A Linguistic and Temporal Melting Pot

by Aliide Naylor

It was difficult to establish how to start this post for the HUSI blog, as my interests rapidly evolved in tandem with the course as it developed. On the surface, Ukrainian for Reading Knowledge is an intensive language program – but it is in equal measures valuable in Ukrainian history, politics, and culture.

Initially, I was excited to write about the incredible amount of history distilled into language. Even solitary Ukrainian words are like little documents, with various twists and turns in the region’s history imprinted on each one – their roots and origins, their popularization, and their own impact on the ever-evolving language. But as the course progressed, I almost became overwhelmed by the sheer number of new paths opening up before me as potential routes of further exploration. 

I ended up developing a deep and sincere enthusiasm for the poetry of Volodymyr Svidzinsky, an early 20th century writer, and I recently bought my own book of Svidzinsky’s poetry in bilingual translation. As a direct result of our summer classes, I can already comprehend a significant proportion of the Ukrainian original and reinterpret parts into my own English – I never believed that I would advance so rapidly that this would be possible. I also deeply enjoyed learning the months of the year, which in Ukrainian (as with Lithuanian), are so beautifully evocative of seasonal change. ‘Грудень’ (December), for example comes from the Ukrainian word for frozen clumps of ground. And ‘Червень’ (June) alludes to the color red, as berries ripen in the summer months. 

Learning Ukrainian under the instruction of Volodymyr Dibrova brought into focus that which should have already been very clear: How Ukraine’s location on the Black Sea, with Odesa only 800km from Istanbul, means that there is a great deal of Mediterranean influence on the culture– and this truly shines through in the language.

As someone who has traditionally focused on contemporary Russia and the Baltics, my understanding of Ukraine had very much been influenced by the conceptualization of Ukraine in terms of its relationship with Central/Eastern Europe and Russia. I understood that the language shared commonalities with Russian, Polish, and Yiddish (I recall once reading somewhere that early 20th century karbovanets banknotes had at least three different languages on them) – but I had yet to recognize how much both the toponymy and language had been influenced by Greek, Turkic, and Persian cultures. 

Sevastopol, Simferopol, Mariupol, Melitopol, Odesa are all very Greek place names. The name Sevastopol originates from the Greek word ‘σεβαστος’ (‘sebastos’), meaning ‘respected’ or ‘venerable’, which was often used as an honorific for royal leaders. Sevastopol is home to the Greek colony of Chersonesos. The ‘pol’ at the end of so many Ukrainian place names comes from the Greek ‘polis’ or city. It’s obvious when you think about it. 

The influence of Turkish on the language is also much stronger than I anticipated. While I understood Tatar to be a Turkic language, I was previously blind to its impact in Ukrainian – often in military terminology. Kozak (Cossack), Chumak, tovarish, otaman, osavul, dzhura. Yes! Our favorite form of address adopted throughout the USSR comes from the Old Turkic ‘tavar ishchi’! ‘Tuman’, which means ‘fog’ in both Ukrainian and Russian, is a ‘Turkism’ too. 
Garbuz – which means pumpkin or squash, is related to both ‘arbuz’ – the Russian word for watermelon, or ‘qarpuz’ – which would also be Persian for watermelon. Conversely, in Ukrainian the word for watermelon is ‘кавун’ (‘kavun’), which is essentially the same as the modern Turkish word. Ukrainian last names can also indicate Turkic roots: Balaban, Murza, Kochubey, Kumlubey. And of course, the word ‘Maidan’ – the site of so much unrest in recent years – itself has Persian roots.

 

Now, as we learned, we are seeing the language evolve significantly as it attempts to take steps away from Russian – sometimes such contrived steps so as to make its evolution a little ridiculous. As with Russian, of course the language has adopted several modern, foreign words that exist in a separate realm of ‘internet language’, directly transliterating words like ‘hashtag’ or ‘hacker’. But there are deliberate steps being taken outside of the more organic realm of social media. For example, intentionally using the word литoвище as opposed to аеропорт (“airport”) – the latter being used in both Russian and English. The overwhelming takeaway was that we need to apply contemporary context to every word we read or hear, from the time in which it was written in order to gain a greater depth of understanding about what a Ukrainian text (or indeed any text) can tell us both explicitly and implicitly – a valuable skill for students of both history and literature.  

Despite being unable to travel to Cambridge this year (the US will start allowing Brits in soon, I hope!), I nonetheless applied to the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute, and was extremely fortunate to have been granted a scholarship. The online format of the classes was surprisingly seamless; we ran into very few technical issues and were able to work intensively together in small ‘breakout’ groups, while also collaborating and conversing as a whole class. 

Over the course of HUSI 2021, I learned a great deal from my classmates, too, from Kazakh film recommendations, to meditations on man’s relationship with nature, to early 1990s sects, and even a newfound appreciation for opera, as well as people’s extremely varied experiences in Ukraine itself. I cannot recommend HUSI highly enough!