Political Correctness in Russia

[Alina Israeli]

Here's what Rozental' wrote some 40 years ago:

Сочетание на Украине возникло под влиянием украинского языка (ср. на  
Полтавщине, на Черниговщине) и поддерживается выражением на окраине.  
http://books.google.com/books?id=v1A-AAAAIAAJ&q=Сочетание+на 
+Украине&dq=Сочетание+на+Украине&hl=ru&pgis=1

The prescriptive на Украине has been replaced with в Украине in the  
latest editions of the same Spravochnik po pravopisaniju i  
literaturnoj pravke.

AI


On Dec 6, 2008, at 2:48 PM, Maria Dmytriyeva wrote:

>> In the matter of v/na Ukraine, mentioned in another response, this is
>> quite literally a matter of  'political correctness', and is  
>> mirrored by
>> the insistence that we should in English refer to 'Ukraine' and  
>> not, as
>> formerly, 'the Ukraine'. The argument seems to be that in both  
>> cases the
>> old formulation implied that the Ukraine was a mere territory and  
>> not an
>> independent state (notwithstanding the analogy of 'na Rusi'). This  
>> has
>> been discussed here before, and I would still maintain that it is not
>> 'the' which implies marginality but 'Ukraine', for obvious  
>> etymological
>> reasons.
>
> I would highly appreciate if you stated these _obvious_  
> etymological reasons that go at least a step towards science away  
> from folk etymologies so wide-spread among advocates of Ukraine  
> being perceived as an outskirt of the Great Russia.
>
>

Alina Israeli
LFS, American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington DC. 20016
(202) 885-2387 	
fax (202) 885-1076
aisrael at american.edu




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