aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- Re: [aaus-list] Sound like Ukraine?

[Max Pyziur <pyz@brama.com>]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Roman Serbyn wrote:

>> From "Signandsight.com:
>
> Die Welt 21.08.2007
> Dankwart Guratzsch takes a meeting of language experts from around Germany
> as an opportunity to lament the neglect of the German language. "While the
> French hold up, unchanged, Moliere's French and still honour it as the valid
> official language, whose mastery is considered requisite in a complete
> education, Germany is propagating the myth of an ongoing 'development' of
> the language, in which the perversions of advertising German, the supposed
> 'youth talk' and the 'hybridisations' coming out of Turkish/German Kreuzberg
> are made to reflect the 'new German' of a multicultural society of the
> future."
>
> - But is there a Ukrainian Dankwart Guratzsch to lament the neglect of the
> Ukrainian language?

Why not start from determining the proposition that command of a language 
is key to the determination of identity.

Is Gaelic critical for an Irish identity

Numerous Ukrainian-Americans and Ukrainian-Canadians have poor command, if 
any, of Ukrainian, yet disparage Ukrainian nationals from speaking 
anything else but Ukrainian, and then judged against some sort of "pure" 
unsystematized ideal?

Also, consider cases where language was successfully adopted - English in 
Singapore and Hebrew in Israel. Why were they successful? Were punitive 
policies put in place or was it just expedient?


Max Pyziur
pyz@brama.com