Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka has once again shown his undisguised scorn to the Belarusian language.
In the recent interview with Russian TV channel Rossiya 24, Lukashenka said he would not manage to speak Belarusian all the time, because ‘one can not always find proper words’. In his opinion, Russian is much richer.
“The present-day Russian language is good for us. I often say that the Belarusian language is relatively young. Indeed, the Belarusian language simply does not have relevant terms and words on many topics and in many fields, i.e. physics, chemistry, mathematics, etc,” the Belarusian leader said.
According to Lukashenka, he knows Belarusian, but his heart is in the Russian language as well as the souls of the vast majority of Belarusians:
“I do not think those who criticize the Russian language to be its opponents, they simply want to ramp up the Belarusian language to the level of Russian,” he believes.
Interestingly, Alyaksandr Lukashenka failed to mention that the national language descends from the old Belarusian language which dates back to the 13th century. He said no word about the 500th anniversary of the Belarusian book printing either. Moreover, the president must be unaware of the availability of a wide range of modern technical dictionaries and school programmes on mathematics, geography and physics in Belarusian.
