- Hi there! This is Conor, the Language
Tsar so today I'm in Lviv in western
Ukraine with my buddy Jan Van Der Aa
of LanguageBoost. Go check out his
channel, it's called LanguageBoost. - Hello
everyone!
- So Jan has been here for about I think
about 10 days at this stage more or less
in Lviv and Jan is actually
learning Russian and I'm here to learn
Ukrainian and Lviv is located in western
Ukraine where the majority of people
speak Ukrainian and they don't speak
Russian as their first language and this quite
different to say Kiev or Odessa or
Kharkov and other cities in Ukraine
where Russian is very very common and
probably ... still the dominant language
spoken everyday discourse so what we're
going to discuss in this video is:
what is it like to if you don't speak
Ukrainian and you try to speak Russian
in this part of Ukraine? So Jan you've been
learning Russian not for very long so
it's not
very strong yet and you've been
here in Lviv for 10 days and to speak
with local people you don't speak
Ukrainian so you've tried to converse in
Russian so how's that gone for you? - That
works very well. I only have to say
that but you have to be very clear that
you don't speak Ukrainian. If you
approach someone in a restaurant for
example and you start speaking Russian, they
would often just reply in Ukrainian so
we have to be clear you have to say that
you don't speak Ukrainian otherwise they just
reply in Ukrainian. I find that in general
that the people are fine with it. I mean
probably they can hear from my
accent that I'm not Russian or and then
I'm just a tourist they use Russian
as a lingua franca here and they
accept that. They understand it and they
reply in Russian if you ... if you tell them
that you don't speak Ukrainian. It works
pretty well.
- Okay, well that's an interesting
experience because when I came to Lviv
for the first time, it was 2009 and it
was extremely hard to speak in Russian
here. People really insisted on using
Ukrainian and they didn't give me much
of a leeway being a foreigner
so what's happened in Ukraine if you've
paid attention to the international
politics and what's been happening here
is there's been a conflict with with
Russia in the last three years is the
overthrow of the Yanukovych government in
... as a result of the Euromaidan
protests and what I see, kind of
paradoxically, is that it's actually
easier to use Russian
in Lviv that it was before the conflict and
I think there are several reasons for this.
One is the fact that they're actually
more Russian speakers who have moved here
because with the conflict in the east of
the country,
a huge number of people have moved to Russia or they moved to
Kiev or to this part of Ukraine so there
are actually more Russian speakers when
you go to the cafes, restaurants and you
hear a lot more Russian on the streets.
- So you mean that Russian is more accepted by
the local people here. - Well it's definitely spoken more
by more people in the city and second of
all with this conflict with with with
Russia and with the conflict and with the conflict being in the
East and obviously with Crimea's annexation, what
you see is that there's less tension
between people who speak Russian and people who speak
Ukrainian because there's more
national solidarity. - They welcome
people that come from the east. - Exactly!
So you have a less of a distinction
based on language. At least, that's been my
impression as I've traveled around Lviv
that speaking Russian is not seen as
something maybe anti-Ukrainian, like it
was maybe in the past because obviously
a lot of the country speaks Russian as
their first language or are bilingual
in fact and also speak Ukrainian.
- I think it would be different and that will
be something we're gonna
explore in another video, is what is it
like as a Ukrainian if you
speak Russian and don't speak Ukrainian
and you come here because of course
we're 2 non-Ukrainians and non-native Russian
speakers so as you said we're probably
given a little bit more leeway.
- The thing is that maybe we should
mention as well is that
everyone, basically everyone in Ukraine
understands Russian, right? - They
should understand more or less what
you're saying in Russian, not always hundred
percent if they grew up in a Ukrainian
speaking village, for example, maybe
they're not so exposed but in general
everybody should be able to understand
you even if they can't reply in
Russian. - So if you come to Lviv
and you speak Russian
you should be fine and otherwise you can
always try English, of course, which is
not spoken by too many people here but
I've had some waiters that have noticed that I'm
a foreigner and they started speaking
English as well so that I can help
yeah something to recommend - That can
happen so stay tuned for the next video
in which we're going to speak with a
with a native speaker of Russian
about what it's like if you come
to Lviv and you speak Russian as opposed
to Ukrainian and what their experience is like and
what their impression are so it's
"до побачення!" which means 'goodbye' in
Ukrainian and "до свидания!"
from Lviv in western Ukraine.