Weekend selection: What do Ukrainian children dream about in Slovakia?
A regular dose of weekend reading.
Nice weekend! What do Ukrainian children who fled the war in Slovakia with their mothers dream about? The children drew what they want to say to the world and their mothers say what they want to say to Putin. Everyone can find themselves in the new interpretation of the word love, linguists say, adding that the change was not only conditioned by what happened on Zámocká Street.
Two prestigious awards were presented last week – the Anasoft Litera 2022 award for the best Slovak literary work went to Stanislav Rakús. The SME reporter Lukáš Onderčanin won the readers’ prize, and in interviews he also describes his own experiences from the search and travels in Kyrgyzstan. We can also present the three best young painters of this year in the Painting 2022 competition.
They fled from Putin’s war and live in Slovakia. The children drew what they wanted in the world
Ukrainian children drew what they wanted to tell the world. (source: Dorota Holubová/SME)
The red viburnum is one of the symbols of Ukraine. According to legends, this tree has a power that brings immortality and can unite generations in the fight against evil.
“That’s our national tree,” says 11-year-old Alisa from Kyiv in fluent Slovak as she draws it. In Slovakia, they first spoke to their mother in English, then they started speaking in Slovak. “I listened to Slovak at school in the scout group, so I remembered a lot of things,” she continues.
Alisa and her mother Natalia left Ukraine at the beginning of March. “Unfortunately, Alisa was prepared for something like war to come. It was talked about among adults, we suspected something,” Natália explains. When it all started, they had documents, money and a fueled car ready. They were afraid that Kiev would become the first city where the Russians would come.
When they arrived in Slovakia, they were only wearing ski gear, but the Slovaks helped them. They were taken in by a Slovak family with two sons of Alisa’s age, with whom they lived for five months.
For the first half of the year, they lived day by day because they still hoped that he would come home soon. “In the summer, we understood that it wasn’t going to happen anytime soon,” notes Natalia. So they started building a life in Slovakia.
How do five Ukrainian children live in Slovakia? They drew how they imagine Ukraine and their mothers said what they would like to say to Putin.
Everyone can be found in the new interpretation of the word love
Illustrative image. (source: SME/Dominika Colombo)
The new interpretation of the word love in the Dictionary of the Contemporary Slovak Language no longer mentions opposite sexes. It thus reflects the reality of how people use the word.
The translation “affection of one sex to the other, amorous feeling, affection” was proposed by the Ľudovít Štúr SAV Institute of Linguistics to be changed to “a strong affection for non-nemus on the basis of physical, mental and emotional attraction, amorous feeling, love”.
About why the change took place in the week after the terrorist murder on Zámocká Street and what effect it may have new interpretation impact on societysay lexicographer Bronislava Chocholová and sociolinguist Lucia Molnár Satinská from the Ľudovíta Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.
“Even now, our step to change the interpretation of the word love was not conditioned only by what happened on Zámocká Street. We knew about the inaccurate interpretation and wanted to correct it,” says Chocholová.
Lukáš Onderčanin: Moscow must have liked it when the Slovaks came and offered to build a paradise
SME daily reporter Lukáš Onderčanin won the Anasoft Litera 2022 readers’ award. (source: SME/Jozef Jakubčo)
Lukáš Onderčanin lives the classic fate of a journalist. This means that even when he is on vacation and could be relaxing, he thinks about everything he sees as a potential article. This also happened to him in Kyrgyzstan, with the difference that he had the subject of a book.
It was published by the Absynt publishing house under the title Utopia in Lenin’s Garden and won the readers’ prize in the Anasoft Litera literary competition. In it, he wrote about the Slovaks, who in 1925, under the influence of major economic problems, went to Kyrgyzstan to build a socialist paradise. They left everything here and believed that one day they would see him far away among the camels.
Many were deceived. Many instead of beautiful houses and good jobs, disease and death awaited. Many fell victim to reporting and brutal political purges. However, the SME reporter thinks that with this project, which few people know about today, several positive and nice things also manifested themselves.
“It is difficult to design a society without making decisions in it. Someone must always have a higher position than others. I am not saying that Interhelpo was a dictatorship, no practice has shown that it is not possible to distribute wealth among people fairly if someone does more and someone less,” he says.
Pictures from the life of ordinary people. The Anasoft letter award was won by Rakús
Stanislav Rakús became the laureate of Anasoft Litera for the second time. (source: Peter Stanley Procházka)
He published his debut book, the novella Žobráci, almost half a century ago. He has been writing ever since. And for his eighth book, a collection of five short stories, Pity, Stanislav Rakús won the Anasoft litera 2022 literary award. This is the second time he has won it.
It brings stories in which, through the motifs of illness, loneliness, death, but also the confrontation of old age with youth images are created from the lives of ordinary people.
“All this happens with a typically Austrian stylistic ingenuity, which makes reading his texts an extraordinary experience. What is also valuable about Stanislav Rakús is that in the old prose age, compared to the previous text, he was able to move to a new level in his poetics,” the expert jury justified its decision.
The best young painters of this are known, see their years of work
The best young painters of this year – winners of the Painting competition – from left, bronze Martina Červenková, absolute winner Ján Bátorek and silver Samuel Kollárik. (source: Painting)
Ján Bátorek, Samuel Kollárik and Martina Červenková are the best young painters of this year. They won the painting competition – VÚB Foundation Award. The current winner has already been among the finalists in the past two years.
Exceptional this time, they also awarded the fourth place – to Sara Záhorjanová, who receives special recognition from the judges.
Among the 109 participating young painters who applied for the competition this year, up to 40 new names appeared in them. Based on the selection of the jury, eight newcomers made it to the top twenty. Among them are up to three of the current winners.
Cultural tips
Sting went to Bratislava after the recent concert in Košice. (source: Peter Ivan)
A concert by Sting, an exhibition about Meky Žbirek or a Slovenian Christmas film for children. we have cultural tips for the next seven days.
Weekend recipe
Nettle roulade with bryndza. (source: Miloš Mikuš)
Cheese, spinach and nettle. Prepare delicious salty rolls.
Weekend quiz
SME newspaper news quiz. (source: SME)
How closely have you followed the events of the last week? Test yourself in our quiz.
Thank you for spending part of your weekend with us. I wish you a successful start to next week and see you again on Saturday.