Questions and Impressions of Basque & Ukrainian

My wife says that at school, she learned Ukrainian
without hearing about "hard g". After 1991, it came
back a little.

I have a Ukrainian-French-Ukrainian dictionary,
printed in 1996. There this "hard g" can be found. It
gives hardly 20 words starting with it. Among them:
- gava (crow, rook)
- ganok (flight of steps) [the only word that she was
able to remind spontaneously]
- gazda (master, landlord; similar to Russian
"gospodin" - wife says probably from Carpates)
- gvalt (uproar) and gvaltuvati (to rape) [clearly
from German "Gewalt"]
- glej (glue)
- grati (grid, bars)
- grunt [ground ! clearly from German Grund]
and a few more.

There seems also to be a first name "Ganzja" starting
with that letter.

The usual ("soft") g, pronounced somehow like "h", and
the hard g, respectively look like:

                  G
GGGGGGG     GGGGGGG
G     G     G
G           G
G           G
G           G
G           G



--- John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:

> Philip Newton scripsit:
>
> > IIRC, Ukrainian has [g] only in onomatopoeia and
> some loanwords, and
> > uses (used?) a special letter (g-with-upturn) for
> this, which was
> > abolished (when it became part of the USSR?),
>
> By Stalin, rather, as part of his russification of
> the USSR.
>
> > though some are trying to reintroduce it.
>
> I think that it is in fact reintroduced, at least in
> print.
>


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)

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