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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

At the individual level, the boundaries are really blurry. I'm a Russian. I know many Ukrainians. Often, when you meet a Ukrainian, you'll never know that they are, in fact, from Ukraine, unless you ask. Sometimes their pronunciation ("г" as "h" instead of "g") would give them away, but other than that, there are practically zero differences — especially cultural ones.

We really are mostly the same people and we should really be friends. Everyone would benefit from that. It's a shame that the ambitions of one person are splitting us apart like that.

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As a Ukrainian living abroad for 12 years it’s the opposite for me.

It’s easy to spot russian person: visually, by russian accent, by English accent, by the way of carrying themselves and so on.

There were always tons of different queues: not 100% accurate, but many good heuristics.

Both can be true; Russia is a big place that's sort of an amalgam itself.

Parent comment is mostly true to russian people.

They assume if the other people know russian language and understand their culture it means everything else is the same. But lots of nations in that region in addition to understanding russian language and culture have their own.

A and that is why it can never be said that we are the same people.

At a minimum such statements and observations come as the result of ignorance - there are not many russian people that I know that would come and visit Ukrainian museums or ask for a tour or ask a question about Ukrainian history.

If you have settled world view and don’t try to learn of course you will not see counterexamples of what you believe in IRL and you would just write decades old cliches like “we are the same people”

I can't fault you for taking it as hostility and ignorance, considering the present circumstances, but it doesn't have to be that way.

The United States is a nation of nations, and while the same ignorance of local history is broadly true, there can be brotherhood despite that. I'll admit, though, that the US is showing some fraying of those bonds.

“brotherhood” seems like a fancy word used in propaganda. It’s too high level and too abstract.

You don’t start with “brotherhood”.

A you start with respect. Respecting your neighbor. Respecting people practicing some different religion, or having different sexual orientation, or speaking different language, or practicing different traditions.

“brotherhood” is about recognizing that we are all human despite all the differences in the ways we live.

First do that. And that is fundamental difference between the US and russia.

Spot on!

> We really are mostly the same people

Heh, it's kinda stereotypical that a Russian citizen wouldn't notice the difference between themselves and Ukrainians.

From my perspective as a foreign observer, the average Russian tends to be much more badly behaved than a Ukrainian. When I hear someone speaking Russian being very loud and obnoxious, violent, lacking manners, showing little empathy and lots of entitlement, 9/10 (I'd say always but maybe I'm forgetting something) it's a Russian citizen, not a Ukrainian.

I'm speaking as a Russian ethnic who's not a Russian citizen.

Amen.

You seen Gagarin meme from early war?

Where he call from the past and ask who is the foe that Russia and Ukraine are fighting against; together?

Is there any good source on the topic of "г" pronounced as "h" instead of "g"? I've studied Russian as a second language and once got into an argument over whether Russian has the equivalent of "h" because "x" is pronounced as "kh", which is harder than "h". Does this phenomenon have some name, as googling didn't turn out much?

You're looking for fricative /ɣ/ in southern dialect. Relevant links:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B3%D1%8D%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Russian_dialects

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%87...

It's hard to describe in writing, but I'll try. There's no "h" sound, like the one where you just exhale, neither in Russian nor Ukrainian. The Russian "г" is hard, like "g" in "get". The Ukrainian equivalent to that is "ґ", but their "г" is something in between, closer to "kh". The fact that many English-language reports about the war do transliterate "г" as "h" in Ukrainian toponyms doesn't help, but it's as close as one could reasonably get to the real Ukrainian pronunciation.

There's so much no such sound that I've seen Hebrew and Arabic transcribed into Russian with the character "h" for that sound.

> Does this phenomenon have some name, as googling didn't turn out much?

Certainly not a formal one. Хэканье? Or maybe simply украинский акцент?

The Ukrainian г is a voiced glottal fricative, IPA /ɦ/. This is as the English /h/ sound but voiced. Southern Russian dialects use /ɣ/, a voiced velar fricative, which is pronounced like /ɦ/ but further forward in the throat. East Slavic dialects turn Proto-Slavic /ɡ/ more into /ɦ/ the further south you go.

Belarusian also uses /ɣ/.

It should be noted that even in Russian, /ɣ/ used to be the more common pronunciation throughout the Empire until the end of the 19th century or so, due to the influence of Church Slavonic (in which it is also /ɣ/). And it's still preserved in modern standard Russian in some words, such as бог (god) - /boɣ/.

History is full of similar peoples fighting wars. But it's not just one person either, the Brat movies don't exist in a vacuum, do they? Voldemort is enabled by a base and a system.

I disagree with you. Ukranian and Russians are not the same people. It is this type of thinking that Ukranian people are same is what got us in today's soup. And it's a shame of not one person's ambition but of Russian ideology in general and years of acceptance of it. Putin is a reflection of the society not the other way round. So, stop deflecting blame and accept responsibility.

If Ukranians cannot be Russians then all Russians are Ukranians. It's as simple as that to me. But I accept now that people have the freedom to choose whatever nationality they want to be, even if it appears irrational. Similarly restrictive though, nobody is allowed to be Russian in Ukraine now and since this whole mess began.

W/a the Polish? Warsaw used to be part of your empire.

Or the lucky bastards are in NATO already, out of your reach?

I've already stated that in my opinion everyone can chose their own nationality, I don't get why your response is contrary in conclusion to what I just had written.

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