Is it true that they speak Ukrainian in Western Ukraine? I was surprised that they spoke Russian in Kiev, Zaporozhye, Simferopol, Yalta and Kerch; even at home. I came to the conclusion that the Ukrainian language is a dying language until I heard that they speak it in Western Ukraine.
yes!
it is true!
1. Western Ukraine wasn't in Russian usurpation so long time as that regions. It's like Canada (2 language)
2. But our children's beginning talk in Ukrainian (even in Simferopol))))
3. So Ukrainian language re-berthing.
To over-simplify, Ukrainian (which was standardized as a literary language about 200 years ago) is something of an intermediate between Russian and Polish (Slavic 'cousin' languages). Roughly speaking, in the East of Ukraine, most speech is Russian, with the use of Ukrainian increasing as you go to the West.
The region near the Carpathian mountains can be thought of as the home of "pure Ukrainian language." In fact, older people who have lived all their lives in Lviv were actually born in Poland -- it became part of Ukraine at the end of the Great Patriotic War (WW II).
By national law, schools must teach Ukrainian, all official documents, signs, and other communications must be in Ukrainian, and all TV broadcasts must be in Ukrainian or have titles/voice-over in Ukrainian language.
Hmmm, Durak, 'East of Ukraine'?? I would call that Russia, wouldn't you?!!! I know what you meant.
Some history about area in western ukraine....was ruled by Poland through most of 16th- 18th centuries and in 17th century, ukraine was split near Kiev with the east of Dniper to Russia and to the west of the Dniper to Poland. This is a timeline:
26 Apr 1795 Annexed by Austria from Poland (part of Galicia).
1 Nov 1918 Ukrainian State (independence from Austria).
13 Nov 1918 Western Ukrainian People's Republic
22 Jan 1919 Incorporation into Ukraine; later alternately
incorporated into Poland (1920) and Ukraine (1939-41).
20 Apr 1920 Annexation by Poland (Western Ukrainian government in exile est.)
15 Mar 1923 Ambassadors council recognizes Polish annexation.
1 Aug 1941 Galizien district of German occupied General-government.
Jul 1944 Occupied by Soviet forces.
15 Sep 1947 Incorporation into Ukrainian S.S.R. (in Soviet Union)
(de facto from 1944).
As you can see it really became part of ukraine after WWI with periods by another country. Lots of Polish influence still in areas. Not sure how close ukrainian language is to polish language but other than some words and couple letters of alpabet very close to russian. I did have a look at polish words and it remined me more of Czech language, maybe best described as Polish-western slavic and Russian- eastern slavic. I would guess it is similar to French and Spanish languages or maybe even Spanish and Italian languages.
I agree that urainian IS being taught in schools now to children and I don't know if it is true but
russian is considered a foreign language. I know in Latvia, the governments and business' only speak Latvian and since most people speak russian, an interpreter is being needed for dealings.
It's come up many times before here that ukrainian language mainly spoken in western ukraine toward Kiev and the rest of ukraine russian is heavily spoken. If there is an area in Ukraine that is more pro-russian it is the Crimea.
<pedantic> The phrase I used was "IN the East of Ukraine," meaning "within the eastern portion of the country Ukraine." The phrase "TO the East of Ukraine" would mean territory OUTSIDE of the country Ukraine. These words are called prepositions, and convey important meaning! </pedantic>
IN a village roughly 200 km south OF Kyiv, I noticed two interesting things about language: (1) a life-long resident (an elderly lady) speaking a hybrid of Russian and Ukrainian (she had spent perhaps than 1 month of her life outside of her tiny village); and (2) several people calling their national currency "rubles!" That the actual name has been hryvnia for more than 10 years, and that this is clearly printed on all the banknotes, was evidently not important to them.
I've been studying Russian, a language of fluency for nearly 300 million people. If you could already speak Russian, knowing Ukrainian would only increase your scope of communication by a few hundred thousand pointy-headed western Ukrainians who damn well understand Russian, but pretend not to because of their militant nationalism. Because of this, I'm quite biased. Every time I see or hear немае instead of нет (just one example), I find it a little jarring.
A man who has lived all his life in Ukraine (growing up in the western part, the homeland of Ukrainian) told me how ridiculous he finds it, that Russian TV programs must have Ukrainian subtitles. The decades will reveal, how well nationalism is working for them...