DANGER IN DICTIONARIES
!. Those who are again attempting to compile an official dictionary ofc the Ukrainian language are threatened I with long terms of imprisonment. ' Their predecessors in this task—members of the Academy in Kieff—wera sentehcedxld ten' years each. Their offence was choosing Greek or Polish ! roots instead of Russian ones for the many new scientific terms required oy a language which'had long lain fallow as a peasant dialect. In all the other non-Russian. Soviet Republics the local national cultures are to be submitted once again to the dominant, centralising influence of Moscow. As a result local lexicographers, like; the local literati and musicians, are being similarly persecuted by, Stalin's viceroys. Moscow's own' dictionary-makers also have their troubles. There is already an "affair" brewing over -the Russian Academy's new dictionary. ■The elderly scholars took their examples of the use of words from,-he Russian classics father than- from Soviet officials like Litvinoff or Maisky. For "indivisibility* they quoted Gqgol's "The church is indivisible" instead of "Peace is indivisible." To illustrate' the use of "materialist" they , chose Tchekov's "If you go on being such a materialist you will come to a bad end, my son."
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Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 19, 24 January 1938, Page 7
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193DANGER IN DICTIONARIES Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 19, 24 January 1938, Page 7
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