As Russian forces continue to attack Ukrainian citiesforcing over a million people to flee the country so far, viewers around the world can notice different spellings and pronunciations of the name of the country’s capital.
CBC uses a transliteration based on the Ukrainian spelling of the name: “Kyiv” (pronounced “KEE-ef”). The Russian version is “kyiv” (pronounced “kee-EV”).
Kyiv or Kyiv?
Kyiv was the internationally accepted spelling of the English language during the Soviet period and in the early years of this century.
But, according to Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, director of the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, the name “kyiv” is now associated with the Russification of Ukraine. In recent years, more and more publications, governments, airports and geographical dictionaries have replaced the spelling with the Ukrainian variant, she said.
“The fact that we have been using the word ‘kyiv’ for so long has something to do with the history of the region…the history of relations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine,” Khanenko-Friesen said. .
WATCH | On the ground in Ukraine on Day 8:
A dash cam captured footage of an explosion in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv as people continued to flee the country eight days after the Russian invasion. In the northeastern city of Kharkiv, a chaotic scene unfolded as crowds of people desperate to leave swarmed a train station. Warning: Audio contains profanity.
Khanenko-Friesen noted that the region officially became part of the Russian Empire in the 17th century and only declared itself an independent country in August 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Many people still speak both Russian and Ukrainian, and in 2001 the last time a census was taken, about 17% of the population was Russian, although some have pointed out that this 20-year-old data does not reflect changes in recent years.
The “Kyiv” transliteration was legally mandated by the Ukrainian government in 1995, but the new name only began to gain traction a few years ago when the Ukrainian government launched a campaign to gain international approval for the name of its capital.
“The Ukrainian diaspora (…) has been very active in this transition, and we have seen significant changes,” Khanenko-Friesen said.
“We have seen the media change the spelling, the transliteration and now the pronunciation. We are now seeing the use of the Ukrainian word ‘Kyiv’ in the computer field. People can now book tickets to Kyiv online using the new spelling rather than the old one.”
Why does CBC use “Kyiv”?
On Tuesday, CBC’s chief pronunciation adviser, Laura Carlin, said in a memo that CBC would use the Kyiv transliteration based on Ukrainian spelling.
“While the language is changing, we generally change the pronunciations of place names only to reflect a genuine change in how English-speaking Canadians refer to a country or to match widespread changes in transliterations…or to eliminate the pronunciations that are really problematic,” she said.
She said that “Kyiv” falls into all three categories.
CBC reporters may often use an anglicized pronunciation of “Kyiv”, but this is already common practice when, for example, they use the English pronunciation for “Paris” or “Mexico”.
“For a foreign language speaker, Ukrainian is not an easy language to master, and the pronunciation ‘KEE-ef’ is really a good approximation of how the word Kyiv sounds in the native Ukrainian language,” said said Khanenko-Friesen.
Pronunciation is political
Khanenko-Friesen says the spelling and pronunciation of “Kyiv” is important in this “time of heightened aggression against the sovereignty and integrity of the Ukrainian state”.
“Using, at this time, the Ukrainian pronunciation of…the capital is a very small choice one can make recognizing that Ukraine has the right to exist as an independent nation, contrary to what Vladimir Putin said in his recent statements and addresses to his nation.”
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