Staunton, July 10 – Yuliya Yemalyanovich,
a Belarusian school girl from Baranovichi, has won an international Russian-language
Olympiad in Moscow by talking about the Belarusian language in which she
declared her commitment both to that language and to the nation which speaks
it.
She competed against representatives
from the CIS, the Baltic countries, Georgia, Abkhazia and South Osetia and won
a scholarship to a Russian Federation higher educational institution of her
choice on the basis of her performance in oral practice, an essay and an
examination on Russian area studies (intex-press.by/ru/news/society/16582
Yemalyanovich
chose as the subject of her essay the Belarusian language. She told her home city’s newspaper that it
was “a theme close” to her heart and that she had talked about its phonetic
distinctions, its history, its two alphabets, its two orthographies, and “its
contemporary popularization among young people and the intelligentsia.”
In
addition to her knowledge of Belarusian, she speaks Russian, English, German,
and Polish, believing like Voltaire that “to know many languages is to have
many keys to a single lock.”
She
said that she was delighted to have the opportunity to study at a Russian
university because Russia is entering the Bologna process, and consequently,
her diploma will be internationally recognized.
But at the same time, she said that she “does not want to leave Belarus
forever.”
After
completing her university studies, Yemalyanovich said, she hopes to work in
Europe and then return to Belarus where she told the paper, she hopes to
promote “the popularization of Belarusian as a means of inter-Slavic
communication.”
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