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I wanted to add a bit of footnote commentary on how I understand Russian to be spoken in Ukraine. Millions of native Ukrainians, especially in the eastern side of Ukraine, exclusively speak Russian, and in fact speak it much better than Ukrainian. [1] (Almost all Ukrainians understand Ukrainian perfectly fine, and even study it in school, but a large contingent don't speak it as their mother tongue.) It's much, much more than just "some Ukrainians", and in fact, it's part of what characteristically and culturally distinguishes some eastern and western/rural and urban regions of Ukraine. [2] Going into anecdotal territory: This was surprising to me. I hosted a family native to Kharkiv and discussed this topic. I'd think speaking Ukrainian would be a part of one's heritage worth preserving, so it was surprising that speaking Ukrainian wasn't a fluent affair for them, and they also didn't have much interest in promoting the language. Their remarks, extremely simplified, were basically that Russian is so broadly understood that it is just efficient to use, especially because of the internet. They don't want the Ukrainian language to die, but they also don't find it as a practical "daily driver". Their children know Ukrainian from having to learn it in school (but don't really speak it), and their grand-children—who moved to the USA—don't know it at all and only speak Russian. I'm less familiar with Belarus, but it was an almost identical sentiment about Russian and Belarusian for a Minsk-native family that hosted me. [1] "Russian is the native language of 29.6% of Ukraine's population [...]." "According to a survey conducted in 2006-2007 by Gallup, 83% of the respondents preferred to conduct the Gallup interview in Russian." "For the preferred language of work, an equal amount chose either Ukrainian or Russian (37%) and 21% communicated bilingually. The study polled 10,071 individuals and held a 1% margin of error." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Uk... |
Internet has made the breach greater, we might have great catalan poets from centuries ago, and a rich culture and history, but no youtuber will stream in catalan when in spanish they reach a 100x audience for example...
I'm glad I learnt it as my mother tongue though, being bilingual makes both learning other languages easier, and latin is like the wildcard of word roots for all of 'em (I can speak well English, Spanish, Catalan, and some French)
YMMV