Hi guys. As my regular readers will know, one of the reasons why I love traveling so much is to experience another country where English is not the main language spoken. Whilst some English speaking tourists go to great lengths to try to approach this kind of situation, I totally embrace the experience of having to communicate in a foreign language that is not my mother tongue. This trip to Kiev is a bonus because it is a bilingual city where two languages are spoken: Ukrainian and Russian. I already speak some Russian, it is my 15th language and I do not even include Ukrainian amongst the 25 languages that I do speak, even if I can understand a bit of it because I already speak some Russian. I have been fascinated with Ukraine for a long time - I took great interest in the 2004 Orange Revolution because I had both Ukrainian and Russian colleagues at that time and in a nutshell, there were huge protests in Kiev after a highly controversial rigged election. The government then caved into pressure from the mass protests, the election was re-run and the corrupt pro-Russian president Yanukovych was ousted, the pro-Western president Yuschenko was declared the eventual winner. Even in 2005, the Ukrainian entry for Eurovision was their revolution anthem (that had to be rewritten to make it less political, to comply with Eurovision rules). So if we focused on just the Orange revolution in 2004, then you might think that Ukraine would hate Russia and want to pursue a closer relationship with the EU and America? But actually, Ukraine is so confusing: nothing is simple when it comes to Ukraine's bizarre love-hate relationship with Russia.
Yuschenko only lasted one term as president and the disgraced Yanukovych (who was ousted in the 2004 revolution) was the man who became Ukraine's next president. Yeah, it makes one think, hang on - this was the tyrant you protested and risked your lives to get rid of, then you go ahead and vote for him in your next election? What the fuck Ukraine? Яка до біса Україна? Like seriously? Oh I could go on talking for ages about why Ukrainian politics makes no sense whatsoever, but of course, as an outsider, I'm suppose I am guilty of searching for a very simple narrative which goes along the lines of: Ukraine was once an independent country, it was annexed by the Soviets and was forced to be a part of the USSR for many decades. It is now a proud independent country that totally hates the Russians and wants to distance themselves from President Putin - but no, that simple narrative simply isn't true at all for the situation on the ground is so much more complex. To begin with, my Ukrainian friends explained to me that Ukrainians and Russians are all Slavs - they have shared cultural roots and the two languages are so similar they are mutually intelligible. A Russian person would be able to read a Ukrainian newspaper and understand around 85% of the content (and vice versa). If a monolingual Ukrainian man spoke to a monolingual Russian man and both men spoke only in their native language, they would still be able to communicate with each other relatively well. Thus my Ukrainian friends never really saw Russia as the enemy - some of them may not like Putin, but as they explained, "that's all just politics, we have to learn to separate our cultural identity from politics." If you're not confused yet, hang on and keep reading, it is going to get more confusing.
Before you imagine that the two languages are totally similar, let me to give you a list of common words in both languages that are different and why I had to make a genuine effort to learn some Ukrainian words when I was there. A good comparison would be how Cantonese and Mandarin are different: as a Mandarin speaker, I understand a lot of Cantonese say if I watched a TV programme with no subtitles, but if you wanted me to speak Cantonese to someone in Hong Kong, it would come out as a mish-mash of Cantonese and Mandarin words as I simply don't know enough words in Cantonese. So when I tried to speak Ukrainian in Kiev, it often came out in a mish-mash of Ukrainian and Cantonese.
Yes/no Russian da/nyet Ukrainian tak/ni
Please Russian pazhalusta Ukrainian budlaska
Sorry Russian izvenite or prostite Ukrainian vybachte
Good morning Russian dobry ootra Ukrainian dobre ranok
How are you? Russian kak dela? Ukrainian yak spravy?
Do you speak English? Russian Vy guvariteh po Angliski? Ukrainian Vy rozmovliateh Angliesko?
So imagine my surprise when I turned up in Kiev and realized that more people in that city spoke Russian than Ukrainian - let me illustrate just how Russian speaking it was. During the shoot, the crew had a radio system where they would communicate with each other. A simple example would be how the director would be waiting on the actor(s) to be ready to shoot the next scene and typically they would be held up at somewhere like hair & make up or costume. So the first assistant director would message the make up department, "hello this is the first AD here, we need Alex on set as soon as possible for the next scene please but I understand he's still stuck in the costume department, how much longer do you need him there for and could you guys hurry up please?" So I thought that such conversations on the radio would take be said amongst the Ukrainian crew either in Ukrainian (as we are in Ukraine) or English (as there are some people on set who are from other countries) but no, it was entirely in Russian. This is even more bizarre as Russian is discouraged by the government - for example, when I take the metro in Kiev, everything is signposted in two languages: Ukrainian and English, so that makes it quite useful for me as a tourist as my eyes would be automatically drawn towards the English. According to my Ukrainian colleagues in Kiev, his formal education was conducted entirely in Ukrainian, the default second/foreign language that they were taught at school was English but still, Russian is spoken amongst his friends in the street and with his family at home, so that's how prevalent the Russian language is in everyday life in Kiev.
According to Wikipedia, despite the fact that the people of Kiev are 94% ethnic Ukrainians and only 5% ethnic Russians, 52% of the population spoke "mostly Russian" on a daily basis, 32% spoke both Russian and Ukrainian in equal measure, 14% spoke "mostly Ukrainian" and only 4.3% spoke "exclusively Ukrainian". Thus if you spoke Russian, you could communicate with 84% of the people in Kiev whilst if you spoke Ukrainian, you could communicate with 50.3% of the people in Kiev. The reason why Russian is so prevalent in Kiev is because Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union for 72 years during which time, Russian was the main language of education, politics, administration and business. If you were to look at the map of Ukraine, the further east you go towards the border with Russia, the more Russian speaking it is and the further west you go towards the border with Poland, the more Ukrainian speaking it is but Kiev doesn't conform to that rule despite the fact that it is in central Ukraine, it is mostly Russian speaking. This was evident on set during the shoot when I observed the local crew speaking to each other almost exclusively in Russian, with one exception of my driver who spoke to his colleagues in Ukrainian. I found this strange because we're in a country that is still at war today: the Donbas war is taking place in Eastern Ukraine on the border with Russia. This war is happening because the pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region want to break away from Ukraine to join Russia after Russia has already annexed Crimea - a region in southern Ukraine back in 2014 and this region still remains under Russian control today.
So if there is a war with Russia in Eastern Ukraine and Ukraine has lost Crimea to the Russians after an invasion and annexation in 2014, I would have thought that the Ukrainians would hate the Russians and I'm not even going that far back to what the Ukrainians had to suffer at the hands of the Russians during the Soviet era - in short, I thought that the Ukrainians would have plenty of reasons to really fucking hate the Russians and that would result in Kiev being a lot more Ukrainian-speaking and I wouldn't hear as much Russian. On the surface of course, that's the case such as when I used public transport and all the signs were in Ukrainian and English only - but pay a bit more attention and you'll notice that the people around you in the metro station are mostly speaking in Russian. I would compare this to the situation in Hong Kong right now, whereby there is a lot of political unrest as the Beijing government is tightening its grip of control over Hong Kong - long before things gotten this bad, I visited Hong Kong in 2018 and even then, I was very careful to avoid speaking Mandarin given how much hatred there was directed at people from mainland China. I would only speak in Cantonese and English with the locals and pretended that I didn't speak a word of Mandarin, to make darn sure that nobody would mistake me as someone from China. Ironically, quite a few older people in Hong Kong were happy to speak to me in Mandarin as they didn't speak English but were keen to communicate with me - this ranged from street vendors keen to make a sale to bus drivers who were happy to help me with directions. They spoke Mandarin with a very strong Cantonese accent, so I knew they were locals and not from China. Could you imagine a situation where more people spoke Mandarin than Cantonese in Hong Kong? No, that just would not be possible! It would be just unthinkable.
So imagine if Germany had invaded the UK and annexed a part of England (let's say they took Kent), I would be quite careful not to speak German in London even if I do speak German competently because I would expect the locals here to be quite angry about the annexation of Kent. German people or German speaking people (from Austria or Switzerland) might prefer to speak another language like English instead to avoid being identified as the enemy that this country is at war with. It wouldn't be an unreasonable assumption to make: if Germany did successfully invade England, the English would be incredibly angry and hate the German. They wouldn't just say, "ah well, we were never that fond of Kent anyway and at least they didn't annex London, so they can have Kent and we'll happily speak German, do all things German in London." In fact, the British royal family simply changed their names from the very German sounding Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor during WW1 when the UK was at war with Germany, because imagine British soldiers being sent to the front line when they had what was effectively a German royal family! Such are the kind of sensitivities when a country is at war, when soldiers are dying to defend your country. But that's exactly what is happening in Kiev now - Ukraine is to all intents and purposes speaking at war with Russia, Russia has already annexed Crimea but somehow, the Ukrainians in Kiev are still happily embracing all things Russian instead of hating them as the enemy. Am I the only one to find this situation so confusing to say the least? Or is this just a separation of politics from one's cultural identity?
Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against the Russians - there are aspects of Russian politics that I find distasteful and I am appalled by the amount of homophobia in Russia but by the same token, I've also met loads of wonderful Russian people who have been super friendly with me. The fact that I do speak some Russian has made it very convenient for me in not just Kiev, but in other countries like Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and even Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary where Russian has been used as a lingua franca when I don't speak the local language well enough to communicate with the locals. I adore the Russian language, it has been one of the most useful languages that I speak. I use it both at work and when I travel, I enjoy loads of Russian culture online and I think more people should make the effort to learn this beautiful language. So I suppose for the Ukrainians, the easiest second/foreign language for them to learn is still Russian of course because it is a close relative of Russian. It would be far easier for an Ukrainian person to become totally fluent in Russian than for them to become fluent in a language like German, Chinese, French or English. The Ukrainian production crew that I worked with mostly spoke English quite well (I stumbled upon a photographer who spoke no English and some of the catering staff struggled with English) but the rest were actually pretty fluent in English. It was a completely different story in the city in Kiev though where virtually no one spoke any English at all in any of the shops, restaurants, cafes or train stations that I visited and I had to then use my Russian to communicate with the locals.
The shoot continued after I flew back on a Monday, two of my Dutch colleagues only flew back to Amsterdam three days later on the Thursday and during our last dinner on Sunday night, they said to me, "Wat gaan we zonder je doen als je morgen vertrekt?" (What are we going to do without you after you leave tomorrow?) I had been taking my Dutch colleagues around town, ordering for them in restaurants and helping them communicate with the locals in the shops. I tried to assure them that they would be fine but otherwise, there was always Google translate! But yes, ironically, that was the other language that I did speak in Kiev - Dutch! After all, this was an ad for the Cambodian market, so they were casting for anyone who could pass as Cambodian for this ad and they had looked in a few major European cities including London and Amsterdam - that was why two of the actors were Chinese actors from Holland: one was born in Hong Kong but moved to Holland as a very young child and the other was born in Holland but had parents from Singapore. Being Dutch, they spoke English fluently of course but they were astonished that I spoke Dutch too. It is one of those languages that even foreigners living in Holland don't bother to learn as the Dutch all speak English so fluently, that's why they were amazed that I wanted to embrace their language but then again, that's exactly what I do. Being able to speak 25 languages is a big part of who I am, I'm not doing it to please Dutch people but I'm doing it because I enjoy learning languages like Dutch - my favourite TV programme is in fact the famous Dutch reality TV show 'Wie Is De Mol'.
So there you go guys, those were all the languages that I spoke in Kiev apart from English: Russian, Ukrainian and Dutch - oh and a little Khmer/Cambodian, since I had to learn the lines for this ad in Khmer! The experience certainly didn't disappoint the polyglot in me as I loved being able to practice my Russian in Kiev and making two new friends from Holland was a bonus. I'm now settled back into my routine at work but watch this space - we're expecting a further relaxation of rules regarding traveling later in October when all PCR tests requirements will be scrapped. Once that rule is confirmed, I will probably be doing a long weekend somewhere in Europe so yes I can at least travel again! Oh I can't wait to go onto Skyscanner and start my research for that. Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
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