Russian and Ukrainian are East Slavic languages and come from a common native stock, but they evolved differently
Citizens of Ukraine certainly don’t expect the West to send their armies to fight the Russians, but there is one thing everyone could do right away to help them confirm their identity: call the country’s capital right. . Do you say Kiev or Kyiv? The first version is the one adopted by Moscow at the time of the Soviet Union, then also used abroad and also became famous for a chicken recipe. The second is the one that the inhabitants of the country have always preferred. In the age of cancel culture, perhaps we should all adopt it.
Ukrainians call their capital “Kyiv” (pronounced ki-yiv, with many “i’s”), a transliteration of the original “Київ”. The Russian version is “Kiev” based on the Russian Cyrillic “Киев”. The reaction to the Russification of Ukraine had already led numerous publications, dictionaries, maps and governments to adopt the local spelling, abandoning the Soviet one. The invasion of the country should push everyone to take the side of the Ukrainians, by pronouncing the name of the capital correctly. “When I meet people I don’t know – Andrii Smytsniuk, a Ukrainian language teacher at Cambridge University, told the Guardian -, I like to pronounce their name the way they want it to be pronounced in their language. I think ‘Kyiv’ is right: many Ukrainians see it as a sign of respect for their language and identity ”.
The difference is due to the linguistic evolution of a region which in the last thousand years has fallen under the rule of the Mongols, Lithuanians, Poles and Russians. Russian and Ukrainian are East Slavic languages and come from a common native stock, but they evolved differently. It also happened to English, which uses different words and spelling when spoken in London rather than in New York. In England we say, for example, color, center, aging; in America it is called color, center, aging.
Ukrainian has taken on some Polish influences over time and has letters of the alphabet that do not exist in Russian, such as ї in Київ. The Kyiv government has been conducting an international campaign to cancel the Kiev denomination for four years, but only partially succeeded. It will be the solidarity determined by the Russian invasion, unfortunately, to cancel it forever.
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