Why I speak such lousy Ukrainian – even after 10 years in Kyiv: Part 2
Now I really start making excuses
If you missed Part 1, click here: Why my language skills suck
No pressure, really, but this part won’t make nearly as much sense unless you’ve read Part 1.
There has been quite a tinge of nostalgia pervading this blog over the past six or seven months, and I’ve taken these posts in that direction as well.
This wasn’t my initial intention, and when students ask me about my language skills, I hardly think they’re interested in all this self-indulgent mumbo jumbo about my past.
I took a ‘seemingly simple’ question and turned it an unnecessarily self-indulgent answer.
What else would you expect? I’m not about to change anytime soon.
I can just imagine the next time someone asks me why I don’t speak such good Ukrainian or Russian and I direct them to these blog posts and they take a look and say ‘seriously? You want me to read 4000+ words just to hear this answer? Get to the point old man!’
Anyway…picking up where we left off in Part 1…
2006: from Lviv to the Basque Country
I left Lviv in June 2006, hardly having learnt much Ukrainian. But I figured that was okay, because I never thought I’d be back.
Remember that teacher – from my last post – who wanted to teach me Russian? She really tried to convince me, and she was overly eager and one of her arguments was ‘if you don’t think you’ll ever come back to Ukraine and you’re thinking about travelling in other parts of the Soviet Union’ – which I was – ‘then Russian will be so much more practical.’
Remember that.
2006, autumn: the second year of my ‘two-year plan’ to teach English. Not a good one. In retrospect, the Basque Country is a spectacularly beautiful place with arguably the finest food on the Iberian peninsula. If you’ve never had a proper Basque pintxo, then you’re really missing out on some of the planet’s most delectable, scrumptious, exquisite artistic delights. They are majestic.
For more on this:
Basque cuisine is an exploration of just how far wood, smoke and flame can be taken as a cooking technique when it’s expertly harnessed and applied to the finest ingredients. (BBC Travel)
A confession: though I at one point had passable Spanish and I’ve spent much of my life learning it, and I could’ve really built on it and got to a decent level, I just don’t enjoy the language, whether reading it, hearing it or attempting to speak it. I didn’t have a good teaching year in San Sebastian and I knew I wasn’t coming back after my contract was up and unlike Lviv, I had a great group of English-speaking teacher friends, so my Spanish never went anywhere.
2007: Riga, Latvia
So much for the ‘two-year plan’. It was onto year three.
And back to the former Soviet Union.
Noticing a theme in my choice of destinations? It wasn’t a coincidence – I was heading to places with linguistic, cultural and political ‘issues’ (apologies for the over-simplification here, I’ve covered this in another posts somewhere back down the line), whether Ukrainian/Russian, Basque/Spanish or Latvian/Russian. I didn’t pick these destinations out of the blue.
Similar to my school in Lviv, this one offered 10 free Latvian lessons. I took one. It was a good lesson. The teacher was lovely and I sent her a message asking for private lessons, even though I was more interested in her than learning Latvian. She never responded.
A Scottish colleague, who was a fluent Russian speaker, convinced me to study Russian, and it didn’t take much convincing. I hardly needed to be swayed by the ‘it’s more practical’ argument this time around.
The problem? Again, this is an over-simplification, but the divide between Latvian and Russian speakers was very palpable and for various reasons, the overwhelming majority of the places we teachers frequented were Latvian establishments. There really seemed to be little mixing or mingling. The Russian joints were more ‘Soviet’ in character and although my erstwhile editor the G-Man – long-time readers will recognise his name – much preferred the kitschy nostalgia of the Soviet watering holes when he visited, the rest of us opted for Latvian locales, where the English spoken was good. Hence, there were few opportunities to use Russian. Ergo, my Russian never went anywhere, but I really filled up my notebook and slowly built my vocabulary.
2008: I left Latvia and went on holiday to Crimea, Georgia and Armenia. I figured I could use my Russian a bit.
In Crimea, however, being in Ukraine again and feeling nostalgic about it, I defaulted to what little Ukrainian I knew, the pleasantries at least. That did not go down well in Sevastopol. I bumped into some drunken, rowdy sailors at one place, who didn’t take too kindly to my use of Ukrainian.
Outside of Yalta, when I took a cable car to a cliff-top Tatar village (was it a village? I’m not sure that’s the right word), it was a welcome relief to be able to use my paltry Ukrainian.
In Georgia and Armenia, people didn’t mind my attempts to use Russian and I had little trouble getting by.
And then, after a stint of teaching summer school in Canterbury, I called it quits on my English teaching ‘career’, after three years.
2008: the financial crisis
A great, great time to be looking for completely different, non-teaching jobs in New York, Washington, Chicago and other big US cities.
That worked out well.
In an area I’ve covered in significant depth in my old blog, I started my post-graduate course in high school history and social studies in New Hampshire, in the autumn of 2009. And before that…
2009: Kyrgyzstan
This time I was going somewhere to teach English – I had eight or nine months to kill before starting my teaching certification course – and actually make a concerted effort to study a language, Russian.
And I really did. I had brilliant teachers, two different ones, with two totally different styles, but who were both perfect for me. I was motivated. I had ample opportunities to use and practise my Russian because everyone in Bishkek spoke it, was happy to speak it, and spoke it so clearly, with nary an accent. I had loads of fellow teacher friends, but that didn’t matter. I wasn’t as anti-social with practising. I made progress. I got out and about, went to markets, talked to taxi drivers, haggled with market sellers and then took the conversation further. I was writing my journal in Russian. I wrote emails to my then girlfriend (English, but fluent in Russian) in Russian, and she said they were ‘not bad, but keep at it’. I travelled for a few weeks in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and not only had no problems getting by, but was really starting to have more in-depth conversations. I felt great.
I left Central Asia in August and headed to New Hampshire in September.
To this day, this is still, by far, my most popular post. But I fear most of the people who have come across it were looking for something, eh, a wee bit different…
August, 2010: I returned to Kyiv
And I’m still here.
Sorry, and I’m sure some of my readers hate when I do this, but this is yet another area that I’ve written about in substantial depth, my decision to come back into the English teaching fold, almost by accident.
And sorry again, because I know some readers and friends won’t like to hear this, but I had no qualms about continuing with my Russian and not trying to re-kindle my Ukrainian. I had a better, stronger grounding and I was determined to build on it.
And I think I did, in that first year or two. I got out and about, on my own. I had friends and acquaintances, who were more than happy to get together for language exchanges. 2010 in Kyiv was a time when there was still little English spoken in shops and restaurants, when menus were still in Ukrainian (my food vocabulary was still strong), when street signs and maps were not in English.
So what happened?
1 Euro 2012
Such an epic, fun month, even though it was hectic as hell, since I was doing my DELTA at the time.
But this is when, to prepare for the massive influx of visitors, everything started to appear in English, and more and more people suddenly started learning and speaking English. It spiraled from here.
Good for Ukraine.
Bad for me.
2 I got married
And we speak English all the time. Only English.
In the early days, we tried language exchanges, but that didn’t work. My wife’s Russian just isn’t very clear to my ears. I struggle to understand her. It was tedious and hard work for both of us. To this day, I don’t understand her very well when she speaks English. As I write, she’s jabbering away on the phone to her mother, complaining about me, knowing she’s safe in doing so because I won’t understand her.
[Full disclosure: I’m slightly exaggerating. My wife sometimes reads this blog. She would not, at all, I promise you, disagree with what I’ve just written. Trust me.]
My mother-in-law also speaks pretty good English anyway.
3 Opportunity costs: I love reading
Clearly I love reading. It’s probably the most common theme emanating from these pages from the past 10+ years. I panic that I won’t have enough time to read all the books I want to read in life. Time spent studying Russian is time not reading in English.
I lack the discipline to put down my books and focus on improving my language skills. It’s as simple as that.
I spend 30-40 minutes reading Chekhov or Tolstoy short stories, slowly picking up words, but then I get impatient and think ‘hell, in the time I’ve read 3 pages here I could’ve read 19 pages of Dickens!’
Shame, shame on me. (I’m not even much of a Dickens fan)
Let’s go back to Lviv, 2005, from my last post.
Nothing in the city was in English. Almost no one spoke it. My friends were all Ukrainian speakers. I had no internet at home. I had four TV channels. I didn’t have an e-book (did they exist at the time?). I had only a handful of books with me.
In short, I had ample opportunity, and time, to learn Ukrainian.
I discovered the British Council library. The selection wasn’t huge, but there was enough for me.
But so desperate was I for books, that I was flexible and open-minded.
And I don’t know how many time I’ve said this, but when you’re in a situation where your choice of reading material is limited, you learn so much more about yourself. You expand your horizons. You discover unknown pleasures.
These days, you can download anything, order anything, read anything online.
In those days, it was different.
A formula:
my bibliophilia/bibliomania + discovering books I’d never usually choose to read if had a choice = one of the greatest reading periods of my life.
Lviv Reading List, 2005
4 I’ve gone back to being more anti-social
This goes hand in hand with the previous point. One student once told me ‘don’t read, go out and talk to people.’ But I’m a grumpy, cantankerous, anti-social misanthrope. I don’t even want to haggle at markets anymore. I hear the price, I pay, I leave.
5 So many more people speak English now
Going back to the Euro 2012 effect. When I walk into a restaurant these days – well, when I say ‘these days’, I kind of mean pre-pandemic era – and they hand me a menu, it’s usually in English. They just know I’m not Ukrainian, whether I’m alone or with my wife.
When I attempt to speak Russian somewhere, more likely than not, the person I’m talking to will respond in English.
If they don’t, it’s because it’s in a small shop in a less salubrious part of town, and the only language we need to use is connected to whether I need a bag or not, and whether I’m paying in cash or with a card.
6 It’s nice not to be able to understand things
Whether it’s the TV or people in public, when you understand little, it’s much easier to block the noise out. My wife watches TV from time to time, and I’m happy to sit there and read whatever and it’s nice to not be distracted by the sound. I hear the banal conversations in cafés in the UK and US and when I’m in a café here, I’m thankful I can block it out.
7 I’ve accepted and come to terms with – somewhat – that I’ve sadly become that cynical, jaded, idiotic ex-pat who doesn’t feel the need to learn the local lingo
Except that I’m not a loud, bumbling, pompous fool when I’m out in public, walking into a restaurant with a booming voice and making a buffoon of myself. (I hope)
Although there was a time when putting on this image was a huge plus. I remember in my early days here walking into a bank, seeing a massive queue, standing around looking like a helpless idiot, and then being approached by a worker who then kindly ushered to me to some bank manager with passable English who would deal with my right away.
Foreigners and their damn privileges.
8 I have moments, usually when I travel to western Ukraine and hear Ukrainian, where I start to waver and think, ‘to hell with Russian, I want to get back to Ukrainian.’
But then those moments pass, and I convince myself that because I know so much more Russian, it makes more sense to pursue that, but then…
…see reasons 1-7 above.
But it has all led up to this…
9 I have my own private tutor. And she’s two-and-a-half years old.
My Northern Irish cousin Guy has told me that his best German teacher is his son, who is German-born.
And I’m now rapidly improving my listening skills thanks to my daughter. I speak to her in English, and she speaks some English, but most of her language is in Russian.
And in her kindergarten she’s getting Ukrainian.
And I’m hoping she’ll ‘teach’ me Ukrainian and Russian. I’ll learn with her. I may not improve my speaking skills much, but my listening skills have always been my biggest weakness.
It ultimately comes down to this
Need versus desire.
Do I well and truly need to learn the language?
Or do I really want to learn the language?
Other than for practical reasons, I had wanted to study French for a while. I wanted to read the classics in the original.
For a while, this was what really starting pulling me away from Ukrainian and towards Russian. As a teenager, I discovered Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy and then Chekhov and so I had this desire to read the classics in Russian. The choice of whether to learn Ukrainian or Russian can be a sensitive one. And this is neither the time nor the place to get into which classics to read: growing up, I only knew about the Russian ones.
These days? That desire to read in the original has faded away, and it all comes back to opportunity cost. Now that I’m a crusty old bird, how much time, energy and patience will it take me to get to the point where I can truly appreciate one of the classics, and in that amount of time, how many books could I have read in English in the same amount of time?
I’ve got a dual Russian-English language reader. I’ve got my Russian Grammar Books. I’ve got a collection of Lina Kostenko poetry, which I dip into from time to time. I’ve got a loyal Reader and friend who’s eager to help with my Ukrainian. I’ve got my daughter’s books, which are a mix of Ukrainian and Russian.
Let’s see how this goes.
I’ll write an update on 31 August 2030.
Read More
In this post, from September 2010, I revealed the thought process and how I came to my decision to return to Ukraine:
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