In a country long dominated by the Russian language, Ukrainians have struggled to defend their native tongue for centuries. But two decades of independence and official status doesn't mean the fight is over, with Russian often gaining the upper hand.
This is particularly clear in the service
sector, where persistence on speaking Russian can sometimes be
overbearing. Canadian-born Lada Roslitska, who lives in
the U.S. and spends part of her time in Kyiv, says she decided to
stop frequenting one of her favorite sushi restaurants Tanuki,
because of the service staff’s insistent use of the Russian
language.
“It happens sometimes in Kyiv.
Servers refuse to speak Ukrainian and then I start speaking English,
but that was not the first time (this happened) at Tanuki (to me)
and my friend, who was with me, (that we) kept demanding Ukrainian
service,” said Roslitska.
Roslitska and her friend from Canada, also an
ethnic Ukrainian, wanted to place a take-out order, but found no
Ukrainian-language menu. A server refused to speak Ukrainian first and so
they found themselves in an increasingly unpleasant situation. “We
asked a waitress what’s wrong with speaking Ukrainian and she said this is the restaurant’s policy, started crying and ran away,” Roslitska says.
When another server
approached them, she finally started speaking Ukrainian and the
customers got their order. “But then a guard approached the
waitress (who spoke Ukrainian to us) and threatened her with a fine,
we started a discussion with them, called (over) the administrator
and even the police. The situation appeared to be very unpleasant
and even scary,” Roslitska says, adding that she is no longer a
customer of the sushi restaurant.
Another of the restaurant’s employees,
Oleksandr, who refused to give his last name, said Roslitska
and her friend were drunk and racist. He acknowledged they are
regular customers, and that their first server wasn’t prepared for
them.
Asked if they had Ukrainian-language
menus, he said the restaurant didn’t, but that “they were printing
them.”
Yet it seems
Ukrainian businesses are not too concerned over losing clients this
way. “They will lose one or two and then 10 more will come. That
might work in Canada or the U.S., but not in Ukraine,” said social
psychologist Oleg Pokalchuk.
Only half of 290 eateries that volunteer
group Prostir Svobody canvassed in every oblast capital and cities
with populations over 300,000 had signs and menus in Ukrainian.
Moreover, half the servers at the eateries answered
Ukrainian-speaking customers in Russian even if they were asked to
switch.
Unlike the survey’s
other findings, the figures for this one actually improved in favor
of Ukrainian compared to the previous year. Surprisingly the
language phenomenon is prevalent even in cities that, according to
official figures, are predominantly Ukrainian-speaking.
Thus, restaurant
employees insisted on Russian-language service in 8 out of 10
eateries in Zhytomyr, 9 out of 10 in both Kirovograd and Polatava,
and 7 out of 10 in Sumy.
The study by Prostir Svobody monitored
Ukraine’s eight most-watched TV channels and six most-listened radio
stations, surveyed Ukraine’s 29 biggest cities, used data from the
state statistics service. But the organization warns official
figures should be taken with a grain of salt. Among others, the
state statistical service claims 90 percent of kindergartens and
higher educational institutes teach in Ukrainian, but this is only
nominally true and actual implementation depends on the will of
local administrators, the report noted.
“(For) the first time in over 20 years of
the country’s independence the number of students who study in
Ukrainian decreased,” said Taras Shamajda, project manager at
Prostir Svobody. His organization found
that the number of students studying in Ukrainian at schools fell to
81.9 percent in 2012, from 82.2 percent in 2011 – the first time
this indicator has fallen.
Shamajda argued that
the growing use of Ukrainian in different social spheres is
outweighed by the decrease in the education sector.
“Conducting such a language policy in
education means the state strategy of de-Ukrainization
is farsighted and fundamental,” he said, adding that such a policy
would ensure Russian dominance in the decades to come.
According to Ukraine’s last population
census, held in 2001, 67.5 percent listed Ukrainian as their native
language even though 78 percent claimed to be ethnically Ukrainian.
That may seem high given centuries of foreign occupation and decades
of Soviet propaganda, but multiple surveys have found that many who
consider Ukrainian their native tongue do not use it in everyday
life.
Looking beyond education and everyday use,
the situation gets even grimmer. Only 43.8 percent of books
published in the country are in Ukrainian, while 87 percent of books
sold are in Russian. This reflects the situation in the country’s
media, with Ukrainian-language periodicals, apart from daily papers,
do not even reach the 40 percent threshold.
On air, Ukrainian language and bilingual
(Ukrainian and Russian) TV programs each accounted for around 28
percent of airtime, while Russian dominated some 44 percent of the
time. In turn, Ukrainian-language
and bilingual radio programs, as well as Ukrainian songs, accounted
for a third of programming altogether, with close to 40 percent
being in Russian and the rest in other languages.
One of the problems is the perceived status
of Ukrainian, which is not prevalent in business spheres and is
associated with losing opposition political parties.
“Unfortunately for most people,
Ukrainian is not a language used in business, it is rather a
language of people who could never hold (power) once they get it.
People subconsciously perceive Ukrainian as a language of political
losers,” Pokalchuk said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko
can be reached at [email protected]
