Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A Russian Grammar Note

It is like the entire Russian blogosphere got the same memo simultaneously. Since the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent republics, the RuNet has now renamed "Tskhivali" and "Sukhumi" "Tskhinval" and "Sukhum" respectively. And while in the past, these place names were indeclinable (that is, their forms did not change according to their function in the sentence), now they are declinable according to standard Russian grammar rules.

As far as I can tell, "Poti" remains Poti and not "Pot" and "Tbilisi" remains Tbilisi and not "Tbilis" or even "Tiflis". I suppose we'll know that Russia has "liberated" the rest of Georgia when those changes are made in RuNet...

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