Comfortably numb @llivingnextdoortoalice - Tumblr Blog

Sister: can you stop naming all the insects that come into the house?

Well here goes my story about spider Afanasiy Petrovich who i was trying to persuade to leave quietly because we were not happy to see him. Benjamin the big black bug has already left and spider Gennady still lives between glasses in window as there's no way to deport it

#some people just don't know how to have fun #downshifting notes #spider afanasy petrovich was a tarantula about 4 cm large #gennady is his long lost brother about 3 cm large #yikes

Me: *downshifting in the village, got up before 7, drinking coffee on the porch and thinking that life is beautiful and while i want to get back to work i would love to hang here for a while, birds are singing, everything is great, i am planning places where i can plant roses*

Mmb who has a day off today: olya ffs it's 7 am why are you awake??

#but it's nice out there in the morning #i just want to enjoy life ok #i want to move to the village and listen to bird singing!#alas the military project comes back and two months of summer will be spent in the field #meh

I am like a hermit coming out of my cave to show things, and today I present you a wholegrain sourbread i baked (i ran out of place to plant flowers on my balcony, i need to do something else)

#and a flowery grandma-worthy kitchen towel apparently #personal stuff #i have zero energy #and i've lost all my social skills #and this is kiiiiillliiiing me #needless to say I don't cope with the situation well enough #but i have bread!#sourbread is a tricky one to make it pretty #usual yeast bread is so much easier in that #but here's to the new horizons am i right

kurhanchyk

Im not from Eastern Europe so I don’t really understand this, please explain: Why are Ukranians exactly ‘afraid’ to speak Ukrainian? Is it because Russian has been so dominant in the recent past, now it’s hard to transfer to Ukranian? The relation betweet Ukranians and their language is quite interesting, even now when you’re in this conflict with Russia, Russian is still so widely spoken in Ukraine.

Thank you for the question. This is a problem that is usually ignored in Ukraine and outside. So, let’s begin.

General review: Russian is a second spoken language in Ukraine. According to 2001 population census, 29,6% of Ukrainian citizens called Russian their native language. Only 56% from them are ethnic Russians, others are Ukrainians and ethnic minorities. Russian-speaking population generally resides in big cities, urban and suburban industrial areas. Although Russian doesn’t have official status, it is widely used due to historical reasons.

Russian as native language in Ukraine (2001 census)

Majority language in Ukraine (2001 census)

Ukraine has a long history of Russification. There is no natural ethnic Russian core in Ukraine except for the small rural region near Putyvl in Sumy Oblast. Generally speaking, nearly all Russian population settled here in order to development of cities and low-populated territories during the time of Russian Empire and Soviet Union. To these days Russians have majority in Crimea (after deportation of indigenous Crimean Tatar people in 1944) and in some parts of Donbass where Ukrainian industry is concentrated and significant minority in cities, especially in the Southern and Eastern Ukraine and also Kyiv. There are reasons to say that Russian is colonist language.

Russian is used to be privileged language among the Ukrainians. During the Russian Empire Ukrainian language survived through a lot of bans and was refused to be accepted as an independent. Even through Ukrainians were officially known as “Little Russians”, Russian imperialists didn’t leave attempts to assimilate the whole nation. It was official politic toward all native people, but Ukrainians were special due to being Slavic and descendants of Rus, so it was very important to imperialists to keep them being “Russians”. On the other hand, Soviet authorities forced the idea of Russian being a language of inter-ethnic communication. In the country, which was built on the ruins of the chauvinistic empire, it further worsened the situation with non-Russian languages, including Ukrainian. Ukrainian language was de-facto removed from the informal public usage in the places where there was at least Russian-speaking minority. Ukrainian migrants who settled in cities needed to adopt the Russian-speaking milieu both in Russian Empire and USSR. When my grandparents were in Odesa (major city in Southern Ukraine) in 80s, they were trying to speak Ukrainian as quietly as they could because they wanted nobody to hear them. They were ashamed. In Soviet Ukraine Ukrainian language was believed to be a language of uneducated, rural people. “Villagers’ languages”, “the language of cows”, “rural Russian”, “Little Russian”, “funny language”, “a dialect”, “Polish-Russian mix” are examples of still known and used slurs for Ukrainian language. The strangest slurs I’ve personally heard were “a half-extinct language of the minor ethnicity” and “a local archaic Nazi language”.

Russian language is a political weapon. Russian authorities repeatedly claimed that Russian-speaking population in Ukraine needs their protection. Language issues are a big part of Russian chauvinism toward Ukraine.

So-called “New Russia” (shades of red), territories in Ukraine which are believed to be Russian(-speaking) in minds of Russian nationalists.

So why are Ukrainians still afraid to speak Ukrainian language? As I said above, it was a big social challenge to freely speak Ukrainian in Soviet times. Situation didn’t improve with independence. Ukrainization was quite soft until 2014. Being a post-Soviet country, Ukraine is still culturally dependent from Russia and Russian language. We share the same modern culture, the same Internet segment, which is Russophonic, while content in Ukrainian language is provided only for Ukrainians because Russians never had any need to know Ukrainian. This is the reason why Ukrainian language is suffering from underrepresentation, while Russian is overrepresented on Ukrainian TV and in media. Even Ukrainian-speaking people got used to use Russian by default.

Percent of Ukrainian language on TV [1] and radio broadcasting [2] by year. Data could be inaccurate because mixed Ukrainian-Russian programs are believed to be Ukrainian.

Ukrainian language tends to be invisible in Ukraine while Russian is spoken in much richer, much more educated, having much more opportunities, well-connected to Internet big cities in the South, East and North-East, and Ukrainian-speaking minority (big minority, maybe somewhere even majority) has to adopt this. There are reasons to say that Russian is still privileged language.

All of my Ukrainian-speaking family members and friends switch to Russian in public in Odesa every day. Some of them take this situation as normal. Many of them use Russian language everywhere except for informal speaking with each other. One of my Ukrainian-speaking relatives talks in Russian to her child. Why? I don’t know. It’s our social habit. I remember when guests came to my aunt for the first time and they all started to speak Russian. Then the guest heard my aunt speaking Ukrainian to me and smiled. Everyone chilled out and started speaking our language. We don’t know how people in this city will react to us neither other Ukrainian-speaking people do. In this country, Ukrainian-speaking person may get called with slurs, beaten or killed. Of course, situation has improved and in 2020 majority of people wouldn’t care about Ukrainian. But there’s the risk and due to that we have not only a habit, but also a fear that makes us be silent in Ukrainian and speak in Russian.

Majority of Ukrainians prefers not to see this situation as a problem, but this topic always makes people angry and ready to argue with each other.

Never would have thought but this situation affects me more than i would like to admit, considering i am quite a hermit, but all i do is cook, eat, and plant flowers (and manage to lose weight so yay i guess, but i look for people with fire torches, as this is certainly a witch thing), but look what i have

#i survived 2 hours line in bank today #and then i saw this and was like hey i deserve this #it's so beautiful :')#personal stuff #mmb looks at me like i am clearly unwell every time i buy another flower #can't say he's wrong #but i have pretty balcony at least

blurrymango

Remove the first and last letter of your name. Let's see how cool is your new name.

Ranci.

#lh #uhm i dont like this

Last Easter preparations. How do your eggs look like this year?))

@sansael uhh... I did it

#burgers buns is on the background if you are curious what is that #also i made cruffins!#and they are pretty!#personal stuff #local bakery is at it again

fumadoresdememes

teaboot

Is he aware that we physically fucking can’t

sonicrainbooms

? physically cant what?

starswallowingsea

Bend our ankles like that

sonicrainbooms

Like what???

starswallowingsea

At steep angles! Bones fuse and prevent that if you don’t do it regularly as a kid. It’s the same reason we don’t climb trees like monkeys, whose ankles don’t have the same restrictions we do

Human ankles don’t normally work like that!

waral

Iirc someone did an anatomical study and people of slavic descent have shallower hip sockets that allow that movement more easily as well.

starswallowingsea

Yes! This was something we talked about in my physical anthropology class, that like, some people physically cannot slav squat just because of their bones and skeletal structure.