April 27, 2020 The shortest introduction into the hisstory of English: "Germanic tribes called Angles, Saxons and Jutes invade Britain in the fifth century. They bring along their Anglo-Saxon language, which we call Old English. Then come the words. English gets new ones in three main rounds.

Round One is when Danish and Norwegian Vikings start invading in 787. They speak Old Norse, a close relative of Old English, and sprinkle around their versions of words we already have both skirts and shirts, dikes and ditches. Plus lots of other words, like happy and their and get.

Round Two: more words from the Norman French after William (i. e. Guillaume) the Conqueror takes over "England" in 1066. For the next three centuries, French is the language of government, the arts, and learning. Voilà, scads of new words, like army, apparel, and logic.

Round Three: Latin. When England falls into the Hundred Years' War with France, English becomes the ruling language once more, and English writers start grabbing up Latin terms from classical authors - abrogate and so on" [McWhorter, 2008].

April 23, 2020 To fight tooth and nail against prescriptivism seems to be a dominant practice in academese developed within the English discourse. However, teaching of English as a foreign language knows the importance of the strategic “Thou shalt not”. Here is how The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language approaches prescriptive grammar:

“Traditional grammar reflects the approach to language known as prescriptivism – the view that one variety of a language has an inherently higher value than others and ought to be the norm for the whole of the speech community. A distinction is often drawn between prescriptive rules, which state usages considered to be acceptable, and proscriptive rules, which state usages  to beavoided – grammatical ‘do’s and don’ts’. In fact the “Thou Shalt Not” tradition predominates, with most recommendations being phrased negatively” [Crystal. 1996: 194.]

April 21, 2020 As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 surges past 2.2 million globally and deaths surpass 150,000, clinicians and pathologists are struggling to understand the damage wrought by the coronavirus as it tears through the bod. They are realizing that although the lungs are ground zero, its reach can extend to many organs including the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain. 

“[The disease] can attack almost anything in the body with devastating consequences,” says cardiologist Harlan Krumholz of Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, who is leading multiple efforts to gather clinical data on COVID-19. “Its ferocity is breathtaking and humbling.”    Translation: Жестокость этого заболевания поражает и потрясает.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/how-does-coronavirus-kill-clinicians-trace-ferocious-rampage-through-body-brain-toes#

April 17, 2020 Cultural and institutional terms are “untranslatable” in the sense that they do not have dictionary equivalents. Ubuntu  (South Africa) is one of them.

The word comes from the Nguni languages spoken by some of Africa’s first peoples, but ubuntu didn’t appear in written sources until the mid-19th Century, rising to prominence in the midst of South Africa’s transition from the apartheid regime to a democracy that included all races.

While definitions of ubuntu have varied over the years, the Nguni proverb “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” (often translated as “a person is a person through other persons”) is most commonly used to describe the concept.

 In practice, ubuntu is a belief that the common bonds of a group are more important than the divisions within it. As Nelson Mandela once wrote, ubuntu is, “The profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world, it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievements of others.” In South Africa, the philosophy manifests in displays of kindness and compassion, particularly towards people of different cultural backgrounds.

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200412-four-countries-with-a-tradition-of-kindness

April 13, 2020  The authors of the cynical article use the parenthesis in yellow to be able to disavow the message of the utterance if confronted and cornered by Steinmeier's formula signed by the Ukraine. The essentials of a deal — if not the order in which to apply them — have been set in the so-called Minsk negotiations among Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They are a cease-fire, OSCE-verified withdrawal of Russian-led forces, return of the border to Ukrainian control, local elections and some measure of decentralized decision-making for all Ukrainian administrative regions.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/827608458/opinion-the-coronavirus-crisis-presents-an-opportunity-to-end-war-in-ukraine?t=1586351250602

Основные детали этой сделки, но не порядок их реализации, изложены в так называемых Минских соглашениях, заключенных между Украиной, Россией и Организацией по безопасности и сотрудничеству в Европе. Это прекращение огня, отвод пророссийских сил под контролем ОБСЕ, возвращение границы под власть Украины, местные выборы и некая мера децентрализации процесса принятия решений для всех административных регионов Украины.

April 11, 2020  By now the term "plausible deniability" has established itself in scholarship and academese:

"Although a highly centralized, top-down operation, the Comintern ordered that volunteers should appear to be spontaneous and self-directed, as Stalin hoped to maintain plausible deniability about Soviet involvement in attacks against German forces" [Malet, 2013: 97 – 98, quoting Richardson, 1982]

Proxie wars seem to have set up a new cognitive space for the term:  Malet, David. Foreign Fighters: Transnational Identity in Civic Conflicts. – Oxford University Press, 2013. – 272 p.

April 7, 2020 There are many terms carrying disapproval to the ways LANGUAGE is being used: academese, bureaucratese, CIA-ese, commercialese, computerese, educationalese, journalese, headlinese, legalese, motherese, New Yorkese, translationese etc.

April 3, 2020 “Schizophrenese” is a language which leaves it up to the listener to take his choice from among many possible meanings which are not only different from but may even be incompatible with one another. Thus, it becomes possible to deny any or all aspects of a message”  [Watzlawick, 2014: 54 - 55].

This is a description of the mechanism of "plausible deniability" in Psychology.

April 1, 2020 Looked at from 30,000 feet, Ukraine’s debt burden dropped from 80% of GDP in 2016 to 52% today and inflation is around 4%. Interest rates have dropped over the last couple of years by around 700 basis points and are now at 11%. This is a growth killer. Ukraine’s economy is fragile.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/03/18/ukraines-broken-government-scares-off-investors/#7bb3fae2ec27

С высоты птичьего полёта