Ruined Language Means Ruined Nation

I am not going to deliver lectures to the readers about the critical state of the Ukrainian language in both Ukraine and the diaspora. The threat is grave: if the Ukrainian language dies, so will the Ukrainian nation. Yet, we are a great nation: according to late Prof. Volodymyr Kubiyovych, there are about 65 million of us in the world. What leaps to mind here is comparison with the five times smaller Jewish nation, which still exercises colossal influence in the world. When organizing a state of their own, the Jews had no official language. They resuscitated Hebrew, and the government issued an injunction to learn this language in two years, for this was a prerequisite for holding government office.

The Irish are getting rid of the English once imposed on them. The mayor of Dublin, the capital, says, “I am the last mayor of Dublin who will speak English.”

And what about us Ukrainians? If ten Ukrainians come together, they speak Ukrainian among themselves. But when one alien comes around, they all switch over to the alien language just to please him: oh, he doesn’t understand our tongue!

Churches are going over to a foreign language, because, you see, there are mixed families who don’t understand Ukrainian.

There are also those who say, “I won’t make a living from the Ukrainian language in the US or Canada, so I don’t need Ukrainian.” or, “I gos to a Ukrainian church but my husband is not Ukrainian, he does not understand the Ukrainian language, so he doesn’t go to our church because he feels ill at ease in it.”

There are also those who willingly speak surzhyk (Russian-Ukrainian pidgin) which mercilessly butchers our wonderful Ukrainian language. Or take the so-called intellectuals who, instead of learning their mother tongue, are introducing foreign (from the Ukrainian perspective — Ed.) words, such as implementation, manager, etc.

Almost half of all Ukrainian children, especially in the east and north, have Russian as the language of instruction. And all this happens in the Ukrainian state!

In foreign lands, Ukrainian children go to foreign schools. It is clear that, since a child grows up in a foreign environment, he/she has a very perfect command of this country’s language. So the Ukrainian child is usually at a loss for a suitable Ukrainian word and therefore automatically switches over to the foreign language. They find it easier, especially when dealing with their peers. But even this can be overcome if there is will and understanding.

There are states heavily populated by Ukrainians, where the authorities create conditions to force the Ukrainians to forget their mother tongue and adopt the foreign language as their native one. A process like this is going on in Russia, where millions of Ukrainians have no schools of their own.

Still more examples could be cited indicating the ruin of our native language. Moreover, the ruin of the language causes the ruin of the nation. We have already seen that it is the foreign land that benefits by alienating the Ukrainians from their roots. Some of those alienated even take a hostile stance toward those who defend the native Ukrainian language, and this a very painful thing.

I want to note that there is nothing bad in studying other languages. I personally have learned and am fluent in five languages: this has never harmed but always helped me. This does not mean I demand that every Ukrainian, wherever in the world he might live, should learn more languages. But every Ukrainian should know his/her native Ukrainian language. We must remember Taras Shevchenko’s words “...learn things foreign but do not scorn your own.”

Let me for this reason make a few suggestions on how to change the Ukrainian language situation, so that the Ukrainian nation does not vanish in an alien sea:

1. The worldwide Ukrainian Church must immediately make Ukrainian the language of divine liturgies and sermons. If a church is attended by mixed families, it should organize a Ukrainian language course for the latter so that they learn Ukrainian as a second language and thus become more cultured and spiritually richer. Now each of our US, Canadian, and other parishes is capable of maintaining such a course, for among the Ukrainian immigrants there are professional teachers who are now otherwise earning a living. They should be employed in our parishes, which would require the establishment of a Metropolitan or Diocesan endowment.

2. The Ukrainian World Union of Professional Teachers has begun setting up Ukrainian language camps in Ukraine for Ukrainian children who lag behind in learning their mother tongue. Four camps of this kind are to be organized this coming summer. The US, Canada, and other countries should send our children to these camps in Ukraine, so that they will know their native land and be imbued with the Ukrainian spirit.

3. The Ukrainian state should take care of the Ukrainian people who live outside Ukraine.

4. Ukrainian banks might allocate certain funds to publish Ukrainian textbooks for Ukrainian children and to support Ukrainian schools throughout the world.

5. Wealthy Ukrainians must invest certain funds in the Ukrainian language’s development.

6. Each of us, “poor” Ukrainians, could donate some money for the revival of our mother tongue.

7. We must lay down a strict principle of communicating among ourselves in Ukrainian only.

8. The Ukrainian diaspora should be in constant touch with Ukraine, our Fatherland.

9. Schools should be organized for the elderly to improve their command of Ukrainian.

In sum, let us make an all- out effort to revive, preserve, and develop the Ukrainian language, for we should remember the words of the poet Vasyl Symonenko, “Without the mother tongue there is no mother nation.”