Ukrainian man stabbed for ‘being Russian’ after bizarre translation test at Brooklyn bar

New York Post ^ | 5/3/2022 | Gabrielle Fonrouge

[simpson96]

An enraged Ukrainian man stabbed a compatriot for speaking Russian at a Brooklyn bar in a booze-fueled spat that’s now being investigated as a hate crime, The Post has learned.

Andrii Meleshkov, who was born and raised in Eastern Ukraine and has a Russian mother, said he was at Signature karaoke bar in Sheepshead Bay celebrating a friend’s birthday last Monday when Oleg Sulyma, 31, sat down at his table and started hurling “profanities” at him and his buddies.

“You look Russian,” Sulyma, who is Ukrainian, sneered, according to prosecutors.

Meleshkov, a 36-year-old truck driver who left the Eastern Europe locale and moved to Brooklyn in 2015, insisted that he was Ukrainian but Sulyma didn’t believe him.

“We switched to Ukrainian in order to calm him down but it was getting him more and more agitated and he started asking us to translate words to prove that we’re Ukrainian,” Meleshkov told The Post.

Sulyma demanded Meleshkov and his friends say the word “Palianytsia” — a type of Ukrainian domed bread — that native Russian speakers have difficulty pronouncing because of its combination of vowels and consonants, according to prosecutors and Meleshkov.

“If you get it wrong, I’ll have my way with you,” warned Sulyma, according to prosecutors.

Meleshkov, (snip) said the word as he attempted to pay the bill and leave but Sulyma just kept getting “angrier and angrier,” the alleged victim claimed.

Prosecutors say Sulyma grabbed two beer bottles that were on the table, smashed them together and turned toward Meleshkov and threatened: “I’m getting ready to kill you.”

(snip)

“I got lucky … the paramedics told me it’s my second birthday because the wound that was on the left side on the neck, it came really close to the carotid artery.”

[ClearCase_guy]

[BobL]

I suspect that the Ukraine Apologists here don’t have a problem with it, since it was a ‘misunderstanding’, don’t you know.

[Dr. Sivana]

This is an extreme version, but such happens around the world. My Mother-in-Law is French Canadian, but she spoke perfect English. She got beaten up by French and Anglo alike.

[Dr. Sivana]

That was in Quebec.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Shibboleth

A New Orleans resident challenges out-of-towners there to protest against the 2017 removal of the Robert E. Lee Monument. Their inability to pronounce "Tchoupitoulas Street" according to the local fashion would be a shibboleth marking them as outsiders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth

In the Book of Judges, chapter 12, after the inhabitants of Gilead under the command of Jephthah inflicted a military defeat upon the invading tribe of Ephraim (around 1370–1070 BC), the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross the River Jordan back into their home territory, but the Gileadites secured the river's fords to stop them. To identify and kill these Ephraimites, the Gileadites told each suspected survivor to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimite dialect resulted in a pronunciation that, to Gileadites, sounded like sibboleth.[10] In the King James Bible[Judges 12:5-6] the anecdote appears thus (with the word already in its current English spelling): And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

Here endeth the lesson!