Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
So you are in Central Ukraine, your colleagues are Russian speaking but they get angry at the thought of having Russian as a second state language?
That seems totally bizarre. Why would they not want their everyday language as a state language? I have never heard of such a thing.
First, for those people Russian as a state language, in practical terms, would change nothing. In verbal communication it's complete Russian-Ukrainian pluralism with big prevalence of Russian anyway. Official forms and things? Frankly speaking, I can't tell you in which language was the form I filled two weeks ago. Locals are good enough with Ukrainian to not take notice of such things. State language as a matter of principle, not to be "people of second sort"? It doesn't make sense. Nobody feels like a second sort person here because of being a Russian speaker. Maybe because they are Ukrainians and live in Ukraine and it is quite enough for them.

Second, about them being angry, it's an emotional anti-Russian thing because of the war. They see on Russian TV (Lavrov etc.) that one of the reasons their country is being attacked is that the aggressor wants to make it's language their state language. Isn't that infuriating, on principle?