When people talk on the streets of Ukraine, they often do so in the form of "Surzhyk" - a mixed language in which Ukrainian and Russian elements alternate. Slavicist Gerd Hentschel is now dedicating his own research project to this phenomenon.
Whatever is being talked about in Ukraine at the moment, there is a very high probability that the oral exchange will take place in a Ukrainian-Russian mixture of languages, especially in the vast central Ukraine. This mixed form is called "Surzhyk", in which Ukrainian and Russian elements alternate in quick succession, often within individual sentences and words. It is precisely this still largely unexplored linguistic phenomenon that researchers led by the Oldenburg Slavicist Prof Dr Gerd Hentschel are focusing on. The full title of his research project, initially funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation with 150,000 euros for two years: "Variability and stability in the mixed substandard in extensive and time-stable language contact: Ukrainian Surzhyk between Ukrainian and Russian".
"In its position between Ukrainian and Russian, Surzhyk is of particular linguistic-sociological importance," explains Hentschel, who has carried out several projects on Belarus and Ukraine in recent years with the support of the Volkswagen Foundation and the German Research Foundation (DFG). "The most important question is: does the Surzhyk have identification potential for certain sections of the population? Is its use even an expression of a sub-national and sub-ethnic identity?"
The question is an explosive one, especially against the backdrop of the language dispute that has been smouldering for years - which was even fought out physically in the Ukrainian parliament. "Surzhyk is basically nothing more than a mixture of dialects and the dominant standard language," says Hentschel. "However, in both the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union, this standard language was Russian and not Ukrainian." Regiolects or urban dialects in southern Germany are comparable. These were also mixtures of the respective rural dialects and the standard German language. With one decisive difference: "There is only one standard language here, and no second, disadvantaged one, as in Ukraine."
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. "It is currently even expanding among younger speakers, except in the predominantly Ukrainian-speaking west in and around Lviv."
However, the Western European perception of Ukraine - here the "Russian" south and east, there the "Ukrainian" west - is too simplistic. "That doesn't do justice to the situation in the country." Only the far east, the so-called Donbas region, is clearly orientated towards Russia. And only the far west, the greater area around Lviv, is clearly Ukrainian. "The very large space between these areas is not clear-cut."
It is precisely in this large centre of the country that the average citizen very often uses Surzhyk in everyday oral communication. Its origins lie in the industrialisation of the country, when Ukrainian farmers migrated to the cities and adapted to the Russian language. Normative linguists and cultural scientists therefore still regard the mixed language as a sign of a lack of education or lack of culture. "That's a stereotype and doesn't correspond to reality," says Hentschel. "Even academics who are perfectly capable of speaking 'cultivated' Russian or Ukrainian often automatically fall into mixed speech in the context of family and close friends."
The research work in the Surzhyk project will begin with a broad, representative survey in relevant parts of Ukraine. Hentschel's cooperation partners are the Slavicist Oleksandr Taranenko and the social scientist Mykola Tschurylov (both from Kiev) as well as the former Oldenburg social scientist Bernhard Kittel (now at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna). According to Hentschel, it will only be possible to carry out research on site, make voice recordings and conduct interviews if the Ukrainian-Russian conflict does not escalate any further. "A development that is, of course, much more to be hoped for for the people in the country."