Talk:Ukrainian language

Classification and relationship - verify sources

Hi, I'm requesting verification whether the sources do contain the information they are provided for in "Classification and relationship to other languages" chapter.

In particular, there is "The question of whether contemporary Ukrainian and Russian (as well as Belorusian and Rusyn) are dialects of a single language or separate languages is not entirely decided by linguistic factors alone because there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility" backed by 3 sources, and "some linguistic references list them as dialects of a single language" backed by 1 offline source.

Quotes from sources were already requested to verify that sources do contain what has been added to the article. Quotes were provided (see article footnotes) and editor has said a number of times that quotes provided are enough to perform the verification [1] [2] . So the verification can be performed on quotes provided. --windyhead (talk) 08:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

A general comment of mine. If the other editor had a proven history of misusing sources I would completely agree with your various criticisms. I would also be suspicious if he used only off-line foreign-language sources that would be quite hard to find and thus to verify. This doesn't seem to be the case here. Therefore the thing to do is to find this source yourself or get someone else to do it and in the meantime one must assume good faith and let the info stand.Faustian (talk) 13:10, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I am sick and tired of User:Windyhead's continued malicious tagging of this article. I have reported him for edit warring. The sources cited are completely adequate for referencing this paragraph. This paragraph was, and still is, NPOV. The latest revisions by Faustian and myself have made it even more neutral. Each statement has a reference and often a quote in the footnote. Windyhead simply refuses to read the sources cited if he disagrees with my interpretation of them. He has been warned at multiple forums that he needs to read the sources: [3] and [4] and [5]. This is just another case of his forum shopping. Indeed, Windyhead's whole apparent modus operandi is "I don't like the comment that Ukrainian and Russian are mutually intelligible, I don't understand the quotes in the footnotes, and I'm not willing to actually read any books on the matter, so I'll just tag the comment because I don't like it, and keep replacing it until I wear Taivo down and get my way." --Taivo (talk) 14:30, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

• I am replying per Windyhead's request at WikiProject Linguistics, though I speak only for myself. Voegelin & Voegelin and Comrie are both respected sources, and this text does not appear to misrepresent them. I have not read Schenker 1993, but article text seems consistent with similar work in the field. The paragraph in question seems to accurately and fairly represent consensus within the field of linguistics. Cnilep (talk) 17:10, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I'm reviewing Comrie, pages 145 - 146, and there is no mention of "dialect" at all only that "little russian" was deemed to be a dialect of Russian by Tsarist government. The maximum what can be found there is "The three East Slavonic languages are very close to one another, with very high rates of mutual intelligibility". What makes you believe that "The question of whether contemporary Ukrainian and Russian (as well as Belorusian and Rusyn) are dialects of a single language or separate languages" can be found there? Are there Voegelin & Voegelin talking about dialect / language question? --windyhead (talk) 17:25, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? You clearly don't understand what you are reading and have no understanding of linguistics in general. The question of mutual intelligibility is fundamental to the linguistic issue of language versus dialect. You can read about it in any one of countless introductory linguistics textbooks. Comrie doesn't have to say this explicitly because it is at the root of the whole theoretical question of what constitutes a language versus a dialect in linguistics. If you don't understand fundamental linguistics, then you have no place questioning such issues in Wikipedia. And the Voegelin and Voegelin quote is crystal clear--in terms of mutual intelligibility, the East Slavic languages are one language. How can you question the meaning of that sentence? --Taivo (talk) 18:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

What is the source that raises dialect - language question for Russian and Ukrainian? --windyhead (talk) 18:20, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Which part of "fundamental to the linguistic issue of language versus dialect" do you fail to understand, Windyhead? Every cited source that talks about mutual intelligibility has that fundamental issue at its root. It's like "prefix". Linguists don't need to define "prefix" every time they use the word in a language article in Wikipedia. Every source I've cited deals with the issue of language versus dialect between Russian and Ukrainian by using the term "mutual intelligibility". They wouldn't mention "mutual intelligibility" unless that were the underlying context. A linguist saying "Russian and English are not mutually intelligible" would be very odd because there is never a question of them being dialects of one another. A linguist saying "Russian and Ukrainian have a high degree of mutual intelligibility" is using that phrase because there is the question of dialect versus language to deal with. As the article clearly states, some linguists use mutual intelligibility as the sole measurement (e.g., Linguasphere) so the East Slavic group is one language, while most linguists go beyond mutual intelligibility alone and consider sociolinguistic factors as well. Didn't you actually read the discussion above under Talk:Ukrainian_language#Dialects_versus_Languages? You seem oblivious to the actual linguistic issues involved. --Taivo (talk) 18:27, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so the sources being discussed somehow managed to live without mentioning Rus - Ukr "dialect - language" question. Why this article should mention that? --windyhead (talk) 19:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

They all "mention the Rus-Ukr issue" by talking about mutual intelligibility. Didn't you actually read and understand my post? By using the words mutual intelligibility they automatically turn on the "language-dialect" light. Please, please, please read an introductory linguistics book before you continue to talk about linguistics articles. The issue is important because most of the sources mention it. Therefore the article needs to mention it. --Taivo (talk) 20:30, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Now, can you please tell us what that "53-AAA-e, Russkiy+Ukrainska" from Linguasphere Register means? --windyhead (talk) 19:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

That is the language number and language name that Linguasphere uses for the single East Slavic language. --Taivo (talk) 20:27, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Changes

I looked beyond the dialect/languge issue and see that this article needs significant work. There's a lot there about the language's persecution, usage etc. but little about the way that it developed over time (when and what kind of Polish loan words came into it? Etc.) which seems to be interesting. I've split off a section thast could serve as a start for that section. It's summer, I don't have a lot of free time, but I will slowly expand on it; hopefully others will help.Faustian (talk) 03:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree. The article is 90% a sociolinguistic history of the language and 10% everything else. If you look at other language articles it is the other way round. Once the article gets fleshed out with phonology, grammar, etc., the sociolinguistic stuff needs to be moved to another article. --Taivo (talk) 04:18, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

For example, compare this article with Kurdish language, another language that engenders a lot of nationalistic feeling. There the sociolinguistic history is a couple of paragraphs compared to some solid linguistically-accurate information about the language itself. Here most of the article is a discourse on the minutiae of how Ukrainian speakers rose from second-class citizenship to have their own national language. It's written in a barely neutral style. The consensus (international) linguistic view that Ukrainian is part of the Eastern Slavic group of languages is presented as if it were a Russian plot to subjugate the Ukrainians further and the distinctly minority (Ukrainian) view (that Ukrainian rose independently from Proto-Slavic) is presented as the final victorious liberation from Russian rule. That's hardly neutral writing. It doesn't help that the majority of the references in that section of the article are not verifiable to anyone who doesn't read Ukrainian and neutral observers are unlikely to read Ukrainian. In the article, there's virtually nothing about the language itself in and what there is is poorly formatted and minimally informative. --Taivo (talk) 13:18, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

The Ukrainian language's persecution over the centuries is important enough to warrant inclusion. I agree that that ought to be a separate article (with a several-paragraph-long summary here) and the focus ought to be on the language, in accordance with how it is done in other articles. A 90/10, or perhaps 80/20 ratio would be ideal. The Kurdish language article could be a good template. To add to my earlier coment - I'm n ot a linguist and stuff such as what kind of loan words were taken and when is undrstandable to me, while issues involving more scientific terms and concepts are more difficult, so I may be less likely to include them (as a layperson some of it is hard for me to follow).Faustian (talk) 12:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Anti-Ukrainian slant of this article

I am so tired of reading all this anti Ukrainian nonsense on Wikipedia. Why is Ukrainian language the only selected to be described is "mutually intelligible" from Russian? Why the same phrase or a phrase that "some linguistic references list them as dialects of a single language" is not used in the Belorussian language entry? Why is Ukrainian the only language to have a section "classification and relationship to other languages" and "differences between Russian and Ukrainian" as to imply to the casual reader that this is of paramount significance, whereas again, Belorussian, a language more closely related to Russian, does not have such entries, Finally, one just needs to look at the entry for Rusyn langauage to see that again, Ukrainian gets the short end of the stick. Why doesn't it say that Rusyn and Ukrainian languages are "mutually intelligible?" After all they are practically identical and were thought to be identical until about 19 years ago. Maybe we should have a section on the modern persecution of Ukrainian language. Mykyta (talk) 04:38, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

You are free to add this section to Belarusian language. No one is stopping you. Wikipedia has uneven coverage not because of some bias, but because some editors have worked at X location, but not at Y location. --Taivo (talk) 05:47, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I reworded the section appropriately and added it to Belarusian language. --Taivo (talk) 05:59, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Removed 1916 impressionistic reference

Please actually read the paragraph before adding an impressionistic, unscientific reference from 1916. There are modern sources already cited on both sides of the issue of whether Russian and Ukrainian are one language or two. Saying that two speech forms are like two other speech forms is not science since there are no scientific criteria by which such things can actually be judged. There are also linguists who consider Danish and Swedish to be varieties of a single language, so the comparison is worthless. --Taivo (talk) 19:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not. The situation with Scandinavian languages are very similar since they are likewise mutually intelligible. Although no one would seriously claim them to be dialects of the same language such as some linguists have done with Ukrainian and Russian languages. Alfred Jensen was a wellknown and respected slavist and translator of many different slavic languages. Närking (talk) 20:13, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The point is that there is no scientific measurement as to what is similar and what is not. That is the point. The reference is unnecessary and quite outdated by more recent sources (by modern Slavicists). It doesn't matter when the languages were distinguished. As an extraneous and outdated comment, I moved it to a footnote where it belongs. --Taivo (talk) 22:06, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Once again you act like WP:own here and start to blame others for WP:3RR (which I didn't but you just did!) and start to talk about bans. It's also this uncivil behaviour of yours that has made many other editors leaving this article.

And please show me the linguist who says Danish and Swedish are the same language? If you find someone they are as unscientific as the ones who claim Russian and Ukrainian being the same language. And that also shows it's not science but politics! Närking (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but you seem to be unfamiliar with the linguistic literature. C.F. Voegelin & F.M.Voegelin, Classification and Index of the World's Languages (1977, Elsevier); David Dalby, The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities (1999/2000, Linguasphere Observatory); Einar Haugen, Scandinavian Language Structures (1982, Max Niemeyer). All these treat Danish and Swedish as a single language. These are all solid linguists writing solid linguistic works and just because they do not support your political agenda in these linguistic articles, does not make them politicians or bad linguists. These works base their measurement of one language or two based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility. Other works that separate them give more weight to sociolinguistic factors. Neither approach is incorrect, they are just different. And in the cases of Danish and Swedish, and Ukrainian, Belarusian, Rusyn, and Russian, the conclusions reached are different. Neither is wrong, they are just different results based on placing different amounts of weight on different evaluation criteria. And I did not violate WP:3RR (you should analyze that policy more clearly). I did not remove your pointless reference a third time, I simply moved it to a footnote. You need to read WP:BRD to refresh your memory on basic editing procedures. If you make an edit and someone reverts it, you do not replace it, but come to the Talk Page to discuss and build a consensus before reinserting your material. THAT is the Wikipedia process, not what you did--keep adding your information back in without discussion. --Taivo (talk) 00:05, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

• I have temporarily protected the page so you can find a consensus on the talk page rather than edit war. I personally prefer Taivo's (present) version balancing a controversial notion of complete mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian with the opposing opinion (that is IMHO is a mainstream). I agree that it will be better to have more modern source but it is sometimes difficult to find references for the notions that consider public knowledge. Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:34, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Poor quality of this article

Feels like someone just wrote parts of this article, to entertain himself. Especially laughable was the part where there was a table comparing Russian, Ukrainian, and then a mythical "Russian Ukrainian" languages (which I changed to Syrzhyk, which actually does exist, unlike Russian-Ukrainian). Also I got a healthy portion of laughter reading the citation 58 that said that "В Украі(и)не" (a Russian for "In Ukraine") is, quote, "more widely Used in Ukraine"--Rkononenko (talk) 03:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Surzhyk chart

I moved the chart comparing Russian, Surzhyk, and Ukrainian to the Surzhyk article where it is more appropriately placed. --Taivo (talk) 04:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Official Language status?

I live in Poland and to my knowledge, Ukrainian is not a recognised minority language. We do have four, Lithuanian, Kasubian, German, and Belarusian. Also, I believe Moldavian in the Cyrillic is the official language, with Ukrainian and Russian as working languages. Can we get a reference on these?