Holodomor

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Dr. Goodword
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Holodomor

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Feb 14, 2023 8:07 pm

• holodomor •


Pronunciation: ho-lê-dê-mor • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: A famine intentionally created by Stalin in Ukraine that caused the deaths of 3-5 million Ukrainians from 1932 to 1933, the "Terror Famine".

Notes: Today's Good Word appears only in a few peripheral dictionaries, despite coming up 3,270,000 times in a Google search and a memorial to it in Washington, DC. Today's word is a lexical orphan.

In Play: Although America sent thousands of tons of corn and wheat seeds to the Ukraine during the 1921-23 famine, stronger anti-Soviet sentiment prevented US intervention in the holodomor of 1932-1933. So 2022 wasn't Moscow's first attack on the Ukraine. Ukraine was settled by angry serfs who didn't like their slave-like status, so they fled "to the edge" of Muscovy, u krai in Ukrainian. They called themselves Cossacks and were historically defiant toward Moscow. Stalin staged the holodomor of the 30s to suppress resistance to collectivization and efforts to build an independent Ukrainian state.

Word History: Holodomor is a compound noun comprising holod "hunger, famine" mor "death". Golod came from PIE goldi- "desire", Proto-Slavic gold'- "hunger", which by liquid metathesis became glad in South Slavic Serbian and Bulgarian, and West Slavic Czech hlad and Polish głod—all meaning "hunger". The same PIE word by "full voicing" became golod in Eastern Slavic Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian (where it is pronounced [holêd]). Mor has a more recognizable origin. It derives from PIE mer-/mor- "to die", found in Sanskrit marati "dies", Latin mors, mortis "death", Greek mortos "mortal, person", Lithuanian mirti "to die", Russian mertvii "dead" and smert' "death", as in smert' shpionov "death to spies" (SMERSH), and Armenian mah "death", from earlier marh. (We owe Debbie Moggio a debt of gratitude for today's highly timely Good Word, that has all but slipped away from us.)
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George Kovac
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Re: Holodomor

Postby George Kovac » Wed Feb 15, 2023 7:45 am

References to the holodomor were suppressed during the Soviet era in order to quell the anti-Russian sentiments that were deeply felt by generations of Ukrainians.

After the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine slipped the Russian leash. (I lived in Kyiv in 1993). There was an explosion of makeshift memorials for the victims of the holodomor in various sites around Kyiv—acts of defiance that would have been criminal a year earlier. So thorough was Soviet prpaganda that I had not previously known of this Stalinist cruelty. Ukrainians were eager to educate me about this horror. I believe that more permanent memorials were built after I left.
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tkowal
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Re: Holodomor

Postby tkowal » Wed Feb 15, 2023 11:58 am

If you are interested in this subject, I recommend the book Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum. It's hair-raising.

By the way, the Polish spelling for hunger is głód!

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Re: Holodomor

Postby Slava » Wed Feb 15, 2023 5:16 pm

Does anyone know the word for the slash across the l in ł?
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Re: Holodomor

Postby Dr. Goodword » Wed Feb 15, 2023 8:27 pm

The slashed L is used by the Polish for Ls that have converted to [w]. People in this part of the country, eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey convert all Ls not followed by vowels to Ws, so help is pronounce [hewp] and tell, {tew].

In English is is sometimes called "dark L". In Polish its called the "crossed L" (przekreślone L).

In English it is dialectal, so we have no special letter for it.
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tkowal
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Re: Holodomor

Postby tkowal » Fri Feb 17, 2023 2:32 pm

Several languages use this letter; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%81


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