Linguistic code of nation

The preservation, research and development of culture is impossible without studying the language
code of the nation, the role of language as a form of expression of culture and the means of its
formation.

The language determines the ethnic identity of the carriers of culture. It is an important factor in
national development and the carrier of the intangible heritage of each nation, because it reflects
ethno-cultural, psychological and mythological ideas and experiences.

That is why the language was introduced into the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of
Intangible Cultural Heritage, adopted in 2003.

“Nations do not die of heart attacks, at first, they are getting deprived of their language”

Lina Kostenko

The ideas of Humboldt, Benveniste and Potebnja remain valid in the modern linguistic world.
Scientists claimed that language is primarily a spiritual essence, the inner world of a man, a unique
creation of an ethnic group. Today these ideas acquire special acuteness due to the need to attract
attention to the problem of language assimilation and oppression that the Ukrainian language has
been experiencing for centuries.

Archetypes, culturally important concepts as the codes of the nation recorded in the mental and
linguistic consciousness of people, allow the nation to store and broadcast elements that capture
information for subsequent generations, forming ethnic unity and identity.

The very language preserves culturally important national information and is the key to
understanding "psychology of the nation" (the term by Oleksandr Potebnja).

Language as the dynamic system

Language is a dynamic system, the parts of which are in constant motion, change and development.
The process of its formation and improvement never stops. At the same time, it retains the signs of
stability and integrity. External factors, as well as intercultural interaction, can affect the language
positively enriching it. This influence is not always mediated. It can be done in order to destroy
national identity.

The language, being not only one of the instruments of categorization and conceptualization, but
also in general the method of intellectual comprehension of reality, reflects the signs of the
formation, development of the nation, peculiarities of thinking and adaptation to the external
environment: geographical, climatic, historical, religious, etc.

Precisely because a language is a natural substrate of culture, an instrument of mental ordering the
world, a means of fixing ethnic perception of the world and optimizing intercultural interaction, a
language is the first to be destroyed during the policy of forced assimilation.