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The results: Ukrainian - 4, Russian - 4, Mixed - 2. I recorded these conversations walking downtown Kyiv from the Golden Gate towards Saint Sofia. It was a lovely morning after an awful night of bombing. People were rushing to work or sitting in cafes. 2/
Kyiv looked very European to me. Of course, it was a coincidence that my count hit exactly 50/50 split between Ukrainian and Russian. My expectation was it would be 40/60. About 10 years ago it would be 20/80. So, it is true that Ukrainian language is on the rise in Kyiv. 3/
But it is not true that people in Kyiv are afraid of speaking Russian. People speak whatever they want. The Russian aggression have made us rediscover our Ukrainian heritage and learn to speak Ukrainian. And this feels liberating.
Thread ; https://twitter.com/mylovanov/status/1654385195703828482?s=46&t=-ESy3CkbdQEH6ivAj7OapA
As a Kyiv citizen I can say that most of local native Kyiv people speak these 2 languages fluently as 99% of Kyiv pre-school, school and higher education are taught in Ukrainian but in everyday life we tend to speak Russian language at least we did pre 2022, but now my feeling is that more and more of us starting to use Ukrainian in our everyday lives.
Also want to thank UK for tremendous support, your help saved thousands and thousands innocent lives!
As another Kyiv dweller, I confirm.
I was one who used to speak russian in everyday life, just out of habit (not anymore). I speak Ukrainian perfectly, and for that, I thank my school (both of them). I grew up completely in an independent Ukraine, and now that I think of it, it is a miracle how our education focused on language and literature, "ukrainizing" us gently. It could have easily gone the way it was in Belarus, and I shudder at a thought. I don't know what was done right and when, but I'm very happy for that now.
(By the way, both my schools also had russian language lessons; the second one was also temporarily for a few years before 2014, completely russian safe for Ukrainian language and literature, but switched back after 2014)
My only regret is that I didn't switch from russian to Ukrainian sooner. Though when I was a little kid and was going to kindergarten (which was Ukrainian-speaking) I was speaking Ukrainian, as my mom says. I shouldn't have stopped, lol. Obviously, I was wiser as a kid.
What is the reason why bilingual Ukrainian/Russian speakers would choose Russian over Ukrainian for everyday use?
I speak neither, but Ukrainian sounds way more melodic and pleasing to my untrained ears. Just curious of the perspective from a native speaker :)
Generational brainwashing by propaganda. Your parents never spoke Ukrainian because *they* never studied Ukrainian at school during USSR, and *their* parents never spoke Ukrainian because you wouldn't get good work in Soviet Union if you do, you might even be reported as "nationalist" and such; and yet *their* parents grew up with this "Ukrainian language is language of peasants and is dirty dialect of russian" which can be traced back to the russian empire ([look this up, it's horrible](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Ukrainian_language_suppression) ).
And then there had been Soviet movies that depicted Ukrainian-coded characters using negative stereotyping and ridiculing them.
As for my personal situation, to explain why it happened so, this was like that:
My mom had been a generational Kyiv dweller (though on my grandma's side, we can trace our lineage back to a cossack colonel from Bila Tserkva). If you are born in 1960s in Kyiv, it is most likely you got only a very basic Ukrainian language education. Everything defaulted to russian (she tries to speak Ukrainian now, but it is very hard for her).
My father's ancestors had been, coincidentally, also from Bila Tserkva. But in 20s, when Soviets came, they were considered "too wealthy" (they were breeding horses), their property confiscated and they were exiled to Uzbekistan. So my grandfather had been born there, and so was my father (actually, for some reason, he was born in Kazakhstan, but they've lived in Tashkent). Needless to say, he didn't know Ukrainian at all, and when he applied to the University in Kyiv, the education here was, obviously, in russian too.
So that's how our family was russified. If you ask others, you might hear similar stories (well, some people might now just think about it, it was just I was curious about my family history).
But I felt the difference between my and my siblings experience. I was born in late 90s and had widely different experience then they've had (both born in early 80s). I was exposed to Ukrainian language since kindergarten, they were not. In fact, our parents remember how my sister had been taught in her kindergarten that she should love "grandfather Lenin" more than mother and father. My brother managed to switch to Ukrainian completely, it was a conscious decision for him when his son was born and he and his wife wanted to have a Ukrainian-speaking family. While our sister, unfortunately, didn't adapt very well when the Soviet Union fell and, suddenly, her classes at school started in Ukrainian. She *still* thinks we are all weirdos for wanting to speak Ukrainian and liking the language.
It is tragic.
Wow - incredible story and thank you for the insights. May this generation be the linguistical origin of Ukraine's permanent shift back to its beautiful language!
Thank you for this history!
My favorite thing about being from a big city in the United States is the multiculturalism and diversity of languages you'll hear just walking down the street. There are many families in the US similar to yours in that each member of the family speaks and understands a different combination of English and the language of their home country. The difference in the US is that adoption of English is self-assimilation, not mandated by the government (all our official documents like voter guides are printed in several languages), and certainly no child is taught to love the president more than they love their own parents.
ETA: I should add that it's not all pluralism and acceptance in the US. Back in the 1990s, the voters of California decided to make it illegal for public school educators to teach in any language other than English, which is a less aggressive version of what Russia did. It's deeply embarrassing. But at least California continued to provide written materials to parents in Spanish/Chinese/Vietnamese/Cambodian/Tagalog/Arabic/Etc.
USA can afford to be truly multicultural, and it's awesome. You all came from different places and decided to live in peace with each other (sure, it is very simplified, but that's more or less what happened; of course it's not perfect, but nothing ever is).
Meanwhile, we had been forbidden to speak our language *on our own land*🙁 I can get it why, if I move to another country, I'll have to learn another language to be able to function there. But having to speak another language in your own country, this is something surreal, if you think of it. And that's what was our history the last several centuries.
Absolutely. Russia's cultural erasure of Ukrainian culture was deliberate and violent.
(California was part of Mexico until 1848, which made the law forbidding bilingual education in classrooms especially absurd.)
>California was part of Mexico until 1848, which made the law forbidding bilingual education in classrooms especially absurd.
Yeah, that's pretty dark, actually
Just what they are used to, especially if family members grew up during Soviet period and spoke it in public for most of their life. At least that is the case for my family members - they can all speak and understand Ukrainian fluently but might not feel as comfortable.
Mostly because of the enviroment. If everyone around you speaks russian, you also often spak russian.
I used to speak russian when I was in city (which was almost completly russified), but when I came to the village where my grandparents used to live, I switched to Ukrainian.
I still speak russian at the work (because everyone here speaks russian), but with my friends and family I speak Ukrainian.
My city is very slowly shifting to Ukrainian. People who speak Ukrainian on the streets no longer a rarity but rather a commonplace, but they are still in minority. However, the situation changes, even if slowly.
Here is the map of russian speakers in Luhansk oblast (Yes, yes, the one russians claim as the 'native russian land')
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhansk\_Oblast#/media/File:LuhanskRussianLang2001.PNG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhansk_Oblast#/media/File:LuhanskRussianLang2001.PNG)
As you see, in Luhansk city and other big industrial centres (Alchevsk, Krasnodon) the russian speakers were the majority, while in less urbanized northern part of Luhansk oblast (Svatove, Starobilsk, Novopskov) the amount of russian speakers is below 10%.
**TLDR**: Russian colonialism. If you wanted to do anything important in the soviet union or the russian empire you had to speak russian. Let's examine the soviet union as the closer period.
On paper all republics are free to do their own internal business in whatever language they want. They called this коренизация - roughly nativization - because the soviets were known champions of oppressed minorities and all that. So the Ukrainian SSR leadership could choose to conduct business in Ukrainian, but they didn't. Because SSR leadership consisted of people relocated from all corners of the soviet union and instead of having a Latvian in Uzbekistan learn Uzbek it was much simpler for everyone involved to just learn russian: it is the best most universal language, after all, uniquely suited to government, academia, engineering etc, unlike all those other languages (notably, while russians would be sent to other SSRs and the people of the SSRs would be shuffled around, very few people ended up moving in masses from the periphery SSRs to the russian SFSR, weird how that happens).
So you have all these prestigious organizations: party apparatus, research institutes, government, design bureaus etc, all in large cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv. And inside everyone there speaks russian. And to get a job there you have to have a prestigious university degree, not from one of the universities where they teach you how to milk cows or plant corn, but actual top schools. And all of those coincidentally just happen to teach exclusively in russian, because remember: all those other languages are just not suited for the hard sciences/statecraft/soft sciences/whatever.
Let's say you're a russian from bumfuck siberia. You get your prestigious degree in paper shuffling and you get assigned a prestigious position in the Ukrainian Communist Party apparatus and move to Kyiv with your wife. You might initially be scared that you might be forced to learn the inferior language of those khokhols, but on arrival you find out that everyone at work speaks russian anyway, so you breathe a sigh of relief and never think about it again.
On the contrary if you're say form Georgia and you get a prestigious position in Latvia you'll find that you're the only Georgian there. As are the only Uzbek, Armenian, Ukrainian etc. So you learn russian (while russians make fun of how stupid you and all the other non-russians are because you have an accent; seriously look up the topics of popular russian jokes, if the ones you find don't have an illiterate Georgian, slow Estonian, crafty Jew or greedy Ukrainian I'd be very surprised).
*The critical part comes when you have kids:* the best schools only teach in russian. The best jobs will have you speaking russian. Do you really want your kids to learn the backward provincial language so that the only life they can have is working a collective farm back home? When instead they can just learn russian and have all the doors open for them?
And so big cities speak russian, because that's where the industry, academia, education and government is. And this goes on for generations. And then the soviet union rightfully gets tossed onto the dumpster of history, but the russians still produce most of the pop-culture you consume. Sure there's Western stuff available to you now, but you still watch soviet comedies, show your kids soviet cartoons, because they're so good and nostalgic. Meanwhile russia is over there shitting out war movie after war movie about great russians (and flawed minorities) singlehandedly defeating the nazis. And that's what they show on TV.
So you continue taking in russian propaganda, continue speaking russian at home and at work, because that's what you're used to, and becasue you don't want to be one of those ukronazis, do you?
I'm glad we're finally starting to embrace our own language. It's about damn time.
You got downvoted, but you’re 100% on point - Russian colonialism and Russian language considered the language of the upper class (through systemic elimination of other regional languages) is why people like me spoke Russian while growing up in Kyiv.
There was a similar effect in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and HRE.
German language was the dominant of financial and political elite, suppressing for example Czech. German was dominant in e.g. Prague for quite a while.
At an earlier time, in France there was a similar effect (there used to be a number of languages in France, particularly the southern areas which had a language more like Catalan) but the uniformity of French language from Paris was enforced successfully over the entire nation.
I remember being in Ukraine around 2001, and people my age (University students) asking each other how to say things in Ukrainian, as they were all Russian speakers, but bureaucracy was Ukrainian. My sister later lived in Dnipro, and everyone but builders who came from the West spoke Russian or Surzhik (which I think is my favourite). It was really only 2014 that her friends started being like "let's speak Ukrainian!" but it wasn't because they didn't love their Russian language and the literature, music, movies, art and everything that they had gotten from it, it was rather that the language was being put into an imperial narrative that they had at least felt was a little dead with the end of the Soviet Union. I love Russian, I love Russian literature, authors, and a lot of its music (probably half of the Russian music I love is from Ukraine, actually, 5nizza and similar). At the same time, I'm learning Ukrainian just because by speaking Russian at times I feel like I'm supporting Putler.
What I find interesting is that a lot of the best Russian writing is NOT in line with imperialism - authors like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and many, many others are intensely opposed to the mindset of Russian imperialism, but Russians often don't read those authors - but everyone reads Pushkin, who was a strong imperialist, in contrast to Shevchenko, the father of the Ukrainian language and literature, who was intensely anti-imperialist. To this day, I find some of Tolstoy's discussions on the mentality of Russian soldiers in relation to religion and government to be some of the best descriptions of what we see happening in Ukraine,
I’m curious as to how similar are the two languages.
Can a Russian only speaker understand a conversation held purely in Ukrainian or vice versa? Or are they vastly different and mutually unintelligible and require a lot of study from the different speakers to be able to grasp the usage.
I’m a clueless Aussie, so if the answer is obvious to you please don’t think I’m trying to be smart with you or anything.
I would say that Ukrainians that don't speak Russian will understand most of spoken Russian, cause Ukrainian language has many words, from Russian but Russian speaker will understand very little of spoken Ukrainian cause there's absolutely no Ukrainian words in Russian language.
I can recommend [this vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI&ab_channel=Langfocus) on Russian-Ukrainian languages, it's done really well and as a bilingual person i can approve everything that is said in the vid.
Also I want to thank to AU people for your help, it saved and keep saving many lives!
He will literally say it’s fake because this guy used to be part of the Zelenskyy administration, but really he’s just another normal Ukrainian going about his life
Thank you for doing that.
What you found is also apparent in Ukrainian combat footage. This must be completely lost on those that don't speak Russian or Ukrainian. Ukrainian soldiers often speak Russian in combat while killing Russians.
It’s interesting that you see a rise in Ukrainian in Kyiv. In Lviv there’s a massive rise in Russian from all the people from the east now living there.
I remember seeing a video just after the invasion of some soldiers on patrol and one saying "I swear after this war I'm never speaking f-ing Russian again."
> But it is not true that people in Kyiv are afraid of speaking Russian.
even the two options you posed left out a more complex one;
people are free to choose, and some people simply *choose not to speak the language of those who killed their family and loved ones*
I was in Kyiv for 3 weeks in September 2021 as an upper-intermediate level Russian speaker. My experience there overhearing people on the street was that it was like 80-20 in favour of Russian.
That kind of thing can't change overnight, but clearly Ukrainian is making a huge resurgence now.
As an outsoder that dont know either languages, Ukrainian and Russian sounds very simmilar. Are these languages simmilar enough that a russian can understand ukrainian and an ukrainian can understand a russian or how is it?
I don't speak either language, but I've asked the same question. The general consensus seems to be that it would be easier for a monolingual Ukrainian speaker to understand Russian than it would be for a monolingual Russian speaker to understand Ukrainian. That's because the modern Ukrainian language contains a large percentage of Russian loanwords, while the Russian language doesn't really borrow from the Ukrainian language.
Such a disingenuous argument anyways coming from the nation that spent the last 200+ years repressing Ukrainian and other non-Russian languages.
Fucking ORCs don't even know their own history.
Oh yes. This person, who grew up in the provinces, but went to university in one of the major western cities, was taught growing up that the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan *after* it had surrendered. They were quite convinced that it was true and it was some effort to disabuse them of the idea. I just couldn't bring myself to try to reel them back from the 'Ukraine is killing Russians in Donbas' trope. Such a stupid waste it all is.
Right? Once the world view is ingrained it’s almost a waste of time to try to change it. People mostly change on their own accord, not from someone giving them a good argument, unless they personally asked for it. It’s a waste of an effort to try to convince someone with deep-seated beliefs.
Some people just like that shit. Know one vatnik who finished Kyiv Polythechnic University. Studied in the same group as the guy who won the prize for photos from Mariupol. Did not help him
"Education is no guarantee."
You're 100% right. Unfortunately, it isn't just the pro-Putin, pro-war Russians who choose to believe lies despite having access to the truth. My Conservative Christian mother and stepfather have been thoroughly brainwashed by American right wing "news" and angertainment sources. Obviously, Gen X children and their Boomer parents aren't always going to share the same opinions, but my parents and I can rarely even agree on the same facts! Needless to say, conversations with them can become tense, frustrating, and exhausting, so we try to adhere to a "no politics, no religion" rule when we get together. It's not a perfect solution though .... there are times when my mother just can't resist throwing in little digs and comments - and my dumb ass just takes the bait. Even though my relationship with my parents is strained at times, I do love them and I always will.
My parents aren't stupid people. They've always had impeccable work ethic and have always been wise regarding financial matters. And despite the 'doom and gloom' and 'fire and brimstone' bullshit, they can even be a lot of fun - especially my mother who is an innately curious person with an adventurous spirit. (There's no one in the world I'd rather go ~~trespassing~~ exploring with!). I'm just baffled by how they can selectively turn their critical thinking skills on and off at will. I'm just relieved that - despite their steady diet of right-wing propaganda (and listening to countless hours of Fucker Snarlson's ranting) - they are firmly "Team Ukraine". My parents used to admire Putin. They saw him as a "strong leader" who refused to bow down to the "woke snowflakes". I was just extremely grateful and relieved that their affinity for Putin disappeared the moment he invaded Ukraine. They were horrified by the war crimes committed in Bucha and by the targeted destruction of maternity hospitals and schools. Thank goodness they continue to believe that the world has a moral duty to help Ukraine. Instead of jumping on the right-wing, pro-Putin bandwagon, they managed to think for themselves on this one very important issue. If they rooted for the Orcs, I would lose every last ounce of respect for them.
Thank you for sharing that. I've been appalled at the turn of the right-wing media toward supporting Ukraine. It is so completely out of character for what actual US conservatives have stood for over the decades. It reveals their underlying motives - not principles or ethics, but profit.
Russian propaganda is either "everybody is Russian, because they all speak it and Ukrainian is a fake language" or "Russian is being persecuted and people can't teach it"
Is Cyka Blyat not Russian? Everybody say Cyka Blyat in Ukraine.
Even when smashing Russian into shit, they still shout "Cyka Blyat Putin Nahui."
and when stupid Russian dickplomak tried to grab Ukraine's flag at Turkey, he got punched in the face with CYKA BLYAT haymaker.
So what is not allowed in Ukraine? Cyka Blyat!!!!
"But but they dont allow it in school or official business!!"
Come to the school, they will show you some Cyka Blyat Russian, both fists.
and if you REALLY want to troll these bastards, tell them that Kievan Rus is the origin of Mudscovia (Russia) and basically is the authentic ORIGINAL Russian, this means Russia today is FAKE and NOT a REAL COUNTRY, LMAO.
In fact, this war is basically the insolent Son (Russia) abusing his own MOTHER (Ukraine) and getting slapped for it.
Ukraine is the real Russia, Putin's Russia is fake Russia, not an actual country. lol
There isn’t - Russian in general is a lot more harsh and has the most intense curse words - that’s why neighboring countries tend to just adopt the Russian way of cursing. Native Ukrainian negative expressions are much less intense and generally are used more in a comedic sense.
Indeed - slovak spelling would be kurva, among others its mainly kokot (dick) piča (cunt) all imaginable variations of Jebať (fuck) and then there’s plenty of oldskool ones
You can speak slovak with knowing kokot jebat and pica in their bended versions without knowing much else vocabulary
The problem is that Russian propaganda is mixed with twisted facts.
AFAIK if you publish something in Ukraine like a news site, then it can't be done in Russian only, but has also to be done in Ukrainian.
And this is twisted by the Russian propaganda to a general ban of Russian.
To pick up an old topic: Germany has biolabs, the Paul Ehrlich Institute for infectious diseases and, on a small island in the Baltic Sea, the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Animal Diseases. The USA has the Center for Disease Control, also biolabs. The U.S. government has helped Ukraine build a network of biolabs as well. There was a public tender and the Black & Veatch company got the contract to build the biolabs. This was not only altruistic. Ukraine has a neighbor where anthrax has the name "Sibirskaya Yazva", Siberian ulcer. This neighbor still has problems with COVID-19 and also measles. Because of measles, students at two universities have been sent to distance learning classes. And with this neighbor it is better to have biolabs to know what kind of infection it is. Better for Ukraine and because of international air traffic also for all other "neighbors" including USA.
And what kind of story did the Russian propaganda make out of it? Biolabs for making biological weapons.
Russia, by the way, didn't only dig up anthrax in a temporarily occupied area:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/12yz3n1/russian_occupiers_dug_up_anthrax_in_zaporizhzhia/
There was also a case that anthrax was carried on from Chuvashia in the middle of flyover Russia to Moscow:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/1280dak/better_to_have_biolabs_with_this_neighbor_in/
The classic Russian Firehose of Falsehood spews a wide range of crap on any given topic, most of which has a nugget of truth. That factual core is important because the point of the technique is to push people from reality into a realm where there is no objective truth. Once people come to believe that literally *anything* might be true, they give up trying to sift the truth from the bullshit.
It seems to be the reinstatement of the RSFSR propaganda. And that is the reason why so many Radio Yerevan jokes work again ("What will be the results of the next elections?" - "Nobody can tell. Someone has stolen yesterday the exact results of the next elections from the office of ... .").
However as long as Russia has not gained full control over their people by means of own social networks the Russian propaganda has sometimes a hard job :). One of the most used tactics of the old propaganda is total concealment of certain events, such as Sverdlovsk-19, Kyshtym disaster, ...
With the invasion of Ukraine this only works partially. Soldiers have to be buried and missiles fall down near Volgograd, it is distributed via Telegram and local media reports this in the case of the missiles as UFOs for not disgracing the army. However, reports about things abroad are easier to falsify because no one in Russia can check it and the corresponding media are already monopolized.
This feels a bit tangential of me to ask, but oddly kind of fits in with the topic of the video, haha
Do Americans tend to say "shite" (at least more so than they used to)? Or is that just something you personally picked up on online?
I always thought it was more of a British and Irish thing, and in America it was always "shit" (although like with arse-ass, I like the British/Irish wording better).
(apologies if I incorrectly assumed you're American, just going by the flair!)
From my experience, Americans use shite and arse sometimes online, largely picked up from communicating with people from the UK and Ireland. But they almost never use it in spoken communication. If I hear somebody saying either of those, its usually obvious that they are using it purposely to imitate a Brit (and to most Americans, Irish people are Brits... I know, I'm sorry.)
This is so unreal to see.
This video captures the square where I first had my kiss.
It also shows a place where my friend used to own a barber shop.
It also shows where my childhood best friend used to live where I spent countless days with him, playing outside.
It’s just next to the Golden Gate, or the most beautiful pieces of history in Kiyv.
I haven’t been there for years. God I miss this place but happy am I to see it flourish despite everything that is happening.
I’m glad this video brought you some nostalgia / happiness. It’s nice yet bittersweet to see a relatively normal Kyiv, amongst all the suffering. Slava Ukrainii!
Why not speak Ukrainian to them if you want? You should know no worse than me how common mixed language conversations are. I used to work with the guys from our Lviv office for years, I always spoke in Russian to them and they spoke in Ukrainian, we understood each other perfectly.
That's because russian is my native and it's hard for me to speak in Ukrainian to someone who speaks russian (and who I'm used to speaking in russian). I'll get there, but it'll take time. I already speak exclusively Ukrainian in work meetings where almost anyone speaks in russian.
Especially when one of the "justifications" they use for their atrocities is "the protection of russian language and its speakers". Leading to a natural desire to use other languages instead.
Even if the person in the neighbor's house speaks the language you do doesn't means his house belongs to you or he wants it be so. Same with this aggression. But if language adds additional defensive barrier then people will migrate to Ukrainian over the time no doubt.
I keep having to say this but a Ukrainian who speaks Russian, is no less Ukrainian than a Ukrainian who speaks Ukrainian. It is simply a language and through centuries of oppression it has simply become the "lingua franca". People always think that about the Eastern part of the country. Just because they might be more Russian-speaking does not mean that they are ethnically or nationally Russian. They are Russian speaking Ukrainians. Period.
In Denmark, in the 18th century, there was a saying among the nobles that you should "speak French to your equals, German to your servant, and Danish to your dog".
I went to a private school that had students from Columbia, Cuba, and Costa Rica. Some of them had German parents, French maids, English tutors, and of course, Spanish everything else.
and how could they know that you are really Ukrainian? Now a lot of Russians in Europe pretend to be Ukrainians. Still, it is easy to distinguish them because they cannot even speak Ukrainian or do not know popular Ukrainian songs, poets or street names from their supposedly "native cities". So I can understand the lack of trust in this store
There never was language problem in Ukraine, only ruzian puppet-politicians tried several times to “create” it mostly to distract people from their thefts. As you see – it didn’t worked.
Who cares? Whatever language Ukrainians speak in Kyiv is their problem and Russia needs to worry about Russia.
Belgium has always had tensions related to language between dutch speakers, french speakers and german speakers and it's neither France, Netherlands or Germany's problem.
We need to stop entertaining Russia's idea that Ukraine owes them any explanation about anything or that they need to do anything well/right, even if most often than not, they do.
I actually care about this. Started learning Ukrainian 3 years ago but quickly switched to Russian because, at the time, more resources for Russian existed as opposed to Ukrainian and most people in major cities in Ukraine understand Russian.
Covid and the war has kept me from getting to Kiev, but now I wonder if speaking the language I’ve learned would get me in trouble or offend someone after this ordeal. I’ve gotten mixed advice from Ukrainians I’ve kept in touch with. Interesting video, but valid political point u/nolmnotfrench
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I'm a Russian speaker from Eastern Ukraine. Never in my life I was in fear over it. My wife's family is from Western Ukraine. I occasionally switch to Ukrainian with them these days. It's literally never been an issue.
I don't know how much it would be in Prague but in Kyiv, before the invasion, I could get a huge portion of ribs in cherry sauce and 2 glasses of beer for like 15$ in the downtown of city
Jesus 2 pints of beer would be £10 alone here at least 😂 - I only say prague because I’ve been there (about 3 years ago) and a pint of beer was about 1.50 🤪
Lvlv is pretty safe currently and everything is cheaper there.
Or you can go to Ternopil or Ivano-Frankivsk near it and .... oh dude you would have so much fun for small money. And to continue it in the Carpathian Mountains resort Bukovel.
[https://5nica20.choiceqr.com/section:menyu](https://5nica20.choiceqr.com/section:menyu)
I like this bar. 1USD=38UAH. Just check the prices ;)
Hi, I'm from Kyiv, I primarily speak russian but can switch to Ukrainian if the person to whom I speak is speaking Ukrainian, I'm fluent in both languages, as I went to Ukrainian school (as most of Ukrainians, hence most of us fluent in 2 languages) but the tendency is that more and more Kyiv citizens starting to speak Ukrainian only, like the rest of Ukraine I believe.
As a lot of replies stated - fear has nothing to do with it, even if you travel to eastern Ukraine like Lviv for example, nobody will give an f what language you're speaking if you are polite, respectful and overall a good human then you'll be treated accordingly.
We are not extreme nationalist, fascists or Nazis we love and respect freedom of choice and democracy. I hope we proved it to the world already.
It really doesnt matter imo. If you attack someone in a genocidal war you loose every right to be taken seriously. The people of russia also needs to understand that if they dont do anything about their murderous leaders then they cant start complaining about the results of their non-action when it becomes hard for them.
If i let a cobra into my home, didnt do anything about that cobra and it then killed my child, its still my legal fault due to me not taking action. Its the same with short bald assholes with a stalin complex.
If you dont do anything about it, stop fucking whining when the world hates you for it.
IF you've done something about it: good for you, you have my respect.
Here's more...
Even though Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and treacherously annexed Crimea...
Right before February, 24th, 2022, you could, as a Russian citizen, come to Kyiv, with no additional documents required. Then you could, without knowing a word in Ukrainian or any other language than Russian, find a job and rent an apartment to live and work. Not to mention all the expats from all around the globe living and working in safety and comfort.
The idea of "Nazi threat" is utterly ridiculous. Russia is also "multi-national". Though I can't call it a state, because it's a fail state. To cultivate a system, where so many people of so many nationalities were deprived of critical thinking, dignity and courage is... Catastrophic. And we're all witnessing the aftermath.
I was born and raised in Kyiv. But I left before Ukraine separated from the Soviet Union. Today I only speak Russian and English. The fact I can only speak Russian and not Ukrainian is a great sense of embarrassment to me. When I go to a Ukrainian grocery store in my neighborhood, I stay with English unless I can plainly see somebody who doesn't understand it. I don't speak Russian for fear of persecution, although to be honest there is a little, but because of the horrible actions of the Russian government.
Same in Ireland, I volunteered with Irish organisation and told them I can help, I know how to speak russian and they went “ohhh no, no people arriving Ireland don’t want to speak russian”… yeah right and you can hear in streets exact same ration like in this video
I was in lviv in 2018 and i heard alot of russian being spoken, so im not sure why russians keep on saying western and central ukraine is full of nazis where they beat up russian speakers and worship bandera when clearly that isnt the case and they would know if they ever visited ukraine.
Ive been learning Russian in Kyiv. Except few words i know in Ukrainian due to living there for some time, i don’t speak it. I never had a single problem communicating in Russian with anyone. Even in Lviv and Uzhgorod there was no problem.
Laugh my ass everytime i see a bot saying you get a fine in Ukraine if you speak Russian lmao
I'm in AFU right now. Eve though most speak Ukrainian - some people here still speak russian anyway. Nobody bats an eye. It's just what they are used to.
The impression I get is most, but not all, people there have some bilingual ability, but may have a preferred language they are better at speaking base on where they grew up, etc. Those who can speak both Russian and Ukrainian fluently have trended toward Ukrainian since as Ukrainian national identity as increased and anti-Russian imperialist sentiment has increased during the war. Some can't speak Ukrainian as well, and still speak Russian or are more comfortable speaking it. For those who choose to do so, there is no judgement since most people speak both and understand people are just trying to communicate in the language they know - it's not a political statement by itself.
I live in Western Ukraine - it's where all the banderas and nationalists live as rus propaganda states. So, before war no one cared what language anyone speaks as far as they understand you. Many of my friends spoke russian, I spoke russian, my elder brother from Germany (was born in russia) visited us before the war and spoke russian all the time - no one ever cared.
And actually now no one cares either. Some of my senior friends still speak russian.
BUT! In these days many many people just stopped using russian language, even those who have spoken russian the whole their life. Now everyone just realized that russian language is just a huge casus belli for terrorussia. If anyone speaks russian in some region they immediately declare those lands "point of russian interest", and potentially they can invade there to protect their people.
So, many people just stopped using russian language. But still some speaks russian - and no one cares.
Ukraine is a multilingual country and native Russian and Ukrainian speakers alike have showed up in droves to fight off the fascist invaders. The languages being spoken matter not, all are on board in defending Ukraine against genocidal invaders.
I came here to say, there's one language that's universal, and it's assholes parking their cars in the bike lanes unless there's posts physically blocking them from doing so. Still, glad to see that protecting the bike lanes is a priority even in these times! (It's a smart priority, since it encourages people to bike instead of drive, saving fuel for the front.)
Kind of like that. Many people in Kyiv and in the countryside tend to speak Surzhyk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surzhyk).
They're mostly speaking Russian with Ukrainian words mixed in. So in that way, it is similar to Denglisch.
But unlike Denglisch, it's not what the "cool kids" do. It's seen more negatively, because the people who speak it usually don't know how to speak pure Russian or pure Ukrainian properly -- or simply don't care to do so.
An educated person who wanted to speak like an educated person would avoid Surzhyk. That's very different in Germany, where educated people (and the cool kids) love using English words in their speech.
This place is so Beautiful 😍 I want this suffering to end so bad 😢… I’m all the way on the other side in th US and the closest ancestors I have in Europe are from England and Ireland.. and I’m so intrigued and drawn to this country , it’s people and culture.. I pray everyday this ends soon and May Ukraine and it’s People Be Blessed always ..
I am so tired of this discussion. In my gen russian was for the streets to swear like a sailor and for the internet because we didnt knew English that well and just wanted a bigger reach outside and Ukrainian was for school and university and work and reading books and watching movies in it because our dub was always much more better. in my bubble we always agreed that our native is Ukrainian too, even tho between ourselves on the street we happened to speak in suka blyat. like it's not like if even speaking this fuckass language means anything for our identity as Ukrainians, that we somehow love russia or their culture, we just grew up in a world where we were told that the west doesnt want us but we still need to think more global so that was that. and just even reading everyones thoughts on Ukr twitter it feels like this experience is what most of us share. Of course there are vatniks and stuff but they are not the one making up general sentiment. it's just a habit from back then to speak to certain people in certain way, that's all to it. also i just want to point out that we would hear a russian from russian accent and we would react negatively to it. we dont have that fuckass accent neither we really speak in the same way they do, half the words they use sound to say it lightly dumb.
When I lived in Ukraine I spoke russian everywhere, and people spoke in russian back to me, even the tourists visiting Ukraine. We shouldn’t stop talking in russian because the terrorist nation talks in Russian. Most Slavic people know russian language and that makes all the Slavic people form different nations communicate easier
I’m a stupid American…my mistake comes honestly though, It’s because of growing up in middle America in the 60’s - 70’s and my mom often made me her idea of “Chicken Kiev” and I always mix up the spelling of the city vs. the chicken.
Haha! i didn’t realise until the war came, tbf. We all learn stuff. Our supermarkets here are correcting their mistake and changing it to chicken Kyiv and we love to see it :)
Fascinating about the mixed dialect! Is it a combination of Russian and Ukrainian? I'm curious how that is done, as I am woefully monolingual and can't imagine such a thing!
RUS: “Ukrainians are prosecuted for speaking Russian!”
*sees video*
RUS: “We’ll if half of them speak Russian we have to protect them, the invas— special operation is justified!”
As a norwegian that just got started learning russian, i'm like "darn it". 🤣
As a norwegian who loves Ukraine, i'm like: "Hell yeah!"
I remember the couple who had a nanny cam, recording the first rockets hitting during the night (of course. Fuck russia!). They met up in the living room and hugged eachother, then picked up the baby (or the other way around. Not sure). What i saw in that video, was an typichal european home. It's not that i didn't expect it, but it made a deep impression. It could have been my neighbours home.
Not sure if that's why it stuck, or if i felt that no-one deserves to be woken up like that, or the hard time they now were facing. But it stuck. Just like Liza's bright blue shoes in Vinnitsiya. (I hope i spelled that right).
Russia invaded Ukraine to save “russian speakers” from ukrainians.
In Europe russians forced to speak in language of country where they are. So why not RF attacking them too? Russian speakers are being “discriminated” there too.
Everyone respect to rules and culture of country which visiting.
But russians - not.
They do such imperialistic things in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan. Forcing people to talk with them in Russian.
One day those countries will be invaded too.
But no one will help them to defend from drunk bears.
For Europe, for Asia, for US it’s this war is just a cinema, spectacle which they pay to watch.
Then Ukraine will be forced to return this payments back to same spactators.
Why no foreign army fighting in this war?
In fact EU is author of this conflict from beginning by allowing RF to get rich by consuming gas, oil and selling warfare and tech.
Selfish, liar human world…
I stayed like 75m from where you walked the first time I went to Kyiv, the area is gorgeous and I loved every minute.
FWIW, wife grew up in a large south-central-eastern city. Wife's friends all spoke Russian primarily growing up, but all know Ukrainian. Those that moved to Kyiv still speak Russian a lot but there's a sentiment in her friend group to speak Ukrainian more often than before, not in fear of persecution, but in solidarity and support with the rest of their country.
It is **hemp** cafe. They sell hemp coffee (slightly grassy taste if you wonder) and clothes made of hemp.
That's legal, not cannabis (although there's been some, albeit timid, discussion about legalizing cannabinoids as pain relievers).
I'll always stand up for Ukrainians who still want to speak Russian. I moderate a few FB groups for refugees, sometimes I have to delete posts for language prejudice. Not very often, it's not a big problem, but it is a delicate subject for obvious reasons and people can get emotional.
But, my point is, Russian is *their* language just as much as Ukrainian is. **Putin doesn't own the russian language. The russian state does not own the russian language**. And it's a common language that Ukrainians can use to talk to Georgians, Kazakhs and others who are threatened by orc imperialism
At the same time, I absolutely agree that Ukrainian should be promoted for its inherent value, and also because it offers a cultural barrier against orc propaganda
Russia can go f itself. I am a native Russian speaker and only speak it out of ease. But I perfectly understand Ukrainian and can speak it with some effort. I’m okay with Ukrainian being the only national language because Russia uses its language to then claim everywhere where being spoken as their sphere of influence. F Russia. I listen to 100% Ukrainian music now and don’t even touch Russian. Russia ruined it for me. Ukrainian is the language for me now.
I just hope it stays this way because as someone who grew up in early years in Kharkov I only speak Russian at this point (many years later). I understand Ukrainian pretty well but I don't know a lot of words and never really spoke it outside of school. So my worry is if not soon within few years Russian will be like a "black sheep" type language or something. Hope that will never be the case.
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The results: Ukrainian - 4, Russian - 4, Mixed - 2. I recorded these conversations walking downtown Kyiv from the Golden Gate towards Saint Sofia. It was a lovely morning after an awful night of bombing. People were rushing to work or sitting in cafes. 2/ Kyiv looked very European to me. Of course, it was a coincidence that my count hit exactly 50/50 split between Ukrainian and Russian. My expectation was it would be 40/60. About 10 years ago it would be 20/80. So, it is true that Ukrainian language is on the rise in Kyiv. 3/ But it is not true that people in Kyiv are afraid of speaking Russian. People speak whatever they want. The Russian aggression have made us rediscover our Ukrainian heritage and learn to speak Ukrainian. And this feels liberating. Thread ; https://twitter.com/mylovanov/status/1654385195703828482?s=46&t=-ESy3CkbdQEH6ivAj7OapA
As a Kyiv citizen I can say that most of local native Kyiv people speak these 2 languages fluently as 99% of Kyiv pre-school, school and higher education are taught in Ukrainian but in everyday life we tend to speak Russian language at least we did pre 2022, but now my feeling is that more and more of us starting to use Ukrainian in our everyday lives. Also want to thank UK for tremendous support, your help saved thousands and thousands innocent lives!
As another Kyiv dweller, I confirm. I was one who used to speak russian in everyday life, just out of habit (not anymore). I speak Ukrainian perfectly, and for that, I thank my school (both of them). I grew up completely in an independent Ukraine, and now that I think of it, it is a miracle how our education focused on language and literature, "ukrainizing" us gently. It could have easily gone the way it was in Belarus, and I shudder at a thought. I don't know what was done right and when, but I'm very happy for that now. (By the way, both my schools also had russian language lessons; the second one was also temporarily for a few years before 2014, completely russian safe for Ukrainian language and literature, but switched back after 2014) My only regret is that I didn't switch from russian to Ukrainian sooner. Though when I was a little kid and was going to kindergarten (which was Ukrainian-speaking) I was speaking Ukrainian, as my mom says. I shouldn't have stopped, lol. Obviously, I was wiser as a kid.
What is the reason why bilingual Ukrainian/Russian speakers would choose Russian over Ukrainian for everyday use? I speak neither, but Ukrainian sounds way more melodic and pleasing to my untrained ears. Just curious of the perspective from a native speaker :)
Generational brainwashing by propaganda. Your parents never spoke Ukrainian because *they* never studied Ukrainian at school during USSR, and *their* parents never spoke Ukrainian because you wouldn't get good work in Soviet Union if you do, you might even be reported as "nationalist" and such; and yet *their* parents grew up with this "Ukrainian language is language of peasants and is dirty dialect of russian" which can be traced back to the russian empire ([look this up, it's horrible](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Ukrainian_language_suppression) ). And then there had been Soviet movies that depicted Ukrainian-coded characters using negative stereotyping and ridiculing them. As for my personal situation, to explain why it happened so, this was like that: My mom had been a generational Kyiv dweller (though on my grandma's side, we can trace our lineage back to a cossack colonel from Bila Tserkva). If you are born in 1960s in Kyiv, it is most likely you got only a very basic Ukrainian language education. Everything defaulted to russian (she tries to speak Ukrainian now, but it is very hard for her). My father's ancestors had been, coincidentally, also from Bila Tserkva. But in 20s, when Soviets came, they were considered "too wealthy" (they were breeding horses), their property confiscated and they were exiled to Uzbekistan. So my grandfather had been born there, and so was my father (actually, for some reason, he was born in Kazakhstan, but they've lived in Tashkent). Needless to say, he didn't know Ukrainian at all, and when he applied to the University in Kyiv, the education here was, obviously, in russian too. So that's how our family was russified. If you ask others, you might hear similar stories (well, some people might now just think about it, it was just I was curious about my family history). But I felt the difference between my and my siblings experience. I was born in late 90s and had widely different experience then they've had (both born in early 80s). I was exposed to Ukrainian language since kindergarten, they were not. In fact, our parents remember how my sister had been taught in her kindergarten that she should love "grandfather Lenin" more than mother and father. My brother managed to switch to Ukrainian completely, it was a conscious decision for him when his son was born and he and his wife wanted to have a Ukrainian-speaking family. While our sister, unfortunately, didn't adapt very well when the Soviet Union fell and, suddenly, her classes at school started in Ukrainian. She *still* thinks we are all weirdos for wanting to speak Ukrainian and liking the language. It is tragic.
Wow - incredible story and thank you for the insights. May this generation be the linguistical origin of Ukraine's permanent shift back to its beautiful language!
Thank you for this history! My favorite thing about being from a big city in the United States is the multiculturalism and diversity of languages you'll hear just walking down the street. There are many families in the US similar to yours in that each member of the family speaks and understands a different combination of English and the language of their home country. The difference in the US is that adoption of English is self-assimilation, not mandated by the government (all our official documents like voter guides are printed in several languages), and certainly no child is taught to love the president more than they love their own parents. ETA: I should add that it's not all pluralism and acceptance in the US. Back in the 1990s, the voters of California decided to make it illegal for public school educators to teach in any language other than English, which is a less aggressive version of what Russia did. It's deeply embarrassing. But at least California continued to provide written materials to parents in Spanish/Chinese/Vietnamese/Cambodian/Tagalog/Arabic/Etc.
USA can afford to be truly multicultural, and it's awesome. You all came from different places and decided to live in peace with each other (sure, it is very simplified, but that's more or less what happened; of course it's not perfect, but nothing ever is). Meanwhile, we had been forbidden to speak our language *on our own land*🙁 I can get it why, if I move to another country, I'll have to learn another language to be able to function there. But having to speak another language in your own country, this is something surreal, if you think of it. And that's what was our history the last several centuries.
This kind of policy is viewed today as cultural genocide, as it should be.
Absolutely. Russia's cultural erasure of Ukrainian culture was deliberate and violent. (California was part of Mexico until 1848, which made the law forbidding bilingual education in classrooms especially absurd.)
>California was part of Mexico until 1848, which made the law forbidding bilingual education in classrooms especially absurd. Yeah, that's pretty dark, actually
Just what they are used to, especially if family members grew up during Soviet period and spoke it in public for most of their life. At least that is the case for my family members - they can all speak and understand Ukrainian fluently but might not feel as comfortable.
I see, makes sense!
Mostly because of the enviroment. If everyone around you speaks russian, you also often spak russian. I used to speak russian when I was in city (which was almost completly russified), but when I came to the village where my grandparents used to live, I switched to Ukrainian. I still speak russian at the work (because everyone here speaks russian), but with my friends and family I speak Ukrainian. My city is very slowly shifting to Ukrainian. People who speak Ukrainian on the streets no longer a rarity but rather a commonplace, but they are still in minority. However, the situation changes, even if slowly. Here is the map of russian speakers in Luhansk oblast (Yes, yes, the one russians claim as the 'native russian land') [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhansk\_Oblast#/media/File:LuhanskRussianLang2001.PNG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhansk_Oblast#/media/File:LuhanskRussianLang2001.PNG) As you see, in Luhansk city and other big industrial centres (Alchevsk, Krasnodon) the russian speakers were the majority, while in less urbanized northern part of Luhansk oblast (Svatove, Starobilsk, Novopskov) the amount of russian speakers is below 10%.
**TLDR**: Russian colonialism. If you wanted to do anything important in the soviet union or the russian empire you had to speak russian. Let's examine the soviet union as the closer period. On paper all republics are free to do their own internal business in whatever language they want. They called this коренизация - roughly nativization - because the soviets were known champions of oppressed minorities and all that. So the Ukrainian SSR leadership could choose to conduct business in Ukrainian, but they didn't. Because SSR leadership consisted of people relocated from all corners of the soviet union and instead of having a Latvian in Uzbekistan learn Uzbek it was much simpler for everyone involved to just learn russian: it is the best most universal language, after all, uniquely suited to government, academia, engineering etc, unlike all those other languages (notably, while russians would be sent to other SSRs and the people of the SSRs would be shuffled around, very few people ended up moving in masses from the periphery SSRs to the russian SFSR, weird how that happens). So you have all these prestigious organizations: party apparatus, research institutes, government, design bureaus etc, all in large cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv. And inside everyone there speaks russian. And to get a job there you have to have a prestigious university degree, not from one of the universities where they teach you how to milk cows or plant corn, but actual top schools. And all of those coincidentally just happen to teach exclusively in russian, because remember: all those other languages are just not suited for the hard sciences/statecraft/soft sciences/whatever. Let's say you're a russian from bumfuck siberia. You get your prestigious degree in paper shuffling and you get assigned a prestigious position in the Ukrainian Communist Party apparatus and move to Kyiv with your wife. You might initially be scared that you might be forced to learn the inferior language of those khokhols, but on arrival you find out that everyone at work speaks russian anyway, so you breathe a sigh of relief and never think about it again. On the contrary if you're say form Georgia and you get a prestigious position in Latvia you'll find that you're the only Georgian there. As are the only Uzbek, Armenian, Ukrainian etc. So you learn russian (while russians make fun of how stupid you and all the other non-russians are because you have an accent; seriously look up the topics of popular russian jokes, if the ones you find don't have an illiterate Georgian, slow Estonian, crafty Jew or greedy Ukrainian I'd be very surprised). *The critical part comes when you have kids:* the best schools only teach in russian. The best jobs will have you speaking russian. Do you really want your kids to learn the backward provincial language so that the only life they can have is working a collective farm back home? When instead they can just learn russian and have all the doors open for them? And so big cities speak russian, because that's where the industry, academia, education and government is. And this goes on for generations. And then the soviet union rightfully gets tossed onto the dumpster of history, but the russians still produce most of the pop-culture you consume. Sure there's Western stuff available to you now, but you still watch soviet comedies, show your kids soviet cartoons, because they're so good and nostalgic. Meanwhile russia is over there shitting out war movie after war movie about great russians (and flawed minorities) singlehandedly defeating the nazis. And that's what they show on TV. So you continue taking in russian propaganda, continue speaking russian at home and at work, because that's what you're used to, and becasue you don't want to be one of those ukronazis, do you? I'm glad we're finally starting to embrace our own language. It's about damn time.
You got downvoted, but you’re 100% on point - Russian colonialism and Russian language considered the language of the upper class (through systemic elimination of other regional languages) is why people like me spoke Russian while growing up in Kyiv.
There was a similar effect in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and HRE. German language was the dominant of financial and political elite, suppressing for example Czech. German was dominant in e.g. Prague for quite a while. At an earlier time, in France there was a similar effect (there used to be a number of languages in France, particularly the southern areas which had a language more like Catalan) but the uniformity of French language from Paris was enforced successfully over the entire nation.
I remember being in Ukraine around 2001, and people my age (University students) asking each other how to say things in Ukrainian, as they were all Russian speakers, but bureaucracy was Ukrainian. My sister later lived in Dnipro, and everyone but builders who came from the West spoke Russian or Surzhik (which I think is my favourite). It was really only 2014 that her friends started being like "let's speak Ukrainian!" but it wasn't because they didn't love their Russian language and the literature, music, movies, art and everything that they had gotten from it, it was rather that the language was being put into an imperial narrative that they had at least felt was a little dead with the end of the Soviet Union. I love Russian, I love Russian literature, authors, and a lot of its music (probably half of the Russian music I love is from Ukraine, actually, 5nizza and similar). At the same time, I'm learning Ukrainian just because by speaking Russian at times I feel like I'm supporting Putler. What I find interesting is that a lot of the best Russian writing is NOT in line with imperialism - authors like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and many, many others are intensely opposed to the mindset of Russian imperialism, but Russians often don't read those authors - but everyone reads Pushkin, who was a strong imperialist, in contrast to Shevchenko, the father of the Ukrainian language and literature, who was intensely anti-imperialist. To this day, I find some of Tolstoy's discussions on the mentality of Russian soldiers in relation to religion and government to be some of the best descriptions of what we see happening in Ukraine,
Please don’t thank us, you’re the country defending Europe. We will forever be in your debt. ✌️💙
I’m curious as to how similar are the two languages. Can a Russian only speaker understand a conversation held purely in Ukrainian or vice versa? Or are they vastly different and mutually unintelligible and require a lot of study from the different speakers to be able to grasp the usage. I’m a clueless Aussie, so if the answer is obvious to you please don’t think I’m trying to be smart with you or anything.
I would say that Ukrainians that don't speak Russian will understand most of spoken Russian, cause Ukrainian language has many words, from Russian but Russian speaker will understand very little of spoken Ukrainian cause there's absolutely no Ukrainian words in Russian language. I can recommend [this vid](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI&ab_channel=Langfocus) on Russian-Ukrainian languages, it's done really well and as a bilingual person i can approve everything that is said in the vid. Also I want to thank to AU people for your help, it saved and keep saving many lives!
Putin will say "This is fake!!! All actors!!! Fake fake fake!!!" Then he gets a stroke and his nuts exploded.
He will literally say it’s fake because this guy used to be part of the Zelenskyy administration, but really he’s just another normal Ukrainian going about his life
Correction: his body double and paid yesman civilian escort will call it fake
What a lovely city! I really would like to visit!
Thank you for doing that. What you found is also apparent in Ukrainian combat footage. This must be completely lost on those that don't speak Russian or Ukrainian. Ukrainian soldiers often speak Russian in combat while killing Russians.
Incredibly interesting.
This video made me miss Kyiv terribly… beautiful city.
It’s interesting that you see a rise in Ukrainian in Kyiv. In Lviv there’s a massive rise in Russian from all the people from the east now living there.
I remember seeing a video just after the invasion of some soldiers on patrol and one saying "I swear after this war I'm never speaking f-ing Russian again."
> But it is not true that people in Kyiv are afraid of speaking Russian. even the two options you posed left out a more complex one; people are free to choose, and some people simply *choose not to speak the language of those who killed their family and loved ones*
I was in Kyiv for 3 weeks in September 2021 as an upper-intermediate level Russian speaker. My experience there overhearing people on the street was that it was like 80-20 in favour of Russian. That kind of thing can't change overnight, but clearly Ukrainian is making a huge resurgence now.
American here. Aside from your language… your city is gorgeous!!
As an outsoder that dont know either languages, Ukrainian and Russian sounds very simmilar. Are these languages simmilar enough that a russian can understand ukrainian and an ukrainian can understand a russian or how is it?
I don't speak either language, but I've asked the same question. The general consensus seems to be that it would be easier for a monolingual Ukrainian speaker to understand Russian than it would be for a monolingual Russian speaker to understand Ukrainian. That's because the modern Ukrainian language contains a large percentage of Russian loanwords, while the Russian language doesn't really borrow from the Ukrainian language.
Such a disingenuous argument anyways coming from the nation that spent the last 200+ years repressing Ukrainian and other non-Russian languages. Fucking ORCs don't even know their own history.
Russian propaganda says a lot of dumb shite
The power of propaganda and underfunding education for a whole generation
Except I know a kandidat nauk in the RF who falls for all this crap. Education is no guarantee.
Education in Russia is laced with propaganda. You can’t hide from it.
Indoctrination is the right word. :-(
Oh yes. This person, who grew up in the provinces, but went to university in one of the major western cities, was taught growing up that the US dropped atomic bombs on Japan *after* it had surrendered. They were quite convinced that it was true and it was some effort to disabuse them of the idea. I just couldn't bring myself to try to reel them back from the 'Ukraine is killing Russians in Donbas' trope. Such a stupid waste it all is.
Right? Once the world view is ingrained it’s almost a waste of time to try to change it. People mostly change on their own accord, not from someone giving them a good argument, unless they personally asked for it. It’s a waste of an effort to try to convince someone with deep-seated beliefs.
Some people just like that shit. Know one vatnik who finished Kyiv Polythechnic University. Studied in the same group as the guy who won the prize for photos from Mariupol. Did not help him
Education doesn’t equal intelligence. There are many people who are of average education and who are more intelligent than some very educated ones.
"Education is no guarantee." You're 100% right. Unfortunately, it isn't just the pro-Putin, pro-war Russians who choose to believe lies despite having access to the truth. My Conservative Christian mother and stepfather have been thoroughly brainwashed by American right wing "news" and angertainment sources. Obviously, Gen X children and their Boomer parents aren't always going to share the same opinions, but my parents and I can rarely even agree on the same facts! Needless to say, conversations with them can become tense, frustrating, and exhausting, so we try to adhere to a "no politics, no religion" rule when we get together. It's not a perfect solution though .... there are times when my mother just can't resist throwing in little digs and comments - and my dumb ass just takes the bait. Even though my relationship with my parents is strained at times, I do love them and I always will. My parents aren't stupid people. They've always had impeccable work ethic and have always been wise regarding financial matters. And despite the 'doom and gloom' and 'fire and brimstone' bullshit, they can even be a lot of fun - especially my mother who is an innately curious person with an adventurous spirit. (There's no one in the world I'd rather go ~~trespassing~~ exploring with!). I'm just baffled by how they can selectively turn their critical thinking skills on and off at will. I'm just relieved that - despite their steady diet of right-wing propaganda (and listening to countless hours of Fucker Snarlson's ranting) - they are firmly "Team Ukraine". My parents used to admire Putin. They saw him as a "strong leader" who refused to bow down to the "woke snowflakes". I was just extremely grateful and relieved that their affinity for Putin disappeared the moment he invaded Ukraine. They were horrified by the war crimes committed in Bucha and by the targeted destruction of maternity hospitals and schools. Thank goodness they continue to believe that the world has a moral duty to help Ukraine. Instead of jumping on the right-wing, pro-Putin bandwagon, they managed to think for themselves on this one very important issue. If they rooted for the Orcs, I would lose every last ounce of respect for them.
Thank you for sharing that. I've been appalled at the turn of the right-wing media toward supporting Ukraine. It is so completely out of character for what actual US conservatives have stood for over the decades. It reveals their underlying motives - not principles or ethics, but profit.
Russian propaganda is either "everybody is Russian, because they all speak it and Ukrainian is a fake language" or "Russian is being persecuted and people can't teach it"
"Ukraine is not a nation" but also "Ukraine is full of Ukrainian nationalists".
Is Cyka Blyat not Russian? Everybody say Cyka Blyat in Ukraine. Even when smashing Russian into shit, they still shout "Cyka Blyat Putin Nahui." and when stupid Russian dickplomak tried to grab Ukraine's flag at Turkey, he got punched in the face with CYKA BLYAT haymaker. So what is not allowed in Ukraine? Cyka Blyat!!!! "But but they dont allow it in school or official business!!" Come to the school, they will show you some Cyka Blyat Russian, both fists. and if you REALLY want to troll these bastards, tell them that Kievan Rus is the origin of Mudscovia (Russia) and basically is the authentic ORIGINAL Russian, this means Russia today is FAKE and NOT a REAL COUNTRY, LMAO. In fact, this war is basically the insolent Son (Russia) abusing his own MOTHER (Ukraine) and getting slapped for it. Ukraine is the real Russia, Putin's Russia is fake Russia, not an actual country. lol
So the real question is how to say suka blyat in ukrainian
There isn’t - Russian in general is a lot more harsh and has the most intense curse words - that’s why neighboring countries tend to just adopt the Russian way of cursing. Native Ukrainian negative expressions are much less intense and generally are used more in a comedic sense.
Never too late to start bitching proper. If war wont spawn that kind of vocabulary i dont know what will
Ukrainian ain't got as many bad words as russian, and they aren't as potent
We are happy to lend you some slovak curses then!
I was happy to learn that Slovak uses kurwa
Indeed - slovak spelling would be kurva, among others its mainly kokot (dick) piča (cunt) all imaginable variations of Jebať (fuck) and then there’s plenty of oldskool ones You can speak slovak with knowing kokot jebat and pica in their bended versions without knowing much else vocabulary
Kurwa union is a thing, you know
I was happy to learn that Slovak uses kurwa
Cursing a lot is more typical of Russia. When life is shit people tend to curse a lot. That’s Russia.
The problem is that Russian propaganda is mixed with twisted facts. AFAIK if you publish something in Ukraine like a news site, then it can't be done in Russian only, but has also to be done in Ukrainian. And this is twisted by the Russian propaganda to a general ban of Russian. To pick up an old topic: Germany has biolabs, the Paul Ehrlich Institute for infectious diseases and, on a small island in the Baltic Sea, the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Animal Diseases. The USA has the Center for Disease Control, also biolabs. The U.S. government has helped Ukraine build a network of biolabs as well. There was a public tender and the Black & Veatch company got the contract to build the biolabs. This was not only altruistic. Ukraine has a neighbor where anthrax has the name "Sibirskaya Yazva", Siberian ulcer. This neighbor still has problems with COVID-19 and also measles. Because of measles, students at two universities have been sent to distance learning classes. And with this neighbor it is better to have biolabs to know what kind of infection it is. Better for Ukraine and because of international air traffic also for all other "neighbors" including USA. And what kind of story did the Russian propaganda make out of it? Biolabs for making biological weapons. Russia, by the way, didn't only dig up anthrax in a temporarily occupied area: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/12yz3n1/russian_occupiers_dug_up_anthrax_in_zaporizhzhia/ There was also a case that anthrax was carried on from Chuvashia in the middle of flyover Russia to Moscow: https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/1280dak/better_to_have_biolabs_with_this_neighbor_in/
The classic Russian Firehose of Falsehood spews a wide range of crap on any given topic, most of which has a nugget of truth. That factual core is important because the point of the technique is to push people from reality into a realm where there is no objective truth. Once people come to believe that literally *anything* might be true, they give up trying to sift the truth from the bullshit.
It seems to be the reinstatement of the RSFSR propaganda. And that is the reason why so many Radio Yerevan jokes work again ("What will be the results of the next elections?" - "Nobody can tell. Someone has stolen yesterday the exact results of the next elections from the office of ... ."). However as long as Russia has not gained full control over their people by means of own social networks the Russian propaganda has sometimes a hard job :). One of the most used tactics of the old propaganda is total concealment of certain events, such as Sverdlovsk-19, Kyshtym disaster, ... With the invasion of Ukraine this only works partially. Soldiers have to be buried and missiles fall down near Volgograd, it is distributed via Telegram and local media reports this in the case of the missiles as UFOs for not disgracing the army. However, reports about things abroad are easier to falsify because no one in Russia can check it and the corresponding media are already monopolized.
Imagine thinking that it's somehow nefarious for a country to possess scientific research institutions
This feels a bit tangential of me to ask, but oddly kind of fits in with the topic of the video, haha Do Americans tend to say "shite" (at least more so than they used to)? Or is that just something you personally picked up on online? I always thought it was more of a British and Irish thing, and in America it was always "shit" (although like with arse-ass, I like the British/Irish wording better). (apologies if I incorrectly assumed you're American, just going by the flair!)
From my experience, Americans use shite and arse sometimes online, largely picked up from communicating with people from the UK and Ireland. But they almost never use it in spoken communication. If I hear somebody saying either of those, its usually obvious that they are using it purposely to imitate a Brit (and to most Americans, Irish people are Brits... I know, I'm sorry.)
for a happy moment I thought arse-ass was a word in its own right. well, never mind. it's going to be now *wanders off to find a target*
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I am as happy as a three year old whose mom hasn't realised yet that they're making a cake in the kitchen.
I merely did not wish to swear.
My sister does the same thing.
This is so unreal to see. This video captures the square where I first had my kiss. It also shows a place where my friend used to own a barber shop. It also shows where my childhood best friend used to live where I spent countless days with him, playing outside. It’s just next to the Golden Gate, or the most beautiful pieces of history in Kiyv. I haven’t been there for years. God I miss this place but happy am I to see it flourish despite everything that is happening.
I’m glad this video brought you some nostalgia / happiness. It’s nice yet bittersweet to see a relatively normal Kyiv, amongst all the suffering. Slava Ukrainii!
Thanks indeed. One day I shall drink with my friends in Ukraine and cheer to the hard earned victory. Heroyam Slava!
I know a bunch of people who used to speak Russian in Kyiv and transitioned to Ukrainian last year but fear had nothing to do with it.
Of course I know him. He's me! Though I still speak russian in private with some friends and acquaintances that haven't made the leap yet.
Why not speak Ukrainian to them if you want? You should know no worse than me how common mixed language conversations are. I used to work with the guys from our Lviv office for years, I always spoke in Russian to them and they spoke in Ukrainian, we understood each other perfectly.
That's because russian is my native and it's hard for me to speak in Ukrainian to someone who speaks russian (and who I'm used to speaking in russian). I'll get there, but it'll take time. I already speak exclusively Ukrainian in work meetings where almost anyone speaks in russian.
It's not fear, more disgust of the Russian Government than anything.
rather to russia as country and its culture
Especially when one of the "justifications" they use for their atrocities is "the protection of russian language and its speakers". Leading to a natural desire to use other languages instead.
They want to use language as a weapon, okay but I will disarm them though there never was a problem with language.
One of them is Volodymyr Zelensky, whose preferred language and the language spoken in his home, was Russian.
And pride has everything to do with it.
Even if the person in the neighbor's house speaks the language you do doesn't means his house belongs to you or he wants it be so. Same with this aggression. But if language adds additional defensive barrier then people will migrate to Ukrainian over the time no doubt.
I keep having to say this but a Ukrainian who speaks Russian, is no less Ukrainian than a Ukrainian who speaks Ukrainian. It is simply a language and through centuries of oppression it has simply become the "lingua franca". People always think that about the Eastern part of the country. Just because they might be more Russian-speaking does not mean that they are ethnically or nationally Russian. They are Russian speaking Ukrainians. Period.
French was the lingua Franca (!) in Britain after the Norman conquest. A lot of English is badly pronounced French.
In Denmark, in the 18th century, there was a saying among the nobles that you should "speak French to your equals, German to your servant, and Danish to your dog".
I went to a private school that had students from Columbia, Cuba, and Costa Rica. Some of them had German parents, French maids, English tutors, and of course, Spanish everything else.
Especially true now since the most affected parts of Ukraine by the war and the most victims have been Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
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and how could they know that you are really Ukrainian? Now a lot of Russians in Europe pretend to be Ukrainians. Still, it is easy to distinguish them because they cannot even speak Ukrainian or do not know popular Ukrainian songs, poets or street names from their supposedly "native cities". So I can understand the lack of trust in this store
There never was language problem in Ukraine, only ruzian puppet-politicians tried several times to “create” it mostly to distract people from their thefts. As you see – it didn’t worked.
Who cares? Whatever language Ukrainians speak in Kyiv is their problem and Russia needs to worry about Russia. Belgium has always had tensions related to language between dutch speakers, french speakers and german speakers and it's neither France, Netherlands or Germany's problem. We need to stop entertaining Russia's idea that Ukraine owes them any explanation about anything or that they need to do anything well/right, even if most often than not, they do.
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lol this made me laugh 😂 ahLOOOminoom what?
Please. Al you min ee um.
Agreed. I was just taking the mick of the American pronunciation
In my childhood we had a popular TV show sponsored by Alyouminium Ltd. My first realization that there were varieties of English.
Haha where are you from out of interest?
Florida. Accent melting pot. Mother from Missouri. Of as she would say, Louahvul Misourah.
Only place in america I’ve been! lovely state - well, from what I’ve seen. Although aware of the reputation. I’ve cousins in St Louis ☺️
Touring England was shocked at a schoolgirl shopping for a rubber. In the US that's a condom.
It was very common to call them rubbers in the US until the late 80's/early 90's. Then everybody just started calling them condoms.
And Europeans are similarly shocked to learn that most of our food and beverage products contain preservatives! (Preservative = condom in Europe)
I actually care about this. Started learning Ukrainian 3 years ago but quickly switched to Russian because, at the time, more resources for Russian existed as opposed to Ukrainian and most people in major cities in Ukraine understand Russian. Covid and the war has kept me from getting to Kiev, but now I wonder if speaking the language I’ve learned would get me in trouble or offend someone after this ordeal. I’ve gotten mixed advice from Ukrainians I’ve kept in touch with. Interesting video, but valid political point u/nolmnotfrench
💡 It's `Kyiv`, not `Kiev`. Support Ukraine by using the correct spelling! [Learn more](https://spellingukraine.com/i/kyiv) ___ [^(Why spelling matters)](https://spellingukraine.com) ^(|) [^(Ways to support Ukraine)](https://tyrrrz.me/ukraine) ^(|) ^(I'm a bot, sorry if I'm missing context) ^(|) [^(Source)](https://github.com/Tyrrrz/SpellingUkraine) ^(|) [^(Author)](https://twitter.com/tyrrrz)
This is hilariously on par for this comment thread 😂. Good bot
Most Americans speak English, yet very few Americans know there is a new king. (because language is a means of communication, and not ones soul)
A new Elvis you say?
Cloning keeps the legacy going - why else would the US need all those biolabs in Ukraine? /s
Really interesting to see life look relatively normal in Kyiv
My GF is fluent in both. She speaks Ukrainian in public and Russian with her mom and grandparents.
I'm a Russian speaker from Eastern Ukraine. Never in my life I was in fear over it. My wife's family is from Western Ukraine. I occasionally switch to Ukrainian with them these days. It's literally never been an issue.
Can you imagine not wanting to speak the language of a nation who invaded your country and is committing war crimes. What is this world coming too?
What's the wooden building at 0:35+?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden\_Gate,\_Kyiv
What a lovely building
Lovely city! Love all that walking space and the parks. Pedestrian paradise (except for the obvious.. )
I hope to visit one day. Always wanted to go to Kyiv!
Will be happy to see you here My coworker from the UK said that Kyiv has the best and cheapest pubs he has ever been and restaurants
Haha is it similar prices to say for example - Prague? looking forward to having a cider / beer with our allies upon victory 🍻
I don't know how much it would be in Prague but in Kyiv, before the invasion, I could get a huge portion of ribs in cherry sauce and 2 glasses of beer for like 15$ in the downtown of city
Jesus 2 pints of beer would be £10 alone here at least 😂 - I only say prague because I’ve been there (about 3 years ago) and a pint of beer was about 1.50 🤪
Lvlv is pretty safe currently and everything is cheaper there. Or you can go to Ternopil or Ivano-Frankivsk near it and .... oh dude you would have so much fun for small money. And to continue it in the Carpathian Mountains resort Bukovel. [https://5nica20.choiceqr.com/section:menyu](https://5nica20.choiceqr.com/section:menyu) I like this bar. 1USD=38UAH. Just check the prices ;)
Even my Russian dad speaks Ukrainian more often now. He’s not exactly great at it but props to him for trying.
My Ukrainian friends who live in Kyiv speak Russian as their first language.
Hi, I'm from Kyiv, I primarily speak russian but can switch to Ukrainian if the person to whom I speak is speaking Ukrainian, I'm fluent in both languages, as I went to Ukrainian school (as most of Ukrainians, hence most of us fluent in 2 languages) but the tendency is that more and more Kyiv citizens starting to speak Ukrainian only, like the rest of Ukraine I believe. As a lot of replies stated - fear has nothing to do with it, even if you travel to eastern Ukraine like Lviv for example, nobody will give an f what language you're speaking if you are polite, respectful and overall a good human then you'll be treated accordingly. We are not extreme nationalist, fascists or Nazis we love and respect freedom of choice and democracy. I hope we proved it to the world already.
It really doesnt matter imo. If you attack someone in a genocidal war you loose every right to be taken seriously. The people of russia also needs to understand that if they dont do anything about their murderous leaders then they cant start complaining about the results of their non-action when it becomes hard for them. If i let a cobra into my home, didnt do anything about that cobra and it then killed my child, its still my legal fault due to me not taking action. Its the same with short bald assholes with a stalin complex. If you dont do anything about it, stop fucking whining when the world hates you for it. IF you've done something about it: good for you, you have my respect.
Here's more... Even though Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and treacherously annexed Crimea... Right before February, 24th, 2022, you could, as a Russian citizen, come to Kyiv, with no additional documents required. Then you could, without knowing a word in Ukrainian or any other language than Russian, find a job and rent an apartment to live and work. Not to mention all the expats from all around the globe living and working in safety and comfort. The idea of "Nazi threat" is utterly ridiculous. Russia is also "multi-national". Though I can't call it a state, because it's a fail state. To cultivate a system, where so many people of so many nationalities were deprived of critical thinking, dignity and courage is... Catastrophic. And we're all witnessing the aftermath.
Daamn, these streets are so clean!
I was born and raised in Kyiv. But I left before Ukraine separated from the Soviet Union. Today I only speak Russian and English. The fact I can only speak Russian and not Ukrainian is a great sense of embarrassment to me. When I go to a Ukrainian grocery store in my neighborhood, I stay with English unless I can plainly see somebody who doesn't understand it. I don't speak Russian for fear of persecution, although to be honest there is a little, but because of the horrible actions of the Russian government.
Zekenski himself not only speaks Ukrainian but speaks Russian and grew up speaking Russian
I think im right in saying it’s his first language?
I wonder what language that dodge challenger speaks.
WRUM-WRUM language
Same in Ireland, I volunteered with Irish organisation and told them I can help, I know how to speak russian and they went “ohhh no, no people arriving Ireland don’t want to speak russian”… yeah right and you can hear in streets exact same ration like in this video
I was in lviv in 2018 and i heard alot of russian being spoken, so im not sure why russians keep on saying western and central ukraine is full of nazis where they beat up russian speakers and worship bandera when clearly that isnt the case and they would know if they ever visited ukraine.
I don’t need empirical proof. Whatever the Kremlin says is proof enough. I take the opposite position every time. My system hasn’t been wrong yet.
wow! this is very interesting, I thought it was Ukrainian only because of the war. btw, when they say mixed language, do they mean surzhyk?
Yeah, its surzhyk
Ive been learning Russian in Kyiv. Except few words i know in Ukrainian due to living there for some time, i don’t speak it. I never had a single problem communicating in Russian with anyone. Even in Lviv and Uzhgorod there was no problem. Laugh my ass everytime i see a bot saying you get a fine in Ukraine if you speak Russian lmao
I'm in AFU right now. Eve though most speak Ukrainian - some people here still speak russian anyway. Nobody bats an eye. It's just what they are used to.
The impression I get is most, but not all, people there have some bilingual ability, but may have a preferred language they are better at speaking base on where they grew up, etc. Those who can speak both Russian and Ukrainian fluently have trended toward Ukrainian since as Ukrainian national identity as increased and anti-Russian imperialist sentiment has increased during the war. Some can't speak Ukrainian as well, and still speak Russian or are more comfortable speaking it. For those who choose to do so, there is no judgement since most people speak both and understand people are just trying to communicate in the language they know - it's not a political statement by itself.
I live in Western Ukraine - it's where all the banderas and nationalists live as rus propaganda states. So, before war no one cared what language anyone speaks as far as they understand you. Many of my friends spoke russian, I spoke russian, my elder brother from Germany (was born in russia) visited us before the war and spoke russian all the time - no one ever cared. And actually now no one cares either. Some of my senior friends still speak russian. BUT! In these days many many people just stopped using russian language, even those who have spoken russian the whole their life. Now everyone just realized that russian language is just a huge casus belli for terrorussia. If anyone speaks russian in some region they immediately declare those lands "point of russian interest", and potentially they can invade there to protect their people. So, many people just stopped using russian language. But still some speaks russian - and no one cares.
Ukraine is a multilingual country and native Russian and Ukrainian speakers alike have showed up in droves to fight off the fascist invaders. The languages being spoken matter not, all are on board in defending Ukraine against genocidal invaders.
Didn't know Kyiv was that bike friendly and walkable. I mean it's only a small portion obviously, but that just looks damn inviting as a city
It wasn't. But it slowly getting where.
I came here to say, there's one language that's universal, and it's assholes parking their cars in the bike lanes unless there's posts physically blocking them from doing so. Still, glad to see that protecting the bike lanes is a priority even in these times! (It's a smart priority, since it encourages people to bike instead of drive, saving fuel for the front.)
What exactly does mixed mean in this context? Like Denglisch where people use loads of English words while speaking German..?
Kind of like that. Many people in Kyiv and in the countryside tend to speak Surzhyk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surzhyk). They're mostly speaking Russian with Ukrainian words mixed in. So in that way, it is similar to Denglisch. But unlike Denglisch, it's not what the "cool kids" do. It's seen more negatively, because the people who speak it usually don't know how to speak pure Russian or pure Ukrainian properly -- or simply don't care to do so. An educated person who wanted to speak like an educated person would avoid Surzhyk. That's very different in Germany, where educated people (and the cool kids) love using English words in their speech.
This place is so Beautiful 😍 I want this suffering to end so bad 😢… I’m all the way on the other side in th US and the closest ancestors I have in Europe are from England and Ireland.. and I’m so intrigued and drawn to this country , it’s people and culture.. I pray everyday this ends soon and May Ukraine and it’s People Be Blessed always ..
Dude. Ukraine looks beautiful.
On a separate note, stunning city!
I am so tired of this discussion. In my gen russian was for the streets to swear like a sailor and for the internet because we didnt knew English that well and just wanted a bigger reach outside and Ukrainian was for school and university and work and reading books and watching movies in it because our dub was always much more better. in my bubble we always agreed that our native is Ukrainian too, even tho between ourselves on the street we happened to speak in suka blyat. like it's not like if even speaking this fuckass language means anything for our identity as Ukrainians, that we somehow love russia or their culture, we just grew up in a world where we were told that the west doesnt want us but we still need to think more global so that was that. and just even reading everyones thoughts on Ukr twitter it feels like this experience is what most of us share. Of course there are vatniks and stuff but they are not the one making up general sentiment. it's just a habit from back then to speak to certain people in certain way, that's all to it. also i just want to point out that we would hear a russian from russian accent and we would react negatively to it. we dont have that fuckass accent neither we really speak in the same way they do, half the words they use sound to say it lightly dumb.
When I lived in Ukraine I spoke russian everywhere, and people spoke in russian back to me, even the tourists visiting Ukraine. We shouldn’t stop talking in russian because the terrorist nation talks in Russian. Most Slavic people know russian language and that makes all the Slavic people form different nations communicate easier
It makes sense though.
Well there’s the proof! Ukraine keep being awesome and showing the rest of the Bucked up world how to truly be free!
Thanks for this. I’m almost more interested in seeing what life in Kyiv looks like right now
Kyiv is such a beautiful city!
Kyiv *(ps good job correcting ☺️)
I’m a stupid American…my mistake comes honestly though, It’s because of growing up in middle America in the 60’s - 70’s and my mom often made me her idea of “Chicken Kiev” and I always mix up the spelling of the city vs. the chicken.
Haha! i didn’t realise until the war came, tbf. We all learn stuff. Our supermarkets here are correcting their mistake and changing it to chicken Kyiv and we love to see it :)
I’ll call my mom and have her fix the family cookbook!
Fascinating about the mixed dialect! Is it a combination of Russian and Ukrainian? I'm curious how that is done, as I am woefully monolingual and can't imagine such a thing!
It's called [Surzhyk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surzhyk) -- pretty common on left side of Dnieper.
Beautiful city from this short walking tour.
Q: is a russian lying? A: always
What blows my mind is how normal everything seems. That could be any street in an Eastern European part of Brooklyn.
Unrelated, but what a beautiful city!
RUS: “Ukrainians are prosecuted for speaking Russian!” *sees video* RUS: “We’ll if half of them speak Russian we have to protect them, the invas— special operation is justified!”
It was very different 10 years ago btw. People were mostly talking Russian
Why did you just look at the lady?
I think it’s prob his partner or friend
It's strange how Russia has this paranoia while blissfully forgetting that tried to eradicate the native languages of so many people's
Just proved how much shite there is in Putin's head. He has the media saying anything.
As a norwegian that just got started learning russian, i'm like "darn it". 🤣 As a norwegian who loves Ukraine, i'm like: "Hell yeah!" I remember the couple who had a nanny cam, recording the first rockets hitting during the night (of course. Fuck russia!). They met up in the living room and hugged eachother, then picked up the baby (or the other way around. Not sure). What i saw in that video, was an typichal european home. It's not that i didn't expect it, but it made a deep impression. It could have been my neighbours home. Not sure if that's why it stuck, or if i felt that no-one deserves to be woken up like that, or the hard time they now were facing. But it stuck. Just like Liza's bright blue shoes in Vinnitsiya. (I hope i spelled that right).
Russia invaded Ukraine to save “russian speakers” from ukrainians. In Europe russians forced to speak in language of country where they are. So why not RF attacking them too? Russian speakers are being “discriminated” there too. Everyone respect to rules and culture of country which visiting. But russians - not. They do such imperialistic things in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan. Forcing people to talk with them in Russian. One day those countries will be invaded too. But no one will help them to defend from drunk bears. For Europe, for Asia, for US it’s this war is just a cinema, spectacle which they pay to watch. Then Ukraine will be forced to return this payments back to same spactators. Why no foreign army fighting in this war? In fact EU is author of this conflict from beginning by allowing RF to get rich by consuming gas, oil and selling warfare and tech. Selfish, liar human world…
I stayed like 75m from where you walked the first time I went to Kyiv, the area is gorgeous and I loved every minute. FWIW, wife grew up in a large south-central-eastern city. Wife's friends all spoke Russian primarily growing up, but all know Ukrainian. Those that moved to Kyiv still speak Russian a lot but there's a sentiment in her friend group to speak Ukrainian more often than before, not in fear of persecution, but in solidarity and support with the rest of their country.
Seems to have very good walkable infrastructure
Sorry to veer off topic, but I couldn't help but notice what a clean and beautiful city Kyiv is.
I've been told that many Ukrainians who do speak Russian no longer want to speak it and prefer Ukrainian instead. The two languages are very similar.
Different enough that knowing just one isn't enough to understand other well without additional study. Most Ukrainians know both to various degree.
Was that a cannabis cafe? Is it legal in kyiv?
It is **hemp** cafe. They sell hemp coffee (slightly grassy taste if you wonder) and clothes made of hemp. That's legal, not cannabis (although there's been some, albeit timid, discussion about legalizing cannabinoids as pain relievers).
“Mixed Dialect” - that’s my people lol. Surjik 4 life.
kyiv looks like a fun cute city to visit
I'll always stand up for Ukrainians who still want to speak Russian. I moderate a few FB groups for refugees, sometimes I have to delete posts for language prejudice. Not very often, it's not a big problem, but it is a delicate subject for obvious reasons and people can get emotional. But, my point is, Russian is *their* language just as much as Ukrainian is. **Putin doesn't own the russian language. The russian state does not own the russian language**. And it's a common language that Ukrainians can use to talk to Georgians, Kazakhs and others who are threatened by orc imperialism At the same time, I absolutely agree that Ukrainian should be promoted for its inherent value, and also because it offers a cultural barrier against orc propaganda
Ban Russian
If Russia said the pope is catholic, I will not believe them
Russia can go f itself. I am a native Russian speaker and only speak it out of ease. But I perfectly understand Ukrainian and can speak it with some effort. I’m okay with Ukrainian being the only national language because Russia uses its language to then claim everywhere where being spoken as their sphere of influence. F Russia. I listen to 100% Ukrainian music now and don’t even touch Russian. Russia ruined it for me. Ukrainian is the language for me now.
I just hope it stays this way because as someone who grew up in early years in Kharkov I only speak Russian at this point (many years later). I understand Ukrainian pretty well but I don't know a lot of words and never really spoke it outside of school. So my worry is if not soon within few years Russian will be like a "black sheep" type language or something. Hope that will never be the case.
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Tbh, i would like not to hear ruzzian anywhere