Protecting the Russian language. Riots in the Ukraine.

The Financial Times reports that there is a legislative proposal in the Ukraine to protect the Russian language.  Ukrainian is the local language. 

The Russian language prospered during the Russian Empire and the seventy years when the Soviet Union dominated smaller states like the Ukraine.

Once the Soviet Union came untangled in 1991, Russian speakers lost the political support from Moscow and Ukrainian speakers asserted their language and culture.

Victor Yanukovich is President of the Ukraine and the leader of the Regions Party that controls the Ukraine parliament. There are parliament elections in October and many believe that the legislative proposal to protect the Russian language is an effort to attract Russian speakers to the polls to support Yanukovich's party.

What caught my attention in the article was that there were demonstrations in Kiev that escalated into rioting.

Rioting.

I wonder how many countries have two official languages.  Canada and the UN (I know the UN isn't a country but I imagine there are many international organizations that have multiple official languages).  A quick google-search comes up with reference to multiple local languages as having official status in India (I knew that from the India section of my old stamp collection).  Google also reports that South Afrika has two official languages, namely English and Afrikaans.

The thought of my stamp collection reminded me that Ukrainian and Russian stamps are distinctive because of the graphic beauty of the alphabets that each language uses. Each language uses a different variation of the Cyrillic alphabet. There are similarities and overlaps of some letters but the graphic effect of the letters is pleasing.

Recall the short commercial bi-lingual signs in Canada businesses with French texts and English texts.  Visually, these Canadian signs are pure vanilla, and probably in Helvetica type face.

Imagine these same same signs in Russian and Ukrainian languages printed in related, but distinct Cyrillic letters. What a graphic delight to anticipate.  the Ukrainian alphabet looks like this:

А а	Б б	В в	Г г	Ґ ґ	Д д	Е е	Є є	Ж ж	З з	И и
І і	Ї ї	Й й	К к	Л л	М м	Н н	О о	П п	Р р	С с
Т т	У у	Ф ф	Х х	Ц ц	Ч ч	Ш ш	Щ щ	Ь ь	Ю ю	Я я

And the Russian alphabet looks like:

А /a/ Б /b/ В /v/ Г /ɡ/ Д /d/ Е /je/ Ё /jo/ Ж /ʐ/ З /z/ И /i/ Й /j/ К /k/ Л /l/ М /m/ Н /n/ О /o/ П /p/ Р /r/ С /s/ Т /t/ У /u/ Ф /f/ Х /x/ Ц /ts/ Ч /tɕ/ Ш /ʂ/ Щ /ɕɕ/ Ъ /-/ Ы /ɨ/ Ь /ʲ/ Э /e/ Ю /ju/ Я /ja/

Can't wait to see the bi-lingual signs.

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