Peteris,
On 07/25/2012 09:42 AM, Peteris Krisjanis wrote:
(Skipping all this, because obviously you are not that well informed
about how this situation with Ukraine came into being)
I am trying to get a good picture of the situation, without being
dragged into an ethnic conflict that seems to be the very reason why the
Ukrainian community cannot solve this problem themselves. I have looked
at the history of objects in OSM and if you believe that the key facts I
mentioned (objects usually created in Russian, then renamed to Ukrainian
a few months ago) are wrong then feel free to show us examples.
1. The concrete question: Should all name tag in the Crimea be in
Russian (with appropriate name:uk tags of course), even though the
official language in Ukraine is Ukrainian?
Oficial language in Ukraine is Ukrainian. Even Russia doesn't dispute
that. So, *in my opinion*, no.
Russia, as a country, isn't involved. We are talking about Ukrainian
citizens here who live in Ukraine and who prefer to use the Russian
language.
2. The general question: What exactly is the "local" language in an area
- can we come up with some rule of thumb that says "if X% of people in
an area of at least Y sq km use the language..." or so?
I think it always have been local *official* language.
This certainly is a valid line of argument; however even the Ukrainian
government seems to see the problem and now allows regional governments
to define additional official languages:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/world/europe/ukraine-parliament-adopts-russian-language-bill.html
I don't know if whatever regional government is responsible for the
Crimea has already made use of these powers but there's no doubt that
they will, is there? Which will lead to the Russian language having
"official status" in the Crimea, and certainly with two official
languages, we'd choose that which is used on the ground for the name
tag, right?
This also demonstrates a weakness of the "official language" argument:
It seems to be arbitrary. The law I quoted seems to have been passed
with a slim majority, and it paves the way for Russian to be an official
language in the Crimea. But the article says there are many Ukrainians
who don't like that, so it is quite possible that the next government
strikes down the law again, so Russian won't be an official language in
the Crimea any more, and so on - do we really think it is good to change
the "name" tags in the Crimea with every successive Ukrainian government
just because the political whim of the day is for or against giving
Russian "official" status? The people on the ground don't change, it's
the same people in the same houses in the same streets, just a different
government 800km away in Kiev...
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail [email protected] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
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