Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Advisor on Legal Affairs, Kristina Rikhter, in an interview with the portal “BGmedia”, talked about her way to joining the civil society, challenges in switching to the Belarusian language, and communication in Belarusian within Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Office.
📌 “At first, it was difficult for me to speak and perceive the Belarusian language. At first, it was a psychological issue. But the most challenging part was the lack of vocabulary because when you always use the same words when talking to someone, it looks quite poor”.
📌 “I switched all my devices to the Belarusian language but then noticed quite an interesting thing. If you want to find something on Google, you need to do it in Russian. There is little information in Belarusian”.
📌 “I wanted to completely switch to Belarusian in all spheres of life but the lack of information forced me to keep searching in Russian. This means that we should create our pages on Wikipedia, publish recipes and other things, and translate laws into Belarusian”.
📌 “I admitted to myself that my switch to Belarusian went faster after the war started because I wanted to differentiate myself from Russians in the eyes of foreigners. There was a psychological factor: I didn’t want to face discrimination because of the Russian language”.
📌 “In Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Office, there are many people who speak Belarusian, and there is a portion that speaks Russian. We have always been striving to speak more Belarusian”.
The full interview is available at the link.
