Often humans are quite narrow minded when it comes to places abroad. Their countries are complex, nuanced, and far more than what other people think. But, abroad? They’re all just the stereotypes.
Ukraine, of course, as I have said before has its fair share of these stereotypes too. One thing is the perception that Ukraine is some culturally and linguistically homogeneous country with next to no diversity.
This isn’t true though. I knew it wouldn’t be entirely true before I arrived, yet, it still was far more fascinating to experience and more than I anticipated as I studied more about the country.
So, most people have an idea that there are generally two languages in Ukraine: Ukraine (spoken in the west) and Russian (spoken in the east). First of all, not only is this wrong, the concept of some even dividing line is really way off. The russian and Ukrainian languages mix and vary, the percentage of speakers change. Some people may speak both together, or one at home and one in public, or with different people. I definitely blame poor quality journalists who would use this simplification, and also have the insulting nerve to associate “russian speaking” with “pro-russian” which is straight out of the Putin handbook.
However, there is far more to it. For example, in different regions you may hear these two languages mixed to differing percentages. Even in Lviv, you may still hear some people use “da” instead of “Tak” quite often for “yes”, and yet perhaps in Kharkiv you may still hear “smachnoho” for enjoy your meal, a Ukrainian phrase, even if the person speaks russian for everything else.
But beyond these two languages are so many different languages at play. Go to Lviv, Volyn, and Rivne, and some slang picks up Polish words. In Odessa, there’s such a rich dialect, with a heavy Yiddish influence, and others from its history as a dock city. Poltava, I have heard, boasts the closest to the Literary Ukrainian.
Then we have the super linguistically diverse regions of Zakarpattia. I have described before how there are Hungarian-speaking villages then Romanian-speaking villages. Not to mention Roma people. Not only that, apparently some villages have variations of Hungarian dialects that are unique from standard Hungarian.
There’s also the Carpathian dialect or dialects, which draw from multiple different cultures and languages in the mountains. Even my wife struggles with some of them. Hutsuls are the most well known mountainous minority, but there are others too!
The other area of massive diversity is within Odessa oblast, a region known as Bessarabia. There are Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians and others here. I recommend the videos and articles by Ukrainer on this topic. I will go there one day.
In addition, while perhaps it’s a world away from the melting pot countries like the UK, USA, France etc. people do come to Ukraine from abroad and make Ukraine their home, or their parents did. Particularly in Kyiv and other big cities. Perhaps via force in the soviet times such as the Koreans, or because they studied, or they fell in love, the usual reasons. Many people from the Caucuses are in Ukraine, as well as Central Asia. One of my favourite shawarma places in Kyiv was run by Turkmenistanis (Turkmen?) . Theres African and Indian students (among many others) including those who came decades ago.
The ultimate point is that, perhaps you have the idea that Ukraine is all the same across, or divvied just into russian and Ukrainian speakers. But it’s so much more diverse than that and I myself was surprised by this.
Oh, go watch this video to hear the Ukrainian anthem in 14 different languages of people in Ukraine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba4usrgnu0M
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