Brochure I.V.
Stalin's "Marxism and Questions of Linguistics", published in 1950, was somewhat surprised by the choice of the topic, although for the luminary of all sciences, any topic is appropriate.
As for the rest, even the most ardent anti-Stalinists, both then (in exile) and later, did not find anything scandalous and fundamentally wrong in it.
The brochure satisfied everyone.
This did not always happen with the orientation speeches of Comrade Stalin.
Whereas an interview on linguistic issues, which was given by Radio Liberty * secretary of the Ukrainian Council of National Security and Defense, Cossack Luhansk A.M.
Danilov, created much greater confusion in opinions.
The fact that Danilov noted the highest importance of the current world koine and called for the introduction of Anglo-Ukrainian bilingualism ("I am for two languages in our country. English must be mandatory. If we are talking about the civilized world, then English is the language of civilized communication. English Everyone should know the language. Those who are already elderly are difficult - this is one thing, and starting from kindergarten, in schools it should be "), nobody was particularly frappy.
And in our country, including in the upper classes, the confusion of the American with the Nizhny Novgorod prevails, why should the Ukrainians not interfere with the slang language.
Moreover, given the current semi-colonial status.
Another thing touched. The secretary firmly pointed out: "I believe that this will be one of the fundamental things, we need to get rid of the Cyrillic alphabet and switch to the Latin alphabet." Despite the fact that the NSDC secretary is not the last person in the Kiev system of power, he is not a civilian journalist who is free to carry anything (of course, within the framework of general loyalty). At one time, the NSDC secretaries were Turchynov and Poroshenko, so the position is very significant, which means that the secretary's words are significant.
Of course, some of the objections to the Latinist Danilov are misleading when they say that the money that will have to be spent on the reform of the writing system is wiser to spend on hospitals, roads, nursing homes - that's what they always say.
Moreover, such reforms are usually carried out in far from well-fed and calm times.
The reform of Russian spelling in 1918, the translation of Turkish into Latin in 1928, pirouettes with the languages of the peoples of the USSR, first (in the 1920s) translated into Latin, and ten years later into Cyrillic - were all these well-fed eras?
No, these were ideological epochs, and we do not skimp on ideology.
The problem is different.
List of specialties A.M.
Danilova says: veterinarian, lawyer, teacher, manager, entrepreneur.
The professions are important, but the linguist is not among them.
While the reform of writing requires minimal linguistic knowledge.
After all, the layman's main mistake is that he sees the task as very simple.
“Write as you hear it - and you will be happy.
And philologists only complicate everything. "
The trouble is that living speech and written speech are never in perfect balance.
The task can be compared to displaying a globe, that is, a three-dimensional sphere, on a map, that is, a two-dimensional plane.
Whichever method of map projection you choose, distortions are inevitable.
Either Greenland will be bigger than Africa, or something else.
It's the same with the language.
At the same time, of course, different scripts have different problems. The Latin alphabet, for example, in contrast to the Cyrillic alphabet, is poorly adapted to the transmission of hissing (
w, u, z
), which the Slavic languages are rich in, as well as to the display of the hardness / softness of consonants, which is meaningful in East Slavic languages.
All this, of course, is surmountable.
You can write, as in Polish, eszcze (in the sense of "more"), you can decorate the letters with diacritics, that is, checkmarks at the top, you can finally just invent new letters like the German eszet.
The first experience of such a European invention was revealed by the Frankish king Chilperic, who ruled in the 6th century A.D., who proposed a special letter for displaying interdental consonants such as those denoted by the combination
th
in English
.
He commanded to erase the previous spelling with a pumice stone from parchments.
True, something did not work out, but an attempt took place.
Meanwhile, the question of what to do with old parchments, that is, with the old corpus of written texts, always arises during spelling reforms.
Purely and triumphantly - with the bold and reckless, like those proposed by Secretary Danilov.
After all, the English spelling is absolutely terrible: it says "Liverpool" - reads "Manchester".
French is better, but not much.
It would seem that what prevents to take and simplify?
It is impeded by the size of the aggregate library, that is, the corpus of texts in a given language.
When such a library is very large and, moreover, it is many centuries old, the question is immediately removed, because the spelling reform would turn this entire library into waste paper.
The price of the issue is a complete break with the previous written, which means cultural, scientific, educational, etc.
tradition.
In the case of a reform according to Danilov, the inhabitants of Ukraine will cease to understand not only the "lines from Alexander" - this, perhaps, is even one of its goals.
But the same misfortune will befall them with the "nonsense of Taras" - he will become as unreadable as Alexander.
Happy Ukrainians will only have comics on the newspeak.
Note that reforms turn out to be relatively painless when the population is illiterate or completely illiterate, and the corpus of previous texts is small or completely absent, as was the case, for example, among many peoples of the USSR.
If the supporters of the European Shlyah believe that the Ukrainian language is de facto unwritten, which means that the costs of the reform will be minimal, what can they say to that?
You won't find such Ukrainophobia even in the worst Russian world.
However, the NSDC secretary is extremely pleased: "If the supporters of the Russian world feel bad, it means that Ukraine will be good."
An important Kiev dignitary is ready to spite the Russian world to make a cultural catastrophe in Ukraine, that is, to freeze compatriots not only ears, but also brains, as well as other parts of the body.
Is that it will be slowed down by the Ukrainians quite svidomye, but not yet completely crazy.
* Media recognized as a foreign agent by the decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation dated 05.12.2017.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.