In my blog, I focus on the opposition to separatist forces in Spain and the language policies of all those who serve this goal of „divide and rule“. Politicians of all stripes do not think at all about following the will of the voters, as demonstrated recently in the province of Valencia, where the two conservative election winners, the PP and VOX, broke their promises on the day they took office¹ to ensure freedom of choice of languages.

Thinking out of the box shows that the same principle also applies in Germany, where federal and state governments want to enforce their woken gender language impositions against the will of the overwhelming majority of Germans. These attempts at ideological re-education have now been extended „by a linguistic gift“, as tagesschau.de, the main German news-portal, put it on February 24. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (famous for „I don't care what my German voters think“) has ordered „a small change in the German language“. „We have done what was long overdue: the spelling of your capital in the Ukrainian language.“ From now on Germans should write Kyjiw instead of the former German word Kiew.

Prof. Dr. Werner Müller, a German business economist who speaks Platt (a North German dialect/language „in between Dutch and standard German“) as well as Spanish and Russian. He has not only thoughts worth reading about the languages in „northern Germany, Catalonia and Ukraine“.² For him, the renaming to „Kyjiw“ has a certain American touch.

De-russification of the German language

In his article on tkp.at, Prof. Dr. Müller writes:

„The official reason is that the name should be adapted to the language of the people, i.e. changed from Russian to Ukrainian. The author was in Kiev for 4 weeks in 2018 and he heard Russian as the language of the people about 80% of the time on buses and trains or elsewhere. And nobody despised the Russian language so much that they tried to speak Ukrainian with the foreigner. Only official signs were in Ukrainian... At least back then, Ukrainian was not the language of the people, but that of a nationalist minority that defined itself as an elite.

The de-Russification of the language is older, people have even been forcibly renamed. Tatyana became Tetyana, Sergei became Sirhij, etc. Imagine if the Federal Republic of Germany dissolved and each federal state became independent. Hesse changes its official language from German to Hessian. During the Hessification process, a „Georg Schuster“ is then renamed „Schorsch Schlappeflicker“. (for Germans not from Hesse, that sounds funny and can even be misread as a dirty pun)... Just as an aside, it should be mentioned that the Russian and Ukrainian languages use the Cyrillic alphabet. The „y“ in „Kyjiw“ probably did not originate in Ukraine, but in the USA. For example, the Cyrillic alphabet has a letter that corresponds to the German „ü“. The author's name was once correctly given as „Мюллер“ in a Russian document. During the retranslation, his name was suddenly changed to „Myuller“. The reason given was that according to the official transcription, the Cyrillic letter „ю“ (= ü) should be translated into „yu“, as the USA does not have an „ü“. The Russian variant of the Cyrillic alphabet has two letters „i“ (и + й) for a long and a short pronunciation as well as the „y“ (ы). Ukrainian has four „i“s, the differences between which the author does not really know. Subject to this restriction, however, the „y“ in „Kyjiw“ (Київ) appears to be of American and not Ukrainian origin; in the original German transcription it should be Kijiw. So much for the language of the people!“

Needless to say, for me it remains the German Kiev instead of Kyiv and Moscow, when I write English instead of Москва́ or Moskva/Moskwa.

De-catalanization of the Valenciano

In a similarly undemocratic manner, the previous socialist/green government in Valencia, submitting to the demands of the Països Catalans, catalanized Valenciano, as is increasingly being complained about. The corrupt background to the Catalan language dictate was already pointed out in 2017. In an article by Las Provincias: „¿En qué país vivimos?“ (What country do we actually live in?) states, among other things: „Who are the enemies of the Valenciano language today...? The Popular Party, in the time of José María Aznar (Spanish conservative president from 1996-2004, HJ), already negotiated with the well-known 3% blackmailer, who asked for Aznar's votes to be sworn in as president. In return, this man's 'generosity' consisted of asking for the Valenciano language to be replaced by Catalan in Valencia.“

Just as an aside, it should be noted here that Spanish schools are also trying to genderize. My grandchildren are instructed not only to say „torero“ (bullfighter), but always „torero y torera“ (i.e. bullfighter male and bullfighter female) etc. This way a potentially existing female bullfighter would not be discriminated.

Politicians decide how we should speak

Leaving aside the linguistic niceties, for which I am not qualified, the all-important question is, will the now elected Conservative government - as promised - stand up for the free choice of language? Who decides on the language? The organization „Hablamos Espñol“ recently noted on 16 February: „El próximo curso se discriminará lingüísticamente a los niños hispanohablantes de las grandes ciudades de la Comunidad Valenciana“ (Next year, Spanish-speaking children from the large cities of the Valencian Community will be linguistically discriminated against).

The principle of „divide and rule“ is implemented here as follows: „The Ministry of Education of the Valencian Community only approves regulations aimed at alleviating linguistic constraints in areas considered 'Castilian predominant', which is unfair and discriminatory.... Language belongs to children as individual people, not to the rocks, the sand on the beach...For a child from Castellón it is just as harmful as for one from Torrevieja not to be able to learn in their mother tongue.“
and
„Surprisingly, the families were told that the school directors would decide on the change in a meeting in a short time. It is not the families who can choose individually.“

Well, unfortunately this is not surprising, because the school directors are dependent on the government as employees.