“Nyav”, not “Meow”: In Lviv, a debate flares over cats being “Russian-speaking”

Lviv publicist Ilko Lemko, in his opinion column for the outlet Zakhid, complained about the advertising slogan “The first word my cat said was ‘Meow!’”

According to Lemko, a Ukrainian cat should say “Nyav,” not “Meow.”

“Trams in Lviv are running around with ads that say: ‘The first word my cat said was “Meow!”’ It’s not even interesting what exactly they’re advertising like that — the most interesting thing is that Ukrainian cats, unlike katsap [Russian] cats, never say ‘Meow,’ only ‘Nyav’; that is, they don’t myauk but nyavk. However, for the producers of this ad, these are matters far too lofty; they still need to grow up to that and acquire the appropriate IQ. Because to give up the familiar, native, understandable katsap ‘Meow’ in favor of the incomprehensible, peculiar, exotic Ukrainian ‘Nyav’ is hard intellectual work,” Lemko writes.

This situation was commented on by MP Maksym Buzhansky.

“Undoubtedly, this is a purely internal Lviv issue, but I can see the matter is smoothly heading toward the appearance of cat-language commissioners. Perhaps we need to deprive meowing cats of their rights in favor of nyav-ing ones, derive a scientific formula for the owner’s reliability depending on the cat’s behavior, get a grant for this, create a Cat Council of Integrity — everything as usual, in short,” Buzhansky writes.

Earlier, former Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada from the Svoboda party, Ruslan Koshulynsky, stated that Russian-speaking Ukrainians should be criminally prosecuted and denied education and employment.