"Sasha neit doma" ... that's what I have to say when I answer the phone and Alex isn't around. Yesterday someone hung up on me. No one knows what to do with my lack of Russian. My Russian is coming along... it really is. I know a lot of words now and Alex is always quizzing me with these little piles of yellow flash cards littered all over the apartment. I'm really glad to be learning Russian but, of course, things aren't going as quickly as I'd like. I still can't, like TALK. Which I really really really want.
Which brings me to a point that isn't really related. Ukrainian versus Russian. A lot of Americans I talk to don't even realize Ukrainian is a language Here's the deal: (At least as I understand it...)
Ukraine was, not so long ago, in the Soviet Union, right? And that meant they spoke Russian here. Now, during the period and currently Ukraine was relatively split, East and West; with the east being closer to Russia and the West being closer to Poland. The Ukrainian language stayed strong in the West part of Ukraine, but virtually disappeared in the East (and the south by the Black Sea I'm fairly sure). When the Soviet Union broke, Ukraine was eager to reinstate their language. In cities like Chernigov (where I live... Chernihiv in Ukrainian) Russian schools transitioned to Ukrainian schools and suddenly Ukrainian wasn't just a language they learned in school, it was the language they were taught in. In Western Ukraine this was less of a problem since people still spoke Ukrainian at home. Now many people there don't speak Russian at all, or just as a "second" language. In East Ukraine they are still having transition problems. Newspapers, official documents and schools are all in Ukrainian, but people still speak Russian and, in fact, most people don't seem to speak Ukrainian very well. When we were in East Ukraine, of 20 people Alex was the only who spoke Ukranian well. (When he was little he spent a lot of time in the summer with his grandmother in West Ukraine.) Children tend to have a difficult time in school because, although they are exposed to Ukranian, they speak Russian at home and may not have parents who speak Ukrainian at all (We were watching some making the band type of show yesterday and there was this controversy because out of 5 girls, 4 of them didn't speak Ukrainian at all which they judges didn't think was OK for a Ukrainian reality show.) and then they are in school and suddenly everything is in Ukrainian. When I talked to Alex about this he seemed to think it wasn't an issue but I talked to his friend's wife, who has an 8-year-old daughter and she thought it was a huge problem for the kids.
Interesting, eh?
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