Did you know that Ukraine this country has some of the worst English language skills in all of
Europe? Education First, a company that produces a ranking of English language skills as a second
language across the globe put it in its second lowest category out of five so the question is
what are you gonna do if you come to Ukraine you move here for say three to twelve months a year
and you do not speak the local languages which are Ukrainian officially and
Russian is widely spoken in the country you are going to need
a strategy to overcome the language barrier because it is quite significant here
that's what we're going to be diving into today in this Tip Thursday with me Conor Clyne поехали!
So the first strategy that you can employ to overcome the language barrier here in Ukraine is
to learn the local language, duh! you might be saying Conor well that seems obvious but
I'm not seeing that to be facetious I'm saying that because it is basically the first strategy
but of course if we were that simple then we wouldn't need this video so what I always say to my
clients or you know on a consulting call or someone on one of my online programs or a
client in person is only learn the local language here it's going to be Ukrainian obviously it's
the national language of Ukraine and Russian is most commonly spoken in a city like here in Odesa
only go and learn it if you're planning to spend a lot of time using the language afterwards
so that you get a return on your investment because if you're coming here just as a tourist
maybe once or twice a year for a week then it doesn't really make sense to learn
Russian and invest all that time say for Odesa if you're gonna spend two weeks a year then
it's a lot of effort to make in order to be able to to speak the language probably only to a very
basic high beginner level realistically within you know a year I say that as a big language
geek actually before I had this channel focused on lifestyle here in Ukraine I used to have a
language blog in fact about learning languages I learned a lot of languages more than ten
mainly entirely Indo-European so language like French, German, Spanish which I know a lot
of Americans for example or North Americans they tend to learn as their foreign language in high school
so compared to learning Spanish as a native English speaker I would say it's going to
take you three times as long in terms of time to learn Russian or Ukrainian
so think about it if you're planning spend 3 to 12 months a year here for quite a long time period
then it does make sense to go and learn Russian or Ukrainian or both I think that you need to invest
twice a week maybe an hour so that's two hours a week into learning Russian with a tutor to get to
like an A1 maybe approaching A2 level so basically gonna be able to do the basic stuff in Russian and
that is very important obviously you're spending you're planning to spend a lot of time here as
I said if you buy a property in Odesa but if not not really a good option for you to go and do that
So the second strategy for overcoming the language barrier that you can use here in Ukraine is simply
to rely on English so what is that going to mean well you don't want to invest learning Russian
or you or you just feel like you're not going to spend enough time here to justify that then of
course you can have more of a touristic experience in the sense that obviously in the city centers
as I said you can use English in the restaurants menus are going to be in English you can do very
basic things like go to the airport probably the Uber works for example unlike in the past
you just have to hit a button so you're going to be fine with those kind of things now
if you're going to stay longer and just rely on English as I said it's not Central Europe so
you're basically going to design a social circle that's probably going to be just expats or local
Ukrainians who speak English which is a very small minority of the population speak good English and
the other thing that you can do is of course find English language groupies people want to practice
their English they will gladly hang around you for the free language lessons but that is a perk
maybe a lot of chicks also who are younger will be into that practicing their English and it's good
opportunity for you to tutor them one big downside with that of course is the scammers
because the scammers target primarily foreign men who don't speak Russian they won't invest
their time basically trying to scam someone who speaks Russian because they will just figure out
they're not naive if they're not fresh off the boat they can understand everything going on
around them so you're gonna have to figure out probably a solution to that vet the girls extra
super carefully but it is possible to live here without learning the local language
and just using English but you're gonna have to think very carefully about how you're gonna
structure all that over the long run especially if you're spending more than three months here
more than the touristic experience it's gonna be a bit limited but it is doable for sure
Got a little bit of a photo shoot going on there in the background
you can see in my viewfinder always a common site here in Odesa so the third strategy you can employ
it's kind of a little bit of combination of the first two which is basically to hire someone who's
going to take care of your language needs so an interpreter basically they can also
double as your assistant very common get a local assistant here it's pretty cost effective but
basically that is a way in the short run for solving everything because well most things
unless you're doing something quite intimate where you don't want your assistant with you obviously
going in a date probably not but for by and large all the major issues that you'll have of course
someone else can take care of them for you can outsource that hire an interpreter the long-term
issue with that of course is that you never learn the local language at all so if you're doing that
without doing it as a stop gap would say just while you learn the language then the difficulty
is that you're always dependent on that person or someone else and over the long term that's
not the best strategy you want to be probably use an interpreter for doing difficult things in the
beginning an assistant definitely a big fan of that and then over the long term learn Russian it would
solve that problem also as I said you can't really bring them on dates having interpreting
dates in general like a lot of those scammy disingenuous marriage agencies do it's a complete
disaster because the frame is terribly wrong there and you know you're trying to communicate through
an interpreter bad strategy there so there you go there are my three strategies that you
can employ just a small sample of what you can do about the language barrier here in Ukraine
So there you got three quick strategies about how to overcome the language barrier here in Ukraine
this is something that I dive way deeper into on my high level consultation group with the other guys
in that group it's called Slavic Utopia Secrets: Ukraine it's for high-level guys that want to
spend three to twelve months a year here in Ukraine want to do things like obviously invest in
real estate because they're amazing opportunities here in Ukraine compared to North America and
Western Europe we dive into that also how you're gonna get to stay longer than three months because
most of us are constrained in the visa free by the 90 days every 180 we dive into that as well also
are you going to build up a business network also got you covered on that and actually it's not just
my 10 years of living either partly or a lot longer as it has been during this quarantine
period in Ukraine it's also the knowledge and experience of the other guys in the group
it's a super amazing community that we've been developing out and it will relaunch very
very soon so you need to get in on that if you are interested in spending more time than
say a touristic trip here in Ukraine and the way to get notified of when I open it up for
enrollment is by being on my free mailing list there's a link down below it's a free gift
you'll get my hot spots like cafes, bars, clubs that you need to hit when you come here to
Ukraine to in Kyiv and in Odesa they're covered in that it's down below there's a link you go
you confirm your email you get the free gift and anyways that just makes it basically a
no-brainer and in future you will get notified when I open up which is really really soon
it is officially I think the coldest day so far this year in Ukraine it is about minus 12
right now but it actually feels closer to -20 so I'm gonna get in out of this absolutely freezing
cold see you very soon in the next video до побачення до свидания from Odesa Mama Ukraine!