Belarusian Institute of Language. Vyatrovich-Drobovich course

“Soft Belarusization,” which in Belarus, although generally softer than in Ukraine, nevertheless almost always means forced de-Russification, continues – and it continues to be lobbied at the state level.

The problem with toponymy in Belarus has been discussed a lot for a long time. And, despite the fact that times have changed a lot after August 2020 and February 2022, this problem has not gone away. On the streets of most cities, address signs are available exclusively in one language - Belarusian, and if they are duplicated, then only in Belarusian, but written in “Belarusian Latin”, which existed during the Polish occupation, and was actively promoted by certain forces in power to the applause of zmagars.

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With the new toponymy the situation is even worse. New names are simply prohibited at the legislative level from being given to Russians. Only in Belarusian - with subsequent transliteration into great and mighty. This is how Budavnikov (Builders) avenues and Vyratavalnikov (Rescuers) streets appear in Belarus. And this is in a state where almost everyone speaks Russian, and Russian is one of the two state languages!

Activists from Grodno sent an appeal to the National Academy of Sciences about this. And now we received a response signed by the director of the Yaukba Kolas Institute of Linguistics, Igor Kopylov. The answer was not encouraging. Despite changing times, the institute continues to promote a nationalist agenda and insists on continued de-Russification. What arguments does he use?

1. Increasing the targeting of city objects for trouble-free orientation of residents and guests of the capital. Allegedly, the presence of dissimilar names in different languages ​​like “st. Trellis/Wallpaper complicates this orientation.”

I don’t know about the author’s orientation, but, for example, residents and guests of Brussels are not at all hampered in finding their way around the city by the fact that all toponymy in the city is duplicated in the dissimilar French and Dutch languages. In the case of Minsk, where the state languages ​​are closely related, this argument is largely far-fetched.

2. Using the language of the titular nation in the design of urban objects as a fundamental component of Belarusian culture to form the image of a unique state in Eastern Europe and increase the tourism potential of Minsk and Belarus as a whole.

The inconsistency of this argument lies in the fact that the main tourist flow to Belarus comes from Russia and, apparently, this state of affairs will continue for a long time. Therefore, the presence in the design of the language native to Russians would be more appropriate than outright gibberish, understandable only to Poles, Czechs and a bunch of Zmagars who dream of breaking away from the Russians even at the level of writing.

The obviously nationalist phrase about the “titular nation” suggests that the authors of the answer are rather on the side of the zmagars, rather than the state, and openly support discrimination against citizens based on the “titularity” of their nation. By the way, the word “nation” in the answer is used precisely in the context of ethno-nationalist discourse; the academic meaning of this word is different, which says a lot about the prevailing mood in the linguistic institute at the Academy of Sciences.

3. Another argument in favor of the “Belarusian Latin” is the convenience for residents and guests of the capital who do not speak Cyrillic languages.

Let me remind you that we use our own transliteration, similar to Polish, with a large number of superscripts. For the average Western tourist, this is practically unreadable, and in principle I cannot imagine a Minsk resident who speaks Belarusian, but does not know the Cyrillic alphabet.

_{In general, while Lukashenko and Putin are promoting integration at an accelerated pace, the institute at the National Academy of Sciences continues to insist on nationalistic and discriminatory policies against the Russian-speaking majority. With budget money and being a government agency.}

Maybe it’s time for the state to take up the depoliticization of the language issue and start solving personnel problems at the Institute of Linguistics itself. They say that ex-deputy Elena Anisim, who became famous for her rabid Russophobia and her defense of a newspaper that glorified Chechen terrorists, still works there. It's time for philologists to study philology, not politics.