When you learn a new language, and especially when you’ve learned a new alphabet, reading menus is a really handy way of practicing. When I lived in Ukraine 4 years ago I got really good at reading menus since it was one of my most frequent exposures to the language.
Four years on and the situation has changed. I’ve been in Ukraine for almost a month now and I don’t think I’ve seen a single menu in Russian – they are all in Ukrainian, although most have English translations.
This is all part of an official drive by the Ukrainian government to promote and increase the use of Ukrainian language.
Ukrainian is a Slavic language, closest to Belarusian, Polish, and then Russian. It was spoken more widely until it was banned by the Russian empire in the early 1,800s, leaving to thrive only in the western part of Ukraine, near the Carpathian mountains, where it is most widely spoken today. In the east of Ukraine, closer to Russia, it gave way to Russian as the mother tongue for most people.
Until the Ukrainian conflict started in 2014, Ukraine was largely bilingual and proud of it. People in Kiev, now supposedly spelt Kyiv, switched between the two languages without even a second thought. I’m pretty sure that they didn’t even realise they were doing it half the time.
And they still do switch between Ukrainian and Russian with incredible ease, but the second thought is now there. Since the start of the conflict, language has become politicised in Ukraine and which one people chose to speak has become more important (for some).
In 2015 the Ukrainian parliament tried to ban Russian (quote needed) and has since then embarked on a persistent campaign to promote Ukrainian. Almost all companies now advertise in Ukrainian only. Even in cities like Kharkiv where my waiter this morning told me that “some people come in speaking Ukrainian, but it’s rare – less than 10%”, billboards are all in the language of that 10%. Earlier in 2020, McDonalds took the political decision to remove Russian from all of its self ordering kiosks in Kiev/Ukraine. All announcements at the train station are in Ukrainian only and Ukrainian airlines, whose pilots used to fumble their way through Ukrainian before make the announcement more fluently in Russian, now do not have the chance to move on to their more comfortable language.
It’s difficult to find reliable information how many speak which language now because the issue is so politicised with Ukrainian language representing the euro-leaning Kyiv government, and Russian representing the separatists. When asked, some people will often say that Ukrainian is their “mother tongue” because they are pro-Kyiv, even though they unofficially converse more frequently in Russian. In this poll from 2017 for example, they claim that 30% of people in Luhansk and Donetsk speak Ukrainian, which anyone who’s been there will tell you is clearly absurd. Even on the government controlled side of the line, it is extremely rare to hear Ukrainian in the street.
https://www.unian.ua/m/society/1873666-opituvannya-68-gromadyan-ukrajini-vvajayut-ridnoyu-movoyu-ukrajinsku.html
Politicians, even those avidly anti Russia, often can’t help but fall back into Russian during parliament sessions, and the Ukrainian soldiers themselves speak a lot of Russian between themselves.
On a recent tour I took to Chernobyl, my guide began every conversation with people there (not the tour – that was in English) in Russian. Chernobyl is right in the centre, north of Ukraine, and not one time did she think it fit to begin talking anyone in Ukrainian, nor vice-versa. Some of my friends who previously spoke Russian have made the consiouce choice to speak more Ukrainian”, she told me,
Like it or lump it, a lot of Ukrainians still prefer speaking Russian. However, the government driven shift towards Ukrainian is moving full steam ahead and whilst I can notice a significant shift towards Ukrainian in some respects, it will be incredibly interesting to see how it’s going in 10 years.
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