Connect with us

Entertainment

For centuries, the Ukrainian language was overshadowed by its Russian cousin. That’s changing

Published

on

Languages rise and fall with historical past, in nations and college language departments alike. In 1980, when Roman Koropeckyj stepped into his classroom at Harvard to show Polish, he was “gobsmacked” by the handfuls of scholars awaiting him. The Polish commerce unionists of the Solidarity motion, who had been defying Soviet oppression on the other facet of the planet, had impressed Individuals to be taught.

One other a kind of linguistic flashpoints arrived in February, when Ukraine’s staunch resistance to an enormous Russian invasion drew admirers all over the world. The Ukrainian language hasn’t been taught at UCLA’s division of Slavic East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures “in plenty of years” due an absence of demand, mentioned Koropeckyj, a professor within the division. He and a Ukrainian-born colleague advised the division chair it could be time to show Ukrainian once more.

“There are moments in current historical past the place you see this huge uptick in studying language as a result of language is within the information,” Koropeckyj mentioned, predicting heightened curiosity in Ukrainian “for the foreseeable future.” Not solely that, the unpopularity of the invasion “may change the best way individuals go to review Slavic languages, and Russian might have misplaced the cachet that it’s had up till now for many years.”

Within the month since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops surged throughout Ukraine’s frontiers, the Ukrainian language — lengthy overshadowed by its world-famous Russian cousin, which can also be extensively spoken in Ukraine — has stepped into the worldwide highlight as a logo of defiance, nationwide identification and survival. Extra bilingual Ukrainians are switching languages as a rebuke to Russian meddling, and lots of outsiders who as soon as noticed Ukrainian as a linguistic afterthought to Russian are actually selecting up Ukrainian as an alternative.

When Breena Branham was a music trainer in Utica, N.Y., lots of her younger college students had been from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, which had been as soon as all a part of the Soviet Union, the place Russian was the language of energy. “I really feel unhealthy now, as a result of I didn’t ever ask them the place their households had been from, and I by no means discovered the variations,” mentioned Branham, a retiree in Suffolk, Va. “When this [invasion] occurred in Ukraine, I assumed, I’m gonna go forward and begin studying Ukrainian on Duolingo.”

Advertisement

Between late February and March 20, the variety of customers taking Ukrainian language programs on the favored language app Duolingo elevated by 577%, in keeping with the corporate, with Ukrainian shifting from the thirty third most-popular language to thirteenth most-popular on the app.

“Language studying displays every kind of patterns in popular culture,” mentioned Cindy Blanco, a senior studying scientist at Duolingo, citing an increase in Portuguese learners through the 2016 Olympics in Brazil and an increase in Korean learners after the Netflix present “Squid Sport” grew to become a global sensation.

As an alternative of classroom studying or one-on-one tutoring, Duolingo makes use of a gamified type of instructing wherein customers are proven phrases with photos and requested to translate sentences, an accessible methodology that has made the app extensively widespread.

The expansion of digital language companies resembling Duolingo in current many years has additionally made it simpler to choose up a overseas language on a second’s discover for household, social and even political causes. Since Putin has given prolonged speeches concerning the supposed historic unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples, that may make selecting up some Ukrainian a extra simply achievable symbolic act.

“My understanding is that Russia doesn’t think about Ukraine an impartial nation, doesn’t see the tradition as one thing distinct, and doesn’t see the language as one thing distinct,” mentioned Simone Theiss, a lawyer in London who started studying Ukrainian on Duolingo after the February invasion. Studying the language is a technique “to say I think about the language distinct.”

Advertisement

Civilians evacuate the besieged metropolis of Mariupol, Ukraine, on March 20.

(Anadolu Company)

A few of the surge in curiosity is clearly associated to what number of Ukrainians have fled the nation within the largest European refugee disaster since World Warfare II. In Poland, which sits on Ukraine’s western border, the variety of Duolingo customers learning Ukrainian has elevated by 2,677%, in keeping with the corporate, which mentioned it was donating its associated advert revenues to refugee reduction efforts.

The Romania-based language-learning firm Mondly, which has seen a 900% enhance in customers attempting to be taught Ukrainian on its companies, has additionally seen a corresponding “big enhance” within the variety of Ukrainian-speaking customers attempting to be taught different languages, a spokesperson mentioned in an electronic mail. The corporate is providing free premium companies to Ukrainian customers.

Advertisement

Inside Ukraine, the function of the Ukrainian language is advanced and nonetheless altering, very similar to the younger nation itself. For hundreds of years, the area was dominated by neighboring powers, a few of whose leaders — from tsars to Stalin — tried to suppress the Ukrainian language in favor of Russian, which possesses a formidable political, creative and literary legacy.

When Ukraine’s residents voted to interrupt away from the Soviet Union in 1991 to kind an impartial nation, Ukrainian was deemed to be the official nationwide language. Within the minds of many Westerners, nonetheless, the 2 nations and the 2 languages nonetheless blurred collectively.

“Once I was rising up [in the U.S.], it was frequent while you mentioned you’re Ukrainian for individuals to say, ‘oh, is that like Russian?’” mentioned Laada Bilaniuk, professor of anthropology on the College of Washington, whose dad and mom had been Ukrainian. “Clearly Russian is a world language and Ukrainian has connotations of being a peasant language.”

Two smiling women hold tulips.

Viktoria Shkurat, left, and Iryna Asosak collect tulips March 19 at a central sq. in Kyiv, Ukraine, the place residents spent the day arranging 1.5 million tulips within the form of the nation’s coat of arms.

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Occasions)

Advertisement

Even in Ukraine, being Ukrainian doesn’t essentially imply talking Ukrainian. A 2001 census mentioned roughly a 3rd of Ukrainians recognized Russian as their “native” language within the nation of greater than 40 million, and Russian has performed a central function in on a regular basis life and tradition for a lot of Ukrainians. The present president, Volodymyr Zelensky, makes use of Ukrainian however is a local Russian speaker. Current guests had been usually struck by Ukrainian TV reveals the place an interviewer may ask a query in Ukrainian and obtain a solution in Russian. (The languages are each within the East Slavic language group however are distinct; it’s like asking a query in Spanish and getting a solution in Italian.)

As not too long ago as 2012, parliament had handed a measure formally boosting standing and protections for Russian. In a go to by Putin a 12 months later, the Russian president, attempting to attract Ukraine away from the European Union and celebrating the nations’ shared histories, pronounced in Kyiv that “we’re, definitely, one individuals.”

However in language and in politics, Ukrainization and Europeanization quickly took an higher hand. In 2014, Anna Ohoiko was one in all many Ukrainian faculty college students who joined the Maidan protests towards pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, who tried to dam nearer ties with the European Union and was ultimately faraway from workplace. Whereas brewing tea on Kyiv’s predominant sq. to maintain the frigid temperatures away, Ohoiko began questioning what she may do for her nation’s future.

“I used to be largely occupied with the picture of Ukraine on the earth, and the truth that so many individuals confuse Ukraine with Russia,” Ohoiko mentioned. She determined that “to ensure that the world to take Ukraine severely as an impartial nation, with its personal potential, we have to change this angle of how the world perceives us. Folks must have alternative to be taught Ukrainian language with higher assets, and that’s what I wished to supply.”

Protesters gather in a public square holding blue and yellow Ukrainian and EU flags.

A professional-European Union activist shouts a slogan throughout a January 2014 rally in Independence Sq. in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

(Sergei Chuzavkov / Related Press)

Advertisement

First she created a small Fb web page for the right way to be taught Ukrainian. Then she began an internet site, UkrainianLessons.com. Then she created two podcast sequence, Ukrainian Classes Podcast and 5 Minute Ukrainian, which every have scores of episodes directed towards English audio system. The episodes are targeted on language, not politics.

“The Ukrainian language shouldn’t be the toughest one, and never the simplest,” Ohoiko says within the first episode of Ukrainian Classes Podcast. “You could be afraid of the bizarre alphabet or a number of the circumstances of a single noun. However imagine me, I used to be additionally scared by the a number of previous tenses of English” and discovered it anyway. “I hope this podcast will probably be one thing to maintain you excited and wanting to be taught Ukrainian.”

In current occasions, some Ukrainians have additionally been providing courses for the nation’s monolingual Russian audio system to choose up Ukrainian, with foreigners featured in commercials to point out off the language’s worldwide worth — a logo of an more and more self-confident, impartial nation with an evolving however clearer identification.

“We’re witnessing proper now, actually, the start of a contemporary nation,” mentioned Volodymyr Dibrova, a Ukrainian author and a preceptor who teaches Ukrainian at Harvard College, who mentioned the language was getting into an “Elizabethan interval” of rejuvenation and improvisation: the extra extensively it’s embraced, the extra lived-in and wealthy the language turns into.

Advertisement

“Earlier than the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian language was extra like a museum merchandise. It’s on the wall: ‘Look, it’s a sword, what a lovely sword,’” Dibrova mentioned. “However now it’s a device, it’s an lively device, it’s taken off from the wall, it’s used actively, generally appropriately, generally not, there’s dust on it. However we’re in enterprise now.”

When Steve Kaufmann, the co-founder of the digital studying service LingQ, visited Ukraine within the 2010s, he realized he wanted to know Ukrainian and never simply Russian to grasp the nation. “There’s an inclination to deal with Ukrainian or Ukraine as a form of junior Russia, which it isn’t,” Kaufmann mentioned. “It has a language of its personal, a tradition of its personal, with a language nicely value studying.”

In recent times, politicians have additionally generally pushed legal guidelines extra extensively mandating using Ukrainian, inflaming fears concerning the rights of audio system of minority languages together with Russian. One controversial legislation handed in 2019 mandated that information publishers printing tales in non-Ukrainian languages additionally publish Ukrainian variations.

In neighboring Russia, Putin has seen the cultivation of a separate nationwide identification, together with new insurance policies emphasizing using Ukrainian over Russian, as a part of a Western plot to undermine Russian safety and akin to Russophobic ethnic cleaning by so-called “Nazis.” In 2014, Russian-backed forces seized Crimea and the jap Ukrainian areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, the place Putin claimed Russian-speaking residents “took up arms to defend their house, their language and their lives.”

Throughout the Maidan protests, “all of the issues that united us and convey us collectively thus far got here beneath assault. Firstly, the Russian language,” Putin wrote in a 2021 essay titled “On the Historic Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” “It might not be an exaggeration to say that the trail of compelled assimilation, the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive in direction of Russia, is comparable in its penalties to using weapons of mass destruction towards us.”

Advertisement

Russia’s 2014 interventions expanded to a full-scale invasion and bombardment in February, which in lots of methods has uncovered the huge chasm between Russia’s nationalist rhetoric and Ukraine’s actuality. A lot of Russia’s worst brutality has landed on Jap and Southern cities the place Ukrainians predominantly communicate Russian. Most of the movies of Ukrainian troopers preventing on the entrance traces present them giving instructions and celebrating in Russian.

And by all accounts, the assault has solely tightened the Ukrainian language’s symbolic grip.

“It was clear, proper earlier than the outbreak of the invasion, and through the invasion and up till now, when one hears interviews on the radio, increasingly persons are interviewing in Ukrainian than beforehand,” mentioned Koropeckyj, the UCLA professor. “There are a number of movies I’m seeing on Twitter or TikTok or no matter of those guys having simply destroyed a number of Russian tanks, and in a single a man turns to the opposite and says, ‘After this, I’m by no means going to talk Russian once more.’”

Iryna Shchur, a language tutor in Kyiv who teaches each Ukrainian and Russian, mentioned that for the reason that February invasion, lots of her college students, along with some Ukrainians, have switched from Russian to Ukrainian.

However she additionally emphasised that, not like for Putin, for Ukrainians “language shouldn’t be the problem, it has by no means been the problem, we communicate each languages,” Shchur mentioned. “One of many key ideas of the nation is our language. However once more: Folks communicate in Russian, individuals textual content in Russian. It’s tough to vary every thing.”

Advertisement

A number of interviewees for this story mentioned they’d heard about younger Ukrainian dad and mom switching their major languages from Russian to Ukrainian in order that their youngsters will develop up as native Ukrainian audio system. “In a approach, Putin’s invasion made it matter extra, and other people have felt compelled to say ‘Huh, why aren’t I talking Ukrainian?’” Bilaniuk mentioned.

As for Ohoiko’s podcast, downloads have surged three to 4 occasions their stage for the reason that February invasion, mentioned Ohoiko, who now lives in Sweden. She hopes the curiosity lasts.

“When Ukraine wins [the war] lastly — and it’s already profitable — then Ukraine will turn into fairly a unique nation, and turn into a really completely different nation within the scale of the world, possibly one of many best nations in our time,” with many alternatives for foreigners, Ohoiko mentioned.

She added: “That is one more reason to already begin studying Ukrainian.”

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Movie Reviews

When movie ratings make absolutely no sense

Published

on

When movie ratings make absolutely no sense

We need to talk about the critic reviews for The Acolyte. Critics and audiences have been at war for years.


Audiences usually accuse critics of being either out of touch or biased because they tend to downplay the quality of popular movies and shows. On the other hand, critics have a reputation for assigning ridiculously high scores to content audiences could not care less about.

I usually defend the critics even though I rarely agree with their opinions because audiences have a ridiculously warped perception where this topic is concerned. First of all, audience and critic scores are not quite as divergent as online conversations suggest.

Advertisement

Check Rotten Tomatoes. You might be surprised to learn that most shows and films have similar audience and critic ratings. Generally speaking, audiences and critics like the same things. Those significant differences people obsess over only emerge in rare instances.

Unfortunately, those are the cases audiences highlight because they concern highly publicized films and shows. But even if those differences were more common than the evidence suggests, you can’t accuse critics of being ‘out of touch with the public’ because they are not paid to be ‘in touch’ with anyone.

Advertisement

Are some critics biased? Definitely, but they are the minority. That said, the divide between critic and audience scores for The Acolyte is astounding. Right now, the show has a critic rating of 85 percent and an audience score of 14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Naturally, some people blame the abysmal audience score on review bombing.

That term refers to a situation where large groups of people assign a negative score to a movie or show without watching it because they want to make a point. You can’t dismiss the review bombing allegations because a rabid section of the Star Wars fanbase continues to express its desire to destroy The Acolyte’s reputation online because of the social and political messages it peddles.

But even if you eliminated the trolls, the show’s audience score would most likely peak at 30 percent. In that regard, I would expect the critic rating to settle in the 60s, showing that critics are not blind to The Acolyte’s weaknesses, but they also appreciate subtle strengths such as the acting and production values.

Advertisement

An 85 percent rating is pure madness. It says that critics absolutely love a productthat audiences completely despise, and that does not make sense. You expect to see that sort of discrepancy with artsy indie projects that critics typically swoon over, not big-budget shows that are explicitly designed to appeal to mainstream audiences.

Before you argue that Rotten Tomatoes does not accurately reflect the critical response to this show, no one cared about The Acolyte. In fact, viewers initially rejected the show because of the lackluster trailers.

Advertisement

Remember Episode 3 from a week ago? Diehard Star Wars fans nearly rioted because it supposedly broke Star Wars canon by hinting at Mae and Osha’s immaculate conception. Casual fans like me don’t care about Star Wars canon. We thought the episode was boring.

And critics? They had early access to the episode and praised it as one of the most mind- blowing 35 minutes of Star Wars they had ever seen. Clearly, something is amiss. It is almost like audiences and critics are watching two different shows. I can’t help but wonder whether the online conspiracies are correct and Hollywood critics are only impressed by The Acolyte because of the diverse cast.

If you argued that the presence of minority characters (black female leads, Asian Jedi, lesbian witches, etc) was actively swaying their opinions, I would have a difficult time disputing your claim.

Advertisement

I agree that art is subjective and some viewers have genuinely enjoyed The Acolyte thus far; however, the drastic difference in audience and critic scores shows that Disney (and Lucasfilm) took a wrong turn somewhere.

katmic200@gmail.com

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Entertainment

Appreciation: Comedian, actor, musician and painter Martin Mull mastered the art of always being right for the job

Published

on

Appreciation: Comedian, actor, musician and painter Martin Mull mastered the art of always being right for the job

For anyone lucky enough to have experienced the long arc of his career, the death of droll, dry, deadpan Martin Mull, Thursday at 80, feels like the end of an era. A writer, songwriter, musician, comedian, comic actor and, out of the spotlight, a serious painter, Mull was a comfortingly disquieting presence — deceptively normal, even bland, but with a spark of evil. Martin Mull is with us, one felt, and that much at least is right with the world.

There was a sort of timelessness in his person. As a well-dressed, articulate young person, he seemed older than his years; later on, owl-eyed behind his spectacles, he came across as oddly boyish.

He leaves behind a long, uninterrupted string of screen credits, beginning with Norman Lear’s small-town soap opera satire “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.” Following that were regular roles in “Roseanne,” “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” “Veep” and “Arrested Development”; guest shots including “Taxi” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”; and work in such films as “Mr. Mom,” “Clue” and “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

And so it seemed he would always be around, and working. Even so, his appearances were never quite expected, or in the expected place. But he was ever welcome, and always right for the job.

Like Steve Martin, his friend and junior by two years, he was an accomplished instrumentalist. As a purveyor of witty comic songs, Mull was in the tradition of Tom Lehrer and Flanders and Swann and a peer of Dan Hicks, with whom he shared a taste in floral-print shirts. He was a countercultural cabaret artist who set himself apart from the counterculture. Again like Martin, he dressed well in an age when younger comics let their hair grow long and wore street clothes to distinguish themselves from their suit-and-tie elders.

Advertisement

But where Martin was a flurry of flapping arms and legs, Mull worked from a place of stillness. His musical stage act, Martin Mull & His Fabulous Furniture, found him in his signature prop, a big armchair, leaning forward over his big, hollow-body guitar.

“Ever seen one of these before? It’s electric. You’ll be seeing a lot of those in the near future,” he said.

Later, he leaned back as Barth Gimble, the host of the talk show parodies “Fernwood 2 Night” and “America 2 Night.” Even his solo spots on “The Tonight Show” — on which he was a hilarious, blue-streak-talking guest, usually playing off his career in show business — were delivered sitting.

On “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” Mull played Garth Gimble, an abusive husband who died impaled on the star of a Christmas tree. One would say that Garth had to die in order that Barth, his twin brother, might live. On the spun-off “Fernwood 2 Night,” Mull and Fred Willard, as confidently dim sidekick Jerry Hubbard, created a telepathic double act in which they could seem antithetical expressions of a single character.

Together, the talk shows lasted only two summer seasons; but due to their weeknight appearances, they produced 130 episodes, giving them cultural weight. (You may find them extracted all over the internet.) Mull and Willard would work together again over the years, in the Cinemax series “The History of White People in America” and the follow-up feature “Portrait of a White Marriage,” in commercials for Red Roof Inn, as a gay couple on “Roseanne” and as robots on “Dexter’s Laboratory.”

Advertisement

Martin Mull, left, with fellow comedian Steve Martin in Santa Monica in 2014.

(Ryan Miller / Invision)

Mull grew up in North Ridgeville, Ohio, not far from Fernwood in the map of the imagination, and white insularity was a theme in his comedy. My first Mull memory came with the 1973 album “Martin Mull & His Fabulous Furniture in Your Living Room,” which opened with a version of “Dueling Banjos” played on tubas. The record included a “Lake Erie delta” blues song, purportedly learned from his real estate agent grandfather. It was performed on a ukulele with a baby bottle used as a slide: “I woke up this afternoon / Both cars were gone / I felt so low down deep inside / I threw my drink across the lawn.”

“The History of White People in America,” he told David Letterman, would examine “what, if anything, has the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant done in this country since World War I. It’ll be taking a pretty good hard look at that.”

Advertisement

A memorable episode of “Fernwood” exhibits a Jewish person stopped for speeding as he passed through town as something of an exotic animal, for the benefit of Fernwoodians who may have “actually never seen a real live Jew before.”

“I hope that seat’s all right,” Barth says, welcoming his guest. “ I’m not sure what you’re used to.”

Like many great comedians — the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields before him, or Albert Brooks in his own time — Mull was a temperamental outsider who achieved the success of an insider, while remaining essentially untamed. It’s not beside the point that he was, from first to last, a serious artist. He held undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design — where, it does not seem too coincidental to mention, the Talking Heads were born. He would refer to show business as a “day job” that allowed him to pursue painting.

We were lucky he needed the work.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Movie Reviews

Film Review: Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in Four Parts

Published

on

Film Review: Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in Four Parts

An intriguing romantic relationship but also a series of issues in Ben and Suzanne: A Reunion in Four Parts

Shot in Sri Lanka, “Ben and Suzanne” is a film that unfolds on a number of levels, from a tour guide to the country to the exploration of a rather complicated relationship. It is Shaun Seneviratze’s feature debut and it was shot mostly with local non-actors.

Ben Santhanaraj travels to Sri Lanka in order to reunite with Suzanne Hopper, who works for a local NGO, after a long separation. However, although his plans were to see the country and have a good time with her, she is stuck with work, which comes up at any given time. As time passes, their relationship is being tested by both the fact and a number of other episodes, while the ego and individuality of both seems to place another set of burdens.

Allow me to start with the negative. There are two archetypes of Western people living in Asian countries, or even simply staying for a bit. The one is the ‘savior’ who probably works for a Western NGO and tries to help, considering their effort life-altering for the locals, in a most of the time rather big misconception. The second is the ‘tourist’ who just wants to have a good time inside the usual bubble tourists experience, retaining as many of the tendencies they keep in their country of living, frequently complaining about everything. These two rather annoying archetypes do not represent everyone of course, but are quite prevalent, and they are also exactly the personas of the two protagonists. Suzanne is the ‘savior’ and Ben is the ‘tourist’.

Expectedly, and considering they both consider their wants as above everything, they soon find themselves clashing, with each one, but particularly Ben actually flaunting the aforementioned to each other, in probably one of most entertaining and realistic aspects of the narrative. At the same time, though, and in a yet another annoying aspect of the movie, there is no indication why those two ever got together. They seem to have nothing in common, or ever had for that matter, maybe except from the fact that he likes to make her laugh by clowning and she is quite susceptible to it. Whether that is enough for a relationship does not sound like a question with a positive answer.

Advertisement

The above essentially makes the whole approach of the movie somewhat naive, particularly because it also includes an outsider’s epidermal view of the country, especially when one compares it with a similar film we watched recently, “Paradise” by Prasanna Vithanage, or any other local films for that matter.

There are, however, a number of things that do work for the film. For starters, the chemistry of the two protagonists is impressive, with Anastasia Olowin as Suzanne and Sathya Sridharan as Ben presenting the fact that they have known each other for some time and that they both have changed quite eloquently. Their rapport is quite entertaining to watch, particularly in the erotic scenes and the moments they have fun with each other. Their fights could have been handled a bit better, but overall, this aspect is one of the best of the movie.

Check also this video

The same applies to the cinematography, with the 1:1 ratio giving a very appealing retro essence to the movie, and the overall capturing of the country by Molly Scotti is occasionally impressive to watch, despite the focus on realism. Joe Violette’s editing could have been a bit better in the succession of the scenes, but the overall pace is definitely fitting.

Advertisement

“Ben and Suzanne” has its merits, and the relationship in its center is appealing to watch. However, it frequently feels as a film that was supposed to be shot in the US, just found itself in Sri Lanka without being able to realize the difference or what to do with the fact.

Continue Reading

Trending