Russian Linguistics
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-022-09259-4
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast –
Ukrainian, Russian and Suržyk as“native language”,
“primary code”, frequently used codes and codes of linguistic
socialization during childhood
Gerd Hentschel1
·Olesya Palinska1
Accepted: 20 July 2022
© The Author(s) 2022
Abstract
The study analyses the linguistic situation in the three Ukrainian oblasts on the Black Sea
coast using survey data collected from 1,200 respondents before the Russian attack on
Ukraine. At the end of the 18th century, this region was the core of a “new Russian” governate
during Tsarist times. Previously, the region had been ruled by Tatars and there were
neither Russian nor Ukrainian settlements. From the 19th century onwards, the Ukrainian and
Russian population dominated. Since the annexation of the Crimea, these oblasts represent
a crucial part of the Kremlin’s plan to establish an “expanded New Russia (Novorossiya)”
under Moscow’s control – extending along the Ukrainian-Russian border and the northern
Black Sea coast, reaching from Xarkiv to Odesa. This area is clearly at the forefront of Russia’s
current war goals since controlling it would allow them to establish the strategically
important land bridge to Crimea.
Linguistically, the area undoubtedly belongs to those regions of Ukraine where Russian
was prominent, although apart from the Crimea at no time was there an ethnic Russian majority
on the Black Sea coast – neither during Soviet times nor since Ukraine’s independence.
This means that the population with Ukrainian “nationality” also made strong use of Russian.
This situation is being instrumentalized by Moscow as an argument for its military
intervention to protect the Russian or Russian-speaking population.
The study firstly describes the linguistic situation in the region, differentiating between
the so-called mother tongue, the first language acquired and the principally-used language.
It can be shown that the traditionally assumed dominance of Russian is actually far weaker
when the population’s “multicodality”, including the mixed variety Suržyk, is included in
the analysis. A differentiation is made between respondents with Ukrainian and Russian
nationality throughout the analysis. Using statistical procedures such as principal component
analysis and cluster analysis, the interdependencies between stated mother tongue, first
language and multicodality are presented. Different motives for claiming a certain mother
tongue can be identified among subgroups of respondents. The analysis focuses particularly
on the questions of the extent to which central government measures to strengthen the position
of Ukrainian since Ukraine’s independence have changed respondents’ preferences
when choosing a code, and whether respondents have perceived social pressure for any form
We are grateful to Dr. Katherine Bird for her help with the English text. Remaining errors are ours.
Extended author information available on the last page of the article
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
of shift. On the whole, it can be established that speakers with Ukrainian nationality who
were primarily socialized in Russian have considerably increased their usage of Ukrainian,
but without abandoning Russian. At best, this can also be established to a minimal extent
for respondents with Russian nationality. Furthermore, since there is only extremely scant
evidence that respondents encounter disapproval or censure from their environment for their
choice of code (be it Russian, Suržyk or Ukrainian), Moscow’s claim of persecution, if not
genocide of the Russian-speaking population is exposed as a blatant lie.
1 Background
Apart from the Crimean Peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, the Ukrainian oblasts on the
Northern coast of the Black Sea (including the Sea of Azov), hold a prominent position in
the predatory-prey pattern of Russia’s neo-imperial aggression under Putin’s government, of
course together with the Donbas area and Xarkiv. The Black Sea oblasts would guarantee
continental access to the Crimean naval port of Sevastopol, which is of major importance
for Russian imperial interests – not only in the Black Sea, including the so-called Balkan
area with the Russia-oriented Transnistrian pseudo-state, but also in the Mediterranean area
as well as Africa and all of the Middle East. Historically, the territory of the contemporary
Ukrainian Black Sea oblasts formed the core of so-called “Novorossiya”, literally New Russia,
or, to be precise, the Novorossiya Governate of the Russian Empire established during
the second half of the 18th century. In the first half of the last millennium, these territories
did not have an autochthonous Slavic population, neither Ukrainian (or “Little Russian” in
the terminology of the Russian Empire) nor Russian (“Great Russian” in the same terminology).
Serfs fleeing from more central parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth started
to settle in these less controlled areas called “Wild Fields” in the 15th century. There, over
the course of time, the Zaporizhian Sich and the Cossack Hetmanate developed, a semiautonomous
polity, which came to an ultimate end by 1775. The following colonization of
these territories in Tsarist times was multi-ethnic, with Ukrainians and Russians being the
largest groups in the long run, with differences between the share of the two groups over time,
regions, cities / towns and villages. By the end of the 19th century, it suffices here to state
that the All-Russian Empire Census (1897) provides evidence for a linguistic constellation
in which most of the population spoke Ukrainian, whereas in cities Russian and “Jewish”
(which meant Yiddish) dominated clearly. Thus, by the end of the 19th century, Ukrainian
was mainly the language of the countryside.
The historical background,1
i.e. the fact that the conquest of the Black Sea territories by
the Russian Empire was taken as a motivation for Putin’s enlarged “Novorossiya project” of
2014 (cf. Bidder, 2014; Basora & Fischer, 20142
), gained renewed interest in the context of
the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The envisaged federal state should have included
the oblasts of Xarkiv, Donec’k, Luhans’k, Zaporižžja, Xerson, Dnipro (Dnipropetrovs’ka
oblast), Mykolaïv, Odesa, and Crimea, with a total population of approximately 21 million.
Although these plans somehow faded into the background over the following years, it is
obvious that it is precisely this area that has been the focus of the attacks by the Russian
military forces since March 2022, after the fruitless endeavours to capture the Ukrainian
capital of Kyïv from the North.
1An excellent account of the history of Ukraine, also in its relation to Russia and Poland, can be found in
Kappeler (2019). Cf. especially Chaps. 4 to 7 regarding the region at issue in this paper.
2On the role of “Novorossiya” in Russian nationalism cf. Laruelle (2019, pp. 195–213).
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
Apart from the Crimea, in all oblasts mentioned, ethnic Russians were in the minority,
Ukrainians in the majority. This was the case in the first and until today only census taken in
independent Ukraine in 2001 as well as in the last census taken by the Soviet Union in 1989
(for specific figures cf. Ukrainian Ukrainian Census, 2001 for both sources). Between 1989
and 2001, there was a decrease in the share of the Russian population in single oblasts of
between roughly 5 and 7 percentage points and a corresponding increase in the share of the
Ukrainian population. To what extent these changes are based on migration (e.g. emigration
of Russians from Ukraine to the Russian Federation) or on a redefinition of ethnicity cannot
be discerned here and is of minor importance due to the subtlety of quantitative shifts. It is
more than plausible that this development has continued up to today, be it also due to the
migration of Ukrainians from the oblasts of Luhans’k and Donec’k because of the war-like
situation there since 2014.
As a matter of fact, the linguistic distribution of Ukrainian and Russian in the area of
interest differs from the shares of the ethnic groups in the sense that Russian is considered to
be spoken far more often than Ukrainian (cf. for example Kulyk, 2014). This of course means
that by far not all of those who use mainly Russian are ethnic Russians. The area envisaged
for a federal state of Novorossiya largely corresponds to the one for which even the Kiev
International Institute for Sociology (KIIS) stated a clear, absolute dominance of Russian as
“principally used code” over Ukrainian (KIIS,3
2003) – the areas marked by (dark) blue in
Map 1.
In this KIIS analysis a third code, in addition to Ukrainian and Russian, is also illustrated:
Suržyk.4
Roughly speaking, this is a mixed Ukrainian-Russian variety whose grammatical
and phonic (phonetic and phonological) phenomena are on the whole more Ukrainian-like
than Russian-like. The lexicon however shows a considerable influence from Russian.5
Of
course, Suržyk has a completely different status than Ukrainian and Russian. It is an oral
3Cf. the institution’s website: https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng and the bibliography at the end of the paper
for the specific analysis. There are more recent analyses by Ukrainian researchers from the social sciences (cf.
for example KIIS, 2019 or Razumkov Centre, 2016), which illustrate a somewhat higher share for Ukrainian
in the region discussed here. Their strengths and weaknesses are discussed by Hentschel and Taranenko (2021,
pp. 273–275).
4In view of the stigmatization of the terms “Suržyk” and “Trasjanka”, not least by Ukrainian and Belarusian
linguists (cf. Hentschel, 2017 and below), the same author Hentschel (2013) proposed in one of his
early works on Belarusian Trasjanka to avoid using them and instead to use neutral formulations such as
“Belarusian-Russian mixed speech”, abbreviated as BRMS, and analogously URMS for Suržyk, which he
used in his studies. The reactions of the community working in this field were twofold. Some appreciated this
terminological proposition, others rejected it as being clumsy. Furthermore, they maintained that the old terms
were well known and may be employed in research papers in a neutral way. Ultimately, Hentschel and his
Oldenburg group decided that the latter group of colleagues were right and returned to the traditional terms,
using them neutrally, without any connotation, as will be the case here. Moreover, as was hinted at by Bilaniuk
(2018), the negative attitudes towards mixed speech in Ukraine are retreating to a certain degree in Ukrainian
society, though obviously not among some linguists and representatives of the cultural elites in Ukraine. It
should also be underlined that traditionally “typical” Suržyk is seen as a so-called Ukrainian-based mixed
speech (cf. Flier, 2008). It is characterized by the social fact that its speakers or the ancestors of its speakers
used to speak autochthonous Ukrainian dialects before moving into towns and cities where more Russian
was spoken. Its grammatical traits (e.g. inflectional patterns) are predominantly Ukrainian (cf. Menzel &
Hentschel, 2017 and Hentschel, 2018a, 2018b). In this study we use “Suržyk” in a somewhat broader sense,
including mixed speech with a stronger impact from Russian, too. This corresponds with the layman’s understanding
of the mixed code. The differentiation of Ukrainian-based “typical Suržyk” from Russian-based
“Neo-Suržyk” is one of the aims of the first research project mentioned in Footnote 9 below (cf. Hentschel
and Reuther (2020 for more details).
5For further information cf. Hentschel and Taranenko (2015, 2021), Hentschel (2018a, 2018b) or the anthology
edited by Hentschel et al. (2014). The latter volume offers a comprehensive overview of the literature on
Suržyk (and Trasjanka).
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Map 1 The distribution of the three codes according to principal usage (according to KIIS, 2003). Source:
reproduced from Hentschel and Taranenko (2021)
vernacular in which the Ukrainian “element” is partly shaped by old rural dialects, partly by
the standard language; and the Russian “element” rather by Standard Russian (cf. Hentschel
& Palinska, 2022). Due to the colonial-like constellation of Russian as the socially and politically
dominating language,6
and Ukrainian as the language of the dominated autochthonous
people, Suržyk is viewed rather negatively by Ukrainian elites (cf. Stavyc’ka, 2014), although
slight changes to the positive have been observed (cf. Bilaniuk, 2018). Among the
population of (Central) Ukraine, the attitudes towards the mixed code range from clear rejection
to clear approval (cf. Hentschel & Zeller, 2016) and the quantitative relation between
respondents rejecting or approving of Suržyk is relatively balanced.
All but one oblast that Kremlin plans designate as future members of the Novorossiya
state are part of those regions of the South and the East for which the KIIS map above states
an absolute predominance of Russian with a share of more than 80 percent. Only the oblast
of Dnipro belongs, in terms of the KIIS (2003) classification, to the East of Central Ukraine,
for which a relative predominance of Russian was stated: on average somewhat less than 50
percent.
The KIIS study has the disadvantage that it concentrates on the principally or mainly used
code, thus ignoring the very widespread multilingual or multicodal linguistic practice in the
population. Furthermore, by averaging the figures for larger regions such as South, East,
Eastern Centre etc., which are roughly based on historical regions of Ukraine, a bipartite
Ukrainian-Russian division of Ukraine is implied (cf. the contrast between blue and ochre
in Map 1). To overcome these and other insufficiencies, Hentschel and Taranenko (2021)
6Cf. Danylenko and Naienko (2019) for the history of the suppression of the Ukrainian language under Russian
rule.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
developed a different approach.7
In surveys for two research projects8
on Suržyk, concentrating
on Central Ukraine or the three Black Sea oblasts of Odesa, Mykolaïv and Xerson,
1,400 and 1,200 respondents respectively were asked in 2014 and 2019/2020 respectively,
how often they use each code in everyday life. The possible answers were graded in five
steps from ‘never’ to ‘all the time’. Then, an index was calculated that fixed the presence of
the codes for each oblast by considering the data from each respondent. The composition of
the colouring9
of the oblasts is directly based on the index for the codes in each oblast. Thus,
practically every oblast has an at least slightly different colour to all others. Nevertheless,
five clusters of oblasts, each with relatively similar quantitative relations in the usage of the
three codes remain visible (cf. Map 2 below). The borders of the oblasts simply serve as a
kind of coordinate system within which average figures have been calculated. Differences
within single oblasts and thus potentially smooth transitions in linguistic practice, which are
definitely there to a certain degree, could of course not be modelled. Nevertheless, Map 2
illustrates that linguistic practice in the parts of Ukraine that could be considered10
are much
more gradual in character than presentations of the kind published by KIIS (2003) suggest.
In Map 2, a colouring towards blue indicates the strength of Ukrainian, towards red the
strength of Russian, and towards yellow of Suržyk. The five abovementioned clusters of
oblasts are indicated by Roman numerals preceding the name of the oblasts:
In the following, we will concentrate on the three Ukrainian oblasts on the Black Sea
coast in the narrow sense, i.e. without Zaporižžja and Donec’k on the Sea of Azov, which
are the focus of interest in the still ongoing research project mentioned above (cf. Hentschel
& Reuther, 2020). As can be seen from the colouring of the three oblasts, Odesa is much less
Russian oriented than Mykolaïv and Xerson.11
For the three oblasts at issue here, the main figures of interest underlying the colourings
are as follows: In the oblasts of Mykalaïv and Xerson, it is Russian that dominates the linguistic
situation in everyday life. In Mykolaïv this predominance is absolute, with 62 out
of 100 possible index points. In Xerson we find a relative predominance with 47 points. In
7A similar, but not as elaborated approach, had been already presented in Hentschel and Taranenko (2015).
8This work is mainly based on two grants: (1) Hybridization from two sides: Ukrainian­Russian and RussianUkrainian
code­mixing in the context of the sociolinguistic situation in Southern Ukraine along the Black
Sea coast, funded in an Austrian-German cooperation by the FWF – Der Wissenschaftsfonds (no. I 4189G30)
and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, no. 419468937), headed by Tilmann Reuther and
Gerd Hentschel respectively. This still ongoing project concentrates on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast. For
some comparisons with the situation in Central Ukraine, data from a completed project headed by Gerd
Hentschel have been considered: (2) Variability and stability in a mixed substandard in extensive and timestable
language contact: The Ukrainian­Russian Suržyk in Ukraine, funded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation
(no. 10.14.1.066).
9Unfortunately, the differences will not be mirrored in the black-and-white printed version of Russian Linguistics.
We politely ask the reader to consult either the online version of this issue or the following URL:
https://uol.de/f/3/inst/slavistik/projekte/Schwarzmeer/MapStrenghtofCodesURS.PNG.
10Unfortunately, the oblasts of Luhans’k, Donec’k and Zaporižžja could not be considered in the 2019/2020
survey due to the war-like situation, especially in the first two, after 2014.
11In stating this it must be underlined that metropolises with more than a million inhabitants were not considered
in either research project mentioned above. This is due to the specific orientation of the abovementioned
projects on Suržyk. Metropolises in eastern and southern parts of Ukraine are traditionally seen as Russian
speaking, with a rather insignificant share of Suržyk. Thus, if the city of Odesa, the only metropolis in the
Black Sea region, would have been included as well, the share of Russian in the oblast of Odesa would certainly
have been higher. In the project on Central Ukraine the metropolises Kyïv, Xarkiv and Dnipro were not
considered. If, however, they would have been included, the colouring of these oblasts in Map 2 would have
slipped slightly toward red.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Map 2 The strength of the three codes in the oblasts – clusters indicated by Roman numerals. Source: reproduced
from Hentschel and Taranenko (2021)
Odesa (as already mentioned, only the oblast, without the city12
) Russian receives a few less
index points than Suržyk: 36 vs. 40. Thus, Suržyk is relatively predominant in the oblast of
Odesa, but less present in Xerson, 26 points, and much less so in Mykolaïv, only 12 points.
The share of Ukrainian is relatively stable in all three oblasts, about 25 points. Compared13
with the figures from the analysis by KIIS (2003), one can state that the results for Russian
are much lower, although Russian is still predominant. The main reason for this is probably
that not only the principally used code was asked for (cf. Hentschel & Taranenko, 2021
for more details). Our data show that only one in ten respondents report that they never
use Ukrainian. The same share holds for Russian. And three in ten state that they never use
Suržyk. By including the usage of codes other than the mainly used one into a quantifying
description of the presence of all codes, the share of the mainly used one is automatically
reduced. Furthermore, the KIIS (2003) analysis was conducted almost 20 years before our
survey, and there can be no doubt that Ukrainian now takes up more space in the population’s
linguistic practice and that the reluctance to admit to practising Suržyk has declined as well.
We will return to this topic in the analytic part of the paper.
In what follows, we will offer a first comprehensive account of the linguistic situation in
the three oblasts of Odesa, Mykolaïv and Xerson, which are the focus of the abovementioned
research project on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast. The paper is thus an initial report on
12It should be noted that the absence of data on the metropolis Odesa makes the figures more directly comparable
to those from the other two southern oblasts because the latter do not have such a large urban centre.
The same would hold, of course, for Central Ukraine, where there are metropolises of more than 1,000,000
inhabitants in only three oblasts.
13Since the index for the use of the three codes was standardized to a maximum of 100, arithmetically these
figures may be directly compared with percentage values with the same maximum of 100.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
ongoing research in the area – one of the genres the editors of this special volume on Ukraine
wanted to include. The first point that will be at issue is the question of native language (or
“mother tongue”, Ukr. “ridna mova”, Russ, “rodnoj jazyk”) in a society like Ukraine. Several
conceptions of native language will be highlighted and related to the three codes. Second,
information on respondents’ “primary code” will be provided, accompanied by a discussion
of the methodological problems confronting quantitative analyses based on this concept in
multilingual societies. Third, the contemporary linguistic practice or current usage of the
three codes will be discussed and, subsequently, the code of linguistic socialization during
childhood will be investigated. Last but not least, the question of shifts between the codes
over people’s lifetimes will be posed.
2 Native language
2.1 Native languages and ethnic groups (“nationality”)
Language usage in the sense of acknowledged languages or other codes, e.g. vernaculars,
has an impact on the statement of one’s native language or “mother tongue”. But this statement
has at least partially a different character because it can be only loosely, sometimes
more, sometimes less connected with respondents’ actual linguistic practice,14
at least in
multilingual societies. Such a statement is often an implicit utterance of attitudes towards
the languages or other codes at issue, in which various factors play a role. This has been
widely discussed in the literature (cf., for example, Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 1989;
O’Rourke & Ramallo, 2011). Zeller (2021) has offered a first multifactor analysis for concepts
of native languages in Central Ukraine, which is based on material from the second
project mentioned above and thus concentrates on the oblasts that have been coloured in
Map 2, apart from Odesa, Mykolaïv and Xerson. We will refer to his study at various points
in what follows.15
The immediate question for the situation in Ukraine, not only in the three oblasts at issue
here, is that of the ethnic groups of Ukrainians and Russians. We will start our analysis with
this aspect. The results are presented in Fig. 1, where we differentiate speakers who state that
they belong to the Ukrainian or Russian ethnic group16
in Fig. 1a and 1b:
One difference between Ukrainian and Russian respondents is obvious. The latter declare
Russian, their “titular language”, to be their native language with only very few exceptions,
although every tenth respondent only reservedly agreed with the statement. Ukrainians do
14Compare as well Sasse and Lackner (2018). For the linguistic situation in Belarus’ for example, Hentschel
and Kittel (2011a, 2011b) have described that a clear majority of Belarusians state that Belarusian is their
native language, although they practically never practise it. A similar situation obviously exists in the Donbas
region (cf. Haran et al., 2019).
15Zeller (2021) offers a sketch of the historical and political background of the linguistic situation in Ukraine,
too (cf. as well Hentschel & Taranenko, 2015), which will not be repeated here.
16This information used to be mentioned in passports and identity cards during Soviet times as “nationality”
(Russ. “национальность”, Ukr. “національність”). Note that according to the last Ukrainian census in 2001
(Ukrainian census, 2001) the quantitative relation between Ukrainians and Russian in the three oblasts was
roughly seven to one, in the last Soviet census (according to the same source) about six to one. Among our
respondents the relation was roughly ten to one. It is not known what the relation is right now. The number of
Russians today is definitely not higher than in 2001. It was probably the case that Russians were a little more
reluctant to take part in our survey than Ukrainians. Those who refused to take part were of course not asked
for their “nationality”.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Fig. 1 The three codes as native languages (mother tongues)
so with Ukrainian to an extent that is only a little lower, but every tenth respondent rejects
Ukrainian as their mother tongue. The attitudes to the respective other language, i.e.
Ukrainian or Russian, as well as to Suržyk are similar for both ethnic Ukrainians and Russians,
although the acknowledgement of the other two codes among Ukrainians is a little
higher. The acknowledgement of Russian as a mother tongue can be observed for roughly
550 respondents, only one fifth of whom are Russians, the others Ukrainians. Among the
latter, three in four exhibit a reserved acknowledgement of Russian as their native language.
The number of Russians among the respondents is thus comparatively small (but at least
approximately corresponds to the share of Russian in the population of the region)17
and
thus has a restricted influence on the whole population of our respondents, as is visible in
Fig. (1c). This is much more similar to (1a) than to (1b). In what follows, we will consider
all respondents as a rule. The analyses often compare subgroups of respondents, which is not
possible for the Russian group separately, due to their small number. Specific observations
for this group will be presented when the quantitative basis is solid.
After 2013 / 2014, i.e. after the Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and in the
light of the military conflict between the Russian Federation and independent Ukraine in
the Ukrainian oblasts of Luhans’k and Donec’k, and in still other words, in times of severe
pressure from the Russian Federation on Ukraine, it is far from surprising that many Ukrainians
feel more Ukrainian than previously. Quite a number of Ukrainians (here in the sense
of Ukrainian citizens of “Ukrainian nationality”) who mostly used Russian as their principal
medium of communication before the cited conflicts or even in Soviet times, state that
Putin has finally made them convinced Ukrainians. Accordingly, given the background of
such a social atmosphere, it is not surprising that even on the Black Sea coast, which most
earlier investigations described as overwhelmingly Russian speaking (cf. the discussion in
Hentschel & Taranenko, 2021), it is Ukrainian that receives the clearly highest number of
mentions as the mother tongue: Slightly over 90 percent of ethnic Ukrainians agreed that
Ukrainian was their native language, the overwhelming majority (two thirds of all respondents
questioned) with absolute agreement. It should be noted here that in the last Soviet
17According to the Ukrainian Ukrainian Census (2001) the share of ethnic Russians in the three oblasts was
between roughly 20% in Odesa (including the metropole) and roughly 15% in Mykolaïv and Xerson. Presumably
it was lower in 2020/2021 due to migration of Ukrainians from the Crimean Peninsula occupied by Russia
in 2014 and from the oblasts of Luhans’k and Donec’k where fighting started shortly after. Furthermore, it is
safe to assume a certain emigration of Russians to the Russian Federation.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
census and in the last and only Ukrainian census only a little more than half of the ethnic
Ukrainians named Ukrainian as their native language. For Russian, the rate of agreement
today is much lower than for Ukrainian: about 40 percent, with a certain preponderance of
absolute agreement (somewhat more than one quarter of all respondents) over a reserved
one. More than one third of the respondents even agreed with the statement that Suržyk was
their native language, with slightly more reserved agreements than absolute ones.
At this point it must be underlined that there are many cases of multiple statements of
native languages. Taking into consideration only those 977 respondents who provided an
answer (positive or negative) for all three codes (missing responses are hard to interpret in
this respect), then we can state the following: Only roughly 40 percent stated that they have
just one native language: 30 percent Ukrainian, 10 percent Russian and less than 1 percent
Suržyk. Another roughly 40 percent stated two native languages: 20 percent Ukrainian and
Suržyk, 17 percent Ukrainian and Russian, 2 percent Russian and Suržyk. About 17 percent
stated that all three codes are their native languages.
A brief comment on reservedly rejecting one or the other codes: If these reserved rejections
were to be accepted as some, although clearly restricted form of “felt mothertongueness”,
the percentage of Suržyk and Russian would increase considerably, the former reaching
about 50 percent the latter about 66 percent. Ukrainian (already on a high level) would
gain much less: close to 90 percent rather than a little more than 80 percent.
2.2 Laymen’s conceptions of native language
Declaring a language, a variety, or a code – to use the most neutral expression – to be one’s
native language or “mother tongue” has, as has been mentioned above, at least to some degree
a symbolic, attitudinal character, expressing identity, loyalty and the like. On the basis
of a multifactorial approach it should thus be possible to grade the attachment to single codes.
This, of course, holds especially when there is a “choice” between two or more codes in multilingual
or “multicodal” societies. In this investigation, the respondents were presented with
three statements, one for each code: “Ukrainian / Russian / Suržyk18
is my native language”.
Furthermore, they were asked to evaluate each of the three statements as “absolutely correct,
rather correct, rather wrong, or absolutely wrong”. There was also the explicit option not to
comment on each statement. In addition, respondents had been informed that the statements
were independent from each other, i.e. they were free to state more than one code as their
native language, either on the same or a different level.
The notion of “native language” or “mother tongue” is rather a layman’s category and
as such it is multi-layered. Trying to grasp some and, hopefully, the most important layers
or aspects of the notion, the respondents were asked to evaluate nine statements of the type
“For me, the native language is a language, which …”. Here, there were only two options
for the evaluations, yes or no. The statements that were evaluated are shown in the column
Statement in Table 1. (The values to the right of that column will be commented on below).
18As a matter of fact, the term “Suržyk” was not used in the questionnaire. The term is highly stigmatized in
Ukrainian society and was therefore avoided (cf. the comprehensive study by Stavyc’ka, 2014). The formulation
“mixed language” was always used. The respondents had been informed that this term meant a mixed
code with “more of less balanced” shares of Ukrainian and Russian speech. Ukrainian Suržyk is obviously far
from having a Russian share that is close to the Ukrainian one, whereas in the similar phenomenon of Belarusian
Trasjanka there is a rather balanced relation between Belarusian and Russian, of course with differences
in different structural domains such as phonetics/phonology, morphology and lexicon (cf. Hentschel, 2018a,
2018b on this topic). So, hinting at a more or less balanced share of Ukrainian and Russian in the mixed
speech was intended to imply that neither a Ukrainian with spontaneous and rather infrequent “ingredients”
from Russian was meant, nor a Russian with rather few interferences by Ukrainian (see below in Sect. 3).
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Table 1 Approaches to a concept of “mother tongue” / native language (Color table online)
There is no need to present descriptive quantitative data on the statements in detail. All
but one statement did not reach a majority of positive reactions. This exception was that two
thirds of the respondents agreed on point (A), that the native language is a code they acquired
during childhood. It should be underlined that this agreement is by no means exclusive.
Almost all respondents who agreed with this evaluation also agreed with at least one if not
more of the other nine as well, however with large differences. The other statements reached
agreement rates of between a minimum of 27 percent (B – the language I speak best as
well as H – the language I love and appreciate) and a maximum of 40 percent (E – the
language of my parents). The latter, E, and A as the only point agreed upon by the majority
are, of course, in a way connected with each other. Both typically refer to the language
acquired during childhood, a process in which parents are involved, at least in most cases.
Such interdependencies can be stated for other points as well.
In order to base this assumption not only on intuition, a factor component analysis has
been calculated.19
The results are presented in the three columns on the right-hand side of
Table 1 above. The figures presented are coefficients of correlation. In statistics, it is usually
assumed that a value of 0.5 or higher signals a correlation of medium strength and a value
of 0.7 or higher a strong one. The values in Table 1 represent the strength of the correlation
(interdependence) between each of the nine criteria for naming a code the native language on
the one hand and the three abstract components on the other hand. As can be seen, between
two and four of the nine criteria nicely group together with one of the components by showing
correlations of at least medium, but mostly high strength with the corresponding component.
These components can now be interpreted:
i. Positive reactions to the statements “By ‘mother tongue’ I understand …” F – “… the
language of my country”; G – “… of the nationality, I belong to”; H – “… I love and hold
in a regard”; I “… of my fatherland” hint at an emotional, rather p a t r i o t i c approach
(PATRIO) to the notion of “native language” – the first component.
ii. The second component with high values for B – “… the language I speak best”; C – “… I
use in everyday life”; D – “… I think in” rather signal a p r a c t i c a l approach (PRACT).
based on the language(s) or code(s) in their current real linguistic situation.
iii. The third component with high values for A – “… I acquired as a child” and E – “…the
language of my parents” is practical or realistic in a similar way to ii. However, it does
19The statistical analyses were calculated in SPSS 26.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
Table 2 Groups of respondents and different approaches to “mother tongue” (Color table online)
not refer to the current linguistic practice, but rather to that during childhood. One could
speak of an a c q u i s i t i o n approach (AQUI) to the notion “native language”.
It should be noted that only the patriotic approach is a symbolic one, mirroring attitudes to a
language or code. The practical and the acquisition approach are realistic approaches in the
sense that has just been mentioned.
Similar to Hentschel and Zeller’s (2016) investigation of specific components determining
linguistic attitudes towards Suržyk, we will now investigate the extent to which these
components can be used to group speakers (respondents). In other words: how and to what
extent are these components core approaches shared by respondents? It should be noted that,
theoretically, the three approaches (components) are not mutually exclusive and respondents
may adhere to more than one of them, in the same way as they mostly agreed with more than
one of the statements presented.
The statistical method to achieve this aim is cluster analysis. For a high number of elements
to be clustered (in our case 1,200 respondents) the adequate variant of cluster analysis
is a centroid-based clustering (k­means clustering). For a k­means cluster analysis the number
of clusters has to be fixed in advance. One may either predetermine the clusters and thus
their number to be tested by reasonable non-quantitative hypotheses or fix the ideal number
of clusters by another variant of cluster analysis: hierarchical cluster analysis. This method
can only be run on a smaller number of elements to be clustered, which have to be drawn by
random selection from the larger set of elements. As there are no hypotheses or suggestions
at hand on how many (and which) groups of respondents should be distinguished on the
basis of the three components, the latter approach was taken. The hierarchical cluster analysis
was executed on 50 randomly selected respondents and yielded an ideal number of four
clusters for the analysis of centroid-clustering that was conducted on the data of all 1,200
respondents. The latter yielded the results illustrated in Table 2.
As can easily be seen, the respondents can be almost completely grouped on the basis of
the three components, by showing higher positive values for only one of them and comparatively
high negative values for the other two. Almost 90 percent of the respondents can be
clustered or grouped in this way. Only a comparatively small group of respondents, some 11
percent, show high positive values for all three components, especially for the components
PATRIO and PRACT.
On the basis of their approach to the concept of “native language”, the fixed groups of
respondents or speakers will from here on be called speakers with an orientation towards
a. current linguistic practice (PRACT)
b. symbolic patriotism (PATRIO)
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
c. acquisition during childhood (ACQUI)
d. an inclusive bundle of all components (INCL)
For the first three, the same abbreviation will be used as for the components, for the last
one the new abbreviation “INCL”.
As can be seen in the last two lines of Table 2, the symbolic patriotism motivation for
declaring a language to be a native language can only be observed for almost one quarter
of the respondents. For a somewhat larger proportion of the respondents, their current linguistic
practice and competence plays the dominant role (27.5 percent). The largest group of
respondents equates their first language with their mother tongue. In a way, the latter group
of speakers understands the term “native language” or “mother tongue” literally (38.7 percent).
Last but not least, there is the small group of “inclusive” respondents (11.3 percent).
Such a combined approach to a “mother language” can rather be expected in a monolingual
society, where at least the components PRACT and ACQUI would not conflict and, if there
is some sort of linguistic patriotism in this society at all, it would fit together with the former
two components.
Regarding the quantitative data presented in the last lines of Table 2, one very clear difference
between Ukrainian and Russian respondents must be underlined: the latter are almost
absent from the groups with a symbolic-patriotic or inclusive approach (PATRIO and
INCL). For Ukrainians’understanding of mother tongue on the other hand, the first language
acquired is quantitatively more important than the currently most practised code. This point
will be returned to below.
The survey we conducted was accompanied by open, in-depth interviews from which we
can present utterances made by interviewees which illustrate the abovementioned classification
from (a) to (d):20
(a) current linguistic practice (PRACT)
(1) Суржик я счітаю своїм рідним язиком. (...) всі абщаються со мной, хто хоче,
питається наладить св’язь, общається на суржикє. (...) Рідна мова… ну якой
ти общаєшся постоянно, ну імєнна твоя удобна для тебе.
(123021
– Od, lv, 21, m, h – Suržyk)
I consider Suržyk my native language. (...) everyone communicates with me,
who wants, tries to establish a connection, communicates in Suržyk. (...) Native
language … well, in which you communicate constantly, well, the one that’s convenient
for you.
20Please note that due to the general orientation of the research project, in-depth interviews were only conducted
with people who named Suržyk one of their frequently practised codes, mostly in combination with
at least one other code, i.e. Ukrainian or Russian. This was different for the closed interviews with 1,200
respondents, which were used for the quantitative analyses. Here the selection was simply a random one.
21The characteristics of the respondents are given as following: code of respondent; oblast (Od ‘Odesa’ / My
‘Mykolaïv’ / Xe ‘Xerson’); type of place of residence (vi ‘village’ < lv ‘larger village or very small town’ <
st ‘small town’ mt ‘medium-sized town’ < lt ‘large town / city’); age; sex (m ‘male’ / f ‘female’); education
(s ‘secondary‘ < v ‘vocational’< h ‘higher’; characteristic of the fragment by language). Quotations from the
corpus are presented in the original, i.e. in Ukrainian, Russian or the mixed code of Suržyk. By “Ukrainian”
/ “Russian” we here refer to pure or almost pure codes, some with colloquial elements. The presentation of
respondents’ utterances in Suržyk will illustrate only some of the linguistic features that deviate from the
Ukrainian (or sometimes Russian) norm, as a linguistic analysis is not at issue in this paper. The English
translation conveys mainly the content, linguistic features in the quotations are not emphasized, although the
English here is supposed to mirror the colloquial nature of the utterances, such as syntactic elisions, repetitions
etc.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
(b) symbolic patriotism (PATRIO)
(2) [родной язык] український. Незавісімо от того шо я ним не разгаваріваю
практіческі (...). Український язик счітаю родним, поскоку, як я сказала,
я роділась в Україні, поскоку являється державною мовою і єстєствєнно
являється і родною мовою моєй. (1421 – Xe, lv, 17, f, v – Suržyk)
[my native language is] Ukrainian. Regardless of the fact that I do not speak it
practically (...). I consider Ukrainian to be my native language, because, as I said,
I was born in Ukraine, because it is the state language and, of course, it is also
my native language.
(c) acquisition during childhood (ACQUI)
(3) Рідна мова – це мова, на якій ти розмовляєш з дитинства. Зараз скажу як по
підручнику, але це мова, якої тебе навчила матір, а моя мама розмовляє на
російській, тому моя рідна мова все ж таки російська.
(1312 – My, st, 18, f, s – Ukrainian)
Native language is the language you have spoken since childhood. Now I’m going
to put it as in a textbook, but this is the language that your mother taught you,
and my mother speaks Russian, so my native language is still Russian.
(d) an inclusive bundle of all components (INCL)
(4) родной [язык]... ну он больше с стороны именно, мне кажется, государства,
и с другой стороны, тот, на котором тебе проще разговаривать. (...) большую
часть жизни я говорю именно на нем [украинском], и все, что вокруг меня,
это украинское, поэтому я считаю, что родной язык – это украинский. А
русский – это просто, опять же, проще всем говорить на нем, вот почему-то
так выходит. (1418 – Xe, vi, 17, f, v – Russian)
native [language] ... well, it is more on the part of, I think, the state, and on the
other hand, the one that is easier for you to speak. (...) most of my life I speak
it [Ukrainian], and everything around me is Ukrainian, so I think that my native
language is Ukrainian.And Russian is just, again, it’s easier for everyone to speak
it, that’s why it turns out that way.
2.3 Different conceptions of native language vs. codes as native languages
Having determined the four groups of respondents according to their conceptions of native
language, the first question to be asked is whether there are different inclinations in these four
groups to declare one or the other of the three codes to be their native language. Figures 2a
and 2b illustrate the major points of interest in this respect:
Here, only tables for Ukrainian and Russian are presented, because there are no significant
differences between the four groups in their readiness to declare Suržyk as their native
language. (We will return to the question of which aspects make respondent choose Suržyk
as their native language later in the text.)
Comparing Ukrainian and Russian, the first but not most important point to be made is
that Russian is much less frequently declared as the native language in all four groups. This
of course relates to the fact that the number of ethnic Ukrainians among the respondents is
ten times higher than that of ethnic Russians, since both groups have been considered here.
Of more interest are, however, the quantitative differences between the groups for each of
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Fig. 2 a: Approval or rejection of “Ukrainian is my mother tongue”. b: Approval or rejection of “Russian is
my mother tongue”
the two codes. Most obvious in this respect is that a patriotic (PATRIO) approach to “mother
tongue” as well as an inclusive (INCL) approach almost automatically make respondents
declare Ukrainian to be their native language. As has been shown in Table 2, the patriotic
component is very prominent in the group INCL, too. Of special interest are of course those
who unreservedly consider Ukrainian their mother tongue, and this is almost 90 percent of
respondents in these two groups.
For those respondents for whom a rather realistic conception of native language is characteristic,
be it oriented on current usage (PRACT) or on acquisition during childhood (AQUI),
the share of unanimous acceptance of Ukrainian as their native language is clearly reduced
to approximately 50 percent in both groups. When reserved approval is additionally taken
into account, then three out of four respondents in the groups PRACT and ACQUI consider
Ukrainian their native language. For Russian, it must first be noted that the readiness to declare
it one’s native language is much lower. Apart from that, the differences between the
four groups with different conceptions of native language are diametrically opposite to the
constellation for Ukrainian. Only about 10 percent with a patriotic or inclusive conception
of native language unreservedly declare Russian to be their native language. Within respondents
for whom current usage or acquisition in childhood is most important – among them
almost all of the Russians involved in the study, we observe a very clear increase in the tendency
to name Russian without hesitation as one’s native language, up to 35 or 40 percent,
respectively.
Briefly recapitulating this point, the first thing to note is that Russian tends to be declared
the native language for symbolic or patriotic reasons on a very low level (except for respondents
of Russian nationality), Ukrainian on a very high one.22
It should also be noted that
respondents sharing the symbolic-patriotic conception of native language are in the minority,
22At least the latter has been frequently reported (cf. e.g. Ažnjuk, 1999; Bacevyč, 2009), though not with
special reference to the Black Sea region, traditionally seen as Russian speaking. In Belarus’ Belarusian is as
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
Fig. 3 a: Primary codes (in %). b: Primary codes and speaker types (in %)
forming just one third of the respondents. For the majority of respondents, with a rather realistic
conception based on current usage or acquisition, the results for Ukrainian and Russian
are similar, but still with a predominance of the former.
We now turn to the question of to what extent the respondents’ estimation of their own
linguistic practice, in terms of the significance of the three codes in current usage or usage
during childhood, has an impact on their statement of specific “mother tongues”.
3 Primary code vs. multicodalism
The analysis of the primarily used code by KIIS (2003), as illustrated in Map 1 above, suggests
a clear dominance of Russian in the three oblasts at issue here. The average values,
which additionally included data from the oblast of Zaporižžja (on the coast of the Sea of
Azov), were 82 percent for Russian, 12 percent for Suržyk and only 5 percent for Ukrainian.
Our results are dramatically different, cf. Fig. 3a:
Two methodological points need to be clarified before we turn to our interpretation: First,
in contrast to the question about the native language, only one answer was allowed for the primary
code. Multiple options were not necessary because the respondents were asked to quantify
their usage of each of the three codes, which allows for a detailed comparison. And these
results formed the basis for Map 2 above from Hentschel and Taranenko (2021). Second, the
classification in Figs. 3a/b is three-fold. However, the partition in the questionnaire had five
variants: (i) Ukrainian, (ii) Ukrainian with some Russian words, (iii) mixed language, with a
rather balanced relation between Ukrainian and Russian, (iv) Russian with some Ukrainian
words, (v) Russian. Then (i) and (ii) were combined into the rubric “Ukrainian” and (iv) and
(v) into Russian. The intention was to make it clear to the lay respondents that rather sporadic,
occasional mixing (i.e. minor insertional code-mixing in the sense of Muysken, 2000)
was not at issue when asking about the mixed code.
a rule declared as the mother tongue by Belarusians who practically never use it, which is the clear majority
of the population (cf. Hentschel and Kittel, 2011a, 2011b).
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
As can be seen from Fig. 3a, the results of KIIS (2003) rather correspond to our data
for respondents of Russian nationality, as more than 80 percent of them name Russian as
their primary code. For respondents of Ukrainian nationality, the values for Ukrainian are
even higher than for Russian, the ones for Suržyk three times higher than in the KIIS (2003)
survey. As Hentschel and Taranenko (2021) argue, the differences in comparison with the
KIIS survey are mainly due to the KIIS methodology. KIIS interviewed their respondents
by phone, noting which code was used in their reactions. This method definitely does not
measure the primary code, but the conventional code in answering phone calls (cf. Hentschel
& Taranenko, 2021 for more detail). Furthermore, the much stronger position of Ukrainian
in our analysis of the primary code may depend to some degree on changes in preferences
for the three codes between 2003 and 2020. This will be discussed at the end of the paper.
In the following analyses it is not the primary code that is used, because it is inferior for
mirroring the presence of the three codes in the tricodal society. The problem with the primary
code is that for non-monocodal speakers we do not know on which grounds they select the
primary code from the two or three codes they speak.23
The choice may even be for symbolic
reasons similar to the statement of native languages. As Fig. 3b above illustrates, there is
almost no methodological problem with monocodal speakers of Ukrainian or Russian. They
name the corresponding code as their primary one with a share of more than 95 percent. With
monocodal speakers of Suržyk (type S) this share already drops to 85 percent. One out of ten
of the latter named Ukrainian as their primary code, although when asked for the frequency
of using it, the estimation was less than “frequent”.
4 Current usage of the codes, first language acquired and native
language – comparison and interaction
With regard to the extent of current usage of the three codes in the three Black Sea oblasts,
Hentschel and Taranenko (2021, p. 284) describe that there are no “dramatic” differences.
Each of the codes is in permanent or frequent use by almost one half of the respondent. Of
course, there are partially very clear differences between individuals. Some are oriented on
just one code, some on two codes, and others even use all three frequently. The two authors
differentiate seven types of speakers (already taken advantage of for Fig. 3b above). Figure 4a
illustrates the types and the share of the types (within the 1,030 respondents who provided
information on the frequency of use for all three types).
These seven types correspond to the seven logically possible mono-, bi- and tricodal
combinations of the three codes. As the types are based on a statistical cluster analysis of
frequency estimations, a correspondence between the number of logically possible combinations
and quantitatively based clusters would not necessarily be the case. A respondent
from the monocodal type, say “U” for Ukrainian, usually does use the other two codes as
well, but only to a quantitatively medium extent. This means that on quantitative grounds
other types would be possible, e.g. “strong U and strong R” vs. “strong U and R of medium
strength” etc. The names of the types are thus based on the interpretation of the results of the
cluster analysis (cf. Hentschel & Taranenko, 2021, pp. 285–287 for details).
It is obvious that the presence of the seven speaker types in the Black Sea region shows
a bipartite constellation (Fig. 4a). Three of the seven types have values of about 25 percent.
23As a matter of fact, asking for one primarily used code in a multilingual or multicodal society may force
respondents to a certain overgeneralisation. It is more appropriate to differentiate the choice of codes in the
communication with different interlocutors, different as to generation, social position or function, degree of
acquaintance etc. (cf. Onuch & Hale, 2018). This will be done for our data in a study to follow.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
Fig. 4 a: Types of speakers based on stated frequency of language use (in %). b: Native languages (in %). c:
First languages (in %)
These are respondents with monocodal preferences for Russian or Ukrainian in everyday life
and respondents that name all three codes as frequently used ones. The four other types show
shares from roughly 10 percent down to roughly 5 percent. These are all three speaker types
with a strong bicodal practice and those who practise almost exclusively Suržyk. The low
share of monocodal speakers of Suržyk compared with the monocodal Russian and Ukrainian
type is not astonishing, because Suržyk is principally a vernacular used in diglossic (triglos-
sic24
) constellations with Ukrainian and Russian in unofficial, private communicative settings.
In more public settings the acceptance of Suržyk is rather low (cf. Hentschel & Zeller,
2016; Bilaniuk, 2018 and Sect. 5 below).
There are some specific peculiarities of the speaker types observed for respondents with
self-ascribed Russian nationality: First, there are almost none (two out of 122) among the
monocodal speakers of Ukrainian. Second, two thirds of them are monocodal speakers of
Russian, but, third, these respondents make up just one quarter of all monocodal speakers of
Russian.
For the seven types of speakers (respondents), based on their estimations of linguistic
practice in everyday life, now the statements on their native languages will be compared
and, in a second step, their statements about the first language or code they grew up with.
Figures 4b and 4c respectively illustrate the results.25
Already the shape of the three figures
shows that there is a large degree of mismatch between the respondents’ perspectives on the
three codes as frequently used codes, as native languages, or as the code of socialization
during childhood.
24Cf. Del Gaudio (2010, pp. 258–264) for an early hint at such a triglossic constellation.
25In Figs. 4b and 4c for each respondent and code, a given code was classified as the native language or first
language if the respondent evaluated the utterance “X is my mother tongue” or “X is the code I grew up with
as a child” as completely correct or rather correct. Note further that the number of respondents included in
Figs. 4b and 4c is lower than 1,030, because only those respondents were considered who provided an answer,
positive or negative, for all three codes. 140 out of 1,030 did not do so for their native language. (Cf. Fig. 1
regarding these missing answers.) For the first language, 46 respondents did not answer one of the questions
or named another language, one of the minority languages on the Black Sea coast. Cf. Hentschel and Zeller
(2017) for a comparison with the situation in Central Ukraine.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
4.1 Frequently used code vs. native language
We start with the three largest of the seven groups of speaker type, which make up (with
rather equal shares) almost three quarters of all of the 890 respondents who provided selfquantifications
on the use and the status of native language for all three codes:
i. S p e a k e r t y p e U (218 respondents): The vast majority, eight out of ten of speakers
of the speaker type U (almost only Ukrainian), names only Ukrainian as their native
language, one in ten names Ukrainian together with Suržyk. As has been mentioned
above, there are almost no respondents with Russian “nationality” in this speaker type,
ii. R (210): Monocodal users of Russian reveal a heterogeneous picture of “mothertongueness”.
Only four out of ten report Russian to be their only native language. For the ethnic
Russians among them, the relation is however eight out of ten. Four in ten from both
ethnic groups in speaker type R name Russian together with Ukrainian, one in ten name
only Ukrainian. This all implies that monocodal speakers of Russian with Ukrainian nationality
(two thirds of monocodal speakers of Russian) preferably declare Ukrainian as
their native language, although they rarely (if at all) practise it. Only a quarter of them
unreservedly names only Russian as their native language, almost half of them Russian
and Ukrainian, one in six only Ukrainian. With the latter group there is thus a complete
mismatch between native language and current usage of codes.26
iii. S-U-R (216): Of the speakers with a declared “tricodalism”, indeed more than one third
name all three codes as their mother tongue. The share of those naming Ukrainian and
Suržyk (but not Russian) as their native languages is a little smaller. The remainder name
Ukrainian and Russian or only Ukrainian with comparable frequency.
With regard to other speaker types, a quantification is less meaningful due to small numbers.
It suffices to say that speakers of the S-R type (96) mostly name all three codes as their native
language, (similarly to S-U-R speakers), to a lesser degree Suržyk and Ukrainian (but not
the combination of Suržyk and Russian). S-U speakers indeed preferably name Suržyk and
Ukrainian or Ukrainian alone.
From the point of view of respondents’ statements about their mother tongue one can
make the following statements about native language:
i. N a t i v e l a n g u a g e only Ukrainian (280 respondents): Six in ten declaring Ukrainian
to be their sole native language belong to the monocodal Ukrainian speaker type (U).
The other speaker types are represented to a much less extent: by either one in ten or by
even fewer.
ii. Only Russian (105): Almost nine out of ten are indeed monocodal speakers of Russian
(R), one in ten uses Russian and Suržyk frequently (S-R).
iii. Ukrainian and Russian (146): One half belongs to the monocodal Russian speaker type
(R), about two in ten are each either bilingual speakers of Ukrainian and Russian or
tricodal speakers.
iv. Ukrainian and Suržyk (180): This group is very heterogenous in terms of speaker types:
Four out of ten are tricodal speakers, two out of ten come from the S-U type, one from
each of the monocodal types U, R, S.
v. Ukrainian, Russian and Suržyk (150): One half consists indeed of tricodal speakers, a
good quarter of S-R speakers and one out of ten is a monocodal S speaker.
26Hentschel and Kittel (2011a, 2011b) report that in Belarus’ such cases are still more widespread, that is,
regarding Russian as the language in daily use and Belarusian as the declared native language.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
The number of speakers of other combinations are too small to be commented upon.
The general interpretation of these observations is as follows: Among those people in
whose daily linguistic practice Russian, Suržyk or both codes play a major role, there is
a considerable reluctance to name Russian as their native language (apart from those with
Russian nationality), an even stronger one to name Suržyk (cf. Hentschel & Zeller, 2016 and
Zeller, 2022 in this volume). On the basis of the different layman’s approaches to the native
language this should already have been expected for Russian, for Suržyk this becomes clear
only here. If Russian or Suržyk are named as native languages by respondents with Ukrainian
nationality, this occurs preferably in combination with Ukrainian.
4.2 Frequently used code vs. first language (code)
i. The most obvious phenomenon is that combinations of codes play only a peripheral role
in first language (code) acquisition (cf. Fig. 4c). This is far from unexpected: First, it is
a common phenomenon that there is only one “family code”, at least between parents
and children. Regarding combinations of codes, that of Ukrainian and Russian is most
frequently named here, however, with a low share of 4 percent. It is relevant in this context
that the share of respondents with one parent being ethnic Ukrainian and the other Russian
is rather low, roughly 10 percent.
ii. Ukrainian and Russian are named as the only first language to a more or less equal extent
of roughly one third of the respondents. Suržyk is named by one fifth. It is presumably
safe to assume that at least some of the respondents were reluctant to admit that they
grew up with only Suržyk in their family. This vernacular is stigmatized – as has been
mentioned above – as the code of the uneducated, especially when there is no “literary”
variety used as well. One might feel uneasy to reveal that this was the case in one’s family.
This means that all three codes might be on a similar level as the first linguistic code
acquired, although Suržyk is clearly named less frequently than Ukrainian and Russian.
Regarding the ethnic groups of the respondents, we observe that among Russians more than
two thirds declare only Russian as their first language (the rest is distributed rather evenly
over other constellations of first languages), among Ukrainians more than a quarter do so.
This means, on the other hand, that among those who in the first years of their lives were
socialized only in Russian there are four Ukrainians and only one Russian.
4.3 The presence of the codes in the respondents’surroundings
This brings us back to the question of the extent to which the three codes are currently
used “in reality”. Up to this point we have only discussed data based on respondents’ selfestimations
of their own linguistic practice. To a certain, but of course variable degree people
are interested in presenting themselves in a good light, which is especially to be reckoned
with for the symbolic aspects of the “mother tongue”, which for many, as has been shown,
has a symbolic-patriotic significance. A similar approach cannot be completely ruled out
even for statements on the codes frequently practised or on the ones acquired during childhood.
We therefore now turn to the question of how respondents estimate the presence of the
three codes in their surroundings. First, the situation in families will be looked at, which is
of course a closer or more intimate social context for the respondents and, second, the situation
outside the family. The corresponding questions were “How often is X used or to be
heard?” The presentation of the quantitative relations will be differentiated for respondents
with Ukrainian and with Russian nationality, because they differ clearly between the two
groups. Figure 5 presents the results:
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Fig. 5 The presence of the three codes in the family and in other everyday contexts of the respondents
The first thing to notice in this analysis is that there are very few refusals to answer this
question. This underlines that personal statements in surveys can be influenced by a feeling
of discomfort for some phenomena. The second point to be made is of course the differences
between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. It looks as if the two groups are living in
two separate linguistic worlds. Nearly one half of the respondents of Ukrainian nationality
(Fig. 5a) report the frequent or very frequent usage of Ukrainian, most interestingly a little
more often for non-family (“other”) contexts. Apart from that, first, the same holds for
Suržyk, and second, the results for family contexts and non-family contexts do not differ
greatly. An interesting point is connected with the presence, or to be precise, the absence of
Suržyk in the micro-world of this group: 30 percent state that it is not used in their families,
but only 17 percent say that they are not confronted with it in other contexts. With respondents
of Russian nationality (Fig. 5b) this discrepancy is even clearer: 46 vs. 27 percent.
For both groups it is obviously “easier” to acknowledge the presence of Suržyk outside their
families, i.e. at some distance from themselves. This can be interpreted in the sense that the
usage of Suržyk is to a certain degree even more widespread than people are ready to admit
regularly using it themselves.
The most striking difference between the two ethnic groups is of course connected with
the presence of Russian in their respective micro-worlds. More than 90 percent of the ethnic
Russians state that it is frequent, mostly very frequent in their surroundings, both in their
families and in other social contexts. In view of the widespread monocodalism of ethnic
Russians already described above, this is of course less astonishing for family contexts than
for other ones. The corresponding figures for ethnic Ukrainians are much lower: a little more
than 50 percent use Russian frequently or very frequently.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
Fig. 6 Self-judgements on competence in Ukrainian and Russian (in % for 1,200 respondents)
This leads us to the question of competence in Ukrainian and Russian and to the question
of shifts from one language or code during the respondents’ lifetimes.
5 Competence in Ukrainian and Russian
Since there are relatively large groups that neither use Ukrainian nor Russian frequently,
the question of competence in the two languages arises.27
Eight in ten respondents state
that they can speak and write Ukrainian fluently. Almost everybody reports that they can
freely understand spoken Ukrainian and nine out of ten claim to be able to read long texts in
Ukrainian. With regard to Russian, these figures are even slightly better. Thus, the differences
between Ukrainian and Russian are rather subtle, with a slight quantitative advantage for
Russian.
The judgements about the level of competence in the two languages without distinguishing
between active and passive competence in oral or written form are more informative, as
the next figures illustrate:
As a matter of fact, even these quantitative data in the general overview of Fig. 6 evidence
a balanced relation between Ukrainian and Russian: For both languages the share of
respondents judging their competence with a score of 7 or worse is 37 percent. However,
among those who rate their competence better than 7, an excellent command of Russian is
stated more often than an excellent one of Ukrainian. On the other hand, a score of 8, i.e. the
grade “good”, is more frequent for Ukrainian, with the grade “very good” for both on the
same level.
27Note that we did not ask about competence in Suržyk. An informal pilot survey supported our assumption
that for very many people such a question about “competence in Suržyk” would seem to be unanswerable if
not outright ridiculous.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Fig. 7 a to f: Speaker type and competence in Ukrainian and Russian (colours as above: blue – Ukrainian,
orange – Russian) (Color figure online)
Clear differences in the self-judgements on competence in Ukrainian and Russian become
obvious when speaker types are discriminated; cf. Fig. 7:
It is obvious that many monocodal speakers of Ukrainian report a rather reduced competence
in Russian (Fig. 7a) and vice versa for the Ukrainian of monocodal Russian speakers
(b). And these two groups make up roughly one half of all respondents. Respondents who
named Russian and Suržyk as frequently used codes report similar levels of competence to
monocodal speakers of Russian (e). Here as well, competence in Russian is obviously better
than that in Ukrainian, but of course not as clearly as in the case of monocodal speakers of
Russian. A general point that can be made for all speaker types with Suržyk as one of the frequently
used codes (from d to f) is that the self-estimated level of competence in Ukrainian
and Russian is much lower than for monocodal speakers or for the small group of self-stated
balanced Ukrainian-Russian bilinguals (c). A balanced Ukrainian-Russian competence level
can be observed with one other group, namely with those who use all three codes, including
Suržyk, with relatively high frequency (d). And this is as large a group as the two monocodal
groups. Last but not least, there are speakers with only Suržyk or Suržyk and Ukrainian in
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
frequent use, who by and large tend to report a slightly higher competence in Ukrainian (f),
which is slightly more obvious with those who report Ukrainian as well. However, in both
subgroups the picture is rather diffuse.
So far in this section, the two ethnic groups have been analysed together. What has to
be added is a word on competence in Ukrainian among respondents of Russian nationality,
almost all of whom, as has been outlined above, belong to the monocodal Russian speaker
type. For this reason, a differentiation based on speaker types would not be meaningful. It is,
however, possible to make a more precise comment on the results presented in Fig. 7b: For
ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in this group together, competence in Ukrainian is not high,
and it is not surprising that it is worse for speakers of Russian nationality than for those of
Ukrainian nationality. More than half of the ethnic Russians in this group has a poor level of
competence in Ukrainian with a score of 5 or less on the 10-point scale (a quarter even has
no competence at all). On the other hand, only 14 percent of ethnic Russians claim to have
a very good or excellent competence (score 9 and 10) and 28 percent of ethnic Ukrainians.
These data hint at a situation in which Suržyk is to a certain degree some sort of communicative
bridge in everyday life between speakers oriented towards Ukrainian or Russian, at
least for ethnic Ukrainians. This is mirrored in the answers to the aspect of tolerance towards
the three codes. There were two questions in our survey on this topic: “Have you ever felt
embarrassed because of using X?” and “Have you ever been jeered because of using X?”
Both questions were asked for all three codes. There are extremely few positive answers on
either question. Three out of 100 respondents have experienced occasions of embarrassment
for using Suržyk, one of 100 for using Ukrainian and even fewer for using Russian. Still
fewer experienced objections to their choice of codes, interestingly more for Ukrainian (15
out of 1,000) than for Russian or Suržyk (7 and 8 of 1,000).
In interviews, respondents were more likely to mention good-natured ridicule than real
bullying:
(5) це [суржик] деколи викликає сміх, aле такий позитивний, ти з цього посміявся
і тобі ну..., не так, що “га-га-га” насміхаєшся. А це просто прикольно, навіть
деякі слова можеш перейняти і потім так само їх використовувати.
(1237 – Od, lv, 21, m, h – Ukrainian)
It [Suržyk] is sometimes laughable, but rather positive, you laughed at it and you,
well ..., not that you would go laughing “ha-ha-ha”. And it’s just cool, you can even
adopt some words and then use them in the same way.
In most cases, according to the respondents, it is Suržyk that is stigmatized, but in some cases
the use of the Ukrainian (6) or Russian (7) languages also causes ridicule or objection.
(6) У нас получається в мене в сестри чоловік, він – руский, сам з Кемеровской
області, но він поначалу нас не понімав трошки, а потом він уже привик, хоч
він сам руский, і вже йому і за сємдесять, і як він не хотів перевести, як він не
хотів промовить ці слова українські, то в нього всьо равно ніяк. То ми з нього
глузували, а не він з нас. (1432 – Xe, st, 65, f, v – Suržyk)
We have, therefore, my sister’s husband, he is Russian, himself from the Kemerovo
region, but at first, he did not always understand us, and then he got used to it, although
he is Russian, and he is over seventy, and as he wanted to translate, as he
wanted to say these words in Ukrainian, he anyhow did not succeed. Then we made
fun of him, not he of us.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
(7) Я работала в сфєрі обслуживанія, і я начала балакати, як я балакаю, то
дєвочка одна мені сказала так: “нє разгаварівайтє са мной на украінскай мовє,
разгаварівайтє са мной на русском язику”. (1437 – Xe, lv, 35, f, v – Suržyk)
I worked in the service sector, and I started talking as I talk, and one girl told me: “do
not talk to me in Ukrainian, talk to me in Russian.”
Respondents often even show self-confidence, despite ridicule of their language.
(8) В унівєрсітєті, то да, ми приїхали з села, то в нас такий тута мєсний діалєкт,
можна сказать. Уже Кривий Рог, город, всі по-русски там, то з нас, канєшно, всі
підсміювалися, і ми як починали по-українськи, нам трошки було неудобно, і ми
начинали, ето ж перві курси, під них підстраюваться, ну, балакали по-російськи.
Ну а потім уже як трошки стали старші, то ми рішили, чо ми должні під них
підстраюваться, нехай лучше вони під нас. І ми начали розмовлять по-своєму і,
ну, і перестали, коли вони з нас сміялись, ми просто на це відповідали: хлопці,
ви лучше підстраюйтесь під нас, українська Україна, українська мова, ну, тобто
в таком плані. (1443 – Xe, st, 42, m, h – Suržyk)
At the university, yes, we came from the village, we have such a local dialect here,
as one can say. Kryvyi Rih, on the other hand, the city, all in Russian there, then of
course, all of us laughed, and we started in Ukrainian, we felt a little uncomfortable,
and we started – those were the first years of studying – to adapt to them, well, chatted
in Russian. Well, then as we got a little older, we decided that we shouldn’t adapt to
them, but rather they to us. And we started talking in our own way and, well, we
stopped when they laughed at us, we just answered: guys, you better adapt to us,
Ukrainian Ukraine, Ukrainian language, well, that is, something like that.
However, the number of instances of ridicule or objection described above is far too small
to interpret their differences. What can be interpreted is the low level of embarrassment
and objections regarding the practice of the codes, even for Suržyk. Of course, there are
conversational situations in which one of the codes is more appropriate or inappropriate.
And discomfort may result if expectations for the use or non-use of a code are not fulfilled.
This seems however to be bound to specific situations rather than general attitudes in society
(see Zeller, 2022 in this volume on attitudes).
6 Language or code shifts
It is a well-known fact that language policy in the independent Ukrainian state has enforced
the position of Ukrainian in society,28
especially in official or public contexts. Ukrainian is
the only state language, but Russian has a legally fixed status on the regional level.29
As
28For an overview of the changing role of the Ukrainian language in society over the last two decades, see
Danylevs’ka (2019, pp. 24–40).
29According to the Law of Ukraine “On the Principles of State Language Policy”, approved in 2012, the
use of regional languages, especially Russian, was significantly expanded if the number of speakers of these
languages was at least 10% of the population of a region (cf. Bowring, 2014 for more details). The law expired
in 2018, according to a ruling by the Constitutional Court. The new law “To ensure the functioning of the
Ukrainian language as a state language” was approved by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on 25 April 2019,
and took full effect on 16 July of the same year. It establishes the priority of the Ukrainian language in all
spheres of public life throughout Ukraine.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
Fig. 8 Shifting codes: From first language (code) to speaker type
Hentschel and Brüggemann (2015) have outlined for Central Ukraine30
in the year 2014,
(i) this situation is obviously supported by a majority of the population, (ii) there is neither
an aversion towards Russian in society, even with people who are clearly oriented towards
Ukrainian, nor a prosecution of speakers of Russian, (iii) people do not see a language conflict
in society, the emotional discussion among political and cultural elites notwithstanding,
and (iv) that people prefer to have the specific official status of Russian and other languages
fixed rather on the regional level of oblasts. This holds even for the oblast of Xarkiv, with its
clear orientation towards Russian in 2014, though to a somewhat lower degree.31
Of course,
due to the cruelty of Russian warfare, these attitudes will probably change to the negative
for Russian, at least to a certain extent.
Ukrainian, without any doubt already before 24 February 2022, had become more important
for many people in order to live a normal professional and social life, most probably
with differences between regions such as, for example, between Lviv, as strongly oriented
towards Ukrainian on the one hand, and Xarkiv, as strongly oriented towards Russian, on
the other hand. Nevertheless, the question arises of the extent to which people shifted to
Ukrainian, especially in regions where during Soviet times Russian clearly predominated, as
was clearly the case in the three oblasts on the Black Sea coast.
We will try to shed light on this question by analysing how the respondents’ linguistic
practice developed after their, as a rule, obviously monocodal first linguistic socialization (cf.
Fig. 4c). To this end, we will analyse which type of speaker (cf. Fig. 4a) they now report to be.
The number of respondents reporting multicodal linguistic socialization during childhood is
too low in the four groups to allow for a meaningful quantitative analysis. Figure 8 illustrates
the correspondences for the three monocodal groups:
The major observations are as follows:
30The empirical basis for their analysis comes from the second research project mentioned above in Footnote
9.
31Cf. Zeller (2022) in this volume on these points for the Black Sea coast.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
(a) The majority of respondents reporting a monocodal first language Ukrainian or Russian
state that they are monocodal in their current use as well – to a similar extent for both
languages: almost 60 percent for Ukrainian und somewhat more than 60 percent for
Russian.
(b) This is different for respondents with monocodal Suržyk: Only roughly 15 percent stay
with Suržyk alone in their daily linguistic practice. This, of course, was to be expected,
because a vast spectrum of conversational settings apart from family, friends, and maybe
neighbours demand the practice of one of the acknowledged literary (in the sense of
standard) languages.
Here again, several utterances from the in-depth interviews are offered as illustration:32
(9) Когда я была маленькая, в нашей семье все общались на суржике – мама, папа,
бабушка, дедушка. Тому і я, в детстве і зараз, разговариваю на суржику. (…) я
і зараз общаюсь на суржику, і з вами. (…) я разговариваю так як мені удобно,
якщо вже мене не понімают, то я намагаюсь перейти на той язик, на який треба
– русский чи український. Хоть мені це іногда буває сложно.
(1310 – My, lv, 33, f, v – Russian / Suržyk).
When I was a kid, everyone in our family spoke Suržyk – mom, dad, grandma,
grandpa. That’s why I, as a child and today, I speak Suržyk. (...) I still communicate
in Suržyk, even with you. (…) I speak as I feel comfortable, if somebody doesn’t understand
me, I try to switch to the language I need – Russian or Ukrainian. Although
it is sometimes difficult for me.
(c) The above quotation provides an explanation for the enormous shift among speakers
with exclusively Suržyk as the first code towards all three codes in everyday linguistic
practice (S-U-R). This is simply a social necessity for communicating with the large
number of speakers who practise only one of the two “real” languages.
(10) Мій основний язик – це змішана, ну ілі суржик. З дєтства мене учили
разговарювать зразу синхроно на двох язиках. Я считаю, що це прекрасно,
потому шо щас це мені дуже сильно помагає, я можу переходити з руского
на українский, з українского на руский (...) Мені вообще це комфортно.
(1240 – Od, vi, 20, f, h – Suržyk)
My main language is mixed, well, or Suržyk. Since childhood, I was taught
to speak synchronously in two languages. I think it’s great, because right now
it helps me a lot, I can switch from Russian to Ukrainian, from Ukrainian to
Russian (...) for me in general it’s comfortable.
(d) Speakers with exclusively Suržyk as their first code almost never give up practising
Suržyk frequently. The number of respondents reporting only one code, Ukrainian or
Russian, in their everyday lives tends to zero, the number of respondents using Ukrainian
and Russian (but not Suržyk) is zero. Quite a few of them report one of the combinations
of Suržyk with Ukrainian or Russian (S-U, S-R) as their major codes: roughly 15 percent
each.
32Points (a) and (g) refer to rather conservative respondents who remain with their “pure” language codes.
They are not illustrated with quotations because the in-depth interviews, unlike to the preceding closed interviews,
were recorded mainly with Suržyk speakers – see Footnote 21 above.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
(11) Ну, я з самого дєтства балакаю на суржику, мені зараз восємнадцять год, і
тута шоб сказать, шо на якихось опредєльонних – нє, у нас іногда проскакує
і українська мова, і російська, і то все якось, якось вперемєшку.
(1440 – Xe, lv, 18, f, s – Suržyk)
Well, I’ve talked in Suržyk since very early childhood, I’m eighteen years old
now, and here one can say that in certain [languages] – no, sometimes people
hop, between Ukrainian and Russian, and all this is somehow, somehow mixed
up.
(e) The S-U-R-type of frequent current usage makes up the second largest group in the case
of monocodal linguistic socialization with Ukrainian or Russian (15 or 18 percent), after
the majority groups of monocodal-oriented speakers of Ukrainian and Russian. For both
groups of the previously monocodal Ukrainian- or Russian-speaking children, according
to (e) and (d) Suržyk becomes a frequently used code in further stages of their lives.
It is well known that even people with a linguistic socialization in one of the literary
languages during childhood and an academic education under certain conditions have to
turn to a (mixed) vernacular, for example in professions such as engineers, architects or
veterinarians to be accepted by workmen or farmers.
(12) Підприємці у нас всі суржики. Ну як частина єсть і російськомовні, єсть і
україномовні. Ось, до речі, оці люди, вони україномовні. Але я вам скажу, а
на суржик перейшов, ось підприємець, хлопчина оцей. Він україномовний,
він з Тернополя, але на суржик перейшов.
(1427 – Xe, lv, 53, f, h – Ukrainian)
Entrepreneurs are all “Suržyk-folk”. Well, partially there are Russian-speaking
ones, there are Ukrainian-speaking ones, too. By the way, these people are
Ukrainian-speaking. But I’ll tell you, there’s one who has shifted to Suržyk,
an entrepreneur, this guy. He is Ukrainian-speaking, he’s from Ternopil, but he
shifted to Suržyk.
(f) Apart from the group of current S-U-R speakers, a switch from Russian to Ukrainian
is almost absent for speakers with only Russian in their first linguistic socialization –
compare the very low share of U-R speakers. By the way, this is a clear indication of the
fact that there is no pressure on the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine to abandon
their code of first choice. It is even the case that there is a slight tendency for monocodal
Ukrainian children to later turn to Russian as well. However, this might be a reflexion
of the former predominance of Russian in public life.
(13) Я думаю, що ті, які приїжджають вони не сильно можуть пристроїтись, бо
вони виросли на тому язику. А єслі людина виросла на чисто українськом
язику чи на чисто руском, то їй тоже тяжко перейти на суржик. (…) Я
знаю таких людей, які тут живуть годами і вони не перейшли на суржик
полностю. Так на руском вони й говорять, не можуть перейти.
(1224 – Od, lv, 47, f, h – Suržyk)
I think that those who come here, they cannot adapt that much, because they
grew up in that language. And if people grew up in pure Ukrainian or in pure
Russian, it is also difficult for them to switch to Suržyk. (…) I know people who
have lived here for years and they have not completely shifted to Suržyk. They
still speak Russian, they are not able to switch.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
(g) Last but not least, it should be realized that people with a monocodal Ukrainian background
have more readily turned to only Russian in current usage than vice versa.
On the other hand, those with a monocodal Russian background more readily tend to
add Ukrainian to their repertoire of frequently used codes than those with monocodal
Ukrainian background add Russian to it.
Thus, generalizing these observations, we can state the following: If there has been a shift
among people to Ukrainian, which is more than probable but cannot be determined here
precisely, then people with Russian or Suržyk as their code of first linguistic socialization
add Ukrainian to their repertoire, rather than abandoning their first code completely.Afurther
detail to be added in connection with this generalization is that there are almost no differences
between respondents of Ukrainian or Russian nationality in this respect: If their first language
was Russian, which was almost exclusively the case with ethnic Russians, they maximally
add Ukrainian or (more often) Ukrainian and Suržyk to their repertoire, more or less to the
same extent. Whatever shifts have been accomplished by people during their lifetimes, these
were most obviously not caused by social pressure from people with a different linguistic
orientation.
7 Summary, conclusions, questions for future research
The region this study concentrated on belongs to the primary territorial aims of the war being
waged by Russia against Ukraine. In the article, we tried to present basic insights on the
linguistic situation in 2020 / 2021 in the three oblasts of Odesa, Mykolaïv and Xerson, which
are traditionally seen as a region of Russian language predominance, even by Ukrainian colleagues
from social sciences. As has already been pointed out by Hentschel and Taranenko
(2021), this view must be adjusted to a large degree. As a matter of fact, Russian still is
in a strong position. Almost one fifth of ethnic Ukrainians (and nearly all ethnic Russians)
belong to the group of monocodal speakers of Russian. However, the quantitative dominance
is much less clear than previous analyses like that by KIIS (2003, cf. Map 1) suggest.
The abovementioned more recent analyses by Ukrainian researchers from the social sciences
point in the same direction (cf. Razumkov Centre, 2016; KIIS, 2019), but due to methodological
shortcomings, pointed out by Hentschel and Taranenko (2021, pp. 273–275) do not
offer a precise picture, not least due to the neglect of Suržyk.
The sections above contain a wealth of quantitative data and the main points will be
summarized and interpreted here comprehensively.
The balanced tricodalism that Hentschel and Taranenko (2021) have emphasized is even
more visible when the usage of codes in the respondents’ surroundings is asked for instead
of their own linguistic practice. The two authors based their assessment on self-estimations
of the extent of usage of the three codes. For all three codes the respondents report that in
their families and in their micro-world outside their families they are practised often or even
all the time with shares near to 50 percent or even a little higher. The quantitative relations
between the three codes are more or less balanced. The only clear exception from balanced
quantitative relations between the three codes in the everyday life of people on the Black
Sea coast is that far more respondents report never using Suržyk in their surroundings than
Ukrainian and Russian. This is plausible to a certain extent if we assume that a considerable
number of the respondents live in contexts where “only” one or both of the literary languages
are practised, most probably in socially “high” professional surroundings. On the other hand,
that Suržyk is reported as never being used in family contexts and in other social surroundings
prompts some doubts, as Suržyk is generally seen as a variety mainly practised in the family
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
or with rather intimate acquaintances. The social conditions of the described relations still
need to be analysed.
It is clear that with speakers of Russian nationality, who made up one tenth of all our
respondents, there can be no question of a balanced tricodalism. Their language is predominantly
Russian: As their native language, as their most frequently used language and even as
the language being used and heard in their daily surroundings – in each respect with a more
or less clear tendency to exclusiveness. This group of respondents seems to live to a large degree
in a linguistically different social world, as do some of the monocodal Russian-speaking
Ukrainians.
In regard to the question of shifting from one code to two or three codes, this study mirrors
rather precisely that there is a certain shift to Ukrainian in current linguistic practice.
For the majority of those with a monocodal Russian background during childhood, Russian
definitely remains the only frequently used language. This is most extreme for respondents
of Russian nationality: only a few have added Ukrainian or Ukrainian and Suržyk to their
linguistic repertoire. Among the ethnic Ukrainians with a monocodal Russian background
during childhood, almost one quarter reports a frequent use of Ukrainian as well, often accompanied
with a frequent practice of Suržyk. The self-estimated competence in Ukrainian
in this group is considerable. It can (for the moment) not be discerned to what extent this
reflects a shift to Ukrainian, as it may be the case that younger respondents could take advantage
of better teaching of Ukrainian in the education system. Nevertheless, it is more than
obvious that hardly anyone with Russian as the only code used during childhood abandoned
it, not even ethnic Ukrainians.
Apart from the “competition” between Ukrainian and Russian in Ukraine society, it can
be stated that Suržyk holds onto its position in the “architecture” of linguistic codes pretty
well, even on the Black Sea coast. Our figures suggest that it was (at least) on a comparable
level with Ukrainian and Russian as the code of linguistic socialization during childhood.
For approximately one half of our respondents it belonged to the frequently used codes even
in later years, though only rarely as the only one in frequent use. Last but not least, people
estimate the presence of Suržyk as much stronger outside their families.
The most significant shift to be observed was that in the statement of their native language
by ethnic Ukrainians. In the Soviet census of 1989 and in the only Ukrainian census of 2001,
ethnic Ukrainians in the three oblasts at issue here clearly named Ukrainian less frequently
as their native language than in our survey. In the former census, only little more than one
half of the population did so, here it was up to nine out of ten speakers. The language policy
in independent Ukraine has obviously at least tightened the symbolic-patriotic link between
titular ethnic group and the “titular” language. That linguistic practice changes much less
rapidly, is, of course, not astonishing.
This study, of course, prompts many further questions. Almost all results presented here
must be related, for example to sociodemographic criteria, such as age, sex, education, profession,
diverse political and linguistic attitudes etc. This will be undertaken in the project
underpinning this paper in the near future by employing multifactorial statistical methods
to a much larger extent and by deeper qualitative analyses of the material gathered. Only
then will further interpretations of the empirical results be possible. Nevertheless, we hope
to have given a rather differentiated description of the linguistic landscape.
However, none of the figures reported above, especially the reports about the general lack
of objections and ridicule of their usage of any code (apart from rare exceptions), support the
Kremlin assertion of prosecution of parts of the population for linguistic reasons. Almost no
one claimed that their usage of Russian was objected to by others; not more or even fewer
claimed to have experienced objections to their speaking Ukrainian or Suržyk. Of course,
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
there are different opinions about the enforcement of Ukrainian by the state government and
the legal status of Russian in the Ukraine (cf. Zeller, 2022, this volume). However, after at
least one and a half centuries of severe neglect if not suppression of Ukrainian under Russian
rule, be it Soviet or Tsarist (cf. again Danylenko & Naienko, 2019), the political enforcement
or “positive discrimination” (as one may call it in the words of western gender policy) of
Ukrainian in the state as a whole should be acknowledged as a more than understandable
and legitimate linguistic policy.
The linguistic situation in the three Black Sea oblasts in independent Ukraine can by no
means serve as a legitimation for the Kremlin war in the sense of saving Russians or Russianspeaking
people from prosecution. The assertion of such prosecution, if not worse, is one of
the masses of lies that the Kremlin regime has spread over the last decades. Unfortunately,
it is obviously not only a vast majority of the Russian people that is ready to believe these
lies, but even a large group of “Putin-versteher” in the western world that has shown such
inclinations, at least until recently.
The ongoing war will change many things, including linguistic practice and attitudes as
well. The situation which we have just described for 2020 / 2021 will most probably change
radically.
Funding Note Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
Declarations
Conflict of Interest All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which
permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence,
and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the
article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is
not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory
regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
References
All-Russian Empire Census (1897).33 cf. “First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897. Breakdown
of population by mother tongue: Kharkov governorate – total population”; “First General Census of the
Russian Empire of 1897. Breakdown of population by mother tongue: Kherson district – the city of
Kherson”; “First General Census of the Russian Empire of 1897. Breakdown of population by mother
tongue: Kherson district – the city of Nikolayev (military governorate)”; “First General Census of the
Russian Empire of 1897. Breakdown of population by mother tongue: Donetsk district – total population”.
Demoskop Weekly, 623–624, 31 December 2014. ISSN 1726-2887. Archived from the original on
September 11, 2014. Retrieved April 11, 2022 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya
Ažnjuk, B. (1999). Movna jednist’naciï: diaspora j Ukraïna. Kyïv: Ridna mova.
Bacevyč, F. (2009). Duxovna synerhetyka ridnoï movy. Kyïv: VC Akademija.
Basora, A. A., & Fischer, A. (2014, May 2). Putin’s “Greater Novorossiya” – The dismemberment of Ukraine.
Foreign Policy Research Institute. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.fpri.org/article/2014/05/
putins-greater-novorossiya-the-dismemberment-of-ukraine/.
Bidder, B. (2014, September 9). Das ist Putins Neurussland. Spiegel (online). Retrieved March 29,
2022, from https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-neurussland-von-putin-in-der-ostukraine-
mit-karten-a-989470.html.
33The following four positions have been taken from the Wikipedia entry on “Novorossiya”. Retrieved March
29, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya.
The linguistic situation on the Ukrainian Black Sea coast…
Bilaniuk, L. (2018). Purism and pluralism. Language use trends in popular culture in Ukraine since independence.
Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 35(1–4), 293–309.
Bowring, B. (2014). The Russian language in Ukraine: complicit in genocide, or victim of state-building? In
L. Ryazanova-Clarke (Ed.), The Russian language outside the nation (pp. 56–78). Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1981913.
Danylenko, A., & Naienko, H. (2019). Linguistic russification in Russian Ukraine: languages, imperial models,
and policies. Russian Linguistics, 43, 19–39.
Danylevs’ka, O. (2019). Ukraïns’ka mova v ukraïns’kij školi na počatku XXI stolittja: sociolinhvistyčni
narysy. Kyïv: Vydavnyčyj dim “Kyjevo-mohyljans’ka akademija”.
Del Gaudio, S. (2010). On the nature of Suržyk: a double perspective (Wiener slawistischer Almanach, vol.
75). München: Verlag Otto Sagner.
Flier, M. (2008). Suržyk or suržyks. In G. Hentschel & S. Zaprudski (Eds.), Studia Slavica Oldenburgensia:
Vol. 17. Belarusian Trasjanka and Ukrainian Suržyk: Structural and social aspects of their description
and categorization (pp. 39–56). Oldenburg: BIS Verlag.
Haran, O., Yakovlyev, M., & Zolkina, M. (2019). Identity, war, and peace: public attitudes in the Ukrainecontrolled
Donbas. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 60(6), 684–708. https://doi.org/10.1080/
15387216.2019.1667845.
Hentschel, G. (2013). Zwischen Variabilität und Regularität, “Chaos” und Usus: Zu Lautung und Lexik der
weißrussisch-russischen gemischten Rede. In G. Hentschel (Ed.), Variation und Stabilität in Kontaktvarietäten:
Beobachtungen zu gemischten Formen der Rede in Weißrussland, der Ukraine und Schlesien
(pp. 63–99). Oldenburg: BIS-Verlag.
Hentschel, G. (2017). Eleven questions and answers about Belarusian-Russian mixed speech (“Trasyanka”).
Russian Linguistics, 41(1), 17–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-0169175-8.
Hentschel, G. (2018). Die weißrussische “Trasjanka” und der ukrainische “Suržyk”: grundlegende quantitativqualitative
soziolinguistische Ähnlichkeiten und Unterschiede. In S. Kempgen, M. Wingender, & L.
Udolph (Eds.), Deutsche Beiträge der deutschen Slavistik zum XVI. Internationalen Slavistenkongress
(pp. 127–138). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Hentschel, G. (2018). Belorusskaja “trasjanka” i ukrainskij “suržik”: ob osnovnyx različijax v stepeni vlijanija
russkogo jazyka. Przegląd Rusycystyczny, 162(2), 189–206.
Hentschel, G., & Brüggemann, M. (2015). Gibt es in der Ukraine einen ukrainisch-russischen Sprachenkonflikt?
In E. Bakalova, T. Endrich, Kh. Shlyakhtovska, & G. Spodarets (Eds.), Ukraine: Krisen und Perspektiven
(pp. 95–118). Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
Hentschel, G., & Kittel, B. (2011). Weißrussische Dreisprachigkeit? Zur sprachlichen Situation in Weißrussland
auf der Basis von Urteilen von Weißrussen über die Verbreitung “ihrer Sprachen” im Lande. Wiener
Slawistischer Almanach, 67, 107–135.
Hentschel, G., & Kittel, B. (2011). Jazykovaja situacija v Belarusi: Mnenie belorusov o rasprostranennosti
jazykov v strane. Sociologija (Minsk), 4, 62–79.
Hentschel, G., & Palinska, O. (2022). Restructuring in a mesolect: a case study on the basis of the formal
variation of the infinitive in Ukrainian-Russian surzhyk. Cognitive Studies, Études cognitives, 2022(22),
Article 2770. https://doi.org/10.11649/cs.2770.
Hentschel, G., & Reuther, T. (2020). Ukrainisch-russisches und russisch-ukrainisches Code-Mixing. Untersuchungen
in drei Regionen im Süden der Ukraine. Colloquium: New Philologies, 5(2), 105–132.
Hentschel, G., & Taranenko, O. (2015). Die Sprachenlandschaft der zentralen Ukraine: Ukrainisch, Russisch,
‘Suržyk’. Verwendung – Kompetenz – nationale Positionierung. Die Welt der Slaven, LX, 248–275.
Hentschel, G., & Taranenko, O. (2021). Bilingualism or tricodalism: Ukrainian, Russian and “Suržyk” in
Ukraine. Analysis and linguistic-geographical mapping. Die Welt der Slaven, 66(2), 268–299. https://
doi.org/10.13173/WS.66.2.268.
Hentschel, G., & Zeller, J. P. (2016). Meinungen und Einstellungen zu Sprachen und Kodes in zentralen
Regionen der Ukraine. Zeitschrift für Slawistik, 61(4), 636–661.
Hentschel, G., & Zeller, J. P. (2017). Aspekte der Sprachverwendung in zentralen Regionen der Ukraine.
Wiener Slawistischer Almanach, 79(1), 37–60.
Hentschel, G., Taranenko, O., & Zaprudski, S. (Eds.) (2014). Trasjanka und Suržyk – gemischte weißrussischrussische
und ukrainisch­russische Rede. Sprachlicher Inzest in Weißrussland und der Ukraine? Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang.
Kappeler, A. (2019). Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine. 5., überarbeitete und aktualisierte Auflage. München:
C.H. Beck Verlag.
KIIS (2003). Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Языки_Украины.
KIIS (2019). Dumky i pohljady naselennja ščodo rosijs’koï movy v ukraïns’komovnyx školax i nadannja
nepidkontrol’nym terytorijam Donbasu avtonomiï u skladi Ukraïny. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from
https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=832&page=2.
G. Hentschel, O. Palinska
Kulyk, V. (2014). What is Russian in Ukraine? Popular beliefs regarding the social roles of the language. In L.
Ryazanova-Clarke (Ed.), The Russian language outside the nation (pp. 117–140). Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Laruelle, M. (2019). The three colors of Novorossiya, or the mythmaking of the Ukrainian war. In Russian
Nationalism. Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields (pp. 195–213). London: Routledge.
Menzel, T., & Hentschel, G. (2017). Flexionsmorphologische Irregularität im innerslavischen Sprachkontakt.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Muysken, P. (2000). Bilingual speech. A typology of code­mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
O’Rourke, B., & Ramallo, F. (2011). The native – non-native dichotomy in minority language contexts. Comparisons
between Irish and Galician. Language Problems & Language Planning, 35, 139–159. https://
doi.org/10.1075/lplp.35.2.03oro.
Onuch, O., & Hale, H. E. (2018). Capturing ethnicity: the case of Ukraine. Post­Soviet Affairs, 34(2–3),
84–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1452247.
Razumkov Centre (2016). Konsolidacija ukraïn’skoho suspil’stva: Vyklyky, možlyvosti, šljaxy. Nacional’na
bezbeka i oborona, 7–8(165–166). Retrieved March 29, 2022, from http://razumkov.org.ua/uploads/
journal/ukr/NSD165-166_2016_ukr.pdf.
Sasse, G., & Lackner, A. (2018). War and identity: the case of the Donbas in Ukraine. Post­Soviet Affairs,
34(2–3), 3. https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1452209.
Skutnabb-Kangas, T., & Phillipson, R. (1989). ‘Mother tongue’: The theoretical and sociopolitical construction
of a concept. In U. Ammon (Ed.), Status and function of languages and language varieties (pp.
450–477). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Stavyc’ka, L. (2014). Ein Blutschandekind der Postmoderne. In G. Hentschel, O. Taranenko, & S. Zaprudski
(Eds.), Trasjanka und Suržyk – gemischte weißrussisch­russische und ukrainisch­russische Rede.
Sprachlicher Inzest in Weißrussland und der Ukraine? (pp. 351–374). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Ukrainian Census (2001). Vseukraïns’kyj perepys naselennja 2001 | Rezul’taty | Osnovni pidsumky | Nacional’nyj
sklad naselennja. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from http://ukrcensus.gov.ua.
Zeller, J. P. (2021). The geographical and social distribution of native languages in central Ukraine. Linguistica
Copernicana, 18, 105–134. https://doi.org/10.12775/LinCop.2021.006.
Zeller, J. P. (2022).Attitudes on languages, identities and politics at the Ukrainian Black Sea Coast in 2020/21.
Russian Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11185-022-09264-7.
Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Authors and Affiliations
Gerd Hentschel1
·Olesya Palinska1
G. Hentschel
gerd.hentschel@uni-oldenburg.de
O. Palinska
olesya.palinska@uni-oldenburg.de
1 Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg, Germany