Ukraine/The Ukraine

[Chernetsky, Vitaly A]

Dear Colleagues,

This thread is becoming increasingly a space for venting one's right to bigoted speech. Nobody is *FORCING* any one here to use one word/grammatical form and not the other; in the US at least, we have the First Amendment. However, the insistence on using vocabulary that the person(s) designated by this vocabulary find objectionable is hardly something to be proud of. I am saddened to see a number of colleagues digging in their heels in this stance.

Sincerely,

Vitaly Chernetsky
President, American Association for Ukrainian Studies

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Vitaly Chernetsky
Associate Professor
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
University of Kansas
2140 Wescoe Hall, 1445 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence, KS 66045-7594
(785) 864-2359
vchernetsky at ku.edu
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________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of Jules Levin [ameliede at EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2014 1:03 PM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Ukraine/The Ukraine

Everyone arguing from personal address among individuals is missing the
point.  Old guys like me are still coherent enough to switch to
African-American when speaking to my A-A neighbor, but my neighbor is
rational enough not to tell me to use only A-A even when speaking to my
own family members in the privacy of my home.
The fact is that a mature country self-confident in its identity does
not concern itself with the grammatical details of how its neighbor
speaks its name.    Countries that worry about such things are behaving
like hypersensitive teenagers.  I realize that now the correct
response--Oh grow up!--would be considered child abuse, but...
Jules (chalk it up to Alzheimers) Levin

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