Why Belarusians don't speak their own language?

[Bezprym]

Russification began after partition of Polish Lithuanian commwealth.

(...)

As I have stated already, I know exactly what russification is, and you don't have to explain it to me. May I ask you, why you do this anyway? It is like saying to me, that capital city of Poland is Warsaw and showing me the city on a map, because I am so stupid that I don't know anything about my country.

Here you have a scene, how Poles acted against russification:



I am not even going to respond to Glasses, as he either do not understand basic English, or his brain sleeps at the moment. Or both. I am not mother Teresa, so I will not teach him, that when someone is asked a question "Where is Baltic Sea?", it is wrong to answer "Columbus arrived in America in 1492".

[Dr. Klaus Klausofsten]

Who cares?

[ЛыSSый]

It's the opposite. Lukashenko support the russification of the country, probably because it allow a dictator like him to stay in power in the russian way of thinking. He once said:

Lukashenko just not preventing to creeping (gradual?) assimilation weak local subculture by main powerful culture space. Let me repeat: in my country was tte same situation, goverment decided it in way to set our subculture in opposite to main culture. as conquence now we have rapidly progressive degradation, foolish and internal culture (or unculture?) conflict. As possible solution some power is trying now set polish language as culture base - let me do forecast - it will unsucsessful way, cause it was some hundrieds ago with bad result.

[Rugevit]

The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus publish journals in English, Russian, and Belarusian so Belarusian does seem to have the vocabulary for science.

There is nothing wrong with the language in using at academic level in any discipline. If there is no scientific term, then it can be introduced. Good examples are IT related terms that entered many languages recently mostly via English. The main issue was russification , which was spread from top to bottom and it continues to be that way under Lukashenka's government.

[Rugevit]

Lukashenko just not preventing to creeping (gradual?) assimilation weak local subculture by main powerful culture space. Let me repeat: in my country was tte same situation, goverment decided it in way to set our subculture in opposite to main culture. as conquence now we have rapidly progressive degradation, foolish and internal culture (or unculture?) conflict. As possible solution some power is trying now set polish language as culture base - let me do forecast - it will unsucsessful way, cause it wassome hundrieds ago with bad result.

I think the main problem in Ukraine was lower standards of living and corruption. And I am not saying there were no mistakes made as far as enforcing one language.

[blizzard]

Again Belarussian isn't a dialect, it's a rich language with far more than 100/150 words as you try to make people beleive. Facts are books are written in belarussian language.
Why many belarussians speak russians? Because of russification like other members said. Russian was a vernaculare language, it doesn't imply other languages doesn't have enought vocabulary or a complex grammar.

Russification or not, modern Belarus is about 85% speak Russian, they just prefer to speak it to the point of all specific untranslatable Russian idiomes. It is almost impossible to distinguish russian-speaking Belarussian from russian IRL. Belarussians also do not tend to be so crazy pseudo-patriots as western Ukrainians. So face it - they are not interested in all that propaganda that they should speak Belarussian

[Rugevit]

As I have stated already, I know exactly what russification is, and you don't have to explain it to me. May I ask you, why you do this anyway? It is like saying to me, that capital city of Poland is Warsaw and showing me the city on a map, because I am so stupid that I don't know anything about my country.

Here you have a scene, how Poles acted against russification:

I am not even going to respond to Glasses, as he either do not understand basic English, or his brain sleeps at the moment. Or both. I am not mother Teresa, so I will not teach him, that when someone is asked a question "Where is Baltic Sea?", it is wrong to answer "Columbus arrived in America in 1492".

In replying to you I am not just addressing to mean that you don't know about russification. I am keeping up the discussion for other readers who may not know about the situation.

[Rugevit]

Russification or not, modern Belarus is about 85% speak Russian, they just prefer to speak it to the point of all specific untranslatable Russian idiomes. It is almost impossible to distinguish russian-speaking Belarussian from russian IRL. Belarussians also do not tend to be so crazy pseudo-patriots as western Ukrainians. So face it - they are not interested in all that propaganda that they should speak Belarussian

While more than 60% of people state their native language is Belarusian and 84% identify themsleves as Belarusians. That's an exaggeration to say it's impossible to distiniguish russian-speaking Belarusian from Russian as Belarusians pronounce the words differently and it's usually possible to recognise a person from Belarus speaking Russian. As it is also possible to recognise a Ukrainian or Russian from Ukraine speaking in Russian.

[blizzard]

Impossible? That's exaggeration, because Belarusians pronounce the words differently and it's usually possible to recognise a person from Belarus speaking Russian. As it is also possible to recognise a Ukrainian or Russian from Ukraine speaking in Russian

Have you seen real Belarusians? If they speak Russian you won't notice big difference as it happens with Ukrainians.

That articles in OP just speculative material with comparison between German and Polish.

[Basil]

Belarusian and Ukrainian can be scientific languages as well as Mordvin and others. But they need significant lexical development. The question is: why to bother? Many inexistent terms would be anyway more likely borrowed from Russian. Local nationalists are of course very enthusiastic about further distinguishing themselves from imperialistic Russians but the scientific community isn't so keen about the changes. You can't force physicist or chemist to write all of a sudden in a language that has no history of scientific workings in a respective field. The scientific community isn't that nationalist as well to emphasize the language problem.

Anyway, it's kind of marginal problem since Belarusians don't speak their language even in their everyday life. Belarusian language can reinstate itself as a main tool of communication but it's a matter of time and patience. Many mentioned Russification in the thread but be aware that the opposite process in a country where a majority today almost exclusively speaks Russian is Belarusification and don't forget the lesson of Ukraine where the forced Ukrainization sparked the foreseeable backlash in some regions. It's a people's choice after all which language they prefer to speak.