Hacker News Reader

Comment by justinclift | Hacker News Reader

> A Ukrainian friend joked that I’d be in trouble if I was stopped at a Territorial Defense checkpoint and asked to say what had become a kind of code word for sussing out enemy agents: palyanitsa, the name of a soft white-bread loaf. The word rolls off the tongue of Ukrainian speakers but is hard for Russians to pronounce.

Ugh. That sounds like the author revealing confidential info, that could potentially allow saboteurs to pass by checkpoints. :(

View on HN

It has been all over the news, so it won't sabotage anything. Most elderly people from the south-east of Ukraine wouldn't be able to pronounce it as well as they mostly have a very spotty command of Ukrainian.

Apparently even Russian speaking Ukrainians can usually pronounce it as it's a bread commonly eaten at some Ukrainian holiday (source is some random Reddit comment so take with a grain of salt)

I suppose I must have been wrong about generalising it to "most elderly people", but my Granny who had lived in Donbas for 40 years doesn't know about it.

It means 'lighter', like a cigarette lighter.

Wow that’s another real world use of the eponymous shibboleth

Yeah I learned about shibboleth here in HN, remember reading about Spanish using pork/ham foods as it's own shibboleth-like device. And how some portuguese butchers offered vegan kosher options to the travellers that wanted to not stand out in a cantina, hahaha

I learned about it like I’m sure many did from The West Wing.

Oh, don't worry, it has been the shibboleth word for many years way before this invasion. The beauty here that even if you know the word it is somewhat hard for a person to learn and remember how to pronounce it. I've tried to teach a couple of my non ukrainian friends for many years, they rarely get it nearly right and cannot repeat consistently. Besides there a few backup words like this, if you need to verify.

Nah it's a very common meme throughout telegram. Has been since the first couple of days of the war. Russians just cannot say it the same. They have the same word, but it means 'strawberries', and it's pronounced differently. It's a classic shibboleth.

it's a running joke for past few weeks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com