Re: Economic comparison Estonia<->Finland -- some 80 years ago?

K. Almenas wrote on Jan 15:

« I have had some very bad experiances with Russians who use their
language to show their dominance, to denigrate other nationalities.
The list of these experiences (for some reason I remember them in
detail) would fill several pages.
That there are many who hate Russian is to me completely
understandable. And yet, presently I am trying to improve my rather
elementary Russian. In Lithuania especially among the younger crowd
the ability to speak Russian is fading rapidly. I do not think that
this is a good development. In the past this is what gave us a clear
advantage over the Russians, we could understand them, but they (not
completely true of course) could not understand us. To close, the
difficulty that Russians have in learning another language is indeed
curiuous. Of course attitude is a big factor. An attitude which works
to your disadavantage occurs in other cultures as well. Gheto
youngsters in the US find it is 'cool' to learn as little as possible.
This assures that in the next generation there will be no shortage of
ghetto youngsters. The Russian inability to learn another language has
a similar effect. »

Labai gerai para?yta, Kazy.

In my view, Russians who use their language to show their dominance and
to denigrate other nationalities - and same goes for some other
nationalities who are in a position of subjugating other nations and
imposing their langaue on them - are primarily following their
primitive animal instincts of, well, to be polite, we'll call it
"economy of effort". (We could also call it laziness and
self-centredness, but those would be value judgements and far be it
from the present writer to make value judgements! :-) Their attitude
is why learn another language when you can get away with using only one
- your native language. Then the arrogance sets in as an excuse to
cover up their laziness and stupidity, er, oops, I mean, their
dedication to the "economy of effort" principle.

> The list of these experiences (for some reason I remember them in detail) would fill several pages.

Indeed, why wouldn't you remember it? And it has already filled
hundreds of pages. I have been translating material (LT > EN) about
Lithuanians deported to SIberia, and the dumber and more primitive the
Russian, the more brutal his/her attitude was. Looks like the more
worthless a person is, the more he/she clings to the only thing they
have: a misguided sense of superiority over the less fortunate. (You
see this in some people's attitude to the poor and homeless: the
trashier a person is, generally the less compassionate they are to
those yet another rung below them on the social ladder. Same goes for
prison wardes, and the attitude of white trash toward black slaves)

> That there are many who hate Russian is to me completely understandable.

Yes. Holman says the German Nazi attack on Jews was racist and
genmocidal, but the Russian Bolshevik attck on Lithuanians (and others)
was not. Utter crap! He clings to flimsy apologies like the fact that
the Russians targeted more than one nationality. Big deal! The
Germans also targetted Gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled, and they
also invaded more than one country. Holman claims the Russians were
motivated by ideology. Big deal! So were the Nazis. But both these
imperialist bullies should have kept their ideologies within the
confines of their own countries. Furthermore, when crimes or
atrocities are perpetrated, what counts is not how the perpetrators
felt or what they thought; what counts is the effect on the victim.
Lithuanians in Siberia had only one answer [and it is the correct
answer] to the question "Why am I suffering here?" And that answer was
"Because I am Lithuanian." Holman *** off with your "no, it's because
they were unreliable elements and a threat to the Soviet experiment".
The Russians had no right to be conducted Soviet experiments outside
the borders of loser Russia. (And even within those borders a lot of
what they did to ther own people was illegal by civilized standards and
certainly morally reprehensible.) And the Holmans and Zhirinovskies of
this world would gladly roll out the red carpet and bring all that
back.

>And yet, presently I am trying to improve my rather elementary Russian.

Ja to?e. But, as with you, no doubt, no ruskis driskis is going to
oblige me to speak it. I will choose where and when I use it. (Mainly
watching TV.)

>In Lithuania especially among the younger crowd the ability to speak Russian is fading rapidly. I do not think that this is a good >development. In the past this is what gave us a clear advantage over the Russians, we could understand them, but they (not >completely true of course) could not understand us.

The more intelligent youth will still learn as many languages as they
can. I am quite relaxed about English displacing Russian for
inter-Baltic and wider communication. I strikes at the heart of
Russian arrogance. Lithuanians are never going to abandon their native
language in favour of English, but while we all speak Russian widely
(like the gudai in Belarus) the Russians keep having dreams of empire.
Licking their language in the guts (by numbers of Lithuanians speaking
it steadily declining) weakens their dreams.

>To close, the difficulty that Russians have in learning another language is indeed curiuous. Of course attitude is a big factor.

Hear hear. It's called imperialist arrogance. And the Russians aren't
the only transgressors. One of the worst, in fact (in terms of
numbers) are the Han Chinese - the speakers of Mandarin. Just like
USSR was the Russian Empire in pseudo-socialist drag, so the PRC is
Han/Mandarin Empire in disguise. And let's not forget that the Romans
were disgusting imperialists. Their "punishment" was that their
belovèd Latin fragmented into local patois (later to become the
Romance languages) due mainly to their habit of killing off local men
and stealing their women, who knwe very little Latin and passed on
their native speech habits to their offspring. Something similar
happened in South Africa where the Boers let black nannies bring up
their kids: the result being that Dutch evolved into Afrikaans. A
considerable part of the Dixie accent is also due to African influence
for similar reasons. Such words as 'bust' (for 'burst') were due to
African influence (simplifying consonant clusters). How ironical that
due to rap music all this is trendy now, whereas white Dixie talk is
still tretaed as a quaint curiosity.

>Ghetto youngsters in the US find it is 'cool' to learn as little as possible.

I'm not so sure that it's because they think it's cool. This is a
massive sociological question, perhaps not one for SCB. I will only
say that it would take billions, and a lot of political will -
neither of which are forthcoming under the Bush régime - plus a lot
of time, patience and expertise to remedy the situation.

.