About 53.3% of Ukrainian citizens speak Ukrainian in private life, while 44.5% of people speak Russia, according to a poll conducted by the Razumkov Center from August 10 to August 1, 2011.
Head of the sociological service at the center, Andriy Bychenko, said at a press conference on Tuesday that over the past 11 years Ukrainian language has spread in economic spheres and in private life. He said that since 2004, a upward trend for the increase of the number of citizens who speak the national language in private life.
The sociologist said that there are serious regional differences in the issue. Ukrainian language prevails in central and western regions, while Russian language – in eastern and southern regions. In addition, the data for Dnipropetrovsk region is interesting, as the number of citizens speaking Ukrainian and Russian is roughly equal: residents of Dnipropetrovsk and large cities speak mainly Russian, while in rural areas and small towns they speak Ukrainian.
Bychenko does not think that Ukrainian language is imposed in Ukraine.
"Despite the fact that the number of people speaking Ukrainian is growing, the number of those who believe Ukrainian is their native language is less compared to this indicator," he said. According to the poll, the number of such citizens in Ukraine is 62%.
The sociologist also said that the number of people speaking Ukrainian in public is less than in private life: 49.2%, while the number of those who speaks Russian in public is 48.7%.
The expert said that certain unconscious pressure could be put on Ukrainians in public places and transport, and this s a certain tradition when a Ukrainian-speaking person speaks Russian in the street.
In addition, the poll says that 31.8% of Ukrainian citizens are proud of Ukrainian language, 56.6% of Ukrainians believe that each Ukrainian citizen is to know Ukrainian and 38.2% of respondent do not believe so.
In turn, director of the Ukrainian Language Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, Pavlo Hrytsenko, said that over the 20 years of independence no radical changes were seen in the Ukrainian language.
He said that the sphere of functioning of Ukrainian language, the vocabulary and terminology has expanded.
He said that the number of available texts in Ukrainian grew, including writers and poets of 1920s and early 1930s and literature of the Ukrainian Diaspora.
The expert said that over the years of independence a large Ukrainian-speaking generation has grown, and no political force would be able to cancel the status of Ukrainian language as national one.
