Lukashenka stages New attacks on our language!

[Alina Israeli]

Yoshimasa Tsuji wrote:

>Alina, I think, we are not in a position to advise others whether
>they ought to obey the law or not.

I am afraid the discussion is less about the repressive government in
Belarus' and more about me. In this capacity I would like to suggest the
following:

1. Writing systems exist not so much for the pleasure of linguists but in
order for people to cummunicate easily in written form. Spelling rules
should not be overly complicated. Let me offer one idiosyncratic rule: a
Russian child first learns that spelling is morphological, in other words,
the stress matters: molodOj, molOzhe, mOlod, and then that it does not
matter: rOs but rasti.

Linguists have other ways of reconstructing etymologies without
complicating the lives of those who just need to learn to read and write.

2.The fact that

>Post-war Japan saw a
>major spelling change and a substantial discouragement of ideographic
>symbols and I am of the opinion that the command of the Japanese language
>in general is at a miserable standard.

may be due to the fact that many more people are literate after the war
than before the war. In a similar fashion, many American intellectuals
complain that romances make it to the top of the best-sellers lists, while
before the war it was Hemingway. Well, this may be the result of higher
literacy and the fact that many more people read, and Daniele Steel
represents the taste of the masses.

3.
>The fact that some dissidents
>ended in a political failure by breaking a law means nothing.

Hardly nothing. Laws exist to be obeyed, and Lukashenka's regime is the
first to break them. The ruler and his regime can be ostracized for doing
that. The fact that most countries have some bad laws on the books does not
mean that one should favor anarchy. Bad laws should be exposed as such.

>Some people would prefer to act as dissidents rather than claim to
>be one behaving as conformists.

You don't need to remind me of that.

>And mind you, the end result
>may not always justify the means.

Here we are totally in agreement.

Alina Israeli