Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 4 – The word “khokhol”
must not be used “in official or public speech,” Aleksandra Olkhovskaya of
Moscow’s Pushkin Russian Language Institute says, because it denigrates those
to whom it is applied and thus is offensive. It can only be used, she says,
when those employing it know those with whom they are speaking.
Olkhovskaya says that “the etymology
of the word ‘khokhol’ is connected with the fact that among the Little Russians
there was a widespread habit of cutting hair so that the head was shave and
there remained only a strand of hair, that is, a forelock.” Consequently, initially
at any rate, the word was not a denigrating one (rusnovosti.ru/posts/378659).
There is additional evidence for
this: such a hairstyle was an indication of membership in the elite and the
name was applied to numerous places in Russia, such as Khokhlovka and
Khokhlovsky ruchey. “These toponyms suggest that Little Russians settled in
these locations,” she adds, oblivious to the fact that the use of “Little
Russians” is offensive to Ukrainians.
But if the word initially did not
have any negative connotation, that is no longer the case, Olkhovskaya says.
She says she recently conducted a survey of Russian speakers and found that “young
people consider the word ‘Khokhol’ carries with it a clearly negative assessment”
and that they “would never use it” for Ukrainians they feel close to.
Older Russians in contrast, she
continues, “consider that the word ‘Khokhol’ is simply a conversations word and
can be used in communications with relatives and friends.”
This issue periodically surfaces in
Russia. It is now the subject of discussion because Facebook took down the
account of Eduard Bagirov, a Russian who used the term “khokhol,” an action
that led Maksim Ksenzov, the head of the Russian Internet regulator to ask the
service why. Facebook responded that the
use of the word “violates the rules of the community.”
No comments:
Post a Comment