I feel like dominating after this one!!!

Hello in Ukrainian

Well hello random 7 people from UT 4 from California and 1 from DC! Also I would not want to forget my special 2 readers from Taiwan and India! I do this for you! Well actually more for myself but I am glad you look at it, it would be even better to see some feedback:) just saying!

Today I would like to tell you more than you will ever want to know about how to say Hello in Ukrainian. As you could already guess, it will be a long quote from one of the articles I found in my research. I thought that this guy did a really good job describing cultural and psychological particularities of such simple event as greeting. Enjoy!

Another manifestation of the power distance in the Ukrainian community is traceable in native patterns of greeting. Unlike most West European languages, Ukrainian and Russian contain practically no greetings to be used universally in all communicative contexts. There is no direct equivalent in either of the languages to the one-word Germanic and Romanic correspondents, such as Hello! (English), Hallo! (German), Hej! (Swedish), Salut! (French), etc. With great reserve, I could regard the Ukrainian greetings Dobroho ranku / dnya / vechora! ("Good morning! / afternoon! / evening!") as neutral to the roles of communicants. According to the research results, these forms definitely bear a tint of formality for young Ukrainians.

Among the greetings selected by the interviewees for addressing a friend or person of an equal status, the form Dobroho dnya! (the least bound to the time of the day) occupies only 2% of the selection. As the first rates the Russian greeting Privyet! (65.5% of all the participants) and as the second — its Ukrainian equivalent Pryvit! (23%). The two are the most popular patterns in the youth environment, with the Russian form considerably prevailing. The Ukrainian correspondent was originally modelled on the Russian one, spread all over the Russian-speaking territory of the CIS. The increase in popularity of the two forms in the last 2-3 decades may be explained by their brevity. Both Privet! and Pryvit! serve to emphasize casualness of the situation in practically all age groups of the Ukrainians, though when coming from the elderly, these greetings sound a bit playful.

The research statistics exhibit some gender-based peculiarities of the informal greetings. Young Ukrainian females are more prone to greet with the Russian Privet! (72%) than young males (59%). The males also selected the Russian pattern Zdorovo! (12%), which is regarded as a highly familiar one, bearing a street-culture connotation, and thus is usually avoided by females.

There is also a noticeable difference in the choice of appropriate greeting patterns with respect to the criterion of one's mother tongue. Those who descend from Russian-speaking families favour Privet! in a considerably bigger representation (81.1.%) than the native speakers of Ukrainian (46.3%). Meanwhile, the Ukrainian form Pryvit! won 41.5% of all the young people holding the Ukrainian language as their mother tongue and 8% of the born Russian speakers. Kyiv native residents proved to be more active users of the Russian Privet! (73.6%) than the migrants to Kyiv (58.7%).

Due to the high popularity of the Russian informal greeting Privet!, most authentic counterparts have become marginal in use. In the obtained selection there is only one truly Ukrainian form of unofficial greeting Yak sya mayesh? ("How are you?"), which constitutes only 1% of the answers. Like other native historic greetings, this one had grown obsolete in Soviet times and acquired a rural or/and dialectal (predominantly West Ukrainian) colouring.

The fate of oblivion has also befallen a wide range of official forms of indigenous Ukrainian greetings. Judging by the interview results, young Ukrainians have quite a narrow choice of the relevant patterns at their disposal. In the model situation of meeting a university professor or a person of a superior status, 40.5% of all the respondents opted out for the Russian greeting Dobryi den! ("Good afternoon!"). Twice as few participants preferred the Ukrainian equivalent Dobroho dnya! in the same situational context. There are also two more popular alternatives, such as the Russian Zdravstvuite! (18.5%) and the Ukrainian Zdrastuite! (12%). Both forms, closest to the English Hello! in meaning, are confined to addressing either more than one person or a superior individual. On the whole, the two obtained selections of informal and formal greeting patterns do not intersect with each other, apart from the relatively neutral form Dobroho dnya! having a very low representation (2%) among the familiar forms.

Native patterns of greeting often involve attendant questions about one's interlocutor's state of affairs, health, news, etc. The most customary of them are the Ukrainian Yak spravy? and its Russian equivalent Kak dela? ("How are the things with you?"). The answers given to these reciprocal questions are usually more expanded and intimate in content than they are supposed to be in the classical English-speaking social talk. A curt response like Dobre. ("Fine.") may be taken for a sign of one's aloofness or arrogance.

If on close terms with the addresser, the Ukrainian communicant is normally expected to say some special words about himself/herself, demonstrating in such a way appreciation of the other person's concern. At least, one has to colour one's minimal standard answer like Dobre. in a warm tone and accompany it with a direct friendly look. The eye contact is historically given much significance in the Ukrainian culture, as the etymology of the native name for politeness vvichlyvist (literally "looking into somebody's eyes") suggests.

Slight nods, smiles and waves of the hand often accompany verbal greetings of Ukrainians. These paralinguistic elements also serve to substitute repeated greetings within one day's period. At their first encounter during the day Ukrainian men exchange handshakes, as a rule. To greet a woman with a handshake is considered to be a very uncommon and even tactless gesture.

When making an acquaintance, Ukrainian men invariably shake hands with each other. A local woman may volunteer to stretch out her hand to a male stranger, though it is quite a limited practice out of business circles. Today, you may watch Ukrainian young people saluting each other with kisses and hugs. Still, with those over 30 such a behaviour is more habitual on special occasions, for example at seeing each other after a long period of time.

Warmness of salutation is more typical of the traditional greeting patterns used by rural residents, especially those of the older generation. As a matter of fact, it is mainly due to the Ukrainian countryside that some authentic initial-sequence forms have been recalled from oblivion during the last decade. Recently, it has become a habit with both city and country dwellers to greet each other on the Orthodox Christmas Day (January 7th) after the following dialogue pattern: Khrystos rozhdayetsya! ("Christ is being born!") — Slavite Yoho! ("Hail Him!"). Similarly, on Easter Sunday modern Ukrainians usually exchange religious greetings after the old folk scenario: Khrystos voskres! ("Christ has risen!") — Voistynu voskres! ("He has truly risen!").

Podolyan, I. (2005, June). How Do Ukrainians Communicate?. Journal of Intercultural Communication

sessiya

or finals

always the same story - no matter how hard you work during semester - there is always a need of cramming in the end. Here is an old pic from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv when we were preparing for our advanced math final. I think I am 18 or 19 here. What an adventure! I am glad I am writing papers now.

knowing and doing

Sometimes it feels like we learn more than we can do. Have you ever had a feeling like you could resolve the problems of everyone around you, yet you still need help to resolve your own? It seams like sometimes our intelligence works separately from ourselves. It takes an almost out of body experience of looking at one self from the side to see the absurdity of our own actions or figure out the resolution to a problem. I guess we need to be our own best friends in order to apply what we preach.

on communication and distance

In my philosophy class we are reading the book Speaking Into the Air by John Peters. Mainly the book is about media and how it is shaping society. Today we spoke about James Clark Maxwell's research named "On Action at a Distance." Here is something to ponder upon:
" The problem of communication becomes not only one of getting messages across the waste expanses traversed by the telegraph wires or the interference-prone "ether" of radio transmission, but one of making contact with the person sitting next to you. He [Maxwell] states a major theme of modernist art and literature: that bodies, even when pressed together with great force, may never be in absolute contact."

Our every-day communication with our family and friends and specifically those of us who are in PR, advertising or journalism world, is aimed on learning more about other people. We want to know exactly who they are, how they feel. We want to touch their soul. Yet according to this argument - there will always be a space between us and other people, us and God, us and maybe even our own soul. No matter how much closer we get, there is always more space to concur. In class we decided that this space has an important function as an engine of change and improvement. I bet those of you who are married could see it in your own life when even though you spend so much time with one person, you soon find that there is still room to learn more about them. How exciting that is!

I also thought it was interesting that according to this argument, physical distance really does not matter. We can be with a person in the same room yet be miles apart form each other. On the other hand, people who love and care about each other, could feel a strong connection even if they are across the ocean from each other. I have experienced it in my own life. People ask me if it is really hard to be so far from my family that is in Ukraine and my answer is that it is doable. I love them and they love me and we have that magic connection that I am sure, even if we don't see each other for 10 years, it will not change who we are for each other.

PR and Ukrainian- Russian Relations

From this week's Kyiv Post Russian propaganda and identity border crossing:

"Ukraine’s ambassador in Moscow, Kostyantyn Hryshchenko, noted with concern on May 17 the recent rise in anti-Ukrainian feeling in Russia. A poll by Russia’s Levada Center in January and February showed that 62 percent of Russians have a negative attitude towards Ukraine, whereas 91 percent of Ukrainians expressed positive feelings towards Russia.

“An information campaign is being carried out against our state by the Russian media,” the ambassador said.

Russian media also give Moscow’s views a wide airing in Ukraine, as Russian TV is particularly popular in the south and east of the country, where pro-Russian sentiment is strongest.

“Propaganda on the [Russian] state-controlled TV channels is a tool for influencing people within Ukraine,” said Valeriy Chaly, head of international programs at the Razumkov Center think tank. He added that Moscow’s aim is to prevent the consolidation of a political nation in Ukraine.

But while such propaganda may be disruptive, analysts said that attempting to mobilize Ukrainians along ethnic lines is not a political trump card. “People don’t have a clear understanding of their own political identity,” said Serhiy Taran, director of the International Institute for Democracy. “If you ask people on the street about their identity they will say they are Ukrainian, but they will speak Russian. People cross barriers.”

Also here is what Time said about it:

"Putin's reference on Sunday to "Little Russia" — a term used during the Russian Empire to describe parts of modern-day Ukraine that came under czarist rule — has raised hackles in Ukraine, where many consider it demeaning and offensive.

These comments by Putin should be taken very seriously," says Olexandr Paliy, a political analyst with the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Diplomatic Academy. "Russia is engaged in a propaganda war against Ukraine, designed to convince the West not to support Ukraine. Russia doesn't understand cooperation with equals, only with subordinates."

How different is Ukrainian from Russian

I don't know how many times I was asked this question and finally, I got some good data to answer it!!! Here are some parts of the article I was reading for my homework today.

The summary: these languages are almost as different as Spanish and Italian (38% VS 33% see below for details)! (My guess what Spanish and Portuguese)

"Ukrainian and Russian are both East Slavic languages, and share many grammatical and lexical features (see Bilaniuk, 2005: 203208 for a brief comparison). In lexicon, Ukrainian and Russian differ by 38%; the 62% of the lexicon that these languages have in common consists of 44% morphemically identical and 18% morphemically similar terms (Radchuk, 2002, citing research by Tyshchenko, 2000: 266267). In comparison, Spanish and Portuguese differ by 25%, Spanish and Italian by 33%, and German and Dutch by 25% (ibid).

Two major features of Russian, ‘akanie’ and final consonant devoicing, are absent in Ukrainian. Akanie in Russian entails the pronunciation of unaccented ‘o’ as /a/ or /3/, whereas unaccented ‘o’ in Ukrainian is always pronounced as /o/.

In Russian, the future tense has one form, but in Ukrainian it may be formed in two ways. Russian future tense requires a modal verb, much as in English: /budu cˇ’itat’/ ‘I will read’. The two Ukrainian future tense forms include a form similar to Russian [budu cˇytaty] and another that uses a suffix rather than modal verb,
/cˇytatymu/, both meaning ‘I will read’.

Data on the degree of difference between Ukrainian and Russian (such as the lexicon statistics discussed above) have been brought forward by scholars to refute the misconception (common both in the West and in Ukraine) that these two languages are ‘almost the same’. In the West, this misconception stemmed from politics that subsumed Ukrainian culture and language into Russian, and this view has become increasingly rare as Ukraine’s political situation has changed. In Ukraine, this idea is rooted in (at least passive) bilingualism from a very early age, and as a result, people cannot imagine not understanding the other language" (pp.344-346)

Bilaniuk, L., & Melnyk, S. (2008, September). A Tense and Shifting Balance: Bilingualism and Education in Ukraine. International Journal of Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 11(5), 340-372