Talk:Russian language

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Westernization vs. Modernization

There was an edit today changing Peter the Great's project from "Westernization" to "Modernization". I would have said the former is more accurate. Any views? VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:01, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I am GA referee of this article. I absolutely agree, and I will change this back. Thanks. NIMSoffice (talk) 06:05, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Peter's reforms contained many things that having nothing to do with modernization. How about cutting off beards?VVPushkin (talk) 15:22, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Why not use both terms, although they have areas which overlap, they do have some meaning that does not. Bandurist (talk) 14:25, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

tweak header

Tweaked header by moving up a couple of lines from the 'geographic distribution' section - to make the intro a bit more specific. teinesaVaii (talk) 09:38, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Finnic influence

The statement about the Finnic influence is much exaggerated. The Finnic languages are very different structurally from any Slavic and Russian especially. Russian has nothing to do with any Finno-Ugric, they are totally different at all levels. As it turned out this paragraph was added by an anonymous in 2006, but since then nobody contests it. It seems to be from modern fringe theories and should be deleted.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 23:25, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Classification

"The next closest relatives are the West Slavic languages, especially Polish and Slovak; next are the South Slavic languages, although Bulgarian especially has somewhat different grammar." Are you serious? You claim that Polish and Slovak are closer to Russian than Bulgarian? complete rubbish... I don't know who made up this classification but I can read and understand Bulgarian better than Ukrainian or Belorussian (I am native only Russian speaker with no any significant other Slavic influence) Extreemator (talk) 04:26, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Trained scholars and linguists classify it that way. Duh. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:33, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, this chapter should be rewritten. Except for Ukrainian and Belarusian the sole language which can be closer is Bulgarian. But it can be applied only to vocabulary, the Bulgarian grammar is rather deferent. You can not properly understand some vast Bulgarian texts without knowing the grammar, it will be just a set of some familiar words.--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 06:47, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

When comparing nouns between Russian and Ukrainian there is a 64% correlation. Between Ukrainian and Byelorussian 84% correlation. Byelorussian and Russian 72% correlation. Ukrainian and Plish 82% correlation. Between Russian and Bulgarian 93% correlation. Ths is based on the most commonly used nouns and does not take into account pronounciation or grammar. Bandurist (talk) 01:18, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

This work disagrees with your calculations. Could you tell us the source of your numbers?--Luboslov Yezykin (talk) 13:07, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

If Bandurist is using the numbers I think he's using, then it is his own original count, which, as I recall, included his own list of "the most common words", which included a number of items that linguists would never in a million years include in a list of "core vocabulary". It's unreliable, so these non-linguistic comments about Bulgarian are simply personal musings based on recognizing some vocabulary, and not based on the actual science of linguistics. --Taivo (talk) 15:10, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Not number one in Mongolia

"It is currently the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and has been compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language since 2006.[29][30]" The first ref, which is too old, does not support the statement; the second is also old. In fact, the government already has English as the most commonl taught foreign language. Since I don't have a ref., I won't change the page, but I hope some-one will get a recent government statistic on foreign-language teaching in Mongolia.Kdammers (talk) 14:22, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

The New York Times article says that Russian was to be replaced as the first foreign language in autumn 2005, so I changed the statement from "currently" to 2005. --illythr (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

But now it says that it IS compulsory, since it says "since 2006." This is still wrong: students do not have to take Russian. Kdammers (talk) 12:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

That's what the last available source says. Can you provide another, more modern one stating what you say? --illythr (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

This is one of the really frustrating things about Wik's policies. If we have an old source that says the night sky over New York city is black, we are stuck with it, because, even though it is obvious to millions of New Yorkers that it is not [i.e., no longer] true, since nobody has pointed out the well-known fact in a citable source, we stay with [personally verifiably] wrong statements. I can't cite students, school headmistresses, parents, education officials spoken words or use my own observations in my class-rooms to state this fact. For some reason, the Ministry of Science and Education doesn't put this kind of information on its WWW site.Kdammers (talk) 12:42, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

It's actually worse than that. You have one respectable scholar make a translation error, other scholars reference his wrong data and then have this data solidly rooted in a Wikipedia article, because no one bothered to check the original source and your contacting the original author and getting him to state the obvious qualifies as original research. Still, to profane Churchill, while the system sucks, no better ones have been found, to date. As the Essjay controversy had demonstrated, nothing can be assumed of Wikipedia editors' expertise and knowledge when it comes to editing mainspace content (well, except good faith, heh-heh). Without sources to back you up, another user may appear and rewrite the text into stating the opposite citing his own personal experience with Mongolians he's acquainted with.

I suspect, the necessary information is widely available in the Mongolian sector of the net, though. It's just that, well, nobody cares enough around these parts. --illythr (talk) 19:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the necessary information does not seem to be widely available "in the Mongolian sector." The relevant Ministry doesn't list or link to the information on either its Mongolian or English pages, and searches using relevant terms in Mongolian in Google and in a standard Mongolian newspaper turned up nothing. I'm sure if I went down to the Ministry' s Office I could come up with a citable source. But I don't feel like spending half a day on doing that. Kdammers (talk) 11:50, 1 March 2012 (UTC)