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Dotting the I's: linguocide and the revival of the Ukrainian language
In parallel with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are witnessing an incredible development of Ukrainian culture and its popularisation in the world. The same applies to the Ukrainian language, which is the main feature of Ukrainian identity. But this was not always the case.
A few years ago, one of the most frequently asked questions among German-speaking visitors to the Ukrainian tent at cultural festivals was whether Russian and Ukrainian were actually the same language. „Not at all,“ we diplomatically answered („Ukrainian Atelier of Culture and Sports“), hiding his irritation and providing numerous examples and irrefutable arguments. Today, the situation looks much better. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has made Europeans realise, at least indirectly, that there is a difference. But let's look at what caused this ignorance, and how the Russian empire has been killing the Ukrainian language for hundreds of years in all spheres of life and at all levels.
It is important to say right away that the Ukrainian language originated more than a thousand years ago and is derived from Proto-Slavic, the common language of the ancestors of all modern Slavs, which in turn has its roots in the Proto-Indo-European language. Ukrainian scholar Vasyl Kobyliukh has studied the connection between the Ukrainian language and Sanskrit. In his works, he suggests that the Ukrainian language was formed in the 10th to 14th centuries BC and that the origin of the most important Ukrainian words should be sought in Sanskrit. For example, such modern Ukrainian words as „air“, „love“, „horse“, „wood“, „fire“ are almost identical to the words in Sanskrit.
According to the main researchers of the origins of the Ukrainian language (Shevelev, Moser, Bevzenko), the features of the Proto-Ukrainian language were formed during the 6th-11th centuries AD. And the end of the 11th - mid-12th century can be considered the beginning of the existence of the Ukrainian language as a system that already differed from other languages in its features.
The existence of a written language already in those days is evidenced by numerous inscriptions and graffiti on the walls of St Sophia of Kyiv, dating from the second decade of the 11th century. Of course, this could not have been the case on the territory of modern Russia, if only because neither Russia nor the Moscow principality existed at that time.
The written language of Kievan Rus took two forms: Church Slavonic, which served the needs of the church, and Old Russian, or Old Ukrainian, or Old Kyivan, the literary language of Rus, which performed all state and cultural functions and in which the first literary works were written („A tale of yesteryear“ 1116, „Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh to his children“ 1117, „A word about Igor's regiment“ 1187).
With the beginning of book printing, the Ukrainian language took on a new development. And, of course, like any other language, it did not develop in a vacuum and was constantly enriched by foreign words. Because the Ukrainian alphabet was based on the Greek script, our language was enriched by Greekisms.
In the steppe part of the country came Turkic borrowing. And in large cities, due to the emergence of Jesuit colleges and other educational institutions, they used in Latin. There were also many borrowings from the Ukrainian language Yiddish, and this exchange was, incidentally, bilateral. In addition, the Ukrainian language has numerous borrowings from Polish, German, Hungarian and Romanian languages. This is how every language develops. In the same way, other European countries have developed Ukrainisms, such as Romano-Germanic „steppe“ from the Ukrainian „steppe“, Polish „hreczka“ or „czeresnia“ from the Ukrainian „buckwheat“ and „cherry“, Romanian „smântână“ from „sour cream“ or Hungarian „csónak“ from “boat“.
The Ukrainian language was evolving, becoming even more melodic and flexible. But not everyone liked this development. In the 17th century, part of the Ukrainian lands became part of the Russian Empire, and it was from that moment in our country's history that artificial narratives about „one brotherly nation“ and „common language“.
For more than 350 years, the Russian Empire and its descendants in the form of the USSR and modern Russia have been pursuing a deliberate linguocide - the destruction of language as the main feature of an ethnic group, because this is the main goal of all colonisers.
From the beginning of the 18th century, by order of Russian tsars and emperors, Ukrainian texts were removed from churches, book printing and education in Ukrainian were banned. All this was accompanied by repression, persecution and executions of Ukrainian intellectuals. In 1804, teaching in Ukrainian was finally banned in all educational institutions. Oppression of education is one of the main tools of linguistic violence, as it affects future generations and deprives them of their memory. It was not even allowed to baptise children with Ukrainian names. The year 1863 brought the infamous Valuev Circular to Ukrainians, which banned the publication of textbooks, literature, and books of religious content in Ukrainian. And in 1876, Russian Tsar Alexander II signed a decree in the German city of Bad Ems that was intended to completely destroy the Ukrainian language and culture.
The Soviet leadership only continued the colonialist destruction of Ukrainian identity inherited from the empire. People were shot, tortured and imprisoned for speaking Ukrainian. The Soviet government even interfered with the internal mechanisms of the language, banning letters, words, syntactic structures, and grammatical forms. Instead, a new spelling of the Ukrainian language was developed to artificially assimilate it into Russian. In total, researchers have counted more than 130 official bans on the Ukrainian language from the Czarist to the Brezhnev era, and it is still considered a miracle that our language has survived all the years of persecution.
After Ukraine gained independence, language problems did not disappear. Covert Russification and the dominance of Russian in pop culture only reinforced narratives about the inferiority of the Ukrainian language. But everything changed with the outbreak of the Russian Federation's war against Ukraine in 2014. New cultural institutions are being established, art is developing strongly, Ukrainian literature is pushing Russian literature off the bookshelves, and language legislation is finally dotting the i's and crossing the t's.
We contribute to the protection and development of the Ukrainian language!
Despite, or rather in spite of, all the difficulties, the Ukrainian language is becoming increasingly popular today. More than 40 million people speak the language today. And the popular language learning app Duolingo noted that since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, the number of people willing to learn Ukrainian has increased by 577%. And we at Gel[:b]lau hope that this trend will continue in the post-war period, which will definitely come. After all, the Ukrainian language is not only rich in synonyms, but also incredibly melodic. And this is a proven scientific fact, given the language's rhythmic melody - the relationship of consonants and vowels in the construction of words and word combinations -, the presence of melodic suffixes and the melodic letter „ї“, which is found only in the Ukrainian alphabet. At least if We are talking about Slavic languages.
In March 2022 General Assembly of the European Federation of National Language Institutions (EFNIL) granted Ukraine membership in the EU language space, which, according to the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin will allow in the future „to develop a strategy for legislative protection of the Ukrainian language as a future EU language“.
You are holding in your hands or reading online the new edition of Gel[:b]lau. It is the first German-Ukrainian magazine of this format. We hope that with our work we are also contributing to the protection and development of the Ukrainian language.
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