Language Family Matters

14 MIN READ

In January, the new language law was adopted in Ukraine to allow the Ukrainian language only to be used in the service sector, public organizations, and government agencies.

Supermarkets, cafes, banks, and online shops staff are obliged from then on to communicate and serve their clients in Ukrainian only, including the information provided in price lists, instructions, tickets, and menus. The violation of the law results in fines. Earlier in April 2019, the parliament Rada adopted a law of the Ukrainian as functioning state language – the language of citizens and public and local authorities. And later, on July 16, 2021, the requirement to take an exam to assess the level of fluency in the Ukrainian language is about to come into force for those who seek a position to work in government bodies.

This is yet another language-related act during the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia and a continuation of the latest Ukrainian language movement of 2014, which led to the dreadful civil war. This vast and diverse country has long been a place for different peoples of different communities and languages (22 living languages according to Ethnologue), and to quote one native Ukrainian, “the languages had existed long before this current political issue occurred.” The deepest felt division is between the large West Ukrainian community and the Russian-speaking one in the country’s eastern part. Language has been the main difference between them, apart from religious matters intensified by the separation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from the Russian Orthodox Church as of 2019 and their use of different languages accordingly.

To remember the cause and the development of the tense present situation between the neighboring countries, we have to go back to the year 2012, when sitting Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych proposed a language law to permit officials to speak Russian in the areas with at least 10% of Russian speakers. The law infuriated many Ukrainian people and caused a fighting scene in Rada on the day the law was adopted. In the ensuing few months, Russian was declared as an official language alongside Ukrainian in various Eastern Ukraine cities. The anger and the size of the Maidan square protests in Kyiv only grew, and in February 2014, after Mr. Yanukovych had fled to Russia, the parliament voted for a new law to declare Ukrainian as the only official language of the whole state. This made skeptics, including the Russian media, see this as an attempt to ban the Russian language in Ukraine altogether, including in at the time still Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula. Due to international pressure, the new law was not signed but the situation triggered a Russian uprising to support Crimea on February 27 and a hasty referendum on Crimea to become part of Russia on March 16. Shortly after, the civil war flared up in the Eastern part of Ukraine and is simmering to the present day.

Language issues in the former Soviet republics are a delicate and sensitive matter with a political touch in some way, mainly due to the dominance of the big sister. It so happened that, apart from being the biggest country in the world and one of the leading political, technological, and cultural powers, Russia has had the forefront and superiority over the neighboring lands for centuries – its history spans the years of the mighty Russian Empire followed by the rule of the Soviet Union and finally a dominant role of the new Russian Federation.

Russian and Ukrainian languages joined by Belarusian are tightly related and are classified as Indo-European East Slavic language branch all using the Cyrillic alphabet. Russian-the mother tongue of millions, a second language spoken by large numbers in the former Soviet Union countries and a vast Russian diaspora around the world, all in all about 250 million people, the language of science, technology, and rich classical literature, one of the six official languages of the United Nations, is clearly at the forefront with its advantages and benefits.

Ukrainian Mova (українська мова) (Mova meaning language) is the principal language of Ukraine spoken by more than thirty million people around the world. Its Cyrillic alphabet contains three unique letters: the є pronounced ye as in yeah , the і pronounced ee as in fee, the ї pronounced yi as in yield. It features seven grammatical cases* while, for example, Russian has six.

Belarusian (беларуская мова) has about four million users in total. Its Cyrillic alphabet contains the non-Russian letters i and ў, the latter pronounced oo, close to the vowel sound in the word you.

Let’s compare the following sentence I am reading a book on climate change.

Rus Я читаю книгу об изменении климата.

Ukr Я читаю книгу про кліматичні зміни.

Bel Я чытаю кнігу пра змяненне клімату.

Given the close relationship between the languages, I open a Ukrainian newspaper and attempt to read it. With the help of Russian language knowledge and some work involved, I manage to track words and even sentences I can guess the meaning of. It helps to resort to previous knowledge and look for similarities with languages already known, which is comforting and motivating for a learner of a new language. This, however, does not guarantee that I would necessarily automatically understand what is being said to me in the vernacular if I land in one of the city’s cafes and try to order a coffee. It is important to note that spoken language carries a host of challenges a listener encounters, these being blending of words, morphological and pragmatic reductions, slang, overall paralinguistics which includes spoken language features such as accent, volume, tone, stress, and even body language, and more. It is a process, and one needs to be motivated to go through it. In a debate on the new language law in Ukraine on the Russian radio station Radio Svoboda, debaters gave examples of young native Russian speakers who do not try to speak the Ukrainian language back to the staff of public services, as the new law now requires. The reason is that they are afraid to be laughed at. The youth claim they haven’t really learned the language to be fluent and use it in practice. They may understand what is being said but prefer to answer back in Russian. I see a point here. The key to language learning is motivation and use it with a purpose in mind. Immersing in the language alone and even years of learning it in school do not make one a fluent speaker.

Leaving European east and moving a bit westwards, we find other three language-sisters with their own long, complicated family history. Long ago, back in the 14th century, Scandinavia was practically one country. The Kalmar Union (1397-1523), ruled by the Danish Queen, unified Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Later, Iceland and Faroe Islands were too under the rule of Denmark, until, one by one, starting with Sweden in 1520 and ending with Faroe, which by the way still together with Greenland formally remains within the Kingdom of Denmark, the counties have gained their autonomy. The languages of all these five countries belong to the same language family. All are Indo-European North Germanic Languages. All were once used by the Viking peoples who spoke Old Norse and used the Runes as a written language. At some point (roughly 7th-15th c. AD), the band split and began speaking slightly different dialects, later solidified as separate languages.

Danish is a de facto national language of Denmark. It is spoken by ca 5,6 million people, mainly in Denmark, and is still taught in schools on the Faroe Islands. Denmark’s rule over Norway for more than 400 years (1380-1814) undoubtedly impacted the way people spoke there as well. Norway’s official written language all those years was Danish, and higher education was pursued in Denmark. As a result, Norwegian nobility, traders, landowners spoke Danish with a Norwegian accent while the rest of the population spoke Norwegian dialects**. It could not do without some kind of resistance to this influence and a national movement during the Romanticism period emerged forming two groups of patriots working in two opposite directions in language development. One group was led by Knud Knudsen (1812-1895), proposing to make the Danish variant used by aristocrats more Norwegian, meanwhile, the other group led by Ivar Aasen (1813-1896) was proposing to create a completely new written variant of Norwegian based on collected data of Norwegian dialects and accents, their grammar and lexicon as well as applying the grammatical forms of the old Norwegian language. Knud Knudsen’s proposal to make Danish words sound and look Norwegian was officially approved after his death in 1907. It was first called Riksmål and later after 1929 was renamed Bokmål. Meantime, Ivar Aasen issued a grammar of his variant in 1864 and a dictionary in 1873 while at the same time composing his own poems and plays in it. He called this variant of the language Landsmål which became officially approved in 1885 and got its new official name Nynorsk in 1929. Nynorsk translated as New Norwegian containing the features of the old Norse*** successfully managed to distance itself from Danish. There have been some attempts to combine those two forms into one common language Samnorsk (Common Norwegian) but the idea has been ruled out, and now Norwegian children learn both variants in schools and the official documents Norwegian citizens receive from the state are in two official Norwegian languages. It is however totally up to each person to decide which variant to speak and write and Bokmål is used by more than 80% of Norwegians.

After several reforms, the main differences between the prevalent Bokmål and Danish today are gender (while Danish has common and neuter, Norwegian Bokmål distinguishes between neuter, masculine and feminine), some unique grammatical rules, and in writing, some patterns are followed such as p-k-t in Bokmål and b-g-d in Danish accordingly (e.g., pipe-pibe, bok-bog, rot-rod). Norwegian Bokmål father Knud Knudsen would today be called Knut Knutsen.

Swedish belongs to the same Indo-European North Germanic language family. Its most conspicuous difference is the Swedish letters ä and ö in the writing. In Danish and Norwegian those letters are æ and ø respectively.

Let’s once again compare the sentence I am reading a book on climate change.

Dan Jeg læser en bog om klimaændringer.

Nor Jeg leser en bok om klimaendringer.

Swe Jag läser en bok om klimatförändringar.

While linguistically, Swedish is closer to Danish, the years of Sweden’s rule over Norway from 1814 until 1905 made those two languages more intelligible to each other. To this day, a Swede living in Norway normally stick to their native Swedish. It is amusing to watch Scandinavian TV programs and films where Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes meet to discuss world matters or act in a film, all in their own language. If you ever have watched the TV series The Bridge (Broen/Bron), you will know what I mean. Sometimes, the performers would remain speaking their native language adjusting only particular words according to the language of the Scandinavian country where the film is produced and what its primal audience is. Try watching Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (2014) or The Square (2017), both brilliant Swedish films, where you’ll see a mix of Swedish, Norwegian, or Danish actors and actresses speaking their own languages for a Swedish film director and audience. The claim that a Swedish person has more difficulty understanding Danish than Norwegian is too featured in one of the scenes in The Square but mainly to show the purpose to take advantage of it.

Many similar language examples in Scandinavian popular culture and life prove the three make an effort to understand and be understood. The same does not seem to work for the three Eastern Slavic nations, not yet at least. It is more the opposite. Living in Denmark’s capital city where English only speaking restaurant and shop staff is more frequent than not, while in Oslo, your restaurant order placed in Norwegian will most likely be taken in Swedish since many Swedes live and work there, this language mix is something taken with ease and for granted. To reach the level of such a mellow, nonchalant attitude towards language takes time, requires political stability, and no necessity for anyone to prove or defend their identity. It is an example to follow and a wish for East Slavic language speakers same sisterhood relationship. Differences separate but can unite as well, especially within a family.

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*Grammatical case is a linguistic term for forms of words (nouns, adjectives pronouns, participles, and numerals) to indicate various types of grammatical relationships, their function in a sentence. The Ukrainian language is one of the few Slavic languages that has preserved the Common Slavic vocative case (e.g. when addressing one’s sister (sestra) will be referred to as sestro). In the Russian language, a handful of forms of the vocative case have been preserved (e.g. Bozhe “God!” and Gospodi “Lord!”)

**Also the case today and there are known four main dialect groups which contain smaller variants of the dialect, making them around 100 in total. Dialects are used officially, e.g., on national television.

***the old Norse. Nynorsk was intended to carry on the tradition of Old Norse interrupted in the 15th century.

****Before 1948 the å was written aa. The spelling reform the same year abolished the German practice to start writing all nouns with a capital letter.

Sources: Ethnologue, “Sprog'”Mikkel Wallentin (2016), “Norvegų kalbos gramatika” Aurelija Griškevičienė (2012), “The languages of the World” by Kenneth Katzner (1975), “Linguistics. An Introduction” Andrew Radford et al. (2009), Ukrainian language newspaper Ekspres