Language in and Around Ukraine

 What is the relationship between language and culture?

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Olexander Scherba 🇺🇦 @olex_scherba

A Russian TV show introduces the “local dialect” of Russians in Belgorod oblast near Ukraine. The anchor seems to understand nothing, but Ukrainians understand every word.

Because “the dialect” turns out to be Ukrainian.

As putin says, “it’s historically our land”. #StandWithUkraine

A Russian TV show introduces the “local dialect” of Russians in Belgorod oblast near Ukraine. The anchor seems to understand nothing, but Ukrainians understand every word.

‘Cause “the dialect” turns out to be Ukrainian.

As putin says, “it’s historically our land”.#StandWithUkraine

A 🇷🇺 TV show introduces the “local dialect” of russians in Belgorod oblast near Ukraine. The anchor seems to understand nothing, but Ukrainians understand every word.

‘Cause “the dialect” turns out to be Ukrainian.

As putin says, “it’s historically our land”.#StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/1XWdR9qyBM

— olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) August 15, 2024

Olexander Scherba 🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) August 15, 2024

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The funniest part is when the voice over says "you won't find these words in any dictionary in the world!" And then they go back to the studio and the girl just speaks a local dialect of Ukrainian. Once again, we see the Russians refuting the existence of the Ukrainian language but instead calling it a "dialect" (of Russian). This little girl is taking part in this charade.

Within Ukraine there are several linguistic zones, those maps that separate Ukraine into two clearly defined zones of "Russian language" and "Ukrainian language" are in fact misleading and flat out lazy and awful journalism. It's more like this: 

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Although Central Ukraine is often regarded as having Ukrainian as the native tongue, in truth a large portion of the Ukrainian spoken in central Ukraine consists of Surzhyk, this is a mixed Ukrainian/Russian sociolect due to centuries of Russian domination. The western region is actually the region where the more "pure" form of Ukrainian is spoken. Interestingly, this map actually depicts Kyiv as being Russian speaking. It is true that in that city, day-to-day interactions are almost exclusively in Russian, even if people identify more with the Ukrainian language  (map from Map Porn)

As any Ukrainian will tell you, the modern state, the one the Russians want now to wipe off the map, kill all the people (or forcibly Russianise them), and steal its resources is much smaller than the actual extent of Ukrainianness and the two republics founded after the end of the First World War and then attacked by Poland and the Bolsheviks. It is not just Kursk and Belgorod (Bilhorod - where this girl is from). 

I am actually working today on editing a volume about a site right on the eastern border of what is now Poland that in fact was a centre of the Halych-Volhynian principality. The material culture of the 13th/14th centuries is quite unlike that a few dozen kilometres to the west, there is a very clear difference. Most of the Ukrainians were driven out after WW2 (many forcibly resettled in the east of Poland in areas that Germans had previously been deported from). In the northeast are territories that formed part of the Sloboda Ukraine (Slobozhanshchyna) that is the regions of Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk but also parts of the Belgorod, Kursk, and Voronezh Oblasts of SW Russia. Also worthy of also is the large area Ukraine lost to the Soviet Union east of the Sea of Azov and bordering on Georgia and the Caucasus mountains, the lands of the Kuban Cossacks, formerly the territory of the Crimean Khanate in the 16th and 17th centuries.  

(map from here)