Scribe, ut possis cum voles dicere: dices cum velle debebis (Pl. Ep. 6.29)

Sunday, September 10, 2006

br23

Some time ago i used to follow a blog by a Belarusian guy who called himself rydel23. I mentioned him here a few times too. Then his blog wasn't updated for a long time. Then it went offline. And then i removed him from my RSS. I still left the link to him, but struck it out. I considered the possibility that this rather well-known dissident was vaporized by Lukashenko's KGB or maybe died.

So out of boredom i took a look at it today. Unfortunately my second hypothesis was closer to the truth - he was hit by a fire truck and is slowly recovering from coma. I can only hope that he'll do better than Ariel Sharon did until now.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi. I absolutely love unicode. It's so damn sexy! And makes things easier too. Hall hail UTF-8!

Amir said...

Ŏñļÿ ąṋ ėṽĭł ḿḁń, ẉħỗŝě ḩḗãřṫ ĩṣ ňõṭḫîņģ ḃṻṱ ḓẩṝḱʼnĕşš ċàŋ ḇḙ ḯṅḑḭḟḟḛṝḕṉţ ťōẘấṝđṡ ṯḣḝ ḅḛǻưŧý ổḟ Ửṇįćỏḋë.

qamybim

Amir said...

That was a long rant - now how about taking a minute to write something about my alphabet theory? :)

If you know the smallest thing about me, that you probably also know that one of the things that i care about the most is language. It is one of the most important things for Rydel too. Unfortunately he sees the Russian language as a huge threat to the survival of his own. Many people in Belarus are quite indifferent to their own language, Russia is very active to make the situation worse and Lukashenko is helping Russia by closing down Belarusian schools, having all government websites written in Russian and maybe English, but not Belarusian etc.

Now you say that Rydel is making the mistake of turning to America for help? OK, i agree that this is a mistake on his behalf and i pretty much agree with everything that you wrote about America. But he sees Russia as an enemy and he has a good reason. He doesn't hate Russia, he just wants Russia to stay out of his country and not patronize it.

> And then he qoutes that hater and russophob
> Aspi Pohars as if that was the most normal
> thing in the Universe...

Where did you find that? You seem to read his blog better than i did.

And i'll tell you again: I don't know who Aspi Pohars is, but Rydel is a russophob in the very direct sense - he is afraid that the Russian language will kill the Belarusian.

> And one more thing...
> If you are pro-orange parties in Ukraine and
> Belarus, does that also mean that you support
> the Serbian version of "oranges", too ?

My attitude towards the oranges in U and B is not outright support. As i said once - i put the picture of Y. Tymoshenko on my blog mostly because she's hot.

These "oranges" don't try to hide that they are funded by EU and USA, who promote "democracy", but have additional interests. In practice those politicians aren't such amazing leaders either. But the alternative is going back to the USSR, which is what Belarus is doing now, and that's bad. I wish they could find their own way.

I wish the same to Israel too. The Israeli "oranges", btw, are very authentic and i support them completely, but it's a wholly different issue.

And i don't know anything about the Serbian oranges.

> BBCode not working? Greaaat.

Larry Wall once talked about irrationalites in various programming languages. He had this to say about PHP:

"I thought of a way to do it so it must be right".

I hope that you get the joke. The audience loved it. (I was there and i even participated in transcribing the speech.)

The link: <a href="http://wiki.osdc.org.il/index.php/Larry_Wall_-_Present_Continuous%2C_Future_Perfect#Irrationalities_in_Other_Languages_.285:54.29">

"a href" is less readable than url=, but there are reasons that it's written that way.

Amir said...

> Huge threat? That's a joke, right?

No, it is not a joke.

> "Lacinka" is Belarusian? WTF?

Lacinka is just one of the ways to write the Belarusian language and it is indeed influenced by the Polish Latin alphabet. But Rydel is not a fan of Lacinka. See here: Беларуская лацінка і яе будучыня. It is in Belarusian, and you can understand some of it if you understand Russian. Close to the beginning he asks:

Самае першае пытаньне: а навошта? Я ня бачу ніякай моцнай прычыны для пераходу на лацінку, апрача аднаго: вонкавай эўрапейзацыі нашай мовы. Людзі, якія ня ведаюць беларускай кірыліцы, але ведаюць беларускую лацінку, ня змогуць чытаць расейскіх і сэрбскіх газэт, але змогуць чытаць газэты чэскія і польскія.

Вось і ў гэтым пытаньне: ці будуць у нас будучыні палітычныя і сацыяльныя ўмовы і патрэбнасьць для такой зьмены? Я думаю, што верагоднасьць такога разьвіцьця падзеяў ня надта высокая.

Translation:

The first question: but for what? I don't see any significant reason to change to Lacinka, except one: further Europe-isation of our language. People who don't know the Belarusian cyrillic won't be able to read Russian and Serbian papers, but will be able to read Czech and Polish ones.

So that's the question: will there ever be political and social reasons and necessity for such a change? I think that the possibility of such a development is not so high.

As you see, he doesn't care too much about Lacinka and for him it is mostly a part of the heritage, a historic curiosity.

But he is rightly afraid about the language itself. Years of Soviet rule made Russian more important than Belarusian for everyday affairs such as work and studies. Though very similar to Russian, Belarusian is a distinct language - the differences are more than "funny" orthography and several words. There are significant differences in syntax, the case system, the adjectives, the way questions are asked. Belarusian also has its own rich heritage of literature and poetry.

When Belarus became independent in 1991, the government tried to revitalize the language and the culture, but since 1994 all of this is going down the drain again, because Lukashenko considers Russian more important than Belarusian. His website is in Russian, his speeches are mostly in Russian. The TV is mostly Russian. All schools in the capital Minsk teach in Russian. It's true that a lot of people in Belarus don't care about it and actually prefer Russian, but it's a huge waste. When a language disappears, a way of thinking disappears with it and the world becomes more dull and boring.

> Russia is helping Belarus to keep its Slavic culture, not to destroy it.

No-one is trying to destroy Belarus' Slavic culture, but Russia is destroying Belarus' Belarusian culture. Russians think that Russian is somehow more important than all the other languages.

> How can one Slavs destroy another Slavs (speaking about culture)?
> They can just enrich each others.

Closing down schools is destruction, not enrichment.

> You know, Serbian language was much more similar to
> Russian 200 years ago, but than came frakking Vuk Karadzic ...
> and destroyed it, removing most of Russian and Church Slavonic
> influances from it, but leaving all Turkish (more than 3000).

I agree with you that it's bad. Making a language artificially different by using foreign words is certainly ugly.

> And now if someone here would try to turn it back and make it more
> like Russian - you would probably say he's trying to destroy it.

Russia isn't making Belarusian "more like" Russian - it is simply erasing Belarusian completely.

> But it's already destroyed two centuries ago.
> That wouldn't be destruction, but revitalization and improvement.

This would probably infuriate you, but aren't Croatians rather better in making up new Slavic words instead of borrowing foreign ones?

> And then he (the Belarus guy) confirms that with:
> "I think, it also applies to Belarusians, at least partially."

You are turning it all upside down. He hates that Aspi guy, but sometimes he is just self-critical too.

> The alternative is close ties with Russia.
> Without Russia, Belarus would probably be
> a puny misery, like Serbia.

Well, that's probably true, but the way things are going now, in a few years Belarus won't exist at all, but will just be a bunch of provinces in the west of Russia.

> > I wish the same to Israel too. The Israeli "oranges", btw,
> > are very authentic and i support them completely,
> > but it's a wholly different issue.

> Actually, the Israeli "oranges" - meaning the American proxies
> - are in power in Israel since decades.

OK, now you are confused again. The Israeli politicians who use the orange color, are those who oppose the destruction of settlements. They are quite independent and they are not American proxies. The Israeli major parties - Labor (Avoda), Sharon's Likud and now Kadima, they are the American proxies and they aren't orange. But in Israel "orange" has a different sense.

ikizajth

Amir said...

> You just don't get it.

> The Belarusians, Ukrainians, Chechs, Bulgarians, Serbs...
> we are all branches of the same tree of which the Russians
> are the stem (I hope that's the right word), meaning -
> the biggest, main part.

It is the biggest part in practice, but it is unjustly patronizing its branches. From purely linguistic point of view, there's nothing inherently better or more important in Russian than in Belarusian or Ukrainian (or Serbian, or Hebrew, or Hawai'i). Moscow has a stronger army and Alexander Pushkin is more famous than Jakub Kolas or Ivo Andrić, but that's it. Russia can keep good ties with its sister countries without forcing everyone speak the same language, like it does now.

You won't like what i'm gonna say here, but: You should feel lucky that Serbia doesn't share a border with Russia. If it would be closer, than it would become a province of Russia, and far less people would speak Serbian today (on the other hand, those who would still remember it, would probably write it in Cyrillic, but not because of their patriotism, but because the Russian government would close down all the Latin printing shops - like it did in Lithuania a hundred years ago.)

> And you are so worried about our specific
> subSlavic cultures which are about to expire?

Well yes, i am. Do i hear you admitting that it's about to expire? You see, i'm not taking the side of those Belarusian nationalists who are outright anti-Russian (they are likely anti-Semitic too); but i do support those who keep their own language their own and don't neglect it in favor of that of Pushkin and Tolstoy - even though the latter is my mother tongue.

> If you want somthing to save - please, start saving Yiddish.

As a matter of fact, i started taking private Yiddish lessons lately.

> You - in Hebrew - also have many made up words, I don't know
> how many of them sounds funny to you, but what Croatians
> are doing with the language is a laughter.

Oh, so you say that in practice not all those words are used? In that case it is quite similar to Hebrew. There are some technical words that found their way into actual spoken Hebre, but there are also some words that the Academy of Hebrew makes up and nobody uses them.

> Also I have a feeling like I'm talking to a wall, and I'm
> not even Jewish, nor Chineese, nor a Perl fan. :D

If you were a Perl fan, talking to a wall would be your wettest dream.

rwuefdb

Amir said...

> It's not true that Russia forces us, or the
> Ukrainians, Belorusians... on anything. If
> the Russian language is favored in Belarus
> - that's not because Russia forces that,
> but because their governments (or local and
> regional authorities) choose it.

Russia does force it. It even tries to force it on non-Slavic countries. Putin expressed his serious disappointment lately when Kyrgyzstan passed a law to change the language of the documents in its army from Russian to Kyrgyz. Some Russian speakers live in Kyrgyzstan, but he should get his nose out of other country's army.

When Russia complains about the rights of Russian speakers in former SU countries - it is justified. For example, when the governments of Latvia and Ukraine force Russian speakers to speak Latvian and Ukrainian, it is an outright human rights violation.

In case of Belarus - Lukashenko, with Russia's support is forcing Belarusians to speak Russian by closing down Belarusian schools. Unfortunately, many people in Belarus actually don't care about it, because all of them know Russian. But it makes me sad, because as i wrote earlier - when a language is lost, a piece of humanity is lost, even if the people themselves survive.

> But how do you know that we wouldn't be happier
> as a Russian province than we are know

Maybe you would be more prosperous, but you wouldn't be so Serbian. It's your call. If you have Slavic national pride, it is good. Go on and express it the Serbian way. Russia is just one part of the big Slavic family, albeit the biggest one. You don't have to submit to Russia to be a proud Slav.

> And Yiddish - I'm shure there's a lot of nice cultural works made in it,

More than just nice. Shalom Aleichem, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Leibush Peretz are world-class geniuses. I'm learning Yiddish so i would be able to read their works in their original tongue. I read them in Russian, English and Hebrew, but it's definitely not the same. (The translations to Hebrew, by the way, were the worst.)

> All Jews should speak Hebrew

All Jews should speak Hebrew, but losing the heritage of Yiddish literature will be very bad.

> > Do i hear you admitting that it's about to expire?

> No. That was said sarcastically.
> But it is in danger - not from the East, but from the West.

This affects Russian very badly. Russian is badly contaminated with foreign words today. But Belarusian is in danger of extinction from Russian.

> ALL of Serbian nationalists are PRO-Russian, fiercely.

That's because you are not threatened by Russia in any way. Belarusians think that they are.

> > even though the latter is my mother tongue.

> It looks to me like it was your Masters' tongue,
> to whom you were slaves.

Nahh, you are going too far. I never looked at it that way.

Besides, we are not some Belarusians or Tatars - we are JEWS! The Russians are OUR slaves! :)

(i'm kidding, right?)

Seriously though, i do love the Russian language and i do my best not to forget it. My trip to Russia a year ago mostly filled me with good childhood memories.

> I'm really starting to believe
> there's a little rusophob, deep inside of you.

I waited for you to say that, but i didn't prepare any answer.

I am not a Russophob. Some Russian kids beat the crap out of me for the fun of it many times, but even towards them i don't feel any racial hate. Even after one of them said to me that his mother told him that it's OK to beat me up, 'cuz i'm a Jew. (She also happened to be my school's deputy-principal.) But no, it still didn't make me a Russophob in any way. You'll just have to believe me.

I do think that Russia should loosen up a little and stop playing silly political and economical games. But i think that America is even worse than Russia in this, so it's not really important.

In many things i completely support Russia too. Too numerous to list here.

> > but there are also some words that the
> > Academy of Hebrew makes up and nobody uses them

> Like תקליטור ? How do you, personally, say "compact disk"
> I say it "компакт диск" or just "диск" or "це-де".

תקליטור is not a complete joke - it is actually used sometimes. But most of the time everyone, including me, says דיסק. It's just shorter. But i do say תקליט instead of אלבום, even though תקליט supposedly refers to vinyl records. I like it because it has a good generic meaning - "recording".

Some sciences, such as geography, mathematics, and biology adopted many newly created Hebrew words. Computer people adopted some words - מחשב (computer), מסך (monitor) and מצלמה (camera) are used universally and many people say מחשב נייד instead of לאפטופ and כונן קשיח instead of הארד דיסק. But there are also some words which became total jokes. For example, the academy proposed to call the @ sign כרוכית. But everyone calls it with the Czech/German name שטרודל. Also, מרשתת was proposed instead of אינטרנט, but nobody uses it.

oovckk

Amir said...

Dammmit, those moving yellow eyes of yours are giving me the heebie-jeebies.

kfcqfctn

Amir said...

No.

Your yellow eyes are really giving me the heebie-jeebies.

I'm with Hadar for almost 5 years, and the wedding is mostly a formality.

I almost stopped blogging, because of the technical problems with Blogger 2.0 beta and because i'm busy at work.

It is very exciting to know that you noticed it.

krhiagiw

AlmogBlog said...

Hi,
Sorry to bug in, but two things bother me.
1. I hear the word כרוכית quite often. It is catching on... (it's widely used in the media so I think people are getting used to hearing it).

2. Amir, you have such strong beliefs about conserving language. Yet you choose to write the word 'I' as a lowercase letter. I understand you do it to make a social point, but it's still a sore to the eye.
As I see it, it's the same as if I'd decide the letter C is useless and kan be replased by an S and a K.

Amir said...

Almog,

1. OK. If it's true, i am glad.

2. a. Damn it, i've done it for so long. First intentionally, then it became a habit to the point of being worthy of careful preservation.

b. After about 9 years that i am doing it, you are the second person that has anything to say about it. The first one was also an Israeli, but he was an idiot, who used it as an argument against me when i remarked about his horrible English spelling. Is it really such a sore to the eye?

c. The letter c can't be replaced, at least not the way you showed: In "replased" it would be pronounced as z. But anyway, the English orthography is probably the worst in the world. Ghoti, dammit.

P.S. I didn't imagine that a short sad entry about a fellow blogger in coma will become the biggest comment magnet on this blog.

ezxpslp

Bryce Wesley Merkl said...

I noticed your discussion on Belarusian and thought you might enjoy this site:

Беларуская wiki browser