The book “404 Language Not Found” is about how difficult it is to use the Belarusian language in modern Belarus.
Let me start with a bit of background, with the history of my relationship with the Belarusian language. To be honest, Russian was always the native language in my family, although older generations occasionally mixed in either Belarusian words or dialects (the so-called “trasianka”) or some words from Yiddish. However, the Belarusian language surrounded me from childhood, and I understood it almost as if it were my native tongue. In the 1980s, I once visited Kyiv for a programming competition and was struck by how extensively Ukrainians used the Ukrainian language in daily life. In the Byelorussian SSR, in Minsk, Belarusian was not used as actively. On the second day of this “trip,” I decided to speak only Belarusian in Kyiv. The locals gave me slightly curious looks but generally understood me perfectly.
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