Like so many ardent fans of Ukraine, I have been heartened by the fantastic news of recent weeks – a true watershed moment for a country I love; a tremendous blow for freedom, reform and the rule of law; a day we will certainly all look back on decades from now as the turning point that finally anchored Ukraine in the West and ushered in a new Golden Age of democracy and prosperity.
I refer, of course, not to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s astounding victory in the presidential race, nor even the capture of a parliamentary majority by Volodymyr Zelensky’s party, or Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s decision to cancel the Independence Day military parade. No, the thrilling news I refer to, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now (if you’re as true a Friend of Ukraine as I am), is the historic decision by the Associated Press to change its transliteration of Ukraine’s capital to Kyiv, not Kiev.
I mean, just pause and reflect for a moment on what we’ve accomplished with this change. If you live in Mariupol, aren’t you sleeping a lot better at night? Vladimir Putin must be quaking in his little elevator jackboots.
My friends, imagine how great life could have been if only the AP had summoned up the moral courage to make this decision earlier. Just think how radically it would have altered Western attitudes and actions toward Ukraine. The IMF might have insisted on genuine reforms in the ‘90s. The U.S. and the UK might have enforced the Budapest Memorandum in 2014. Why, if the AP had had the intestinal fortitude to say “Russia Goodbye” back in 2007, Verka Serduchka might even have won Eurovision.
And my friends, this is no time for those of us who show our love for Ukraine by stamping out all lingering traces of Russian influence to rest on our laurels. No, comrades, our fight has only just begun. For now comes the bitter struggle to eradicate the truly offensive habit, endemic among obviously self-hating Ukrainian speakers, of insulting my nation, America, by clinging to one particularly vile relic of colonialism: their monstrous Russified transliteration of the name of my nation’s capital.
That’s right. The time has come to strike yet another blow for linguistic justice by casting off the shackles of “Вашингтон” and embracing the far more accurate “Уашингтон.” Who but a benighted Muscovite would pronounce the initial “W” as a “V”? That’s not the language of free people.
I am confident that all the hashtag heroes who struggled so valiantly for #KyivNotKiev will join me in this noble quest – if, of course, they’re not already leading the charge. And I’m certain that they will steel their hearts and stop their ears to ridiculous, pettifogging arguments along the lines of “but that’s just what it’s called in our language” or “but nobody else will know what I’m talking about” or even the utterly irrelevant “don’t you have anything better to worry about?”
No, my friends, this is not a time to cower behind such quaint, small-minded notions as convention or intelligibility or setting priorities. My compatriots and I have suffered long enough under the bitter lash of “Вашингтон” rather than “Уашингтон.”
Yet despite the scars I bear from this generational trauma, I’m willing to extend an olive branch. I won’t quibble about the vowels in the second and third syllables, though I’d be perfectly entitled to. I won’t even insist that you change your beloved “г” to the new-fangled “ґ.” My dear friends, I beseech you, let’s be reasonable: Please just change the “В” to a “У” and all will be forgiven.
For, brothers and sisters, after righting the historical evil of Вашингтон and leaping forward into the glorious future of Уашингтон, we must all join hands to face the still greater challenge that lies ahead of us. A more urgent mission than fixing the health service, or building roads, or ending corruption in education. Greater even than restoring sovereignty over the chunks of Ukrainian territory that Russia has stolen.
This challenge, of course, is to get English-speakers to start pronouncing the name of Ukraine’s capital properly. For despite all the blood, sweat and hashtags of the KyivNotKiev brigades, people in the West are still doing it wrong.
Do you doubt me? Just try this simple experiment: Find an English speaker near you, show them the name of the newspaper you’re reading right now, and ask them to pronounce it.
Go ahead. I’ll wait.
You see? Did you hear that? “The Key-ev Post.” Shocking, isn’t it? The Posthas been using “Kyiv” for more than two decades now, and yet somehow even its most loyal readers are still pronouncing it “Key-ev.” Come on, can’t they read English? I mean, I even have several good friends, diaspora journalists who used to work at the paper, who call it that. In fact, in the two decades I’ve been living in and visiting Kyiv, I can think of only one person who consistently pronounced it “Kih-yeeve” when speaking English. And he moved back to Canada.
My friends, the struggle is real.
Let it not be said, though, that all of our browbeating and harranguing of hapless Western cartographers and reporters and style mavens have been entirely fruitless. I also know a number of people – for some reason it seems like they’re mostly my fellow Americans – who have heard our cries for justice. And today they will proudly proclaim that they know how it’s supposed to sound, and will confidently tell you (often before you even ask!) that the real way to pronounce it is the monosyllabic “Keeve.”
If you think that means #KyivNotKiev was a waste of time, if you can’t see what a huge step forward this is, then you’re obviously a paid Kremlin stooge, a linguistic Titushko.
But it is only when we’ve ensured that English speakers all know how to pronounce “Kyiv” properly that we’ll be able to roll up our sleeves and tackle the long list of far less important difficulties that this country is facing.
Or wait – what am I saying? Surely once we’ve done that, all of Ukraine’s other problems will simply disappear.
Former Kyiv Post staff writer Nathaniel Espino is a partner in the Warsaw-based PR agency Aldgate Strategy Group. The part at the beginning about him loving Ukraine was serious
