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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5807 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes  Studies: Spanish | Message 17 of 37 19 May 2009 at 5:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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If I wanted to be understood in Serbia the Czech Repulic, Slovakia and Coatia would I be better with Polish or Russian?
The reason being I like the history of those countries. Especially Serbian. So I want to pick a Slavic language which is almost 'middle of the road' and understandable by many. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6780 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 18 of 37 19 May 2009 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Russian is understood by many, but it is because a lot of people learned it, not because it is itself 'middle of the road'. If you want a language that is a 'middle of the road' language linguistically, then perhaps neither Russian nor Polish are it. I'd suggest Slovak or Ukrainian instead.
Edit. Actually "Slovio", a constructed language, is perhaps understood by pretty much all Slavic language speakers - but, of course, noone actually speaks it. Edited by Russianbear on 19 May 2009 at 5:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 19 of 37 19 May 2009 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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I'm not so sure whether we can say that the Americans occupied or dominated Western Europe in quite the same way as the Russians did. For sure Germany and Austria were occupied states divided between the Americans, British, French and Russians until the mid-1950s, but I fail to see how the Americans clamped down on Western Europe like the Russians did on Eastern Europe.
However we know that the Americans didn't have their hands full in the political machinery of the NATO members (rather they were tied up with "pursuits" in Southeast Asia, Latin America or the Middle East ;-)). For example, Britain elected Labour and Conservative governments regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican was sitting in the White House, the French often marched to the beat of a different drummer and left NATO in the 1960s only to reenter this year. Germans elected socialist and conservative governments who didn't always see eye-to-eye with the Americans but it wasn't as if the Americans then made things worse by installing more USA-friendly rulers in their stead. Another thing is that defections were largely a one-way street (East to West) and that wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of what was going on in the Eastern bloc for all of the faults of the Western bloc. For sure more and more Westerners starting in the 1960s openly supported rapprochement with communism and the Eastern Bloc, but that didn't mean that these same people started lining up to defect in order to escape the "capitalist hell". Acutally Western Europe was in pretty rough shape too but the Marshall Plan greatly helped to accelerate the recovery of Western Europe (especially, Britain, France, Holland, Germany and Italy). It wasn't as if the liberation of France, the Low Countries and Italy were affairs that were marked by preservation of infrastructure and property, to say nothing of Germany. Unfortunately the Russians had a policy of physical reparations which didn't sit well with a lot of common folk in Eastern Europe in that local capital infrastructure from the formerly German-occupied territories was removed where possible and taken back to Russia shortly after the end of WWII. It was only later that the Russians largely reversed this reparation scheme (some less charitable observers have called it looting) and began subsidizing reconstruction of certain infrastructure in Eastern Europe. Thus I'm not sure whether one can insinuate that the relative poverty of Eastern Europe compared to Western Europe was attributable to the effects of the war. With the passage of time or fading of memories there may be a sense that somehow Western Europe was in better shape than Eastern Europe after the end of WWII just because of the subsequent wealth gap between West and East. I would argue that the use of capitalist mechanisms as opposed to communist ones as well postwar handling of the economies were larger factors in the growing economic disparity between the two blocs. How they clean up the mess is different from the mess itself. Anyway, back to the original question, I largely agree with you Russianbear (as hard as that may be to believe ;-)) that speaking Russian in most of Eastern Europe is not a problem. However, I don't see the point in denying that Russian still has a lingering negative association in some parts of Eastern Europe because of the actions of Russian-speakers in the past - "Soviet" or not. I think that people who retain this association should let it go, but I know that some people can't just like some people can't help but group me as an arrogant American because of how I use English. In any case one of Ashiro's questions was about the risk of alienating people outside Russia in Eastern Europe by addressing them from the outset in Russian. My answer is not always music to the ears of Russophiles or Russian-speakers, but what'd be the point in giving a half-truth by omitting the "tricky" cases that I touched on with the Baltic states and Poland? The distinction between Soviet and Russian is blurred largely because Russians today justifiably treat the Soviet era as part of their own history - otherwise a good chunk of Russia's historical narrative in the 20th century becomes incoherent. What's more is that the concept of "Soviet" originated from Russia so it's only natural to see the Russian connection. When I last checked, the capital of the USSR was Moscow, not Kiev, Alma-Ata, Tallinn or Yerevan. The Russian element of the USSR was dominant during the USSR's existence despite the presence of non-Russian leaders such as Stalin and Khrushchev. The largest ethnic group in the USSR was Russian. Therefore the association of Soviet and Russian becomes even stronger despite "Soviet" being in origin a political term while "Russian" isn't and the fact that not all Russians could be really called Soviets (e.g. members of the "White Army", dissidents such as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov) About speaking English in Western Europe and negative attitudes to English there, I don't speak the Queen's English and as I said before, I know that some people (usually those critical of America) instantly look down on me because of their association of my accent with unpopular American foreign policy. On the other hand, there's nothing that I can do about this association as this is how I speak English whenever I do use it. I can't apologize for deeds of some other English-speaker but I admit that I've grown thick skin to it and am used to hearing the blanket association made by people who are critical of American policies. The irony of this association is that I actually don't like to speak English when traveling as I prefer to speak the local language first and only use English when finding that communicating in the local language fails completely. The example about getting a cold shoulder in Paris when speaking English there doesn't apply to me considering that I'm fluent in French already ;-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6780 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 20 of 37 19 May 2009 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Case can be made there was a wider range of political opinions within a single party in some of the Warsaw Pact countries compared to certain two-party systems where two parties are more like two factions of the same party.
Well, like you yourself said, the negative responses - if one is to get any at all - will be limited to a blank stare or cold shoulder - which isn't any different from reactions an English speaker may get in the Western Europe. And, assuming the original poster wouldn't think twice about using English in Western Europe - I think it is fair to say one shouldn't hesitate to use Russian in Eastern Europe.
Well, many countries treat their past as their history. Poland or Latvia treat their Soviet years as part of their history, too. US treats its slavery years or genocide of the native americans years as part of its history, too. It is only natural.
Well, the notion of grassroots democracy that the word "soviet" was originally used to represent has hardly originated in Russian. I am thinking the Ancient greeks/roman probably had analogous words. Even in the context of Marxism, there were analogous words that originated in Germany or France. Even the word itself probably appeared throughout the Russian Empire in 1905, not just in Russia proper, but also in places like Poland and Riga.
Well, this is just plain silly. Why does it matter where the capital was? The capital in Europe is, what, Brussels? I assume once the EU falls appart, we have Belgians to blame for everything we didn't like the EU for - and give everyone else a free pass? Should residents of DC get more blame for the Iraq War/occupation than residents of California just because Washington is in DC and not in California? What if the capital of USSR had been Kiev (it could as well have been, given that it was once a capital of the Russian state) or Minsk - how would it matter?
Edited by Russianbear on 19 May 2009 at 8:59pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5843 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 21 of 37 19 May 2009 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The negative aspects of the USSR are well known and 99% of it happened before the 1970s.
Here is an example of something good that Russians in the USSR did for others, and of some people who definitely would not have any problem speaking Russian with visitors: There was a very good BBC documentary about Tadjikistan - the people there liked the USSR and are sad that they are now on their own. (I didn't quite get why, in light of this, they actually broke off in the first place.) However this was not "propaganda" or exaggeration, every person on the program said the same thing. (If BBC had been able to find somebody to say something bad about Russians, rest assured he would have been featured.. ) People there were initially poor, illiterate and hungry - all this disappeared after only a couple of decades in the USSR. Russia was pumping money into the region decade after decade to improve living standards of people there and to get local industry going. Pretty much all useful infrastructure they have is build by Russians; all buildings, architecture, hospitals, universities, parks etc. What the EU is doing for some of the new member states is nothing compared to the efforts by Russians for getting this area up to par. Now that they are no longer backed up by Moscow things are chaotic in this country- drug trade and criminality rule the street and there are no jobs. But things would be even worse (like in Afghanistan / Pakistan) if they hadn't been in the USSR. At least as it is they have legacy equipment. I got curious to hear more, but this area is virtually a black hole as far as news coverage in Europe is concerned. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 22 of 37 19 May 2009 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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The attempt at linking quantity of candidates from the same party as equal to quantity of candidates from different parties seems kind of odd. Would you have us believe that say Reagan and Carter could be that close ideologically? On the other hand, dissent within one party tends to be suppressed and what happens is that the dissidents tend to form their own party or association whenever possible. Unfortunately for dissidents, this was next to impossible in communist societies until the advent of Solidarity in Poland.
The comparison with the EU and USSR also seems a little odd upon further review. Remember that the USSR was not quite the same as the EU. It's tough to compare the two satisfactorily despite the superficial similarity of banding a bunch of nations, economies and cultures together. The comparison with Brussels and Moscow seems a bit incongruous on reflection. The EU is more decentralized than the USSR ever was (and understandably so, since if the EU were less decentralized, it's tough to see how all of the diverse members today would have even considered joining it as it was already.) On the subject of language, it's not as if French, Walloon or Flemish are the dominant languages of the EU, despite the EU's capital being in Belgium. The EU doesn't have one dominant language but it seems that one could argue that the prestige language in the EU is English which is a foreign language for the majority of EU citizens (roughly 86% of the EU's population is from outside the UK and Ireland) In the USSR, not only was the capital on Russian territory, but the dominant ethnic group was Russian which comprised about 50% of the population (Ukrainians were at no. 2 with about 15% of the USSR's population) and it's not surprising that Russian culture and language were prestigious in the USSR and got blurred with the meaning of "Soviet". Apart from Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev (the last one half-Russian, half-Ukrainian), the remaining leaders of the USSR were Russians, which only makes sense since by law of large numbers most members of the Communist party were Russian to begin with and only party members could rule the country. Thus the connection between "Soviet" and "Russian" only gets strengthened by how the leadership evolved. I'm not really bashing Russia as much as trying to show why things like "Soviet" and "Russian" have a noticeable association and why some Eastern Europeans still harbor resentment toward the Russian language because of the actions of some Russians (or perhaps things done in the name of Russia) from before. I could easily turn things around by being able to explain why people resent English (especially American English) because of the actions of some Americans, but then again we already know this and it seems fashionable for people to criticize the "biggest guy on the block", so to speak. I'm not sure if the comments about minimizing the Western Front's suffering compared to that of the Eastern Front would go down well with survivors in the West. While the Eastern Front had a pointed edge that was missing in Western Europe, dismissing WWII's effects as "relatively minor or insignificant" in the West could be really offensive for Western Europeans. I doubt that people who endured the Blitz and flying bomb attacks, the viciousness of the Battle of the Atlantic or deprivation of German occupation in the Low Countries would be comforted to hear others dismissing their suffering as minor or insignificant. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 23 of 37 19 May 2009 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
Part of the reason why the EU's contributions into newer member states is smaller than that of Moscow's into the Central Asian states is because those Central Asian states were in pretty rough shape in the first half of the 20th century. The new members of the EU could never have been as in dire straits as those Central Asian states. (Remember countries apply to be in the EU and have to meet certain requirements. The EU can't really force a country to join its union On the other hand, those Central Asian states were incorporated into the Russian Empire or later the USSR and Moscow had to take strong control or responsibility of those states otherwise it would have risked those states being liabilities in the USSR) Moscow had no choice but to pump money into those areas not only to placate the local population and present a positive light on Russia but more importantly to set up conditions for these local people to live in a communist economy that used technocratic education, collective farms and heavy industry as espoused by the CPSU. It was the only logical thing to do. Edited by Chung on 19 May 2009 at 10:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Ashiro Groupie United Kingdom learnxlanguage.com/ Joined 5807 days ago 89 posts - 101 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 24 of 37 19 May 2009 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||
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This thread has gone off at quite a tangent. I'd normally be irritated but I've recently begun reading a book called "God's Playground (Vol 2)" and it has some bearing to all this.
Its a history of Poland and the reason I bring it up is that you're all concentrating on the Cold War era and the USSR. Firstly: I'm not slating the Russian people as they suffered under the Tsarist regimes just as much as the Poles. The Tsarist regime was just as (if not more than) ruthless, brutal and totalitarian as the Communist USSR. The intense 'Russification' of the Polish partition and other parts of the Empire are staggering. I think a clear example of how ridiculous it got was the insistence that all Polish children be taught in Russian, EVEN when they're having Polish lessons - which was taught as a foreign language. Imagine a British child going to school where he's forced to learn Maths, Science, etc in German. Then he has English lessons to teach him his own language as though its foreign! Sorry - back on topic. Polish or Russian. Thank you for the thread link as its come in very handy. However, I'm still at a loss which to choose. I think I'll finish reading my history books. I don't want to start learning a Slavic language for at least another year so have plenty of time to think about it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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