Alexander Shmelev: "A burning topic"

“While editing the next text, I automatically corrected “in Ukraine” to “in Ukraine.” And when I caught myself doing this, I realized that, oddly enough, I had never spoken out on this burning topic. Although, in my opinion, it is very simple, in while people on both sides write tons of bullshit and nonsense about her,” the publicist says on his Facebook page.

“So, I am sure that in all such cases one must follow a simple three-point rule.

1) Any person or group of people CAN DECLARE that they are offended by such and such a name, and they ask to be called such and such.

2) After this, everyone who knows about this request must choose: does he (s) want to deliberately offend those he is talking about, or does he not want to? And if he doesn’t want to, then he MUST GIVE IN to the request, even if at first it will cause difficulties and be perceived as “violence against the language.”

3) Moreover, for this you DO NOT NEED any additional arguments in one direction or another (this is literate/illiterate, this suffix/preposition/ending has such and such a meaning, etc.). Moreover: often such arguments, on the contrary, harm the cause - because, as a rule, they are invented out of thin air and are easily refuted.

For example:

1) I can declare that I ask you never to call me Sasha, but only Shura.

2) After this, everyone who knows about my request will have to choose: either call me Sasha, realizing that I will immediately rear up, by definition negatively perceiving the rest of their text, or get used to calling me me only Shura (at first, of course, getting confused and correcting himself - “Sasha! Oh, no, sorry, Shura!” - but gradually getting used to it).

3) At the same time, any moralizing that, they say, “Alexandrov is always called Sasha, there is nothing offensive in that,” will sound ridiculous. However, I will look just as ridiculous if I start lecturing to everyone, incl. and to a stranger who called me Sasha - “don’t you really hear in the name Sasha two hisses at once, as if the hiss of a snake?! Do you really want to compare me to a snake?!” In reality, neither one nor the other arguments are needed here: my request is enough.

The same applies to blacks/blacks, homosexuals/homosexuals, Belarus/Belarus, Tallinn/Tallinn, in Ukraine/in Ukraine and all other couples of this kind.

It is impossible to come up with a rational explanation why names derived from the Spanish root negro sound more offensive than those from the similar English root black. It’s impossible, and it’s not necessary. Blacks themselves prefer the latter, and that's enough.

The same goes for “in Ukraine”. Any reasoning about “in countries and territories,” “islands,” “outskirts,” “as Pushkin wrote, but as Shevchenko,” and so on only confuses and confuses.

Moreover, any educated person knows: the use of spatial prepositions does not obey simple and logical rules. It is impossible to logically explain why we work IN THE FIELD, but IN THE FACTORY, why we go to IRELAND, but CUBA, why I am writing this post in English IN July, ON Saturday, AT 6 pm.
It’s impossible, and it’s not necessary.

Do Ukrainians demand to use the preposition “in” and are offended when they see “on”?
This means that every time they come across “on”, it will be perceived by them as some kind of challenge, as a desire to specifically offend them somehow. And if the meaning of our message is not at all in this challenge, then we need to correct “na” to “v”.

Which is what I do all the time now and have even almost completely retrained myself. That's all, actually."