Ukraine: When languages meet

People in central Ukraine often speak a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Slavicist Gerd Hentschel is currently investigating the phenomenon on the ground - and is also feeling the effects of the political crisis. Crimea has always been Russian". That's what Gerd Hentschel recently heard from a first-semester Slavic studies student. This sentence is historically inaccurate: Crimea only became part of the Russian Tsarist Empire at the end of the 18th century. And the fact that the population group with Russian nationality is the largest in Crimea today is a result of the expulsion of the Crimean Tartars - originally the largest group after the Second World War. Hentschel then pointed this out, understanding the misconception: "Basically, young people, especially from the East, can't know any different." A differentiated view is what Slavic scholar Gerd Hentschel is currently striving for in his current research project on Ukraine (UNI-INFO reported on the launch in July last year). The subject of his research is the languages in which people in the vast central Ukraine communicate in everyday life: often not pure Ukrainian and often not pure Russian either, but frequently a mixture of both languages. This idiom is called "Surzhyk", which translates as "inferior flour or bread". The pejorative connotation is no coincidence. The phenomenon is traditionally regarded as "contaminated" Ukrainian by the nationalist intelligentsia. In linguistic cartographies of the country, Surzhyk, which is spoken by millions every day in large parts of Ukraine, is something of a blind spot - only Ukrainian and Russian are recognised there. Yet many people use all three "languages" - in different situations. Hentschel attempts to shed light on this from a sociological and sociolinguistic perspective. Broad empirical surveys are to take the place of previous unsystematic observations on Surzhyk. The researcher has always been interested in the question of what happens when languages meet. "Something new is created in such contacts." In an earlier large-scale project, Hentschel analysed a linguistic hybrid: the "Trasyanka" spoken in Belarus, a mixture of Belarusian and Russian. These mixed forms are largely blends of dialects and the dominant standard language, says Hentschel, similar to what we know in many southern German cities. "However, the dominant language in Belarus and Ukraine during both the Tsarist and Soviet periods was the standard Russian language, and not Belarusian or Ukrainian." Following Ukraine's independence in 1991, Ukrainian became the sole state language - Russian only had the legal status of a minority language in many parts of the post-Soviet country. Nevertheless, Russian is still very much present today. "Good knowledge of Russian even seems to be increasing among younger speakers, except in the predominantly Ukrainian-speaking west in and around Lviv." However, a good knowledge of Ukrainian is also expanding, which is not a paradox, but rather evidence of increased bilingualism at a good level. In any case, the Western European perception of Ukraine - here the "Russian" south and east, there the "Ukrainian" west - is too undifferentiated. "That doesn't do justice to the situation in the country." Only the far east, the so-called Donbas region, is, like Crimea, quite clearly orientated towards Russia. And only the far west, the area around Lviv, is clearly Ukrainian. "The very large space between these areas is not unambiguous." And in this area, Hentschel interviewed around 1,400 people about their linguistic orientation and language attitudes. 150 of them were interviewed in more detail: Those who freely admit to speaking the stigmatised Surzhyk on a regular basis. "For the group of self-confessed Surzhyk speakers, the answers will be recorded in open interviews for linguistic analysis. This means that the interviewers have to speak Surzhyk informally themselves in order to get the interviewees to speak as they do in everyday life." Many had agreed to take part in these more time-consuming interviews - and many then cancelled. "There is always a certain drop-out rate. But here it was surprisingly high." These people had declared their willingness at a time when the Russian seizure of Crimea had already been finalised - but before the bloody clashes in the Donbas region. "It is likely that many cancelled under the impression of these battles, especially as the Moscow government had put forward an alleged language conflict or the persecution of Russian speakers in Ukraine after the Euromaidan as one of the reasons for its actions." This apparently resulted in a linguistic sensitisation of some people: "This was also expressed in the fact that many tried to speak clean Ukrainian in an artificial way and avoid the Russian admixtures of Surzhyk." Many Ukrainians had become more "Ukrainian" as a result of the events in the Donbas. Some interviews were therefore unusable. However, two thirds of the necessary amount has now been collected for a reliable empirical analysis. The remaining third is currently being collected. However, there is nothing in the data to suggest a broad, deeper language conflict in the population. "The question of linguistic orientation - i.e. whether someone mainly uses Russian, Ukrainian or Surzhyk in everyday life - has nothing to do with national identity for very many people." In particular, if someone primarily speaks Russian, it cannot be concluded that they are also committed to a Russian identity. For example, Kiev is still considered a "Russian-speaking Lviv" today. Hentschel expects the data collection to be completed by the autumn. The comprehensive analysis will then follow.