MrBern
I'll Lock Up
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official new spelling for old city
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_ukraine_capital
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061019/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_ukraine_capital
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chicken kyiv
- Thread starter MrBern
- Start date
Marc Chevalier
Gone Home
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Funny.
When I was a wee lad, we were taught that Beijing was spelling 'Peking', and that Mao Zedong was 'Mao Tse-Tung'.
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When I was a wee lad, we were taught that Beijing was spelling 'Peking', and that Mao Zedong was 'Mao Tse-Tung'.
.
MrBern
I'll Lock Up
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jake_fink said:
just dont spell in "Chechen"
The Wolf
Call Me a Cab
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Jugoslavia
Catsup
not to mention Constantinople, French Indo-China and so many more.
Sincerely,
The WOLF
Catsup
not to mention Constantinople, French Indo-China and so many more.
Sincerely,
The WOLF
CharlieH.
One Too Many
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Hmm.. earlier this year Pluto was demoted from being a planet, and now Kiev has changed its spelling. What's next? Will Siam change its name?
funneman
Practically Family
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The Wolf said:
...It was Istanbul now it's Constantinople!"
What the article doesn't say is that it's a simple matter of language. "Kiev" is Russian; "Kyiv" is Ukrainian. This isn't just a whimsical "change the English spelling" thing! It's an understandable movement away from the Russian influence. It's like referring to the country as "Ukraine" instead of "the Ukraine." The latter reduces it to a province or region, which was how the USSR used and exploited it. I couldn't give exact dates, but the city has been Kyiv since the early 1990s. It's nice for some official recognition. Yes, Ukraine is part of the free world, thank you.
I visited Ukraine for six weeks back in 2003, before the Orange Revolution. I still refer to the city as Kyiv, for that's the way Ukrainians spell it. Ukrainian school children now learn three languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and English.
What was amusing were the Metro signs. Up above all the signs are in Ukrainian. (We told them apart because while Ukrainian has the letter "i," Russian does not.) But underground, the old Soviet signs are in Russian. It made navigating a wee bit of a challenge, since I went more by recognition and slow sounding-out than actually reading.
I visited Ukraine for six weeks back in 2003, before the Orange Revolution. I still refer to the city as Kyiv, for that's the way Ukrainians spell it. Ukrainian school children now learn three languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and English.
What was amusing were the Metro signs. Up above all the signs are in Ukrainian. (We told them apart because while Ukrainian has the letter "i," Russian does not.) But underground, the old Soviet signs are in Russian. It made navigating a wee bit of a challenge, since I went more by recognition and slow sounding-out than actually reading.
