How to speak Ukrainian and not return to Russian: the experience of a businessman

Ten months ago, I could not speak Ukrainian fluently. Terrible slang, Russianisms, incorrect accents – all this accompanied my poor attempts to integrate the language into business and everyday use.

I had enough for twenty minutes, then I was overcome by extreme fatigue and my hands fell down. Now I freely conduct meetings in my company, speak from the stage, communicate with friends and even think in Ukrainian.

Mastering the language became a real test for me, because until I was 50 years old I did not try to learn it, all my life I communicated in Russian. Even at school I was exempted from Ukrainian language lessons, because my parents were geologists, which means the family often moved. In the Soviet Union, there was a rule that allowed the children of geologists not to learn the local language.

After all, I didn’t even have basic grammar. This did not prevent me from studying or working: it must be admitted that Chernihiv Region was predominantly Russian-speaking for a long time.

A lot has changed two years ago. The threat of destroying everything you’ve built has a huge effect on the mind – in the first weeks of the war I even practiced a ritual of saying goodbye to what I have. They say that if a Russian is in a Russian-speaking environment, he feels comfortable – as if at home. So, I simply do not have the right to speak Russian.

The entire business community voluntarily switched to Ukrainian. Based on my experience, I am convinced that language learning and its full integration not only in business, but also in everyday communication is a voluntary story. Language and coercion are incompatible things. Internal resistance, which inevitably arises in response to coercion, prevents mastering the language, loving it, and starting to think with it.

Thus, with strong motivation, I set about learning the language. It turned out that one sincere desire was not enough. It went with a creak, and most importantly, I could not fully express my thoughts and feelings in my own individual way. So even when I spoke correctly, it came out somehow artificially, not naturally, it wasn’t the real me.

That was until I found a language coach. I emphasize – not a teacher, not a tutor, but a trainer. For my purposes, I do not need a perfect knowledge of grammar, rules. My request is to talk, and the trainer’s approach helped me to do it quite quickly, to integrate the Ukrainian language into my life in six months, and to start thinking in it in ten months.

What exactly is the correct approach? What did the language trainer do?

Defined my individual language constructions

Before the start of our training, Mira (that’s my trainer’s name) listened very carefully to how I spoke in Russian: constructing sentences, conveying meanings.

She asked me to speak a lot, on various topics. She listened and carefully noted down everything. Mira determined that I have rather long complex and complex sentences, richly flavored with semantic and emotional amplifiers (including profanity).

Why devote so much time and attention to this? In order for me to be able to communicate fluently in Ukrainian and at the same time remain myself, it is important to preserve the linguistic constructions and individual features of expressing thoughts that are familiar to me.

I allowed swearing

As I already mentioned, swearing is inherent in me. All these “ay-ay-ay, the language should be clean” are not for me.

I first fell in love with Ukrainian when I started listening to Les Podervyanskyi. Cursing was woven into his language so harmoniously! My speech is always peppered with profanity.

Professional deformation – I have been engaged in production all my life, and production without cursing does not exist. And this is very convenient, because sometimes at a meeting you can express admiration, despair, praise, and scolding in one word.

The trainer, after listening to me, said: “Olexandr, you can’t take swearing away. Because without swearing, it won’t be you, you won’t be comfortable. And if it’s not comfortable, then you won’t be able to speak Ukrainian with pleasure.”

Several of our classes with Mira were devoted to studying Ukrainian swear words, searching for expressions that could correspond as accurately as possible to my non-normative constructions in Russian. Thus, “grandfather knows him” firmly entered my usage; “damn it”; “to ecstasy” and “so that your motherfucker will pop.”

Supported at the rollback stage

What is a rollback? This is an unpleasant but inevitable phenomenon that accompanies forward movement, regardless of what this movement is connected with.

Internal transformation, mastering new knowledge and skills – everything that requires additional effort and changing habits eventually exhausts us. And at this moment, the reverse movement begins, which is often accompanied by despair, apathy and even irritation.

After seven months of language training, I caught a very strong setback. It is interesting that I observed something similar in my acquaintances. Some people who, it would seem, became Ukrainian speakers seriously and forever, returned to Russian. I was among them. We start speaking Ukrainian, but eventually we switch to Russian.

There is not much pleasant here. I once shared this with a trainer. Mira was not surprised and explained to me that in language learning, just like in other training or in business, there is a plateau: as if nothing is happening, there is no forward movement, on the contrary, a rollback begins.

Linguistic regression is now observed in many. There is nothing strange, let alone terrible, in this – it is a normal cyclical phenomenon, says Mira.

The first strong demand for the Ukrainian language was observed in 2014. From 2016, there was a two-year rollback. A new surge from 2018 to 2020. And another setback was followed by an unconditional and largest rise in the recent history of Ukraine from February 2022. Passion gives way to fatigue. And fatigue and mental overload are now a common and widespread phenomenon.

– So what to do? – I asked my language coach.

– Don’t worry, believe in your own strength and don’t slow down. Understand that this is just a pendulum that will surely swing in the right direction soon. Patience and hard work on yourself will come in handy.

Oleksandr Suvorov, founder of the company Pet Technologies, author of the books “Happiness System” and “Starving for Happiness”, especially for UP. Life

Publications in the “View” section are not editorial articles and reflect exclusively the author’s point of view.