Galician intelligentsia is preparing a transition Ukrainian language on Latin.
The idea of replacing the Cyrillic alphabet in the Ukrainian language with Latin for the sake of European integration is very close to Galician thinkers. A round table on this topic will be held on November 9 in Lviv
In Lviv on November 9, in the famous cult cafe "Dziga", a discussion will take place on the topic: is it possible to translate the Ukrainian language from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet. This is reported by the program News "Facts" of the Ukrainian TV channel ICTV. The main argument in favor of switching to the Latin alphabet among local intellectuals is civilizational. Ukrainian people or, more precisely, Western Ukraine is “for centuries the people of Europe. This is what makes him different from Russians and Little Russians (Naddnipryansky Ukrainians - ed.), Who, in fact, are Russian people. ” And Latin, as well as possible, will emphasize the belonging of Western Ukrainians to the family of the peoples of Central Europe.
Sooner or later, such a transition from Cyrillic to Latin will take place, the Lviv intelligentsia believes. The idea of "romanizing the Ukrainian language" appeared in the 90s among Galician intellectuals who actively advocated the independence of Galicia. By 2000, the norms of Latin spelling in the Ukrainian language had already been developed. Among the developers, the most famous was the artist and publicist Vlodko (Vladimir - ed.) Kostyrko. In the early 2000s, he already published his articles in Ukrainian, written in Latin, in issues of the Lviv culturological almanac "Ї". Kostyrko has long since switched to the Latin alphabet in his Ukrainian-language texts. By this he hopes to underline the irreconcilability and even hostility of two cultures - the "European" Western Ukrainian and the "Russian" Central Ukrainian. He even created the painting "Uniate Kills a Cossack" in his time. In the picture, a Polish hussar with "wings" hits the head of a Zaporozhets with a spear. This is a reminder that in the 17th century there was a war between the Galicians, Greek Catholics and the Orthodox people of Dnipro, the descendants of the Cossacks.
Greek Catholics, reminds the artist, fought on the side of the Catholic Poles. With the passage of time, and especially after the Ukrainisation of the Galicians in the 19 century, it was forgotten. Today, Vlodko Kostyrko openly vents the inhabitants of Eastern and Western Ukraine, arguing that there can be no cultural and civilizational reconciliation between them.
Let me remind you that in March, the Temporary Special Commission for the preparation of the draft law "On the development and use of languages in Ukraine" considered the gradual abandonment of the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in Ukraine. Back in 2007, I wrote about an attempt, during President Yushchenko's time, to extend the replacement of the Cyrillic alphabet to abetsadlo. But then these attempts were doomed.
Issues related to the functioning of the language in the XX and XXI centuries had and have a political and civilizational dimension. And recently, on various Internet resources, sensational information appeared - that for several months now the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has been working on a commission to translate the Ukrainian language from Cyrillic to Latin, and Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk, who was dismissed by the Verkhovna Rada, has been heading. The commission includes employees of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In addition to the state of philologists and linguists, some deputies of the Verkhovna Rada from the Our Ukraine faction, in particular Vyacheslav Koval and Mykola Onishchuk, are engaged in the direct development of the project. The idea of creating a commission allegedly originated at the beginning of 2005 and was supported by President Yushchenko. But then she was at the level of rumors leaked in the media and, after a series of critical publications in the press, was "forgotten." However, the development of the project by scientists continued. Once again, the idea of creating a commission emerged after the parliamentary elections that failed for Our Ukraine. And in August 2006, the commission was still created. The Moldovan nationalist website Moldovatoday.net reported that the commission under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs conducts ongoing consultations with Moldovan colleagues who translated the Moldovan language into Latin. It is also reported that the problem of translating the Ukrainian language into Latin was discussed in the backroom conversations of the Ukrainian and Moldavian delegations at the third meeting of the GUAM Parliamentary Assembly in October 2006.
I think that constant experiments on the Ukrainian language are carried out not only because of the desire of individual “svdomykh” officials to earnestly earn the favor of Western patrons. This is done in order to bring down a single cultural and civilizational space of peoples close to each other. Slavic peoples adapted writing, depending on whether they adopted Christianity of the rite, Byzantine or Latin. If it was Latin, then it determined the choice of writing, - the Latins used the Vulgate for religious purposes - a variant of the Bible, which was almost never translated into national languages, for such was the policy of the western church. Hence there was no need to adapt the written language of the surrounded Slavs to the peculiarities of their languages.
Byzantium went another way, and the missionaries Konstantin the Philosopher (Cyril) and his brother Methodius, translated the Gospel into Slavic (more precisely, his Old Bulgarian dialect), for which they created a special script. This Slavic translation was accepted by all those Slavs who professed Orthodoxy. That is, our present writing is due to the choice made once.
However, attacks on the Cyrillic alphabet were undertaken repeatedly - in the XIX century. in the Austro-Hungarian Galicia and in the XX century. already ... the Bolsheviks.
Alphabet and abetzadlo
Back in 1823, the Viennese palace librarian and philologist, Bartholomew Kopitar, a Slovenian by nationality, wrote in his letter to the Czech philologist Joseph Dobrovsky: "My ideal for all Slavs is Latin letters, and for addition - several Slavic letters from Cyrillic." He proposed to introduce phonetic transcription into language practice, which would lead to individual writing for virtually every village in Galicia. In addition, he was going to replace the Cyrillic alphabet with a Latin alphabet.
In 1833, a collection of ethnographer and writer Vatslav Zaleski Piesni polskie i ruskie ludu galicyjskiego "Songs of the Polish and Russian Galician People" was published in Lemberg. As an alphabet, he used not Russian, but Polish, which he explained to the following reason: “I took it as a basis to write as much as the people say, even if it were grammatical errors. And the fact that I used Polish letters for this, and not verb or Cyrillic, - so everyone obviously praises me for it. I am sure that the time will come when all the Slavic peoples will leave those old letters that most of all prevent the introduction of Slavic literature to the general mass of European literature. ”
He was supported by his colleague - historian, publisher and translator of the Lay of Igor's Post, Avgust Belevsky. In the review of the collection, he wrote: “One of the most important points that the publisher touched in the book is what letters and how spelling to print songs of the Russian people, who have no grammar or dictionary for their language yet ...”
However, neither Zaleski, nor Belevsky, in their attempts to introduce the Latin alphabet for the Galician Ruthenians, had yet set political goals. They just wanted to “make happy” the common people. Somewhat later, events began, which were later dubbed the "alphabet war."
The idea of the Latin alphabet was taken up by the young Galician priest Joseph Lozinsky, who published an article in the Lviv newspaper Rozmaitosci (1834, no. 29), the work "Russian wedding". In the 30s of the XIX century. in Galicia, the process of national revival was taking place. His soul was "Galician awakeners" - the youth of the Lviv University, headed by Markiyan Shashkevich, Ivan Vagilevich and Yakov Golovatsky, nicknamed at the university "Rus' Trinity". It was they who gave the most harsh rebuke to the attempt to introduce the Polish "abetsadl", considering it an attempt to tear Galicia away from historical and cultural ancient Russian roots. “That is the question of existence: to be or not to be Rusyns in Galicia,” wrote Golovatsky much later, “if the Galicians in the 1830s accepted the Polish Abetsadlo, the Russian individual nationality would disappear, the Russian spirit would disappear, and the second Kholmshchyna would become from Galician Rus. "(Golovatsky Y., Notes and additions to the articles of Mr. Pypin, published in the" Bulletin of Europe "for 1885 and 1886, Vilna, 1888). In response, Markiyan Shashkevich in 1836 published a brochure "ABC and Abetsadlo". In it, he argued and convincingly showed the unfoundedness, unacceptability and direct harm of Lozinsky's proposal. He also argued that the departure from the Cyrillic alphabet would not bring Galicians closer to European culture, but would only alienate them from other Slavs. For some time, the idea of introducing the Latin alphabet was put aside.
The next attempt of the Viennese authorities to translate the Galician-Russian language on a Latin basis was undertaken in the 1859 year. In Vienna, a brochure of the Austrian political figure and high-ranking official of the Ministry of Education Yosef Irechek Ueber den Vorschlag, das Ruthenische mit lateinischen Schriftzeishen zu schreiben (“On the proposal to the Rusians to write in Latin letters”) was published. The author clearly stated the purpose of the spelling reform: “The healthy development of Ukrainian literature will find the strongest support for using Latin letters. As long as the Ruthenians write and print in Cyrillic, they will show a tendency towards Church Slavonic and, therefore, towards Russian, and therefore the very existence of Ukrainian literature will be questioned. Church Slavonic and Russian influence are so great that they threaten to completely oust the local language and local literature. ” And further: "In addition to rejection from the Russian people, the transition to the Latin alphabet would later help the Galician Ukrainians to learn Polish and German, without which they would not live anyway."
Such influential people in the Galich ruska environment as Bishop Litvinovich and philologist Joseph Lozinsky who had turned to Russophile positions by that time voted against this reform. They argued that this reform was “pernicious for the Rus people, because with the Latin alphabet the spirit of the Ukrainian people and faith would perish.”
Already in the summer, Irechek was going to come to Lemberg and head the textbook commission, and from October 1859, the children in Galicia were to begin training in new primers. But the scope of popular opposition to reform struck the authorities. The population of Galicia held spontaneous meetings, articles appeared in the press, petitions were written, and deputations were sent. And the Austrian authorities, remembering well the Hungarian revolution of 1848, retreated.
“... books written in the Russian alphabet will become the subject of history”
In 1919, in the “Izvestia” file for March, a note “On the Latin Alphabet” appeared with the frivolous signature “Old High School Student”. It was a letter to the editors, humorous in form, but with a serious, essentially, posing the question. It stated: “Our alphabet is too complex and so different from that adopted in Western Europe that foreigners are horrified by it. We should go to the Latin script, simpler and more elegant, just as we switched from the Russian calendar to the common European and metric system, instead of “pounds” and “arshinov”. And it was explained how it is possible to transmit specifically Russian sounds in Latin letters. There were also references to Slavic peoples, for example, to Poles, who have been using the Latin for a long time.
Ktoo took refuge behind a pseudonym - contemporaries figured out easily. It was either Lunacharsky or Bukharin — the main red intellectuals who then became active propagandists of the “new alphabet”. But what a whim - to translate Russia into Latin?
And everything is very simple: the ardent revolutionaries considered the common alphabet to be one of the tools designed to create a new interethnic community. Why Latin? Firstly, the new leaders in their spirit were, of course, people of Western civilization. And secondly, the world revolution will follow the Russian revolution! Renounce the old world and start everything from scratch.
They started it in 1922 in Azerbaijan. Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan Samad Agamali-ogly, after talking with Lenin beforehand, created in Baku the “Committee of the NTA (New Turkic Alphabet)”. Lenin, according to Lunacharsky, very much approved the idea of romanization, he only thought that it was necessary to do this “later, when we got stronger”). Soon the Latin alphabet in Azerbaijan became state. The old writing was declared "feudal-reactionary." Especially since Kemal Ataturk, who was then considered as a strategic ally, Latinized Turkey with might and main. The Latin alphabet was gradually conceived to be made basic for all non-Slavic peoples of the USSR.
At the Presidium of the Council of Nationalities of the CEC in 1927, the All-Union Central Committee of the new alphabet was created. By the beginning of 30, the 17 languages of Muslim peoples were translated into Latin, and by 1936 there were already 68 of different nationalities. All this happened against the background of indigenization (in our country, Ukrainization was carried out under the leadership of Kaganovich). In 1930, on the initiative of Lunacharsky, the question of the romanization of the Russian alphabet (as well as of Ukraine and Russia) was put on the line. In the article “Latinization of Russian Writing”, published in the journal “Culture and Writing of the East”, he wrote: “From now on, our Russian alphabet alienated us not only from the West, but also from the East, largely by our own awakened ... Gradually books, written in Russian alphabet, will be the subject of history. Of course, it will always be useful to learn Russian in order to have access to them. This will already be a sensible benefit for those who will be engaged in the history of literature, but for the new generation it will be in any case less and less necessary ... The benefits presented by the introduction of the Latin font are enormous. It gives us maximum internationalism, while connecting us not only with the West, but also with the renewed East. ”
The subcommission on romanization of Russian writing, created then at the Glavnauka Narkompros, declared the Russian alphabet “an ideologically alien form of socialist construction of graphics”, “a remnant of class graphics of the XVIII-XIX centuries. Russian feudal landowners and the bourgeoisie "," graphics of autocratic oppression, missionary propaganda, Great-Russian national chauvinism and violent Russification. "
Flaming Latinizers began to slow down in the middle of 1930's. Stalin managed to defeat his Trotsky opponents, so the ideas of the world revolution lost their relevance. A great war was approaching the country, and it was necessary for the peoples to feel themselves in a single cultural space.
In 1936, the Central Committee of the CPSU (B.) Received a comprehensive report NR-322, which, inter alia, said: “The enemies of the Soviet government and the CPSU (B.) Tried to use romanization in order to separate the workers of these republics and regions from the common family Of the peoples of the USSR. Pretending to be talking about the “international character” of the Latin basis, they defended their orientation towards bourgeois culture Zap. Europe as opposed to a developing culture, national in form and socialist in content ... As a result of the active eradication of the Russian alphabet, the All-Russian Central Committee and local committees of the NA created 10 romanized alphabets for peoples with Russian script ... Terminological construction of languages of many peoples of the Union is also not favorable SSR.It is especially unfavorable in this respect among the border peoples and nationalities, where "romanization" is simply an instrument of big and small imperialists. For example, in Soviet Moldavia, for a number of years Romanization of terminology was openly carried out, and in Soviet Karelia (with the old leadership) it was the most active initialization. And all this happened, despite the resistance of the broad masses of the population. " Today, the phrase from the book “The Golden Calf” reminds of those times: “the Herculeans” promised to respond to someone’s intrigues with a friendly translation of office work into the Latin alphabet ”. The meaning of this joke becomes clear only if we recall the unrealized campaign of romanization. But the work of the enthusiasts of “approaching the West” was not lost ...
Why should mobile operators transliterate?
When you read the programmatic article on the romanization of the Ukrainian language “Ukrlatinitsa: simple and with taste” in “The Mirror of the Week” (No. 28 (453), 26.07 — 1.08. 03), it seems that it fell into the distant 30-s. The same arguments are “approaching the civilized West”. The same enemy is “Great Russian chauvinism” and Orthodoxy. And also the main target group is the younger generation: “... Not in the current generation, but in the succeeding ones. Because already from the cradle, still not understanding what these squiggles mean, the child will get used to the Latin alphabet. It will pay off when the time comes to learn a foreign language: the little Ukrainian will no longer have a break-up about the typeface. ”
As you know, the truth is often spoken through the lips of children. Recently, my daughter asked me an amazing question: "Mom, why would a mobile phone operator overpower SMS messages from Ukrainian language, ale Latin letters?"
Why indeed? After all, on any keyboard there is not only Latin, but also Cyrillic font. But the majority of customers of mobile operators, as is known, are young people. And she gradually gets used to the Latin transliteration.
As mentioned above, online publications report consultations between our developers and Moldovan colleagues, who in the beginning of 90 synthesized Moldovan language based on the work of the Lunacharsky commission.
I contacted the first secretary of the press service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Natalia Zhitaryuk. She “in working order” denied this information, adding that “Yakshche newspaper“ 2000 ”has a claim on those who have a serious newspaper, it won’t be disinformatiti readers and writers about those who do not adhere to those who are not“ untill ”. denies the existence of a commission on the Latin transliteration of the Ukrainian language; it is highly alarming that over the past few years, network publications and reputable newspapers constantly “throw in” this topic. At the orange youth forums, it is discussed quite aggressively. But it should be remembered that the prologue to the war that split the former Moldavian SSR into two irreconcilable parts was precisely the romanization of the language.
Information