language query

[Vitaly A. Chernetsky]

Dear SEELANGers,

I believe that if there was a case of emotionality here (of which several
of you had complained), it was in the series of knee-jerk responses of a
number of list members to Michael's quite legitimate objection (in the
most unfortunate tradition of stereotyping anyone Ukrainian as a
ultra-nationalist bugaboo). Perhaps Emily did not think of the pejorative
connotations borne by the wording of her original query. On the other
hand, I would caution against using Moscow/MGU as a standard against which
to measure the Russian language. The Moscow variant of Russian is just as
marked as the English of New York or London (not to mention that it is
frequently the butt of jokes among native Russian speakers elsewhere). As
for the authority of norm, I still vividly remember my own arguments with
some of my teachers back in my MGU filfak years (during exams, no less!)
over points of grammar and--particularly--phonetics.  There was also a
trace of bias in the assumption that the informant in question (a native
speaker of Russian who got her degree in Russian philology at a university
in [mind you, Russified Soviet-ruled] Ukraine) would not be as good on
grammatically correct Russian. I wonder if my colleagues would jump to
similar assumptions in the case of say, someone from the University of
Tartu?

Just some "meta" reflections on the otherwise happily resolved exchange.

Sincerely,

Vitaly Chernetsky