User:Rkononenko/Archive/Talk:Kharkiv

edits by taivo
he-he, Taivo I know you an american professor, taught in Ukraine in the past and so on and so forth, but please refrain from doing reckless edits of what you believe is right. I think we Ukrainians know better what language is spoken in Kharkiv. Also, for an english spelling name of Kharkiv go look it up in Oxford dictionary( this is a response to your comment - we, AMERICANS, refere to Kharkiv here('ed. in the US') as Kharkov. You can refere to it whatever you like, but note that since spanish is super-widespread in the US, we don't call boston, new-york or any other city in a way it's pronounced in Spanish, let alone add "different name" of american cities in spanish, just because spanish is widely spoken in large such cities as New-york or Boston or any other city.  Rkononenko (talk) 07:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Yawn. This has been discussed a hundred times with Ukrainian nationalists.  It doesn't matter what the Rada wants, common English usage prevails in the English Wikipedia and "Kharkov" is just as common in English as "Kharkiv".  Live with it.  (Taivo (talk) 11:56, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * We include Kharkov so that readers using older texts know they are at the correct page when they arrive here. The fact that English language sometimes uses Kharkov may be regrettable to some people, but it's a fact we have to accommodate.  Likewise, Kiev is still the standard spelling found in English language material, so please do not replace it. Knepflerle (talk) 12:34, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * We don't list the Spanish name for Boston because Spanish is not a major language in Boston. We list the Russian name for Kharkiv because the majority of residents of Kharkiv speak Russian and "Kharkov" is common in English texts--just as common as "Kharkiv".  (Taivo (talk) 13:05, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * @Taivo. You can yawn as much as you want, as well as, quoting you "You(ed. user Rkononenko) are being reported for edit warring". Dude, do you really think I can't do edits using proxy server? I'm only changing things that were spelled incorrectly in the Article, and used Russian language as a source, not Ukrainian. I mean WTF, this is Ukraine, not Russia, and things here are spelled in Ukrainian and not in Russian. So I totally think that all of my edits are in lieu with Wikipedia rules and will only benefit the artile. Lastly, stop doing russian-spelling-promoting edits in this artice and go give some more lectures at whatever university you are teaching.Rkononenko (talk) 13:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * @Taivo; and concerning your response as to why you don't spell American cities(in particular, you referred to Boston) in Spanish, it's simply pathetic. By the way I live in Cambridge, (which as you know is basically Boston) and when walking in Cambridge/Boston suburbs one mostly hears Spanish(not English). From what I hear from your fellow countrymen, many American cities  now have the majority of residents speaking Spanish and not English. So your argument is once again pathetic. ''and by the way,  the majority of kharkiv does not speak Russian, that was probably your impression when you lived in still soviet-oriented-ukraine of 90s, but things have changed there since then.Rkononenko (talk) 13:28, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * An aside, for comparison: 5.9% of Cambridge, MA registered using Spanish at home (verify); 44.3% of Kharkiv Oblast registered as using Russian (verify). Incidentally, I'm always struck by how much Haitian Creole you hear around Boston. Knepflerle (talk) 13:56, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Concerning Knepflerle's side note, the numbers you're giving are 1. from 2001 census (wich means they are outdated, since after the collapse of the USSR and Ukrainian independence considerably more people started to speak Ukrainian) 2. those census numbers still confirm that the majority( 53,8%) are registered as using Ukrainian, which breaks Taivo's claim that most of Kharkiv speaks Russian. A side note from me - I didn't get the thing about Haitian Creole. What did you mean? Rkononenko (talk) 14:15, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * They were the most recent figures I could easily find. I do believe 2001 is somewhat post-USSR to if my memory is correct!  I just thought it was interesting to get an idea of the relative size of these minorities - although the numbers will have changed, there is an order-of-magnitude difference between the two, and I would be surprised if this were not still the case.
 * As for Haitian Creole: the Boston area is the only place I hear this language spoken on the streets, and I found this interesting as I'm quite interested in the language. Knepflerle (talk) 14:26, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * @Knepflerle, unrelated to the dispute at hand. You said you sometimes hear Haitian Creol in Boston area, are you also from Cambridge?Rkononenko (talk) 14:38, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * "things here are spelled in Ukrainian and not in Russian"; things here (as in at en.wp) are spelled in English. It's why we use Prague and not Praha,  Moscow and not Moskva.  Vienna comes from the French name for Wien, not the German.  We still use it, however, because English speakers understand it and use it.
 * "Dude, dou really think I can't do edits using proxy server?"; look, if you do that, your edits will get reverted and the article will be locked. You personally won't have achieved what you want and furthermore nobody else interested in the city will be able edit the article. Please don't go down that route and stop other people from editing the article. Knepflerle (talk) 13:29, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, Rkononenko, I lived in Ukraine from 2007-2008 and my wife is from Dnipropetrovsk, so I understand the linguistic situation in Ukraine very well. Kharkiv, like Dnipro and Donetsk and other eastern cities, is a primarily Russian-speaking city.  They know Ukrainian because they are taught in school, many know and use Surzhyk, and some are native Ukrainian speakers.  Official signage is in Ukrainian, but Russian signage is quite common for non-official purposes.  As far as the English Wikipedia goes, the title of the article is Kharkiv, in Ukrainian, because the the Ukrainian and Russian versions are about equally found in English texts (unlike "Kiev", for example, which is still overwhelmingly the most common English spelling).  But within the article, the Russian variant is absolutely relevant because it is still commonly found.  (Taivo (talk) 13:43, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * @Knepflerle. Now you don't understand what I'm trying to say. Of course you don't call Moscow or Prague, Maskva or Praha in English. But at the same time proper nouns are not translated( since you are a German, I'll give you an easy example: Sweinesteiger is not called Pigrider in Englsih). My edits included changing names of famous Kharkiv citizens(proper nouns) to their Ukrainian counterparts, as well as eliminating dozens of other minor Russian'isms(also proper nouns ones). With his reverts, Taivo didn't just add alternative Kharkov in the first paragraph, he aslo deleted all of those proper nouns changes.Rkononenko (talk) 13:47, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * If you want to change things in the article to Ukrainian spellings, especially where the wikilink points to an article with a Ukrainian title, I don't object. But you are eliminating the Russian version of the name against consensus.  In your zeal to respell, don't eliminate the common Russian forms that English readers will know these things by.  (Taivo (talk) 14:00, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * @Taivo I don't see how my edit is against consensus. Please provide proof that there is a consensus that Russian(not Belorussian, Greek or German) spelling should also be included?Rkononenko (talk) 14:21, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a consensus that English spellings be used on the English wikipedia - be they of Russian, Belarusian, Greek, German or Ukrainian origin. If you can demonstrate that the current spellings are less used in English than the spellings you propose, then you can change them.  But you have to demonstrate that first. Knepflerle (talk) 14:30, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * But you are contradicting yourself. You're saying that There is a consensus that English spellings be used on the English wikipedia, but at the same time saying that we should add Russian version of spelling Kharkiv to the first paragraph( and not Romanian, Hungarian or any other language also used by minorities in Ukraine) even though Kharkiv is the correct English spelling( as confirmed by Britannica, verify) of the city.Rkononenko (talk) 14:52, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

The problem is you're eliminating them "because they are Russisms"; on English wikipedia you should eliminate them if they are "not Anglicisms". There's a big difference; for historical reasons a lot of Russisms have become Anglicisms. Just because a term referring to Ukraine entered into English through Russian does not mean it is not the correct English term, just as English has French-origin terms for proper nouns in Austria and German-origin terms for proper nouns in the Czech Republic. You need to look at English-language sources and check which spelling is used: sometimes it will be the Russian, sometimes the Ukrainian. I'd suggest making a list of the changes you want to make here; we can have a quick check of the sources and correct the ones which are not Anglicisms. But there is no excuse or need for removing the reference to the spelling Kharkov in the lead; it's mandated by our policy. Knepflerle (talk) 14:04, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Rkononenko, you are of the mistaken impression that there is a "correct" spelling of placenames in English. There are only "common" spellings in English.  The Rada cannot dictate what a correct English spelling is.  They can only request that the U.S. government use one spelling or another.  English spellings are determined solely by English usage.  Encyclopedia Britannica is only one place where spellings can be found.  It is by no means the only place and it enjoys no official status in the English-speaking world.  Read any history of World War II and it will only talk about the Battles of Kharkov.  Look at any atlas and it will usually list "Kharkov" right alongside "Kharkiv" as alternate names of the city.  When I was going to Rivne, I was finding virtually nothing about it in my atlases and on-line until someone told me to look under "Rovno"--that's where it all was.  So for Ukrainian cities, it is important to list the Russian name as an alternate, especially in eastern Ukraine.  English speakers use the Russian names all the time.  As far as the census is concerned, people in Ukraine don't always know what language they are speaking and recognize both since linguistically they are not really different languages, but dialects of a single language.  People switch from Russian to Ukrainian based on convenience and my Russian-speaking wife had no problem living in Ukrainian-speaking Rivne.  But even if only half of the people of Kharkiv speak Russian, that still means that the Russian variant of the name in the article is quite appropriate.  You must also pay attention to the titles used in the articles that you want to link to.  The article for the oblast is Kharkiv Oblast, the articles for the battles are labelled "Kharkov", and the article for the capital city is Kiev.  (Taivo (talk) 15:17, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * Taivo, so basically, after reading in your comment the argument that linguistically they(ed. Ukrainian and Russian) are not really different languages, but dialects of a single language I realized that probably you are just some unknown professor in some unknown community college in States, who doesn't know what he is talking about and tries to spread that ignoramus-like knowledge of his throughout Wikipedia. Just to let you know, Ukrainian is a separate Slavic language in Eastern Slavic Languages group (Slavic languages), just like English is a seperate language in a Germanic group (Germanic languages). Saying that linguistically they(ed. Ukrainian and Russian) are not really different languages, but dialects of a single language is equivalent to saying linguistically they(ed. Spanish and Italian, or French and English) are not really different languages, but dialects of a single language.
 * Concerning your point that you couldn't find Rivne on the internet when you were travelling around Ukraine, the answer is simple: Ukrainian names were not very widespread on the web in the middle 2000's as Russian internet users( who are very much familiar with Ukraine from the USSR times) wrote various things on the web, some of which were related to Ukraine, while Ukrainian internet users were nearly non-existent(considering 46 million population of Ukraine) and that's the only reason for your difficulties. You, Americans, think that if there is not much information on the internet about something( or I should better say if Google doesn't find many matches for it) you automatically think that this something is insignificant/unimportant/nonexistent/misspelled/absent etc. Since Ukrainian internet is basically a baby and is just starting to grow( both in terms of people connected to broadband and people actively doing various things(business, shopping, reading blogs whatever) in it), there is not many things written yet by Ukrainians on the web. But, it'll change soon in the near future, and I hope such useless debates won't possibly occur just a few years from now  Rkononenko (talk) 16:46, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec) Actually, it shows that you're not a linguist. The reason these four varieties (including Belorussian and Rusyn) of East Slavic are called "separate languages" is political.  They are different, just as British English, Scots, and American English are different, but they are generally mutually intelligible.  If you look at linguistic classifications that use the single criterion of mutual intelligibility, the four are always linked into one language (for example, Linguasphere, Voegelin & Voegelin).  Like Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, there are non-linguistic factors that cause people to separate them (spelling, Polish loan words in Ukrainian, Hungarian and Slovak loan words in Rusyn, history, etc.).  But considering the ease with which Ukrainians switch from Ukrainian to Surzhyk to Russian and back again, and the fact that I have heard many conversations with one person speaking Russian and the other person speaking Ukrainian, it's clear that only non-linguistic factors treat these as separate languages.  But this article is about Kharkiv, not about the linguistic nature of East Slavic.  So far you have provided no reason to remove all Russian variants from this article other than you don't like them.  (Taivo (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * And I never said that Ukraine or Ukrainian was "insignificant". It just illustrates that the Russian variants of Ukrainian names are still very common in English and should not be removed from Wikipedia just because you don't like them.  (Taivo (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * Wow, what a mouthful. Mister Kononenko, instead of chewing on same old stale arguments, insulting your opponents, making far-fetched (albeit unfounded in fact) conclusions about them, and threatening to engage in a full-scale anonymous IP warfare, why don't you first peruse our extensive discussion archives on the subject.  Why, Talk:Kiev/naming alone should keep you entertained for hours, if not days!  You could compile all of the arguments presented over the course of several years, tally up the counter-arguments, and then give us a list of things which are still unclear to you or which you believe had never been addressed.  That would be a fresh turn of events.  I fully concur with Taivo's yawn here&mdash;as long as you keep recycling same old arguments, you are not going to be taken seriously.  Might as well not waste your time and ours.  Best,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 1, 2010; 17:13 (UTC)
 * @Ezhiki. I laughed so loud when I read your comment, then saw your profile, and lauphed even more - you are a male Russian American. Can't stop lauging, sorry. Ok, it's over now. Oh shit, it's back again, can't stop laughing. Ha-ha-ha This is something new, russian-american. Ha-ha-ha. Rkononenko (talk) 17:57, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As to two previous comments, what are you talking about, man? I'm not going to start any anonymous IP adress war, what for? Notice, that everybody who wants to include russian-oriented parts into article(or comments favorably to Taivo edits) is in some way connected to Russia: in case of Taivo, it's his wife from Dnipropetrovsk(probably Russian-speaking), then this russian-american Ezhiki, and finally Knepflerle, I guess a German(I lived in Germany for two years, and made of it an unusual conclusion that Germans are super pro-Russia oriented, even call their kids like Lena, Tania). I'm waiting for someone more impartial to contribute to the article/discussion. Rkononenko (talk) 18:11, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh yeah, the old "you have a black eye, go fix it and then argue philosophy with me" argument ((c) Strugatskiye)... how could I forget. What a witty rejoinder!  How logical a reasoning!
 * Anyhoo, are you going to just continue with insulting everyone on this page, or are you going to find a fresh argument not previously discussed for a change? You are very unlikely to attract "someone more impartial" if all you can offer is some moth-eaten misconceptions and a mouthful of insults.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); April 1, 2010; 19:07 (UTC)

(outdent) So, Rkononenko, if all people with the imaginary ties to Russian that you claim we have are excluded from the discussion, then you are also excluded because of your real or imaginary ties to Ukrainian. Fairness all around. (Taivo (talk) 19:32, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * @Taivo. I actually agree with your last comment, and ideally people with interest (including myself) should restrain from contributing to such articles. True, fairness all around. But it should be two-way deal: if I refrain from editing, you also should. Give it a few weeks, lets see what will others( maybe even some impartial seeking-knowledge-expanding dude) contribute to the article.
 * Also, if you want, for instance, to add Russian way of spelling Kharkiv into the first paragraph(claiming that it would benefit knowledge-seeking English speaking users who can stumble upon a Kharkiv article and be smitten by a novelty that it is not Kharkov as they remember from 1974 textbook on WWII they read in their youth years at Harvard), lets make a vote, like the 1 week voting for admins, and lets see what community decides.  Rkononenko (talk) 20:24, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Before you get too excited about a "vote" (which is not the way Wikipedia operates), check out the last Ukrainian/Russian related survey done at Kiev. The question was should Kiev be moved to "Kyiv"?  Here are the results.  One vote to move, all the rest to keep it at "Kiev".  (Taivo (talk) 20:38, 1 April 2010 (UTC))
 * And you need to get some perspective, Rkononenko. The "vote" to keep Kiev at Kiev and not move it to "Kyiv" was overwhelming.  That was the title of an article at stake.  You're asking that we remove the Russian version of the name of a city that carried its Russian name for centuries before the Ukrainian version became official.  You're not asking to move the article to another name (it's already at Kharkiv).  You're asking to remove one piece of information about the name of a city.  That's a ridiculous request and will fail.  It's the equivalent of removing the population figure from the city template.  It's just part of the body of fact about Kharkiv--it carried a Russian name for centuries and there is still a great deal of English-language literature that carries that Russian name.  Take your hatred of Russians elsewhere, it's not appropriate here.  If you look at the articles for every other major Ukrainian city, they all carry the Russian name as an English variant.  Kharkiv isn't special.  (Taivo (talk) 23:25, 1 April 2010 (UTC))

My interest is mainly genealogical. I have people who tell me they were (or documents that tell me) were born in Kharkov, Charkov,... (For example, ship-board manifests, tombstones, passports) I need information for my work that clarifies, 1) what the town is called now in English 2) what the town is called in it's official language. 3) what the town was official called at the time of the birth (death,...), 4) who was ruling it at that time. This information is needed to even be able to guess on where official records (for the time) may now be located, to match other databases, and to determine mundane things, like what languages would the records be, or what languages my relatives might have spoken.

The ruling history and names are available for most other significant places. Even at Kyiv there is information about the use of "Lemberg" when under the Austrian Empire. This is exactly the type of information an encyclopedia should have. It's not intended to be of political nature, and really has no political content, unless information revealing non-disputable facts could be political. Mjchonoles (talk) 11:00, 2 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You can find information on the language people were speaking if you check the Russian Empire Census from 1897. Although most of the records for this census was destroyed it has survived in certain parts of Ukraine since the local authorities didn't always follow the orders from St Petersburg. The statistics can be found for Kharkov Governorate here . As you can see the majority spoke Ukrainian (Малорусский). If the census records for this region have survived they probably would be located at the archives in Kharkiv . I have myself studied such records from Kiev Governorate and they give detailed information about each household, similar to the American censuses. Närking (talk) 11:33, 2 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that is helpful. Though I would need to also know to (hire someone to) translate the records, whether I would need Russian or Ukrainian translators or both. Mjchonoles (talk) 23:51, 3 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't worry, Mjchonoles. "Kharkov" will remain the first sentence of this article because 1) Rkononenko has no support for removing it and consensus rules in Wikipedia, and 2) Wikipedia policy is to include all important alternate names in the lead sentence of an article.  (Taivo (talk) 11:24, 2 April 2010 (UTC))
 * Taivo draws a rather strange conclusion from Mjchonoles's comment. How I see it, the Kharkov name can and should be included in the article, but only as a historical name used in times of Russian empire ruling over Ukraine. However, this should be a separate paragraph and in no way in the first paragraph. And Kharkov is not, quoting Taivo, an important alternate name of Kharkiv, it is simply a past name used by Russian-language rulers(and obviously their documentation) in Russian empire.Rkononenko (talk) 14:06, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Check out Istanbul, Rkononenko. In the first sentence, both "Byzantium" and "Constantinople" are listed.  "Byzantium" hasn't been used for centuries, but there it is in the first sentence.  "Constantinople" became "Istanbul" long before Kharkov became Kharkiv, but there it is in the first sentence.  (Indeed, as "Kharkov" is Russian and "Kharkiv" is Ukrainian, "Istanbul" is just the Turkish form of Greek "ConSTANtinoPLe".)  Petty anti-Russian nationalism has no place in Wikipedia, Rkononenko.  Start a blog if you need to express yourself in that vein.  (Taivo (talk) 15:05, 2 April 2010 (UTC))
 * And reading back through the material that you archived, Rkononenko, it's clear why you archived it--there's plenty of evidence there that "Kharkov" is a common English alternate name for Kharkiv. (Taivo (talk) 15:14, 2 April 2010 (UTC))


 * Yes, Rkononenko, my main argument for including "Kharkov" could be satisfied by placing the name in other than the first sentence. And I could live with that conclusion. However, my general preference appears to match the general approach found on Wikipedia, which is include important names in the header. For example, many Ukrainian towns with previously high proportions of Jewish or Polish speakers, include names of the towns in those languages. Mjchonoles (talk) 23:51, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As, for example, at Rivne. (Taivo (talk) 00:12, 4 April 2010 (UTC))