The Vice President in Kyiv

[ProSense]

MONDAY, JULY 20TH, 2009 AT 2:16 PM

The Vice President in Kyiv

Posted by Katherine Brandon

The Vice President began a three-day trip to Ukraine and Georgia today. He arrived in Kyiv, Ukraine, where he visited with the staff of the U.S. embassy. On Tuesday, he will meet with President Yushchenko to discuss energy concerns, the economy, and democratic reforms. The Vice President will also meet with Prime Minister Tymoshenko and key civic leaders. On Wednesday, the Vice President will travel to Georgia, where he will meet with President Saakashvili and deliver an address to the Georgian parliament.

[YOY]

1. Since when was it "Kyiv" and not "Kiev"???

Jesus...it's even "Kiev" in cyrillic.

[izquierdista]

2. Kyiv is Ukrainian

Kiev is Russian. Ukrainians are proud of the complexity of having 5 different types of 'i' in their language. Me, I get a headache trying to listen to it.

[YOY]

4. YEah, I know it's that but I thought it was the "i with two dots over it" and not a y though.

n/t

[izquierdista]

5. I checked my Kyivstar modem

КИIB. With two dots over the 'I'. Transliterating the 'i' from Ukrainian Cyrillic to English is a nightmare. :crazy: I'm sure once you know the rules they make sense, but I'm baffled by them.

[YOY]

9. I can usually piece it together from knowledge of other cyrillic based languages.

But Ukie has some really duzhe doozies...like their months...totally non-Julian names.

[izquierdista]

11. Those are old Slavic words

Russian borrowed the months from Latin. Polish and Ukrainian use the old words: Luty (ice) -- February; Kwiecien (flowers) -- April; Listopad (leaf fall) -- November in Polish, October in Ukrainian.

[YOY]

15. "Listopad"...talk about a literal month!

Didn't know the Poles use it. As I cannot recall, did Ukrainian use "to be" or did they leave it out?

I have seen a latinization of "to be" in Serb and Bulgarian. (literally "sum" in the 1st person singualar).

[izquierdista]

16. To be or not to be

There actually are Slavic words for "to be" (byc in Polish) and "to have" (miec). Russian is the unusual one in that they developed a lot of sentence constructions completely omitting these two verbs, but they are both going strong in Ukrainian and Polish. "Do you have" is rendered "czy pan ma" in Polish and "Чи маэ" in Ukrainian, not the oddball Russian construction "у вас есть".

[YOY]

18. Not exactly "meic" but "imat" is common in the south Slavic languages for a little "to have"

They also use that double verb of "to not have" that I have seen elsewhere. ("Njmat").

As for the "to be" the slavified latin they have works nicely in Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian (Can't speak for the Croats though.) I can't help but wonder if they had something like "byc" at one point in time but Roman or Scholarly medival invluences affected the language.

S P
1st Sum Sme

2nd Si Ste

3rd e Sa

The addition of a few Turkic words are where things get funny...

Of course if you really wanna go oddball for Russian...use that "Yavlietscya" form of "to be" they use in the evening news. Think it uses instrumental case. It just sounds so fecking verbose to say a four sylable word for "is"

[izquierdista]

19. Latin influences

The 3rd person plural, <<son>>, is common to a lot of languages, as it is the same in French, Spanish, and Polish (and Italian if you drop the final "o"). I always considered явльяется to be an attempt to reinsert the verb "to be" back into the language, but it is as awkward as if in English we decided to replace "to be" with "to exist" overnight.

There is a lot of English borrowing going on in Russian, and who knows, they might just start using our "am", "are" and "is". There is no logic to the development of language, it turns on what the young people think is cool. I wince when I encounter this new English word "pwned", but I'll bet some Russian kids have already incorporated it into their vocabulary and Slavicized it to "пновать", with the past participle "пнован".

[cascadiance]

10. Yeah, looking at the thread title, its sometimes hard to know what spelling to take seriesly!

Seriously! :)

We now have Mumbai instead of Bombay, and many other shifts too... It's hard enough for me to establish whether I was born in Yogyakarta or Jogjakarta! :)

Maybe when Turkey gets admitted into the EU finally, they'll have to change Istanbul back to Constantinople, and They Might be Giants will have to come up with a new version of that song...

[smalll]

20. Kiev will always be Kiev, as Rome will always be Rome -- when speaking ENGLISH.

Not "Kyiv" or "Roma." And this isn't some evil Anglo-American act of linguistic imperialism. Other languages do it as well. First example that comes to mind, while we use "Germany" for Deutschland, the French use "Allemagne."

[Jennicut]

3. What they giving him there?

It looks like bread with flowers on it. LOL

[izquierdista]

6. Traditional Ukrainian bread

I wonder if he got a nice chunk of 'salo' to go with it (salted fatback - yum).

[Jennicut]

12. Thanks.

It looks yummy. :)

[Retrograde]

14. Bread and salt is a traditional Slavic greeting

At least in Poland and I believe Russia

[Clio the Leo]

7. That's hot! .... thank you. NT

[JNelson6563]

8. Cool

I'm good with Joe Biden representing us abroad. Rock on Mr. Vice-President! :toast:

Julie

[inna]

13. slightly OT - but check out Yulia Timoshenko, Prime Minister of Ukraine...

(there's something.... slightly Princess Leia-ish about her... or is it just me?... :shrug: :P )

[izquierdista]

17. Must be the braids

Even though they don't look like two honey buns on the side of her head. You hardly see them at all in everyday dress. Only when special dignitaries are coming do the women braid their hair and dress up in traditional peasant costumes.

[smalll]

21. I think Ms. Timoshenko actually sports that 'do on a regular basis, not just for special events./nt

[izquierdista]

23. She can afford to

Walk down the street in Odessa, and the women don't have the money or time to spend on braids.

[inna]

22. "Only when special dignitaries are coming do the women braid their hair" - not in Timoshenko's case,

it's simply her thing. she (almost) always wears the braid in public, and it's more of a "political" than "fashion" statement in her case.
see this, for example: http://www.tymoshenko.com.ua/eng/news/press/4740/