Russian Blog
This is a blog by JustRussian about learning Russian. You will find useful tips for learning Russian, Russian courses available in London, information about Russian culture and links to websites with information for students of Russian.
Russian language in modern Ukraine
By Vlada 14 December 10
or Ukrainian “mova” versus Russian “yazyk”
by Anastasia Boosey
My students, who learn Russian, often ask me where I am from. My answer is always: “I was born in Ukraine but I am Russian!” In Soviet times people used to move around the country all the time, that’s how my very Russian parents ended up in Ukraine (it could easily have been Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan or Moldova). Of course they didn’t speak Ukrainian, but on a day-to-day basis they didn’t have to. Russian was the language they could use in any republic, and even abroad, in the Eastern bloc countries. But we did have to learn the language of the Republic we lived in, and thus we had to read, write and sing in Ukrainian.
Time went by and August 1991 brought us to the end of the Soviet era. Many Republics were very happy to get rid of the Russian/Soviet occupation and obtain their own identity (it was particularly true for the Baltic states). Ukraine too was proclaimed an independent state, and understandably, the Ukrainian language began a renaissance. TV, radio and lectures at universities all began to sound Ukrainian. It reached ridiculous levels: for example, if you’re watching a Russian soap, you either have a translation running at the bottom of the screen, or some one will speak over the actors’ voices! Nowadays the topic of Russian language in Ukraine as well as Russian culture and influence is still a sensitive one and commonly used in political propaganda. There are numerous jokes about the two languages, which I would love to demonstrate here, but I’m afraid the humour will be lost in translation.
So, you will ask, how similar is Ukrainian to Russian? Can I get by in Ukraine, just by speaking Russian? Would a Ukrainian person understand Russian and vice versa? Well of course, Ukrainian is very similar to Russian. In fact Ukrainian is classified as a Slavic language and it belongs to the Eastern branch of Slavic languages (like Russian and Belorussian). Throughout history, Ukrainians and Russians were very close, sharing history, culture and religion. Moreover, the Ukrainian capital Kiev is often called “the mother of all Russian towns”, and it once was the capital of Kievskaja Rus. The state existed from approximately 880AD to sometime in the middle of the 13th century when it disintegrated.
As a student of Russian language you are probably already able to read Cyrillic. The good news is that Ukrainians use the same alphabet (plus a couple of additional letters). So it’s not difficult to read. There are however a lot of words that are different from the Russian version. For example “spasibo” (thank you) in Russian is “dyakuyu” in Ukrainian, and Russian “pozhaluysta” (please) becomes “bud’ laska” in Ukrainian. In addition, some words sound slightly different. For instance, Russian “chto” (what) becomes “sho” in Ukrainian. Moreover, as I have mentioned above, politics does get involved in the structure of modern languages. In Soviet times we would get away with many words in Ukrainian that were borrowed from Russian. But times have changed: the new Ukrainan dictionary contains a great deal of words I have never heard before, or never thought could be used. A typical example is “vertolyot” (Russian for helicopter) which transformed itself into “galicopter”. So, some words clearly westernised themself to differ from the Russian influence. There are however plenty of identical words that both nations use.
So, can you get by in Ukraine if you only speak Russian? The answer is yes and no. It very much depends on the part of the country you are going to. I grew up not only in a Russian family, but also in the Russian (Eastern) part of Ukraine, where the majority of people are either Russian or Ukrainian and consider Russian their first language. In general, as the latest census has shown, in 2001 8,334,100 identified themselves as ethnic Russians (17.3% of the total population). However if you decide to travel to the west of the Country, be prepared to hear only Ukrainian (with some very heavy regional accents). Even I struggle to understand some people in, for instance Uzhgorod, a town not far from the Hungarian border. People there speak very fast in what appears to be a peculiar Ukrainian-Hungarian mix! In addition Polish is widely spoken in cities such as Lvov.
Unfortunately, if you try and talk to local residents in Russian they would normally understand you but will refuse to admit it and you may end up struggling to get by with your Russian. This is because the Western Ukraine is in general quite hostile towards its big brother (Russia). The numbers say it all: in Western Ukraine, like Ternopol oblast and Ivano-Frankovsk Oblast, the percentage of Russian language speakers is only about 1%. And finally, an average Russian person is unlikely to understand someone speaking pure Ukrainian. They may pick up some words but that’s about it, whereas the majority of Ukrainians do at least understand the Russian language or rossiysku movu.
The moral is: you can easily get by with only speaking Russian in Ukraine, but mainly in large cities and the capital, although beware the signs on the streets, as they are only in Ukrainian.
Lastly, let the numbers do the talking. In 1989 there were 4633 schools where Russian was the main language. By 2001 this number fell to 2001 schools or 11.8% of the total in the country. About 30% of Ukrainians speak Russian as their primary language. In the Kiev region only 7% of people speak Russian compared with 90% who speak Ukrainian. Ukrainian is spoken by 71% of Ukrainians in Ukraine.
So, whether you decide to go to Kiev, Lvov or visit sunny Crimea (77% of Crimean inhabitants named Russian as their native language), this country has a lot to offer no matter what language you speak!
Anastasia Boosey is a freelance Russian tutor in London, a language graduate of Kharkov University in Ukraine and the School of Eastern European Studies at UCL.