If you'll live in Western Ukraine i don't think there is the point in learning russian, most people native to the region don't use it anyway. And in vast majority of cases if the person talks to you in russian you can ask them to speak Ukrainian /they'll understand you if you talk Ukrainian to them, that's applicable not only to Western Ukraine, but in general.

I don't get your colleagues. What does "more useful" mean anyway? If you are planning to live in Ukraine, Ukrainian is far more useful to you than russian, because it's an official language that is used everywhere. Most people in western academia assume our culture and literature aren't as rich and vast as russian, so learning it for this purpose doesn't make sense to them. But I'm sure if you are learnin Ukrainian on the level you do you understand that it's not the case. There are so many things to explore that were never even translated to English. More native speakers in the world..? I don't know whether you wanna talk to russian speakers anyway :D (jkjk, I don't know your situation, I'm not saying every one is bad).

I'm sad that this bias against Ukrainian still exists, but this sub makes me happy, I'm glad people are still willing to learn it. Good luck to you!

Gently extend your arm and then extend your middle finger to them. Ukraine has its own beautiful language and learning the one which is spoken by people that hate everything Ukrainian is just not right, and your conscience suggests you the right thing. You have no idea how good it feels to hear foreigners speaking Ukrainian, even if it is not fluent. And for all the other situations you already know English, so please do not spend your time learning the language that should trigger disgust in a civilized world and is associated with murderers

maybe a few basics, otherwise not much needed, especially in western Ukraine

As a Russian speaker I would always advise anyone learning Russian to pick another language instead. However from the Ukrainian that I’ve learned in the past few years I do think the comparative knowledge of multiple Slavic languages can be illuminating. Perhaps consider Polish?

You're asking this on a Ukrainian subreddit, so it's obvious that we're all biased, and yes, I don't recommend learning Russian, but if you're thinking about "usefulness," I recommend thinking about Polish

I'm still learning Ukrainian but I think this would be confusing to be honest, and I agree with the moral stance behind not learning it. Learn only what you need to talk to regular people and no more. Avoid the language for moral reasons. That's what I intend to do.

I studied Russian first and got to b2/c1 and started Ukranian as my partner is Ukrainian. I’m still happy to have Russian as it’s spoken by a lot of people from former Soviet Republics and ofc - many Ukrainians too pending on everything you prob already know. I think language is just a tool in that sense. Ofc it’s weaponised too. I speak English as my ancestors were colonised but still, as a result, it’s a key to knowing more people - building bonds. I’ve a lot of Ukrainian friends who choose not to speak Russian, some of whom grew up speaking it at home - yet I’ve never had any vibes of it being bad when I do speak it. In fact an Uzbek friend who speaks Russian much better than English visited and they switched to Russian for him. I think it’s all about context, and intention.

This is probably the worst use case for Russian if you already speak even half-decent Ukrainian.  

For a scholar? Might be very useful, depending on the subject.  

Working for the military in a NATO country? Probably only going to become more in demand.  

Travelling around the former Soviet Union? Sure.  

Living in Western Ukraine? Don’t bother.

In western Ukraine you don’t need Russian. If you want to be an expert at Slavic languages in general, your next logical steps would be Russian and Polish. If you want to be niche specialist, learn Belarusian next. That might allow you to cut out a piece of the translations market for yourself.

I don't think there's a point in learning Russian, especially in Western part. Even if you meet some people that speak Russian to you so you don't understand them, you can ask them to switch to either Ukrainian or English cause you don't know Russian

Learn what you would like to. Some other suggestions may be Polish, Slovak, Czech. If you want to learn Russian, learn it… if not, don’t bother.

one thing to point out is that russian language has been stigmatized and discouraged inside Ukraine recently, for fairly obvious reasons, which may limit its "usefulness" in Ukraine.

from a more linguistic point, from what I understand, Ukrainian maintains more proto-slavic features and grammar, which may be more useful when trying to learn languages from nearby countries. Just as well, Ukraine arguably has had better relations with its Slavic neighbors vs russia's small-penis energy.

regarding the conventional "wisdom" that russian is more useful: I don't know what the actual numbers on worldwide russian speakers are, but I'd guess that it's probably already well-populated, not only with native speakers, but from people who have learned it for business or military/political purposes. I think Ukrainian speakers, especially those who can speak multiple languages, are probably a bit of a commodity right now, especially for coordinating with Ukrainian refugees overseas, helping them find jobs and stability and such. Once the war is over, there will be a economic re-growth period that will probably attract more foreign attention and coordination.

That said, the future is hard to predict; people were surprised at the USSR's collapse, and maybe we'll also be pleasantly surprised with a similar collapse or discord within russia as well, in which case russian would actually be useful, if you wanted to be part of that.

uh, I guess maybe the take-away here is to just learn what you want, unless you have some specific plan or need. Every modern language is useful in its own way, and I'd rather do some kind of business or work in a language I actually enjoy speaking and learning about.

Learn the language you want to learn would be my advice. If you enjoy Ukrainian and feel Russian isn’t for you, then keep on going with Ukrainian. It’s also the official language of Ukraine.

If I could trade my knowledge of russian to you for a pack of crisps, I would gladly do that. Heck, I would even buy you the crisps. Living without knowing what a vile stuff russian gamers post online is a worthy investment.

On a serious note, you can probably learn the basics just so you could tell the two apart? But yeah, no, you don't need russian in western Ukraine. It is the most Ukrainian-speaking region, always was, cause soviets got there later than to the rest of the country. 10-15 years ago you would travel to Lviv as Ukrainian to see the live Ukrainian language (with a specific dialect words on top).

Nearly everyone speaks Ukrainian, but it is less used in the East. You will get along fine in Eastern Ukraine with just Ukrainian.

stick to ukrainian. my family is from eastern ukraine and speak primarily russian with each other (but are fluent in both). however, they’ve been making an effort to use more ukrainian, and my mom has expressed to me countless times her dislike of the russian language and how she wishes she spoke in ukrainian more. so like… even ukrainians who do speak russian would vastly prefer you to stick to ukrainian

I live in Odesa and only speak Ukrainian. A few people get mad at me for not speaking ruzzian, but that is because they are fools. It is better for the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian people that I remain here and never learn that crap.

Derussification is an active process, and I'm very proud to be a part of it

Well, if you insist on stopping Ukrainian, there are many many many other wonderful beautiful languages to study…

…before I’d bother with Russian.

Learning Russian is not necessary for traveling in Ukraine. People throughout the country can communicate in Ukrainian, regardless of whether Russian is their primary spoken language.

If you're good with languages, Russian won't be hard after Ukrainian. You've already done the heavy lift of learning East Slavic grammatical features that are challenging for English speakers - case and verbal aspect are quite similar in the two languages. And there are a lot of good learning materials out there, as it's been taught to English speakers for many years. For these reasons, I think it's no big deal to hold off until you have found that you have some kind of use case for Russian. If that happens, you'll pick it up rapidly.

Regarding it being "more useful," sure there are more speakers, but there are also advantages to being very specialized in a less commonly taught language like Ukrainian. Like in the US job market, Russian speakers are a dime a dozen compared to Ukrainian speakers. And speaking as someone who studied Russian intensively and will never go there again unless there's a regime change... it's really not all that useful anymore. If I were adding a language to Ukrainian purely for "usefulness," I'd consider an EU language maybe. Or work your way around the Black Sea and learn Turkish.

Learn both, both can be useful.

I'd say do what you see fit.

Russian is spoken widely and not only in Russia. Because of USSR imperialism's remnants, it's still the top language spoken in Khazakstan for example. And also a common 2nd language learned by older people in some regions of the Baltics (Lithuania), Poland, Hungary...

If your projects do not include going to these regions who speak it daily, maybe don't bother.

If you want to understand Russian without learning it and not learning it is motivated by political reasons, go for Interslavic, it should be close enough! Interslavic has really good interoperability will all the slavic languages and its political project is humanitarian as far as I have seen.

Russian will defined not be more useful if you’re talking about Ukraine. Especially Western regions

This is not bad or good, this is useless.

I would try to solidify your knowledge of Ukrainian first. Otherwise, you will experience linguistic interference and you will start mixing the two languages together. I know a Westerner who learned Polish then Ukrainian and his Ukrainian was always very weird and he stressed the wrong syllables in many of his words

If it feels wrong for you to learn Russian, you shouldn't learn it

As a foreigner, I learned both Russian and Ukrainian. What I can say is that Russian has proven much more useful, as it allowed me to communicate with people in Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia, whereas Ukrainian is spoken only in Ukraine. As for whether it’s bad to learn both—well, I did forget most of my Ukrainian after I started focusing on Russian.

Hi, US-based Russian speaker with Ukrainian roots here. I chose to learn Ukrainian based on having Ukrainian roots and because I'm anti-war and don't like what is being done to Ukraine right now, and I figured learning the language would be some kind of way to show my support.

As much as I want to say that learning Russian willingly (keyword here) isn't a bad thing, because I come from a "I like language learning" perspective, I can understand not wanting to learn the language of the aggressor, especially if you lived with a host family and they helped you seal your conversational fluency in Ukrainian.

However....I am not sure your colleagues are correct. What is your major anyway? I think what is wrong here is that the people in your major are dimissing the fact that you've learned Ukrainian to a great and decent level, and that is not okay.

Stand your ground. If you don't want to learn Russian, don't. In Western Ukraine, from what I know, even though I've never been there (though would like to visit the country one day when it is safe and no longer at war), I believe a good majority, if not the whole of it, speak Ukrainian there.

And even if you travel around Ukraine, communicating in Ukrainian will do more for you. Based on street interviews I've watched, there are quite a few Ukrainians (in any region) who either don't know Russian (or do, but don't say that they do), or deliberately won't name it because they don't think it should be acknowledged, or say they unfortunately know it (both understandable and valid, given whats been going on).

I won't lie - I myself wish I could forget it, but it's hard to erase decades of knowledge. Especially when other people in my life still speak it to me.

So, short answer: If you stick with Ukrainian and choose to not learn Russian, you'll probably be fine, no matter where in Ukraine you are.

All Ukrainian citizens understand Ukrainian so no need to learn fucked Russian. Is they beg you to learn Russian tell them they are fucked suckers

A small part of the country mostly in the west and and north west uses Polish loan words in their daily life. This peaks in Lviv and Ternopil regions. South west Ukraine uses some Hungarian and Romanian words. The rest of the country uses Russian loan words in daily life, and people in central and east Ukraine still use Russian for various reasons. Polish is not used often in Ukraine at all. I would say studying all three is best if possible. But Russian is probably more helpful with learning Ukrainian. Tho many polish words are used in west Ukraine. There’s even a dictionary for words only used in Lviv. Honestly Belarusian would be a good supplemental language too, but you might start to confuse the two as they are similar for foreigners. These days many people in urban spaces are embracing standard Ukrainian, but dialects are king in most rural areas.

yes, it’s bad to learn russian. it’s the enemy’s language, used to justify killings of ukrainians. it’s barbaric language of savages, for uneducated people

Go with Polish

As a multilingual (Greek, Serbian, English, French, Italian, Ukrainian, and A2 level Mandarin Chinese) foreigner living in Ukraine, I think learning russian is only useful if you plan to live in russia. As a world traveler who loves learning foreign languages, I’ve always wanted to learn russian because I thought it would be very useful as I planned to travel to countries where they speak it. Of course I lost all motivation after the full scale war, I will never learn that language. And I did recently travel to Moldova, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, countries where literally nobody could speak English and russian would have indeed been extremely useful for comfortable communication… I can understand enough russian due to knowing 2 other Slavic languages but of course they couldn’t understand me. So I switched to speaking fake russian (a mix of Serbian and Ukrainian and what I would gestimate some words could sound like in russian) and somehow it worked. Having said that, do I regret not knowing russian and would I learn it? Hard no. I had fun trying to communicate the way I did, I was proud to be a non Ukrainian who knows Ukrainian and not russian (the locals were very curious about that of course), and my knowledge of two other Slavic languages was enough for me to survive pretty comfortably. With all this being said, you are free to choose whatever you like. I’m just sharing my experience. And may I recommend you learn Serbian instead 😁 it uses the Cyrillic alphabet which you already know from Ukrainian so it will be super easy for you to learn, and while we cannot compare the amount of countries where you can speak Serbian (ex Yugoslavian countries), as russian wins, it still is a significant amount, and beautiful countries to travel to.

Please don’t. Let’s not help that cancer to spread