Almost a third (28%) of the Ukrainians surveyed said they speak Polish, according to the results of the sociological survey “Poles and Ukrainians in Daily Contacts” conducted by the Polish company MASMI and Ukrainian InfoSapiens.
According to the survey, this is especially true for representatives of the younger and middle age groups. About a third of the respondents, regardless of age group and gender, speak Polish at an intermediate level, 10% know the language well, 30% know it poorly, and 27% – very poorly. Regionally, knowledge of Polish is the most widespread (44%) in western Ukraine due to its geographical proximity to Poland and historical and economic ties.
At the same time, only 12% of Polish respondents said that they know the Ukrainian language at least at a basic level. At the same time, of those who speak Ukrainian, 14% stated that they have an intermediate or high level of proficiency, and the rest (86%) have the basic knowledge. At the same time, 59% of all respondents and 86% of older respondents (55-74 years old) said that they know Russian in one way or another. Among Poles who speak Russian, 36% have a basic level, and 39% have an intermediate, and only 2% say they know Russian well.
The organizers of the sociological study were the representative office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Ukraine and Poland, The Jan Nowak-Jezioranski College of Eastern Europe in Wroclaw, Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism”. The study was conducted by the Polish company MASMI and the Ukrainian InfoSapiens in parallel in both countries in December 2020 using the online interview method (CAWI) with representative samples from Poland (1,051 respondents) and Ukraine (2,243 respondents).
