IZO

Speech patterns (RIA Novosti):

In 2008, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin contributed numerous catch phrases to the Russian language. For instance, Medvedev's statement about "creating nightmares" became highly popular, while Putin said he was tired of "toiling like a slave on the galleys."

Professor Mikhail Gorbanevsky, vice-president of the Society of Russian Literature Lovers and president of the Guild of Linguistic Experts in Documentation and Information Disputes (GLEDID), said President Medvedev, a former assistant professor at St. Petersburg State University, had his own unique speech patterns, was well-versed in Russian literary language, but tended to copy his predecessor in some respects.

The expression "to create nightmares" is the most vivid example, Gorbanevsky told the paper.
"Although it is believed that President Medvedev had coined this expression, it was Putin who first used it on March 24, 2005 at a meeting with representatives of public Russian business organizations at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow," Gorbanevsky said.

"The expression 'to create nightmares' is borrowed from criminal slang and either means 'to create unbearable conditions for an inmate' or 'to intimidate'," Gorbanevsky told the paper.

Prime Minister Putin is an emotional person who sometimes does not like to read out many of his official statements and starts making impromptu remarks.

"Catch phrases are also intended to win the audience's support. Some of my friends, former intelligence operatives, told me that they were actively trained how to speak while recruiting potential secret agents. A person should know that you and he speak the same language," Gorbanevsly said.

Origin of the disparaging term Khokhol for a Ukrainian (yangel, in Russian):

...it first had currency in the Jewish-settled regions of Ukraine. The offspring of marriages between Jews ... and Ukrainians [were called] Khokhols. Local Jews always called Ukraine Khokhlandiya, which in translation from Yiddish meant something like High Country. Compare with the German word Hochland (one may view Yiddish as corrupted German or German as corrupted Yiddish).

And there's a less neutral word for the offspring of Jews and Russians.

Russian-Chinese slang dictionary (du_jingli).

A decision has been taken to latinize the Uzbek alphabet. Arab script is considered not particularly suited to Uzbek phonetics and grammar.  The cyrillic alphabet was introduced in Uzbekistan by Stalin in the 1940s (Centrasia.ru).

Re "socially-aware net translator" (IZO, earlier today): a reader writes:

This reminds me of the 2005 Moscow Biennial when Slava Mogutin's exhibition "Wigger" was translated in the biennial program as "белый негр," [white negro] and back-translated in the program's English version as "White African-American." But I think that was all done by humans.

Socially-aware net translator: "one white, one black" becomes (in Russian) "one white, one african-american" (translate.ru) (via mrparker). Google translator gets it "right" (один белый, один черный), Babelfish is also "wrong", but in a different fashion (одна белизна, одна чернота).

And while we're naming names, do you live in Pindostan (languagehat)?

Michele A. Berdy looks at Russian internet jargon (Moscow Times).

Lost-in-translation dept. Reuters informs us that (Reuters):

To discourage speculation on the rouble, the central bank said on Friday it would set daily limits on currency swap operations from Monday.

Which is interpreted by MIGnews to mean (MIGnews, in Russian):

From Monday 20 October a limit will be set on the purchase of dollars at currency-exchange points.

(Via mrparker).

Explaining Georgia and Georgia (Slate).

The Ukrainian-language journal Nominar is folding because, in the words of its main sponsor (Jed Sunden, also publisher of the Kiev Post, who has put in $2 million), there "is little demand for Ukrainian language publications" in the Ukraine. Apparently (Kommersant.ua, in Russian):

advertisers are interested in the better-off Russian-speaking part of the population.

The reality, in other words, seems to be in conflict with the policies of the government.

A dictionary of the Uilt language, spoken now by only 40 or so people, has been published in an edition of 500 on Sakhalin  (Lenta.ru, in Russian). These people are so rare I can't even find them in Wikipedia!

The Siberian Ket language, spoken along the Enisei, has been shown to be an ancient relative of many North American Indian languages (Anchorage Daily News). And there's also this (The Linguist List):

The distance from the Yeniseian range to that the most distant Athabaskan languages is the greatest overland distance covered by any known language spread not using wheeled transport or sails.