Posted: 25.01.2022 16:08:00

Belarusians should know their native language, Lukashenko believes

The President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, stands in favour of the development of the Belarusian language in society so that people know it well since it is this language that distinguishes the Belarusian nation from others, BelTA reports

Photo: www.belta.by

As he met with representatives of the National Academy of Sciences today, the Head of State noted, “You know – due to our mad white-red-white troublemakers – we have lost the point: it is our native Belarusian language. You must understand that it is the Belarusian language that distinguishes us from others. We should not get away from it. We need to think about how to make Belarusians know it. It so happened that the Russian language is ours but it does not distinguish us from others – i.e. Russians. Meanwhile, the Belarusian language does.”

"We already know Russian better than Belarusian. It happened so. However, we need to catch up to the Russian language; native Belarusian should follow it,” Aleksandr Lukashenko stressed. “We should not forget our language. If we fail to know the Belarusian language, then we are not Belarusians. Both Russian and Belarusian are our languages. We do not force to speak Belarusian but we will work to ensure that every Belarusian can speak the Belarusian language. There is nothing anti-Russian here, and so on.”

“Under the impression of August 2020, we began to somehow splash murky water… We can lose the point with this. This should in no case happen. Our young people understand this well,” the President said, adding that no soft Belarusification is in mind. “I am not pursuing a policy of soft Belarusification. It is absolute nonsense,” Aleksandr Lukashenko noted.

The President emphasised that there should be no noise and mess in the language issue – as it was observed in times of nationalists in the 1990s. "There was much mess but little sense," he said.

Scientists and representatives of the education sector should also have their say in this regard, the Head of State added.