In Ukraine, being a bilingual who speaks both Russian and Ukrainian is such a ‘normal’ thing that many people hesitate to even call themselves bilinguals. As a Ukrainian who speaks both languages, I never really regarded this phenomenon as anything special. But after the Russian invasion in 2022, and also thanks to my linguistics studies, I noticed that the question of linguistic identity in Ukraine – and for Ukrainians in general — is a really complex, fine-grained and surprisingly under-studied area. So for the spring semester of 2025, for my sociolinguistics exam project, I decided to investigate the subconscious ideologies and attitudes that Ukrainians have towards the Ukrainian and Russian languages. When I told some of my Ukrainian friends about my idea, they laughed and asked me if I was planning on starting a civil war. Initially, I found it to just be a joke but a moment later, I realized that the topic was deeply personal for many Ukrainians, taking the current situation in their country into account. After a few days filled with doubts, I set myself a goal: to design an investigation solid enough to matter outside the classroom, and to do it without starting a civil war.
The linguistic situation in Ukraine
The Ukrainian and Russian languages have existed side by side in Ukraine for more than a century, and to my surprise each time, very few people in Denmark are aware of this fact. As is seen in the image below, a considerable amount of the Ukrainian population today has Russian as their native language, especially in areas closer to Russia.
The main reason for such widespread use of Russian stems from the Soviet period, where the state-level initiative called Russification was implemented. It focused on spreading the Russian language and culture in every part of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine. This led to the Russian language being seen as the modern, progressive language, which was used by educated individuals, while Ukrainian was regarded as the low peasant language. Eventually, when Ukraine became independent in 1991, it was left with the largest Russian-speaking group outside of Russia. Since then, measures have been taken to de-russify (or perhaps, Ukrainianize) the nation, and both the military events in 2014 and especially those since 2022 have played a hugely important role in the national and linguistic identities of many Ukrainians.
Mother tongue and language of the enemy
When the minority language you’ve spoken your whole life suddenly becomes the language of the enemy, what do you do? For some Ukrainians, the solution has been to switch to the majority language, Ukrainian. This phenomenon, ‘changing your mother tongue’, already started after the military events in 2014[1] and continues to an even higher degree since 2022. Legislation concerning language use have also been implemented in Ukraine: for example, in July 2023, the Kyiv State City Council imposed a prohibition on the use of Russian-language cultural products in public spaces, such as music, literature and visual arts[2]. As of 2025, although speaking Russian in public spaces isn’t prohibited, it is extremely stigmatized and often receives severe discrimination. My friends and family in Ukraine have told me that cashiers (or public servants) refuse to provide service if spoken to them in Russian, and my friends who have spoken Russian their whole life are constantly monitoring their speech outside of their homes to avoid accidentally switching from Ukrainian to Russian.
Ukrainians in Denmark: what do they think?
The investigation I carried out focused on Ukrainian war refugees in Denmark. I asked them to listen to short audio clips of Russian and Ukrainian speakers reading a text, and then evaluate the speakers on six positive character traits, ranging from 1 to 7: trustworthy, intelligent, wealthy, educated, honest and friendly[3].
Consistent with my expectations, the Ukrainian audio clips scored significantly (much!) higher than the Russian ones, both across traits and the different audio clips, as can be seen in the figure below.
I had obviously anticipated this outcome, but I hadn’t thought the difference would be so large. These data suggest that Ukrainian war refugees in Denmark have a much more positive and welcoming attitude towards speakers of Ukrainian than speakers of Russian – perhaps not only the speakers themselves, but the languages as a whole (since some of the audios were produced by the same speakers, one audio in Ukrainian and one in Russian). One could think that this seems logical, since I’m asking Ukrainians. But as I mentioned earlier, Ukraine has both native Ukrainian and native Russian speakers, so I also collected data on my respondents’ knowledge[4] and daily use of the two languages.
And this is where I found the most interesting correlation: language use is tied to language attitudes.
The figure below shows my respondents’ average rating of the Russian and Ukrainian audios (x-axis), and the colored bars show their languages spoken daily: only Ukrainian, both equally, or both but predominately Russian. (Interestingly enough, no one reported speaking only Russian.)
Here, we see that the more Ukrainian a respondent speaks, the more polarized their evaluation of the two languages. Especially the Russian ratings are strikingly low for the Ukrainian-only group (2,77 out of 7 points, on average). And those who speak mostly Russian have the smallest difference in their ratings, but still favoring Ukrainian. This suggests that language use is strongly tied to language attitudes; moreover, some of those who report speaking only Ukrainian wrote additional comments[5]. For example, one respondent (reporting their self-assessed level in the two languages) wrote: “Ukrainian wonderful, I don’t use the language of the aggressor”.
Another respondent reported an instance of ‘changing their mother tongue’: “I spoke first 16 years of my life in Russian, but about 3 years ago I changed my primary to Ukrainian”.
A comment that encapsulates many Ukrainians’ current feelings about the linguistic situation in Ukraine and shows a strong ‘one nation-one language’ ideology is this one: “A nation must have ITS OWN LANGUAGE!”
As a predominantly Russian-speaking Ukrainian person[6], some of these comments surprised me. Obviously I expected to see some political comments, but the strength of some of them took me aback. Crucially, however, they highlight how important linguistic identities are in times of war, and how closely knitted they are with national belonging. While I myself don’t hold very polarized views of the two languages, it’s understandable why some Ukrainians do. Reclaiming and promoting a national language is a powerful way of distancing yourself from a political opponent; it is no longer just about communication, but a declaration of belonging.
Notes:
[1] Seals, C. A. (2019). Choosing a Mother Tongue: The Politics of Language and Identity in Ukraine. Multilingual Matters.
[2] Kyiv City Council. (2023, July 13.) Київрада наклала мораторій на публічне використання російськомовного культурного продукту на території столиці. [Kyiv City Council has imposed a moratorium on the public use of Russian-language cultural products in the capital.] Київська міська державна адміністрація. [Kyiv City State Administration.] https://kyivcity.gov.ua/news/kivrada_naklala_moratoriy_na_publichne_vikoristannya_rosiyskomovnogo_kulturnogo_produktu_na_teritori_stolitsi/
[3] Also known as a matched-guise test. (I did control the conditions to avoid confounds as much as possible.)
[4] One of the requisitions for participating in the experiment was to be able to read and understand both Russian and Ukrainian. All respondents evaluated themselves to be at least above intermediate level in both languages.
[5] The comments mentioned here were all either in English or Ukrainian.
[6] I say ‘Ukrainian person’ for the sake of simplicity, but since I’m Denmark-raised, I’m not sure which country I belong to (if any).
Mariya Voronka is a 4th semester linguistics student at Aarhus University, born in Ukraine and raised in Denmark. She never knows what to answer when asked “Where do you come from?”, and has learned to live with a chronic national identity crisis.
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Very interesting to read about.
Great piece of work, Mariya.
Best wishes for your studies!