Thread: del

Good question, and it will be interesting to see if there is any difference between West (mostly Ukrainian language) and East (mostly Russian language) Ukraine!

Wikipediatron says that in 1990-91 (the last year before the collapse of the Soviet Union), around 48% of students in secondary school (High school) received education conducted in Ukrainian. Now it's more like 80%.

Russian is usually a required course though, I believe, even in the West.

Hmmm. I just returned from a short trip to Western Ukraine (L'viv), but I don't think I ever asked this question directly. I think many people know that E Ukraine is very heavily Russian speaking. So far as I know pretty much everyone in the cities in W Ukraine know Russian well, but I don't know if it is a required course in school. I think probably it is.

It was interesting traveling there with just my bad Russian and a Ukrainian phrase book. In the place where we stayed the staff only addressed us in Ukrainian. I can make a little sense (not much) out of written Ukrainian based on similarities to Russian, but spoken Ukrainian is pretty much incomprehensible to me.

Originally Posted by paulb

Hmmm. I just returned from a short trip to Western Ukraine (L'viv), but I don't think I ever asked this question directly. I think many people know that E Ukraine is very heavily Russian speaking. So far as I know pretty much everyone in the cities in W Ukraine know Russian well, but I don't know if it is a required course in school. I think probably it is.

It was interesting traveling there with just my bad Russian and a Ukrainian phrase book. In the place where we stayed the staff only addressed us in Ukrainian. I can make a little sense (not much) out of written Ukrainian based on similarities to Russian, but spoken Ukrainian is pretty much incomprehensible to me.

Lviv is the most Ukrainian place in Ukraine, and they don't like people talking Russian there, although I'm sure they don't mind non-Russian foreigners doing so.