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Yeah… I know. I don’t speak Ukrainian, and I now live in Ukraine. It’s not that i didn’t try before. I made some attempts before we moved, but unfortunately those attempts were scuttled. A super naive part of me looked forward to being taught through this “total immersion” stuff I’d heard so much about growing up. People would always say “you want to learn a language, just move to a country where everyone speaks it” like the hard part was getting there, then the language skill is just granted to you upon arrival…. or you know, three months in or something.

The honest-truth is learning Ukrainian is really difficult for me and when we lived in the US there weren’t any immediate consequences for putting it off until later. At the end of every day, as I was thinking through what needed to be done, I could not consistently conjure up the self-discipline to study Ukrainian. I really regret not working harder at it.

Ksenia has tried to help me feel better by showing me articles about how hard it is to learn Ukrainian. So, for the record, Ukrainian is one of the most difficult European languages to learn as an English speaker. Here are a few challenges I’ve run into in my (thus far) failed attempts at learning the language:

• Ukrainian uses Cyrillic script. I learned the Ukrainian alphabet when we were dating so I’ve had a grasp of it for a while, but there are small overlaps with the English language that always find a way to creep in and confuse me. For instance, ‘Н’ in Cyrillic is pronounced like an ‘N’ and ‘P’ is pronounced like an ‘R’. Also, English mucks things up by having multiple ways to pronounce letters like (for instance) ‘i’ within words (“bite” vs. “bit”), but in Ukrainian ‘i’ is always pronounced ‘ee’. My English instincts sit there like a crazy frat bro hiding behind a bush with a hazing paddle just waiting to mess me up… or mess up my pronunciation… ALL the time.
• Conjugations are applied copiously to words depending on the context.There are 7 cases in Ukrainian for nouns, as well as 3 different genders. The combination of declension and gender (sprinkle in some variations for singular/plural) results in massive conjugation options for each noun.  Plus, all adjectives need to conjugate in agreement with the nouns they describe. You even conjugate names in Ukrainian. And don’t even get me started on the verb conjugations.  As a result, even when I know the basic forms of the words being used, listening to a Ukrainian conversation (which already employs a generous number of syllables per word) turns into word soup.
• Google translate sucks. Actually, I’m probably being overly harsh. It is just not equipped to handle the heavy lifting necessary to convey the actual meaning of the Ukrainian language. You cannot make a literal translation of any sentence. Something that makes totally fluid sense in Ukrainian when translated word for word into English sounds like backwards and broken gibberish. The struggle here has been to pay less attention to what each of the words mean in a sentence/phrase and focus more on the idea/sentiment. Not easy for a first-timer in the linguistic expansion department, like myself.

I’ve learned since arriving here that it is not necessary for someone like me to learn Ukrainian to live here. In one of my first networking chats with an IT professional, I asked “will it be a big negative on my resume that I don’t speak Ukrainian?” in my mind a perfectly legitimate question and a logical deficiency that would diminish my competitiveness as a candidate. Not only did she say that it would not affect my employability, as all IT industry work here is performed in English, but she recommended that I do not even try to learn it. She said the difficulty of learning Ukrainian outweighs the direct benefit.

Regardless of this apparent fact I have every intention of learning the language. It’s my hope by articulating my reasons why here in this blog post and publicly proclaiming my intentions (much like our public disclosures of moving here helped us make it happen) that I can will this desire into reality.

Language is Culture

Growing up in the US I haven’t really experienced other cultures up close. Aside from spending a week on the Native American reservation in my early 20’s, or watching a movie with subtitles, I had literally never been to a place where anything other than English was the primary spoken language.

When Ksenia and I first started dating in 2004, I got annoyed when I attended her family dinners, or gatherings with their Ukrainian friends only to be unable to participate in a single conversation without being specifically invited in because everyone was speaking Ukrainian. All of them had lived in the US for years and spoke English. At the time I remember taking it very personally. I felt like these people weren’t interested in talking to me because they had the option to speak English and chose not to. That same year something happened in Ukraine that made headlines in the US and sparked a personal investigation that helped me see this perceived “snub” differently.

In November 2004,as I sat in traffic one morning, an NPR news update came on the radio focusing on the gathering protesters in the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine. It had something to do with the Ukrainian Presidential Election; a run-off between Victor Yuschenko and Victor Yanukovych. Despite the similarity of their names, these candidates were political polar-opposite. Yuschenko was pro-European Union alliance, and most importantly anti-Russian influence in the Ukrainian economy and politics. Victor Yanukovych was endorsed by the outgoing president Leonid Kuchma and had a very pro-Russia stance. He viewed the future of Ukraine as only prosperous when tied closely to the fate of her long-time manipulator and occupier. The people gathering in Kyiv were protesting because Yanukovych had won the election, but reports from international election observers brought forth allegations of voter fraud. The protesters were demanding a new election take place.

At this point in my life I was not very aware of politics, even in my own country, let alone anywhere else in the world. However, I was eager to take credit for recognizing that this story might mean something to my long-distance girlfriend at the time.

I began following news of the protests (as closely as I could… being new to political news, and having very poor access to useful news from Ukraine) and dug into some of the issues surrounding this election, and its candidates. I was taking a public speaking class at the time and decided to write my final speech about this political turmoil in Ukraine. As part of my research I organized an interview with my future father-in-law (someone who VERY much intimidated me at the time) to get his perspective on recent events in Ukraine. He explained to me the struggles that Ukraine has had for hundreds of years to keep a hold of the lands they have called home for generations.  He explained about the conquests and coercions that Ukraine’s people were forced to endure as her occupiers forced their own religion, laws, language and culture upon Ukrainians. Despite a thousand of years of occupation by neighboring countries and kingdoms, Ukrainians and their way of life has persisted. As the first line of the Ukrainian national anthem states “Ukraine is not dead yet”.

Of all her occupiers, none have been more manipulative or destructive to Ukraine and Ukrainians than Russia. The bots on twitter or the trolls on YouTube might try and tell you differently, but the systematic oppression and aggression towards Ukrainian people and culture should rank up their with some of history’s most egregious human rights violations. From the devastating famine in the early 20^th century (known as “Holodomor”) to the thousands killed in the current war on the eastern border, Russia will not just let Ukraine be a country in and of itself.

All Ukrainians really want is the opportunity to be an autonomous country without an outside power inflicting their will. In the 2004 election Yuschenko represented Ukraine’s independence from nearly 100 years of soviet and Russian influence and oppression. Yanukovych represented continued top-down forced alliance for the benefit of Russia… not the independence of Ukraine.

After several days of protests in the streets of Kyiv, independent observers verified the election fraud and the parliament of Ukraine declared the run-off results as illegitimate. A second election was organized, to be held close to the end of the year. The votes were this time tallied under intense scrutiny, declaring Yuschenko (the pro-European candidate) the victor (as well as THE “Victor”). I remember being so happy and excited for Ukraine back then.

I took history classes in high school. I understood conceptually that there are people that are oppressed by dictators and militaristic regimes all over the world, and throughout history. As I followed this Ukrainian election and plugged in the historical context, I began to truly understand what it must be like to be from one of these oppressed countries, and how even just speaking Ukrainian can be a celebration of your identity and your national struggle and triumph over such brutal tyranny. The fact that Ukrainians still have their own language in the face of 100 years of direct Soviet/Russian efforts to eliminate the cultural differences between Ukraine and Russia is amazing, and worth celebrating. This language carries with it centuries of history and culture.  Now, when I go to parties and everyone is speaking Ukrainian (even though I don’t [yet] understand) it makes me really happy. I want to add myself to the numbers of people working to preserve this culture. 

Language is Relationships

Being here in Ukraine I am learning to navigate the every day parts of living in a country where I don’t know the language. I’ve gotten pretty good at going to the продукти down the street and asking “у вас є…” and completing the sentence with what I’m looking for in Ukrainian. I can order for myself at restaurants (while avoiding anything with my most dreaded culinary nemesis: goat cheese) with the aid of google translate (not a completely useless tool). I have managed through a couple more complex shopping situations buying a computer monitor and a digital piano, all without using English to complete the transaction. Some miming, a pocket dictionary, and some extremely patient store employees have made this all possible.

Through our daughters’ acrobatics gym, we have become acquainted with a family where the father is an American. He has lived in Ukraine now for 15 years and does not speak the language. This is a fact that blows my mind. On one hand, it’s nice to know that someone has been able to navigate this “living in Ukraine” thing without needing to speak the language. It’s just nice to know that it is possible. But, on the other hand… fifteen years and you still don’t speak the native language of 95% of the people around him?

One thing that has really gotten to me over just these last 6 months of living here is how how unfulfilling the surface level interactions are that I have with people who speak Ukrainian. The woman at the corner store. The neighbors we met caroling in our building around Christmas. The nice man selling records at the базар near the Dominican church. Imagine fifteen years of not getting to really know anyone new.

We have met friends here who speak English quite well. We have invited them to dinner and spoken late into the night. We understand them very well, and they understand us… however by the end of the night I can tell that speaking English is exhausting for them. It takes work to go from your native tongue to your second language. The effort that it takes to do that removes some of the casual and free-spirited discourse that comes with speaking among friends. I want to do my part of the lifting so I can understand them better, on a different level.

Likewise, my in-laws speak English, and we have managed to speak to each other over the last fifteen years of my relationship with their daughter… but I know that I am missing out on a deeper relationship with them. One thing that is very difficult to translate is humor. I want to be able to joke with them around a table, without the need of an interpreter.

In order to accomplish this goal, I’m going to have to work hard at it. There is a lot stacked against me. Ukrainian is not required at work, at home, and for the most part my daily interactions are already running smoothly. The benefits of immersion are sort of absent. What I need to do is dive into the language in study, and then seek out opportunities to practice speaking and deciphering responses in public.

Ksenia has been trying to help inspire me with the most effective approaches out there on the internets. This is what I am committing to do from her recommendations:

1. I’m going to do 10 minutes of intense vocabulary study (memorization) daily
2. I am going to read/listen to Ukrainian for 20 minutes a day.
3. I am going to celebrate at dinner with the family each evening at least one experience from that day when I tried to speak Ukrainian and I failed… miserably. (Example from today: I tried to say the name of a show that Anya was watching to my wife. I said “яаєць і вовк” when I should have said “заєць і вовк”. Translation: I said “Egg and Wolf” instead of “Rabbit and Wolf”).

Feel free to share any recommendations that you think could help me accomplish my end goal here. Learning a new language feels like such an overwhelming and worthwhile effort. I feel really good trying. I hope that in nine months time my progress is obvious.