#ukrainian philologists kindly correct me if i got anything wrong.
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garland-on-thy-brow · 2 years ago
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We don't have enough slurs for Russians. What do you propose?
I do not really see a point. What they do defines them well enough, I doubt some word could do better. However, it does not hurt to drop the capital letter - "russia, russians, moscow" - as has become customary in Ukraine during last year.
[The part below is not meant as anything new for you personally, since I believe you already know it. Just some musing on history.]
Historically, of course, we have been been calling them moskals or katsaps. I personally would hesitate to call either a slur proper (though it of course depends on your definitions). moskal is derived from moscow and would be neutral originally, but since it was used to refer to russian occupying soldiers, over centuries it absorbed negative associations. katsap appears to be a borrowing from one of several Turkic and Slavic languages which have this word with the meaning "butcher"; it came to signify russians as a result of their imperialistic crimes commited in Ukraine and other countries. What I would like to point out here is that both words came to exist with their modern meaning and connotation not based on some arbitrary characteristic or stereotype, but as a direct result of russian imperialism. By looking at them, we see russia's role in Ukrainian history.
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