language query

[Michael Burianyk]

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Emily Tall wrote:

> A Russian from Kirov, educated at the Univ. of Lviv with a degree in
> Russian, tried to tell me that saying "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke" is
> just as good as "ia govoriu po-russki" (and the same with "chitat'").
> My 2 MGU native informants told me she is wrong. Could she have been
> contaminated by Ukrainian, or perhaps the provinces? I am trying to
> figure out how she could be using incorrect Russian. Is it some
> kind of substandard variant? Thanks! Emily Tall

Your question has a lot of underlying assumptions. What do you mean
by 'substandard variant'? I was under the impression that in linguistics
the whole concept of 'substandard' has been abandoned (at least in the
context of native speakers). Secondly, why would the Russian spoken
(or better, taught) anywhere in the former S.U. be 'contaminated' and
in what way? If anything, the process was usually perceived to be the
other way around (Ukrainian grammar, vocabulary, changing under influence
of Russian).

Certainly, in Ukrainian, one can say 'ia hovoriu ykrainskoiu movoiu'.
Not being an expert, I can't say for certain whether this is the
analogous construction. On the other hand, though it is correct, it
isn't as common as 'hovoriu po-ukrainskomu'.

This information, by the way, comes from a native speaker of both
Ukrainian and Russian, with training in language, linguistics and
considerable experience teaching both languages at university level.

And btw, having just spoken with the same source, "ia govoriu na russkom
iazyke" *is* just as good - just not as common.

--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca