Against the background of the idea of the mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk to organize a language inspection, language ombudsman Taras Kremin said that such groups already work in many Ukrainian cities. UNN reports with reference to a statement by the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language.
Details
Commenting on the statement of the Ivano-Frankivsk mayor that "language inspectors" will operate in the city, Kremin emphasized that every city or regional council has relevant departments and subdivisions.
According to him, they can create working groups and check for compliance with the language law on signs, announcements, activities of educational, service, and healthcare institutions and prepare relevant orders demanding to eliminate such violations.
Such working groups have been very effective in many Ukrainian cities in 2022-2024. For example, in Mykolaiv, where the relevant working groups were created on the initiative of Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych, more than a thousand signs have been changed. Similar work is being done in Odesa, Kharkiv, and Dnipro. There have even been attempts to do the same in Kyiv. This is a very important work that should be done by local authorities in the first place, strengthening the protection of the language rights of Ukrainian citizens
The Commissioner noted that in Ivano-Frankivsk, as well as in Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and other cities of Ukraine, there is a dominance of signs in non-state languages.
Not necessarily in Russian, but also in English. This applies to the names of youth spaces, cafes, clinics, hotels, and other service providers
Addendum
At the same time, Kremin criticized the use of the phrase "language inspectors". According to him, such statements echo Russian propaganda.
Language inspectors or language punishers are disinformation narratives of Russian propaganda that have been actively used since 2019, when the Law of Ukraine "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language" came into force. Remember how I was called a Sprechenführer, and my representatives, who legally protect the rights of Ukrainian citizens, were called language punishers who almost walk around at night, grabbing my arm and dragging me somewhere
Recall
After meeting with the Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, Ivano-Frankivsk Mayor Ruslan Martsinkiv said that the city would introduce a public initiative of language inspectors to counter the spread of the Russian language.