The nicest thing in your post is you believe that Troki is (or should be) a Belarusian town, not a Lithuanian one. I may only agree.
We already discussed “Tatar” question. There is no point in discussing the Jewish question, because after WWII the Jewish question doesn’t exist in Belarus any more. Let it be forgotten what is covered by ground.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Austrvegr
Melting pot seems to work well in Belarus.
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Yep. Things might have been much worse - fortunately we have to boil in this pot Russians and Ukrainians mostly. Poles are harder to boil but I hope we’ll manage.
Hehe, having said these words I feel like a real devil from hell.
Now about
Ruthenian and
Russian. (Yes, again!) There is a clear difference between the words
Ðóñü,
Ðóñ³í and
Ðîññèÿ,
ðóññêèé, right? I do believe that this difference in the meanings should be saved in translations into English. That’s all. My point of view is close to this comrade’s one (her name is Ewa M. Thompson). I agree with every word she wrote. But her words are more solid because she is a professor and I am not:
Quote:
http://www.postcolonialweb.org/poldiscourse/ewt/1.html
The English words "Russia" and "Russian" translate more than a dozen Russian terms and expressions. The Russian language has the word Rossiia, or the Russian nation and state (this word was given prestige by Nikolai Karamzin's History). The Russian language also has the more ancient word Rus', the state that existed in Kiev before the Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century. The word Rus' is sometimes used in Russian in a poetic way, to embrace all East Slavs -- it may include Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians; in some cases it designates Ukrainians and Belarusians only. In this last case, Rus' echoes the old English word "Ruthenia," which designates contemporary Belarus and Ukraine taken together but not "Muscovy," or Russia. Thus, to translate the word Rus' as "Russia" is fraught with ambiguities, yet this is routinely done by American historians.. .
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Austrvegr
It will be correct to translate it "in Russian" and call the language in which it is written "Old Belarusian".
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This statement is wrong. Have a look in Wikipedia, please:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenian_language The term “the Ruthenian language’ appeared to exist. (To be honest I began to think that it is me who invented it.
). So indeed, that medieval clerk had to write “in Ruthenian”, not in Russian.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Austrvegr
We are discussing your quaint insistence on being called by the name of a South French Gallic tribe.
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It’s strange that you accuse me of causing a mess by insisting on being called “by the name of a South French Gallic tribe”. It wasn’t me who applied this term to inhabitants of our lands. I just tried to show you that there is no need to make a tragedy from it. At least Slovaks and Slovenes, Serbs and Lusatian Serbs take similar “problems” easy. So do I.