Comments by "1midnightfish" (@1midnightfish) on "Interviews from Ukraine" channel.

?? They very fluently speak their native language.
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@YorkerEli How does that make any sense...?? It's not about presidents, it's about what these people's presidents are doing. One is doing his job at an immensely difficult time, the other is sending his men to commit genocide and get massacred in their tens of thousands in another country that posed no threat to them when he decided to invade it. Spot the difference...?
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@VitaliiThe I grew up in Italy and have lived in the UK most of my life. Neither of these countries is homogenous by any stretch of the imagination. And thank goodness for that
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@luxborealis Fantastic reply, thank you so much, this comes up a lot and as an outsider, even though I know beyond doubt that they're repeating other people's lies it can be hard to stand my ground. I'll be tucking your words under my belt to deploy as needed 😤 I just hope you and your friends are OK. Україна назавжди!
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@leroyanthony1208 I'm sorry, who is the "right ally"? ...the rf, who want to wipe the Ukrainian nation off the face of the earth??
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@leroyanthony1208 Thank you for continuining to debunk your own bs just by the way you express it 😂 Not that you're worth the time it takes to type this, but in the interest of anyone else who may read to the end of this thread, note that I referred to "Stalin" in one comment (he was objectively responsible for both the Holodomor and the Executed Ukrainian Renaissance) and the russian federation in the other comment.Hence, your incoherent riposte accusing me of blaming all russians says a lot more about you than about anything I wrote. Oh and trust me, no one is afraid of you. You're ridiculous.
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@dixonpinfold2582 Writing the comments you've written here, and then calling another person "sanctimonious" is an example of doublespeak almost worthy of the kremlin... And no, I'm not expecting you to understand that, since you seem to have trouble seeing beyond the tip of your own nose.
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Thank you for the great video, I've just subscribed. I recently heard Sternenko say that while he's been very critical of Zelensky in the past, that stopped at the beginning of the full scale invasion because now Zelensky is doing what needs to be done. He was also favourably impressed by the President's visit to Bakhmut. Sternenko isn't known for mincing his words, so I think that was a lot, coming from him. Love and solidarity to the Ukrainian people! 💙💛
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@BibEvgen Anyone remotely tempted to give this troll the benefit of the doubt, look up Timothy Snyder's lecture series The Making Of Modern Ukraine, find the relevant lectures in the series, and listen to those instead.
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@shtein4476 You do realise you don't make much sense...? But you come across as if you believe you do, which is pretty sad
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@yaya_is_real Basically you "remember" everything wrong. 14,000 are documented by independent sources to have died in the Donbas between 2014 and late 2021 or early 2022: as in, all of them, military and civilians on both sides plus the hundreds of people whose passenger plane was shot out of the sky by russian special forces. The 4 million is an estimate - based on verified historical sources - of how many Ukrainians were deliberately starved to death by the soviets in the early 30s.
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@@user-zr9pe4bo7e I can see your point of view, but that is my privilege as someone whose home hasn't been bombed to rubble, whose relatives have not been killed or maimed, who hasn't had to flee their city or their country to live as a refugee. I don't judge any Ukrainian person who hates or blames all russians indiscriminately at the moment - though I have noticed that many still don't. I do feel for people in your position. But I think it's absolutely fair for Ukrainians to rage at everyone who could have prevented this horror from taking place, or who could now stop it even if that means taking risks.
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@joedellinger9437 I don't think many Americans realise that Europe and in fact the rest of the world would be so happy if we could all stop worrying about who US citizens are going to elect every 4 years... To quote one of your national heroes, "With great power comes great responsibility". A little reflection on how you got all that wealth and power would also not be out of place.
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@ataipacquiao5713 Ukraine is not russia. Ukrainian cities do not have russian names. Львів - це Україна Харків - це Україна Донецьк - це Україна Луганськ - це Україна Одеса - це Україна Енергодар - це Україна Бахмут - це Україна Бердянськ - це Україна Мелітополь - це Україна Севастополь - це Україна Євпаторія - це Україна
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@joeyyemelyanov1019 Thank you 😊 It's been a while, I'd forgotten I'd written this.... I reread it and I'm still glad I posted it. Which is no small thing
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@iamoo Aww that's so sweet, thanks for the encouragement🤗 I was in fact just listening to an Operator Starsky livestream - where I learned the meaning of the word Совок - and he was also talking about a type of person, who always sees nothing but the negative in everything, which he said Ukrainians call "sradophile"...? Does that mean someone who loves betrayal...?? (he said it can also be "sradoyob" or something that sounded like that). What's the spelling in Ukrainian? It's one of those things that are probably not that important to learning the basics of a language, but socially meaningful pieces of language always get stuck in my head and I know I won't stop thinking about it until I've worked it out!💙💛
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@iamoo You staaaaar thank you SO much... this is exactly the sort of explanation I was hoping for: meaning, usage, register, you got them all! I really appreciate you taking the time. I am generally very interested in colloquial language, I translate literature and theatre from Italian (my baby language) into English and I hope that one day I'll be able to translate Ukrainian into English, too. But also, considering what Ukrainians are going through, and my total inability to send anybody any money, the least I can do is try to understand what life is like for you now, and language is one of the best ways to do that. Do you also work with languages? By the way you explained those terms I get the impression that you might. ☺💙💛
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@iamoo I learned English as a child and it's been my main language since the end of my teens (over 30 years ago). My Italian is not fantastic tbh, I know a number of "heritage language" translators and I have a lot more in common with them than with exophonic translators (people who translate into their second language). Am I right in thinking you have at least three fluent languages? Or do you know any more? I have a Ukrainian cousin who grew up speaking mostly russian but is fully bilingual, except he is now trilingual because he moved to Italy permanently a few years ago and his Italian is better than mine! And he also has a bit of English. Brainy lad. I'm a proud big cousin ☺
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@iamoo Having experienced two languages switching place in my brain, I'm very interested in that process (I wonder if anyone has written anything about it but not having a name for it, it's hard to do a proper search). Ukrainian bilingualism seems to me even more interesting, because there are so many elements to it. I understand your wish that russian were simply not a part of your heritage, but I think growing up with more than one language is always a potential advantage, because it creates space and specific tools in the brain that can then be devoted to other languages. Being fluent in both a syllable-timed and a stress-timed language, as you and I both are, is a particular advantage in further language learning. I'm not interested in learning to speak russian but I've realised that if I want to one day be able to translate expressive text from Ukrainian, I'll need to have some understanding of it, and also of surzhyk. For now I just want to concentrate on Ukrainian, then once I've reached a decent intermediate stage I'll see how much russian I have. I must admit I also quite like the idea of picking up a colonial language through the prism of the colonised language it's been attempting to wipe out for centuries... when I thought about it I realised how rare a situation this is, since most empires (British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, even Italian and German to a lesser extent) have been maritime empires, meaning that the colonised languages were very far from the European language that was imposed on them. So sorry, I'm going on and on... I keep getting interrupted by other things and when I come back to this comment I write some more!! It's just really nice to correspond with you. About switching to Ukrainian, I recently came across this YT video: ЯК ЛЕГКО ПЕРЕЙТИ НА УКРАЇНСЬКУ? Історії і поради тих, хто зміг which I haven't been able to watch yet because... it's not subtitled, and my Ukrainian just isn't there yet. Have you watched it? Or taken part in it? And have you read anything by Володимир Рафєєнко? I haven't yet but really want to - I heard Timothy Snyder talk about this author's decision to completely switch to Ukrainian (which had never been his writing language) during one of his Yale lectures last year: apparently when the author spoke at Yale he said "Не володієш мовою, мова володіє тобою" and those words took my breath away. That's exactly what English did to me when I was a child, and what Ukrainian is doing to me now. YT comments section conversations can end at any moment, so if this is our last exchange I want to thank you again for taking the time to communicate with me. I'll always think of you when I come across those words you taught me 😊 I wish you and your country the very best. I can just begin to imagine how hard it must be right now but never forget that countless millions all over the world are with you - we won't forget, we won't get bored, we are with you all the way. 💙💛
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The Ukrainian constitution expressly forbids the dissolution of parliament while the country is under martial law. There's no point having an election if you can't dissolve the parliament to make the new one.
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@freemind360 It wouldn't be like any election. A substantial part of the electorate is stuck in occupied areas, or has been deported to the aggressor country.
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Would that have been when Trump tried to blackmail Zelensky into inventing dirt to smear his political opponent in exchange for the military aid that Ukraine desperately needed...? Does the phrase "quid pro quo" bring anything to mind?
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russia is not Ukraine's "brother" and what most Ukrainians actually want is for russian occupiers to go back home and leave them the hell alone. If you want the war to stop go tell putin
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@Askarbinochka What you need to get out of your head is the idea that you'll ever be able to erode support for Ukraine all over the world. You won't.
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@elizabethsproule5227 Speaking out against extremism and patronising people are two different things: I don't know where you're from, but in affluent western countries we definitely have a problem differentiating between the two. Patronising people who are currently depending on aid from our own country is a particularly awful, deeply colonial action. Trying to understand what Bandera means to today's Ukrainians and how he became a hero in the first place is a more respectful course of action.
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And wheeen...? They're all in their short sleeves
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Thank you, yes exactly
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Do you watch 1420? There are people doing street interviews in russia at the moment. That's not a measure of how democratic a country is - though I can't imagine people doing street interviews in North Korea, so there are definitely degrees of undemocracy. I admire the people in this video who answered truthfully to their opinion and experience.
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@КириллМирченко Because those areas are currently occupied by the genocidal invaders, as you well know. Besides, plenty of people from those areas are no longer there, they're either refugees or internally displaced or dead 😡
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@alannatory Several opinions were expressed in this video - which one do you mean?
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@alannatory you do realise your comments make very little sense...?
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@Sa_kr8 ??
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@LucioSimone Which part of my comment are you referring to?
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@mikefraser4513 ??
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@qwazse4 Arabic is indeed an imperialist language, no one has at any point in this thread claimed that English is the only one in existence. And English does spread by way of arts and culture, but in reality it is anglophone arts and culture that spread on the back of the imperialist English language - often, historically, at the expense of the cultural output of other nations and languages. Which is, incidentallly, what has been done to the Ukrainian language and cultural output over the centuries, through the russophone cultural output of "the temporary misunderstanding currently known as the russian federation" (to quote Sternenko, a prominent ukrainian blogger). It will never bee too late to decolonise anglophone literature and arts, but more importantly, an automatically defensive stance about the imperialist function of the English language is holding many of us back from dissecting and neutralising the role of russian language and culture in enabling, promoting and to an extent foreshadowing the horrors currently being perpetrated by russia in Ukraine, with the overwhelmingly negative effects on the rest of the world.
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Why? Corruption thrives on secrecy, especially on being an "open secret" that everyone knows and maybe even complains about, never saying or doing anything constructive, because it feels so pointless. In the open air it will eventually degrade, like a virus.
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@yandex9188 Oh so you're one of those articulate trolls, you think you should be taken seriously because you can form proper sentences, that's how low the standards are in your culture nowadays. I can just imagine what would happen if I started saying that I believe any language is artificial and inferior compared to any other, but some russians, like yourself, think they should be indulged by the rest of the world when they make these pronouncements about Ukrainian. I happen to believe that the russian federation is artificial as a country, and vastly inferior to Ukraine and most other countries in that respect... but I was keeping that to myself because I didn't want to offend anyone. Thank you for helping me change my mind on that point. The only russians I should worry about offending are the ones who wouldn't be offended by such a statement, because they agree.
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