Just like almost everyone else these days, I’ve been listening to all kinds of Ukrainian and Russian speakers. I don’t speak either language, and so all I hear is tone and what I think is inflection expressing anger. I’m assuming that anger is what’s being expressed given the current state of affairs, but sometimes when a translation is provided, or the speakers take a stab at English, I begin to wonder if I’m reading the situation correctly.
The languages sound very similar to me and I’m assuming that both Russian and Ukrainian share some sort of mutual Slavic roots. So, I’ve further assumed that I can’t infer anything from either language just from that tone and inflection I mentioned earlier.
Because both languages when translated are much more dramatic that what I’m accustomed to hearing in my Canadian English world. What I mean by dramatic is that the Ukrainians speak like they’re characters in The Lord Of The Rings, and Canadians sound more Tim Hortons casual. I think that language evolves to a point where if you listen carefully you can hear a people’s history, and I’m hearing the history of the Ukrainian people in their word choices.
An example.
Let’s say that the Americans keep drifting Putin’s direction politically. Let’s say that one day in the near future that the Americans take Donnie and Lauren’s advice and decide to initiate a military operation. A special operation to provide themselves a buffer of safety from Canadian socialism, and to liberate Canada from Justin the dictator.
About two weeks later, I can’t picture a group of Canadian women making a video where they’re all dressed in military uniforms, faces covered and AK’s slung over their shoulders, making a statement something like this:
The women of Canada, having taken our children to safety and therefore ensuring our genetic history, choose now to return to our men, and with them go to spill the blood of the invaders. Glory to the motherland, glory to Canada.
I’m not saying Canadian women wouldn’t fight. What I am saying is that the video would have an entirely different vibe.
Because that band of Canadian women would be lacking the history of the Ukrainian women, and the right mindset wouldn’t be available to describe the situation. We haven’t had a thousand years of assorted armies killing and raping their way across the wheat fields of Saskatchewan. We don’t have a history of perpetual conflict starting with the Rus Byzantine war in 860 to the present Russian invasion, and so our language hasn’t evolved to reflect the attitudes of a people in continuous strife.
When Ukrainian people speak English, I hear a hint of fatalism mixed with a dash of determination. I hear a resigned acceptance that the odds were always good that you were destined to hold a weapon. I hear a history of that weapon being wielded against Germans and Mongols and Ottomans and Czars and Prussian kings.
And Russians.
The weird thing is that the Russians sound the same to me. They sound to me like their language evolved from a history that’s either identical or a close relative of the Ukrainians. Which makes me think that these two people would have a fellowship based on their innately shared misery, and they would be unlikely candidates to impose that misery instead of enduring it.
But misery loves company, and apparently sometimes you’ve got to bring the misery instead of just waiting around for it to arrive by itself.
I get this sense that over a thousand years of conflict have scrubbed away subtlety from the Ukrainian and the Russian languages. Threats and accusations are preferred methods of communication, and being dark, dramatic and Draconian is embedded so deeply into their psyche that they see those language tendencies as the only true measure of strength.
And so Putin rattles his nuclear saber when he doesn’t get his way, and Zelensky can’t decide whether to thank the Europeans and the Americans for the stingers, or yell at them for not imposing a no fly zone. Both Putin and Zelensky though warn of potential doom for Europe if they don’t get what they want, even though what they want is diametrically opposed.
For the record, I think that the Russian army needed to stay in Russia. I also think that Putin may have some old man delusions of empire, but just like all things Russian, the truth is somewhere to be found hiding behind all the bullshit. The real reason the Russians are in Ukraine is because Ukraine joining the West in any way means that the Russian people are going to see the advantages of that Western union, and want a little of that for themselves.
And that scenario is a big nyet because if there is anything traditionally Russian, its the wealth of the few being maintained by the labor of the many. Putin, the Soviet elite and the Czars all have that in common regardless of their politics.
And at least to my untrained ear, the languages of both countries sound like it was shaped by an equal mixture of oppression and suffering that the speakers endeavor to make sound poetically noble.
Just recently I was watching a reunion of a refugee Ukrainian family. Through tears and hugs the daughter told her mother that she needed her to be well because she was her only sunshine. No one in the west speaks like that unless they’re trying to come up with song lyrics, but it seems to me that everyone in Ukraine speaks that way.
From frontline soldiers claiming they will fight like lions to repel the Russians Orcs, to a wounded elderly lady laying on a stretcher composing a poem to tell the Russians to go fuck themselves, the mindset and history of the Ukrainian people is on display.
A poem for Christ sakes. While being treated for shrapnel.
It’s fatalistic and dark but kind of awesome at the same time.