dispute about it. Besides it seems most people don't get what makes a language, a language. Many think it's having different rules, different grammars, different words etc... but no, the truth is there is a language when enough people say they speak that language, no matter how similiar it is to another existing language. And that's it, case closed, it really is that simple. Considering there are millions of people saying they speak Ukrainian, I don't see why should outsiders decide how should they view and treat their language.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 44 26 April 2010 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||
It is indeed a language but it actually DOES have much to do with the differences in vocabulary, phonology and morphology. The differences present observable or testable barriers to mutual intelligibility and both Russians and Ukrainians admit that to learn each other's language requires at least some effort or even classes. There's also some indirect demonstration of this conclusion when you notice that both Russians and Ukrainians are ambiguous about the status of "Surzhyk" which tends to be even deprecated by both groups because of its "impure" or "mixed" characteristics. What we CAN say however is that both Old Russian and Old Ukrainian likely arose as dialects of "Old East Slavic". In that sense BOTH languages in their modern forms are ultimately dialects but it's dubious or perhaps even chauvinistic when stating that one of these modern languages is the dialect of the other. On Fazla's assertion: If the most important criterion were merely the feelings or beliefs of the speech community involved, then for example Americans could perversely overturn / reject professional linguists' findings that American and British English are variants of English rather than separate languages just because they've lobbied or claimed to speak different languages for reasons of: "just because we Americans say so" or even more foolishly "just because we're native-speakers and so we're automatically correct in our judgment". This example would also work if it were Britons rather than Americans who would perform such lobbying. Leaving things to the feelings of native speakers, regardless of their degree of understanding/grasping of linguistics seems similar to allowing the figurative patients to run the asylum, and takes out a good deal of the scientific rigour from linguistics and its analysis. A speech community's strong feelings or political will related to the classification or definition of languages does not mean that it is necessarily correct nor has it reached practical conclusions for itself or outsiders who wish to study these languages/variants/dialects/idiolects. However it's because of the capriciousness of politics or emotions that leads to the striking instances where Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian are deemed to be separate languages (despite the trivial linguistic differences and virtual lack of mutual unintelligibility) while Cantonese, Hakka, Mandarin, Min and Wu are considered dialects of a Chinese language (despite the significant linguistic differences and substantial degree of mutual unintelligibility). Edited by Chung on 26 April 2010 at 10:16pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Rycerz Newbie Poland Joined 5753 days ago 33 posts - 33 votes Studies: Ukrainian, Polish* Studies: English | Message 8 of 44 26 April 2010 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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The situation with Ukrainian is very similar like with Afrikaans. There are quite young
languages with snarl history. Ukrainian it is a language but it's a mix of Polish, Russian, Dutch and German languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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