Don't worry Orysiu, it sounds just fine. The points you made get through.
It's great that you wrote.
You know, in Quebec we had Anglos who couldn't learn (some because of older
age) or didn't wish to learn French, and who did not like Quebec
politics, and so they moved to Ontario and elsewhere, even the USA. I
believe about 200,000 left because of the French question in Quebec. French
natives make up 82 percent of Quebec. It's disrespectful not to be able to
speak French here. The Americans, by the way, did not invade to save the
Anglos (:))).
I wish I knew more specifics about the language issues in Ukraine. How many
ethnic Ukrainians are there who do not for various reasons speak ukrainian.
And what would these reasons be?
And how many ethnic Russians are there really?
On Tuesday, 11 March 2014, Orysia Tracz <[email protected]> wrote:
> The time change must be affecting me - it's 3 A.M. and I'm up. Had written
> a letter to the Winnipeg Free Press on an opinion piece. I realize they
> sometime have to edit, but the result makes me sound almost illiterate.
> Here is my original letter and the paper's version.
>
> Dear Editor:
>
> Re Don Marks' "Maybe the Hitler analogy isn't so wrong" (March 7)
> Don Marks writes: "But we lose our argument when we compare anyone to
> Hitler, so Putin's rationale for sending troops into the Crimea to 'protect
> the interests of Russian-speaking citizens there' is nothing like Hitler's
> takeover of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia because `mostly
> German-speaking people lived there'."
> When it is relevant, what is wrong with comparing someone to Hitler?
> Putin's invasion of the Crimea is exactly what Hitler's invasion of the
> Sudetenland was - trumped up. There has been no evidence of any Russians or
> Russian-speakers being "persecuted" in Ukraine. In fact, since Soviet
> times, they have often been the privileged ones when it comes to language,
> a remnant of Soviet (and earlier tsarist) times when Russian was more equal
> than Ukrainian, and touted as more "prestigious." Imagine, people in their
> own country wanting their language to be the state language! And foreigners
> living in a country all their lives not willing to learn that language and
> disrespecting it! Russia (tsarist, Soviet, post-Soviet) has not been able
> to accept that Ukraine wants to be Ukraine, an independent, democratic
> country with no danger from its dangerous northern neighbour. At least now
> the world knows that Ukraine and Russia are two separate nations.
> Orysia Tracz
>
> Hitler, Putin parallels valid
> Re: Maybe the Hitler analogy isn't so wrong, March 7.
> Putin's invasion of the Crimea is exactly what Hitler's invasion of the
> Sudetenland was -- trumped up. There has been no evidence of any Russians
> or Russian-speakers being "persecuted" in Ukraine. In fact, since Soviet
> times, they have often been the privileged ones when it comes to language,
> a remnant of Soviet (and earlier tsarist) times when Russian was more equal
> than Ukrainian and touted as more "prestigious."
> People in their own country want their language to be the state language.
> Russia (tsarist, Soviet, post-Soviet) has not been able to accept that
> Ukraine wants to be Ukraine, an independent, democratic country with no
> danger from its dangerous, northern neighbour.
> At least now the world knows that Ukraine and Russia are two separate
> nations.
> ORYSIA TRACZ
>
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