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by khokhol
845 days ago
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I have been studying Russian history as a hobby for decades If you've been studying the topic for "decades", and then you say things like "they speak essentially the same language" (in reference to Russians and Ukrainians) -- then I don't know what to tell you. |
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Second, I am Swiss and Swiss German is quite different then High German with somewhat different historical routes. When I was in Ukraine we were talking about languages and how they differ from each other and came to the conclusion that Swiss German <-> High German was a reasonable comparison. In some way Swiss German is more different to German then Ukrainian to Russian.
I do consider Swiss German and High German 'essentially the same language' as well. Now if Germany invaded Switzerland I would likely also argue against the notion but that's just politics.
You can of course be nitpick and quibble with the term 'essentially', the fact is they are extremely close related languages.
There is a lot of interesting history of both nationalist movement trying to influence the language. Imperial Russian tried to make Ukrainian more Russian (generally promoting Pan-Slavic policy with Russia as the leader). Specially in the Pre-WW1 period when it became increasingly clear that Ukrainian nationalism was a potential disaster for Imperial Russia. Ukrainian nationalist did the opposite, tried to remove Russian influence and promote the differences. Language unification and dis-unification is an interesting aspect of all modern nationalist development and its always political.