Nationality can still disintegrate into different ethnic groups, nation – never.

This indicates that in the minds of people the concepts of “language” and “people” are closely linked: one people – are those who speak the same language. It is language that unites people and distinguishes them from other peoples. Thus, the ethnic and linguistic divisions of people are interrelated and usually coincide. The common language, culture and self-consciousness are essential features of the nation.

The connection of language with the character of the ethnos is perhaps best felt by writers, for whom the word is the main tool for creating folk characters, types, images of distinctive features of the psychology of the ethnos. M. Gogol remarked: “And every nation that carries the pledge of strength, full of creative abilities of the soul, its bright personality and other gifts of God, is distinguished by its own word, which, expressing whatever it is, conveys part of its own of his character “(” Dead Souls “).

The most important factor is self-awareness: a person realizes that he belongs to a certain ethnic group, and all members of this ethnic group realize that they constitute an ethnic community different from other ethnic communities. Language plays the most important role in understanding the separateness of the people.

Language unites people more than class, party, religious affiliation, more than the history of the people (not everyone knows it), and sometimes even more than ethnic origin. For example, Agatangel Krymsky, Marko Vovchok, Yuriy Klen (Burghardt), Vasyl Vyshivany (Austrian Wilhelm von Habsburg), Vyacheslav Lypynsky, Sofia Rusova, who did not have a drop of Ukrainian blood in them, but the Ukrainian language spiritually united them with the Ukrainian people. … “Neither the nickname, nor the religion, nor the blood of the ancestors itself makes a person belong to one or another nationality.

Whoever thinks in any language belongs to that people, ”wrote the son of a Dane and a German, but a Russian scientist, the creator of the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language V. Dahl. We find a similar opinion in O. Potebny: “A Jew, a gypsy, a Tatar, a German, so Russified that the language of their cherished thought became the Russian language, we can not count among any nation except Russian” [Potebnya 1993 : 186]. However, as V. Ivanyshyn and J. Radevych-Vynnytsky note, “one should not equate in each case the linguistic feature of a person with a sense of patriotism, and in ours – with a sense of Ukrainianness.

Due to various circumstances, people often do not speak their native language, but at the same time retain sincere feelings for Ukraine ”[Ivanyshyn, Radevych-Vynnytskyi 1994: 119]. Communities formed on the basis of the unity of language have proved to be historically more resilient than state formations with their political and economic unity, as evidenced by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires. Thus, after self-awareness (genetic code, genetic memory) the language code (social memory) is very important for the formation of an ethnos. And the higher the form of community organization, the more important the role of language in the consolidation of community members.

An important factor is the state separation, independence, which sometimes overlaps the language factor. Thus, when the population of the United States became aware of itself as a separate nation, the desire to stand out nationally began to stimulate the emergence and development of the American version of English, which is even recorded in Webster’s dictionary.

We can now argue about the various Latin American versions of Spanish, a kind of Austrian version of the German language. It is possible that all these options will eventually, if other external factors do not interfere, grow into real separate languages, as is the case with Bulgarian and Macedonian, Serbian and Croatian (similar to Romanian and Moldavian). But here, too, the last word on self-awareness. The languages ​​with the least differences are different languages ​​if their speakers are aware of themselves as different peoples, and, conversely, remote dialects that significantly impede communication, such as in China or Germany, are considered one language if the speakers do not cease to be aware of one people.

The sense of the native language is a clear example of the ethnic nature of the language. In all nations, language is closely linked to national feeling and national consciousness.

The extraordinary attachment of a person to the native language is due to the fact that each nation has unique associations of figurative thinking, which are enshrined in the language system and constitute its national specificity. Ethnic self-awareness is based primarily on the native language. If we interpret literature as the self-expression of the people, then the real self-expression of the people can be only when it is created in the native language.

Thus, the higher the ethnic organization, the more important the role of language in its life. Nationality can still disintegrate into different https://123helpme.me/write-my-lab-report/ ethnic groups, nation – never. And here the strongest cementing factor is language.

Nation – the highest natural form of human association. This is a category that, contrary to the claims of the classics of Marxism-Leninism, will never disappear. “One can and should hope,” wrote Nikolai Berdyaev, “for the disappearance of classes and coercive states in a perfect society, but one cannot hope for the disappearance of nationalities.” Nationality is a positive enrichment of life, and therefore it should be fought for as a value. National unity is deeper than the unity of classes, parties and all other transient formations in the life of nations. And the great self-deception is to strive to create anything outside the nationality. “

No state in the world has formed as a stateless state. A single consolidated society can be created only on the basis of a common spirituality, a common language, because language itself is the phenomenon that determines the very identity of the nation. Language ensures the normal functioning of the national organism in all its manifestations – political, economic, cultural, etc., because language is the main feature of the nation. Therefore, the struggle for the statehood of the Ukrainian language is a struggle for the Ukrainian state.

The loss of language and the denationalization of the people lead, as O. Potebnya noted, to “disorganization of society, immorality, and division.” In the nation-state, concepts such as state, nation and language are identified. Even such a large and multinational empire as the USSR was identified in the world with the Russian nation. This is well understood by all who seek to build their state. For example, when the state of Israel was formed in 1947, its state-building faced the problem of the state language. Since the Jews scattered around the world had lost their language by that time, there was only one way out – to resurrect the ancient Hebrew language of Hebrew for almost two and a half millennia. Today it is the language of the Jewish state, the language of consolidation of the citizens of this country and Jews around the world.

The attack of chauvinistic politicians in Ukraine on the Ukrainian language is a struggle against Ukrainian statehood; the language factor is used as a means of destabilizing Ukrainian society, because without the Ukrainian language there will be no Ukrainian state.

Culture – a set of achievements of society in the field of education, science, art and other spheres of spiritual life. Language and culture are interrelated. It is generally accepted that cultural processes affect language and language affects culture.

The question of the influence of language on culture is difficult. E. Sepir noted: “I can not recognize the real causal relationship between culture and language. Culture can be defined as what society does and thinks. Language is how they think. It is difficult to determine what special causal relationships between the selected inventory of experience (culture as a value choice of society) and the special technique by which society expresses its various experiences can be expected. It is clear that the content of language is inextricably linked with culture. Language in its vocabulary more or less accurately reflects the culture it does not serve; It is also quite fair that the history of language and the history of culture develop in parallel ”[Sepir 1934: 171-172]. Thus, it is safe to say only that culture determines the content plan of the sign system of language.The semantics of language reflects the general, universal components of universal culture and the uniqueness of the culture of a particular people.

Since language is a social phenomenon, it is in close connection with society. This connection is mutual. On the one hand, language is created and developed by society, on the other – without language there would be no society. In addition to language, society is served by other phenomena – science, technology, ideology, culture, religion, etc., but language is distinguished from all other social phenomena, because it serves all aspects of human life and activity without exception. If, say, ideology serves certain social classes, religion – certain groups of people, then language – all spheres of society as a functional organism. Even labor activity could not be carried out without language.

The development and functioning of language are largely determined by the state of society. Thus, in particular, the language reflects the social differentiation of society (class, professional, gender). The state of language is influenced by demographic processes (changes in the population, in the ratio of urban and rural residents, migration processes, etc.), the level of general education of the people, the development of science, the creation of statehood and more. Society can also consciously influence the development of language.

The conscious influence of society on language (targeted government measures) is called language policy. The language situation in a multilingual society depends on this policy: the government can stimulate the development of multilingualism in the state, restrain and narrow the functioning of the languages ​​of non-state nations, often leading them to extinction, as in Germany, the USSR and the USA. Thus, in particular, due to numbness in the first half of the XVIII century. the Polabian language disappeared. For the same reasons and at about the same time, the Prussian language became extinct. The same fate befell the Lusatian language, which is now spoken by 100,000 people in only two districts of Germany (Dresden and Cottbus).

As a result of Russification during the years of domination of the totalitarian communist regime in the USSR, more than 90 languages ​​disappeared; some are still endangered. For example, in 1979, only a few dozen older people in the villages of Lusatia, Pisky, Krakolie, and Mezhnyky in the Leningrad region spoke the Finnish language. In 1979, the Izhora language of the Finnish group was spoken by 244 people of the older generation (Kingisepp and Lomonosov districts of the Leningrad region), although this language used to be written, it was taught in schools.