Odessa/Ukrainian "nationalism"

[Jim Rader]

Thanks for your interesting post.  I take it from the context and
from the literal meaning of the Ukrainian word that <surzhyk> refers
to some kind of mixture of Ukrainian and Russian.  Is this a more or
less generally used term for such?  Does it refer to Russified
Ukrainian or Ukrainianized Russian?

Jim Rader

>
> In Kharkov/-iv two years ago (where I did occasionally hear Ukrainian on
> the street, along with surzhyk, and Russian) I asked to change currency in
> Ukrainian once at noon. A young woman in the store replied in Russian that
> the kassa would open again in an hour (with some other information). I
> replied in Ukrainian (not really thinking about it, but not having caught
> the "in an hour"), "You said, 'In an hour?'" The young woman struggled to
> reply "Yes, in an hour" in Ukrainian ("Tak, za hodynu" or "Tak, cherez
> hodynu" would've been fine), couldn't, and replied, "Da, cherez chas." I
> thanked here (in Russian) and headed out. As I went, the two other youths
> (young woman, young man, all were about 17) were laughing historically and
> the young man said to the girl I'd asked, in Russian, "What kind of
> Ukrainian girl are you ('Chto ty za ukrainka') if you can't at least say
> "Tak, za hodynu?!" Times change. In 1990 some of us still got the
> occassional "You need to speak a human language" ("Nuzhno govorit'
> po-chelovecheski") for using Ukrainian (that, in Kyiv).
>
>
> R. DeLossa, HURI
> ____________________________________________________
> Robert DeLossa
> Director of Publications
> Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University
> 1583 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138
> 617-496-8768; fax. 617-495-8097
> reply to: rdelossa at fas.harvard.edu
> http://www.sabre.org/huri
>