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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   16082 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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This also reminds me of when I saw tons of people back in March bitching about people spelling the capital as Kiev, saying this was culturally insensitive and that this actually matters.

The switch to Kyiv seems to be much older than March. Even on fox news I found hardly any instances of Kyiv since the official change in name.

The name change goes back to a Ukrainian social media campaign from 2018: KyivNotKiev. I'm generally sympathetic to the idea that we should transcribe their place names from Ukrainian rather than Russian (although it's worth noting that both are spoken there). It's an increasingly common but hardly universal trend to better localize such names. We've practically renamed Mumbai and Czechia. It's unclear if they can make Türkiye happen, and few seem anxious to change Suomi or Deutschland in English.

"Finland" is actually one of the two formal names of Finland, though not due to it being the formal form in English but due to it being the formal form in Swedish, the other national language.

Fox and the others probably switched to Kyiv when the Ukranian official spelling switched to Kyiv... but the pronunciation "Keev" (which I think is not quite right, and sounds awful) seems to have only been used starting this year.

which I think is not quite right, and sounds awful

/'kɪjəw/ is probably the best approximation one can do with English phonemes, and /'kiːjəf/ for the Russian version. /kiːv/ is just weird.

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It's a great side to serve with liberty steak.

Oh yeah, that really bugged me, too, even though I was too young to have any political opinions back then. I'm half tempted to believe that this shows I'm balanced, since I just hate anyone who takes this sort of linguistic policing approach, and half tempted to say that this shows how much the times have changed, since 20 years ago it was the right that was trying to pull this crap, and now it's the left. I guess for what it's worth, I'm surrounded all day every day by people who were pissed off at the right 20 years ago about "freedom fries", who are now the same people bitching about "Kiev", so at least I didn't succumb to whatever mind disease they did in the past 2 decades, somehow.

I’ve just noticed that when the red tribe wants to rename something, it’s treated as pointless signaling or laughably poor gamesmanship, but when the blue tribe wants to rename something, all of the institutions of American public life get behind them. This asymmetry is one more reason Chthulu swims leftward.

Are you sure the Kyiv/Kiev thing is a red tribe/blue tribe issue, though? My understanding is that support for Ukraine has been and probably also still continues to be greatly bipartisan, as it is in most of the rest of the west, and people have reported seeing Ukrainian flags or expressions of admiration to Zelensky etc. in small Republican-voting towns in their areas here, at least.

Not the OP but will say that IME, yes support for Ukraine seems to be a bipartisan issue. The Kyiv/Kiev spelling thing seems to be a non issue to me, as @sarker notes in most the change in spelling seems to have followed the official change of name a few years back, but pronunciation on the other hand seems to be becoming something of a shibboleth with "Keeve" being a blue tribe marker while every one else says "Key-ev"

Uh, small town red tribers are anti-Russian, but not in the sense of buying into(Or understanding) the shibboleths of Ukrainian nationalism. It would be totally normal to say Kiev in the middle of a rant about stopping Putin.

I live in the rural southern US and this has not been my experience at all. Frustration with the Republican neocon war backing could not be higher.

Ranting about "stopping Putin" will get you 100% assumed to be a liberal since only liberals hate him enough to care.

Frustration with spending all this money and weapons on Ukraine is common, but almost nobody actually likes Putin or Russia. Ranting about stopping Putin/Russia is distinctly boomerish, but not necessarily lib.

While probably generally true, the right in The US seems to have the only Ukrainian skeptical wing. That is, most people support Ukraine but if you find someone who objects to Ukraine policy chances are the person is right wing.

The right in the US is also unique, globally in its covid skepticism. All the while still maintaining that dynamic of most As are X but all Y are A.

I’m not sure about that. I mean even ignoring Canada, Eastern Europe and Africa seemed mostly United in not taking Covid particularly seriously, and there were left wing Covid skeptics in Britain, and Brazil had very similar partisan dynamics to the USA, which Bolsonaro seemed to be the driving force behind rather than monkey see monkey do.

I think it is because of the founding of the US. Unique amongst nations being conservative here has a liberal streak.

the right in The US seems to have the only Ukrainian skeptical wing

There is a nontrivial amount of skepticism from the tankie-adjacent wing of the far left: witness the DSA statements on the matter and that since-retracted letter from the House Progressive Caucus. Those have been largely pushed aside by the ruling faction, but aren't totally silent either.

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Yes. It isn’t so much “rooting for the Russians” and more “none of our business; at least not enough of our business to spend 100b+”

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Irrespective of their opinion on Ukraine as such, Red tribe folks tend to despise language policing and ridicule all «ackchyually, starting today the approved word is LatinX» type innovations. Politically correct identity labels, pronouns, trans women are women, Parents 1 and 2 (which Putin tried to play at), words are violence, retiring «problematic» technical terms like master/slave etcetera – they're always apprehensive at the least; and this basic conservative trait, following from their core impulse of guarding against alien moral coercion, is consistent throughout the battlefronts of the Culture War and across the shades of Red. It would be perfectly natural for gun-toting patriots in those small Republican-voting towns to be in awe of Ghost of Kiev and solicit donations for the Ukraine – while taking the piss out of pearl-clutching Blues who accuse them of perpetuating linguistic harassment peddled by Russian trolls with the intent to subvert Our Democracy.

The red tribe would probably start saying ‘keev or however you say it’ if actual Ukrainians asked them to say Kyiv. But by and large it’s their tribal enemies trying to change language for reasons no one can actually explain(blue tribers largely not being well versed enough in Slavic languages to even pronounce‘Kyiv’ properly), which sets off their bullshit detectors.

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