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An answer to a different question pointed out that the vast majority of search engine queries coming from Ukraine, before the invasion, seemed to be in Russian. That was despite the fact that the queries shown seemed to be asking for local results.

If this means that most Ukrainians are more proficient in Russian than Ukrainian, that is very surprising, since Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine.

However, I can think of other possible explanations for this observation:

  • Perhaps those who are more proficient in Ukrainian, use an alternative search engine?
  • Perhaps the users are just choosing the language that will give more or better results, and continue using Russian out of habit even while searching for local results?
  • Perhaps familiarity with the Russian keyboard layout forces their choice? That is, what if someone speaks Ukrainian in everyday life, but touch types only in Russian?

So I'm curious if there is other evidence that tells us whether the majority of Ukrainians are more proficient in Russian than Ukrainian, or not.

MWB
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    The second option seems likely. I live in a non-English-speaking country, but most people generally Google in English, simply because it gives far more results. The same will undoubtedly be the case for Ukrainian vs Russian. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 11 '23 at 18:21
  • @JanusBahsJacquet On the other hand, if you look at the actual queries shown - they seemed to be asking for local results: "Kyiv" and "cheap tickets" (as opposed to, say, cooking recipes, or disease symptoms) – MWB Sep 11 '23 at 18:28
  • Maybe Russian and Ukrainian materials need examining. Not something we an do here. – Lambie Sep 11 '23 at 18:32
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    Or maybe there's a correlation between "speaks Ukrainian" and "knows where to get cheap ticket in Kyiv without asking Google"? – Acccumulation Sep 12 '23 at 03:49
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    @accumulation clarification, since I wrote that answer. The comparisons were separate, for Kyiv vs Kiev and "cheap tickets" in both languages, not "Cheap tickets Kyiv". Btw, I clicked the links and checked again with the latest data and the gap has noticeably narrowed since the beginning of the war when I wrote that. – Eugene Sep 12 '23 at 21:24
  • Related – EJoshuaS - Stand with Ukraine Sep 13 '23 at 15:07
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    @Accumulation there is also the correlation of age with internet use and with using Ukrainian on an everyday basis. – suckrates Sep 13 '23 at 17:09
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    You say 'the vast majority of search engine queries', but your linked answer only mentions Google. Yandex is far more popular in Russia and Ukraine. –  Sep 14 '23 at 02:34
  • @user42559 Do you have a source for your confident claim? I did some Googling, and it seems Ukraine banned Yandex as far back as 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/16/ukraine-blocks-popular-russian-websites-kremlin-role-war – MWB Sep 14 '23 at 16:13
  • How is this a linguistics question? It is geopolitical and sociological, for starters and should be closed. And I am shocked the moderators have allowed this question to flourish here. – Lambie Sep 15 '23 at 13:46
  • "How is this a linguistics question?" -- I'll quote Wikipedia: "... linguistics takes all aspects of language into account — i.e., the cognitive, the social, the cultural, the psychological, the environmental, the biological, the literary, the grammatical, the paleographical, and the structural." – MWB Sep 15 '23 at 18:08
  • MWB How many people speak a language is not linguistics. It's cultural anthropology. And anyway, it's unanswerable as posed. – Lambie Sep 15 '23 at 18:46
  • And you already posted this question: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/47494/are-the-vast-majority-of-ukrainians-more-proficient-in-russian-than-ukrainian/47513#47513 – Lambie Sep 15 '23 at 18:51
  • Lambie, did you not read the Wikipedia quote I posted? It seems pretty clear. – MWB Sep 15 '23 at 20:33
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    "And you already posted this question" -- You are linking an answer, posted by someone else, after my question, saying it's mine, calling it a question and saying that via some kind of causation back in time it should have prevented my question? Needless to say, you are not making a whole lot of sense. – MWB Sep 15 '23 at 20:40
  • At one point, your question appeared as posted twice on the list of questions. This might be sociolinguistics but it is not linguistics per se. – Lambie Sep 16 '23 at 15:30
  • "At one point, your question appeared as posted twice on the list of questions." Doubtful, to say the least. I only posted this once. SE prevents identical posts anyway. Even if it had been posted twice, what would cause you to link to @bta's answer and call it my question? – MWB Sep 16 '23 at 15:55

3 Answers3

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After researching this a bit, I'm posting an answer to my own question, but I want to say that I welcome more answers, especially if they bring other pieces of evidence.

A 2008 Gallup poll asked Ukrainians, face-to-face, in what language they preferred to conduct the Gallup interview, and only 17% of the respondents chose Ukrainian. This seems to be in close agreement with the search query stats.

In contrast, in the 2001 census, 67.5% of Ukraine's population stated that Ukrainian was their native language, and only 29.6% picked Russian.

This apparent contradiction might be due to the higher social prestige of Ukrainian, or due to the respondents interpreting the term "native language" as something distinct from "the language you learned from your parents" or "the language you know best".

This distinction seems to be echoed by an article in The Atlantic titled "Ukrainian is my native language, but I had to learn it".

MWB
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    It’s one theory, but there are other ways this situation can emerge. For example, if people actually speak Ukrainian but read and write more in Russian (similar to what happens in other diglossia situations, like German, Arabic, French Creoles…) then search queries and UI languages could end up in the dominant written language. – Adam Bittlingmayer Sep 12 '23 at 19:29
  • My sense is that the numbers are also different if counting only ethnic Ukrainians. – Adam Bittlingmayer Sep 12 '23 at 19:30
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    @AdamBittlingmayer The Gallup poll was face-to-face. So diglossia (with Ukrainian being the language of formal speech, public education, and Russian being the language of the local Internet, books and newspapers) would not explain the apparent discrepancy between the Gallup results and the census answers. – MWB Sep 12 '23 at 22:45
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    Gallup's methodology is not entirely clear though. Did they ask the question itself in Ukrainian or Russian? Perhaps the respondents just agreed to use whatever language they thought the interviewer was more comfortable with? Did they poll only in Kyiv? Only in big cities? Or did they get a representative sample, including small towns and rural areas? But I'll go with the assumption that the pollsters were not idiots and did a good job. – MWB Sep 12 '23 at 23:40
  • Thanks, makes sense. – Adam Bittlingmayer Sep 13 '23 at 00:48
  • But I'll go with the assumption that the pollsters were not idiots and did a good job. That's usually not a wise assumption (and you know what they say about assumptions...). It's incredibly challenging, and expensive, to create and implement a scientifically worthwhile poll. 90% of pollsters I surveyed confessed that they their surveys are largely meaningless and are primarily designed to generate revenue. – End Anti-Semitic Hate Sep 13 '23 at 10:29
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    This article from The Atlantic doesn't make sense. You don't learn your native language, you acquire it. You acquire it from your parents while still in the womb. You acquire it while you are still being nursed by your mother, while laying on her breasts. It is the language you speak your first words on (usually your mother - "mama" in my Slavic language, and in the most, if not all other Slavic languages). It is the language by which you begin to comprehend world around you. You cannot choose your native language, it chooses you. She just learned her second language. – dosvarog Sep 13 '23 at 16:50
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    @RockPaperLz-MaskitorCasket Gallup has a pretty good reputation, I think. It's not a tabloid. – MWB Sep 13 '23 at 18:04
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    @dosvarog That's a bit much. I'm a native speaker of three languages, even though I only got exposed to two of those languages starting from ages 2 and 4/5. –  Sep 14 '23 at 02:37
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    @dosvarog You don't learn your native language, you acquire it from your parents while still in the womb. Source? – End Anti-Semitic Hate Sep 14 '23 at 05:33
  • @MWB It's not about reputation. It's about the realities and challenges of "scientific" polling. How do you find people willing to take time out of their day to answer personal questions (do you answer personal questions asked by strangers)? How does this significant bias affect the answers you will receive? How do you contact them? How does that additional bias affect the answers you will receive? Who is paying for the polling? Why? How does that additional bias affect how the questions are asked and of whom you are asking the questions? – End Anti-Semitic Hate Sep 14 '23 at 05:48
  • @RockPaperLz-MaskitorCasket Source is common sense. When and where have you seen any child learning their native language by sitting and going through grammar tables and dictionaries of that language? No, they learn it passively, i.e. acquire it. In the womb they feel (and hear) the rhythm of language, later that expands to sounds, and finally to complete words and word constructs as they grow. Newborns are able to distinguish their mother's native tongue from foreign language of another mother. Continued... – dosvarog Sep 14 '23 at 16:00
  • @RockPaperLz-MaskitorCasket ...One of the sources would be this, and this is just one of many studies: https://www.science.org/content/article/babies-learn-recognize-words-womb. So, my conclusion is, you acquire your native language (or learn passively, if you want to put it that way). – dosvarog Sep 14 '23 at 16:03
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    @dosvarog - Careful about what conclusions one draws from this kind of research. Some minimal learning occurs in utero, but then the plastic infant brain is subject to strong and numerous stimuli and infantile amnesia. It is unclear whether any of these associations are retained, and it is the learning that occurs after birth that is far more important: a person whose mother spent her pregnancy in Japan, but who was adopted by a British family and grew up in Britain, will speak English and understand not a word of Japanese, unless they learn it later on. – Obie 2.0 Sep 14 '23 at 22:53
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    @dosvarog As Obie 2.0 mentioned, be careful how you interpret a short internet article about a study. Carefully read the actual study in full. To my knowledge, there is no scientific evidence concluding that babies acquire language from their parents while they were developing in the womb. The study you cited certainly does not draw that unsubstantiated conclusion. – End Anti-Semitic Hate Sep 15 '23 at 05:21
  • I never claimed that baby learns whole language in womb (as you both seem to imply). I said that people start to acquire language already in womb. Maybe there was misunderstanding because I used word "acquire" (and meant continuous action, not one time action), while I should have used "are acquiring". I also later mentioned whole process as they grow up. So I believed it was clear that I don't mean they learn everything in womb. So let me rephrase that: "you start acquiring your native language while still in the womb". There are plenty of other studies, this one was just among first results. – dosvarog Sep 15 '23 at 18:36
  • @user42559 I would not agree with you. I will make a bold statement that there can be only one native language, others are just second language. Even if you speak it on native level, it does not make it your native language. For example, Croatian is very fragmented dialectically (so much that Croatian that speaks one dialect cannot understand another Croatian that speaks other dialect and vice versa) and although we all learn standard Croatian in schools (to understand each other) and have it on TV, I will not say that standard Croatian is my native, although I am with it since being toddler. – dosvarog Sep 15 '23 at 18:57
  • @user42559 cont. I will say that my dialect (which differs substantially from standard Croatian), one that my parents raised me with, is my native language. It is even declared as a separate language, but only historical language. State will never declare it as seperate language for obvious reasons. I can even talk to you in Serbian (which is like 99% similar to Croatian), so native proficiency there, but that doesn't make it my native. But all this is a bit off-topic, point is - she learned Ukrainian as her second language, it is not her native, even with native proficiency. – dosvarog Sep 15 '23 at 18:57
  • @dosvarog I know people who forgot their first language. Take a 7 year old kid away from his family and put him in a completely different environment, with a different language, and I'll be willing to bet that by the time he's 12, he won't be able to say anything in his first language. MAYBE some language acquisition happens in utero. But does it matter later in life? I would think not. – MWB Sep 15 '23 at 22:48
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    @MWB It would be an interesting experiment to see how long would it take for them to remember it. I would assume, not much. Regarding your example, maybe, but that is not something that is common nor it was common throughout human evolution. So it is some kind of edge case, and again, it would be interesting to see how long would it take that person to remember their native language. All this would be interesting to research, but that wasn't my main thought. My claim was that this girl is learning her second language, not her native. Her native is Russian. – dosvarog Sep 16 '23 at 15:24
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    @dosvarog In Soviet schools there were two subjects: "Russian language" and "Native language" ("Родной язык"). Native laguage was meant to be the historical language of the titular ethnic group in the region and usually the kids knew "native language" in this sense worse than Russian (or did not know at all). But it still was officially called "native language". In Ukraine the "native language" was Ukrainian, so, people just know that "native language" is Ukrainian, even if they do not know it or know badly. – Anixx Nov 24 '23 at 07:26
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Looking at this from a software developer's perspective, there's a significant factor here that you may have overlooked. Translating a program or a website is a significant amount of work, testing, and upkeep, and that work has to be repeated for each and every language that the site supports. When you look at the Internet as a whole, few websites support more than one language and exceedingly few websites support more than 2-3 languages.

Russian is the world's 7th most common language, with roughly 6x as many native speakers as there are of Ukrainian. Therefore, the odds that any specific website supports Russian are significantly higher than they are for the website to support Ukrainian.

A Ukrainian citizen interacting with a website in Russian should not be assumed to imply that they're more proficient in or prefer using Russian. Instead, Russian may have been used simply because Ukrainian was either not supported or support for it was poor. There is a large portion of the Internet where Russian is the primary language and Russian technology companies like Vk and Yandex are popular and influential. Internet users in those areas may use Russian out of necessity, similar to how there are many Stackexchange users that post in English despite it not being their language of choice. Even if sites like Google do technically support Ukrainian, Internet users may simply interact using Russian out of habit. They have their browser locale set to Russian for compatibility with the rest of the Internet, and using that setting everywhere becomes easier than changing it back and forth for specific websites.

bta
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    "using that setting everywhere becomes easier than changing it back and forth for specific websites" I think this could be emphasized more, if the search engine is set to Russian because you can get more general results in Russian (cookie recipes, etc.) and you also get good enough results for local queries in Russian, there's not any pressure to switch languages for local queries. If anything it would be self-reinforcing, if local users habitually use Russian to search (regardless of why) then local websites will prioritize supporting Russian. – user3067860 Sep 13 '23 at 16:10
  • There's one caveat, though. That is, "local sites", web sites aimed at specific (parts of) Ukrainian population. E.g. the local swimming pool club of a small city, a grocery store or supermarket, perhaps government offices [but that may be in Russian for other reasons], schools, etc. – Pablo H Sep 14 '23 at 13:56
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The answer is certainly no. We cannot say that this is true for the "vast" majority (say 80%), but maybe this is 50/50. In the south and east, people speak better russian due to their roots (naturally, without ideology). In the cities people might also speak more in russian (before the war) with sometimes the thought that the ukrainian language is for rednecks. This might be because of propaganda/attacks from Russia, or because the russian language is a lingua franca spoken by a lot more people than the ukrainian one.

Again due to the fact that russian is a lingua franca, it might be true that a higher proportion of expatriated ukrainians might speak better russian.

For remainder, ukrainian is the only official language in Ukraine. As a minimum, everybody understand well ukrainian, though sometimes don't speak it (or mix it with russian, суржик). This is unlike Belarus, where russian is also an official language and people really don't need belarusian.

As a comment to Eugene Morozov: it seems exagerated to say that people are beaten up for speaking russian. They might be if they express pro-Pountine ideas. My mother-is-law is ukrainian and speak only russian. She has never been beaten up... Also, the existence of a state (human convention) can be decorrelated from that of a people. The existence of the ukrainian language is the proof that the ukrainian people has existed long enough for a language to form.

Moreover, the ukrainian language sometimes differs greatly from the russian language, and sometimes is more genuinely slavian than russian. For people interested, just look at the months (January, February, March...) in russian, and in ukrainian. In russian, it is just a copy of our "western" months, with russian pronounciation. In ukrainian, it is something completely different, with references to the cycle of nature (and similar to Polish)

disclosure: french, fluent in russian, learning ukrainian, married to a ukrainian woman who speaks better russian than ukrainian

Gospadi
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    While it’s true that states do not correlate with peoples, nor do languages necessarily. The existence of the Ukrainian language is proof that there has been a speech community long enough for a distinct language to form – whether or not that speech community made up a ‘people’ or not. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 12 '23 at 10:59
  • Thanks for your comment. Could you elaborate a bit about what your (or the) definition of a people is? – Gospadi Sep 12 '23 at 11:33
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    ‘People’ is generally more of a cultural and/or political concept than a linguistic one. Languages can spread or die when peoples migrate, but they can also spread or die without any migration. A good example is what we normally call the ‘Jewish people’ – they’re considered a people, even though they are spread across the globe and do not share a single language (some speak Hebrew, some speak Yiddish, some speak neither). Conversely, a fairly large proportion of Arabic speakers (much of the Maghreb) do not belong to the ‘Arab people’, being instead Berbers, Touaregs and many others. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 12 '23 at 12:02
  • Similarly, there is a minority language in Sweden called Elfdalian. It evolved is a relatively secluded part of Sweden, but with migration to and fro, and we can’t really say that its existence proves the existence of an Elfdalian people, because the people who speak it do not generally consider themselves to be culturally, ethnically, nationally or otherwise different from Swedes in general – only linguistically do they stand out. The notion of a purely Elfdalian ‘people’ is rather a recent phenomenon, primarily motivated by language politics. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Sep 12 '23 at 12:07
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    "married to a ukrainian woman who speaks better russian than ukrainian" -- How does she answer the question "What is your native language?" – MWB Sep 12 '23 at 19:29
  • In her case: russian. – Gospadi Sep 12 '23 at 21:11
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    "The answer is certainly no." -- You don't seem to support this assertion at all. Of the 2 Ukrainians you mention (small sample!), 100% speak better Russian than Ukrainian?! – MWB Sep 13 '23 at 18:31
  • @MWB The sample is not just small (2 people), but also highly correlated (parent and child). This really does not mean anything given that there are millions of people in Ukraine. –  Sep 14 '23 at 02:43
  • I mentioned my wife to underline the fact that I am no stranger to the situation. She and her family are from Kherson, where many people have russian as their mother tongue. I know many ukrainians living in France or abroad and I have been to Ukraine during war time. There are big cities in the West, North and center where nobody would speak russian. – Gospadi Sep 14 '23 at 06:30
  • For example I know two brothers (65 y.o. and 55 y.o.) One daily speaks in russian (the younger, lives abroad), the other daily speaks ukrainian (lives in Ukraine). – Gospadi Sep 14 '23 at 06:37
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    Here is some truly possible situation. Let's assume I'm ukrainian: the parents of my father both speak ukrainian as mother-tongue ==> my father has therefore ukrainian as a mother tongue, and good russian because of Soviet Union. The mother of my mother speaks ukrainian as mother-tongue and russian (lingua franca), but her father only speaks russian. As a consequence, my mother was speaking russian at home. Say she also went to a russian speaking school ==> my mother very badly knows ukrainian. What language will we speak home ? Of course russian. Yet 3 out of 4 grandparents spoke ukrainian.. – Gospadi Sep 14 '23 at 06:42
  • "I have been to Ukraine during war time" -- Some chose to stop speaking Russian after the invasion: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/04/enemy-tongue-eastern-ukrainians-reject-their-russian-birth-language However, the question and your assertion was about proficiency, not choices. Can you judge someone's proficiency in Ukrainian compared to Russian, if you are only fluent in Russian, and the other person chooses to speak only Ukrainian (possibly broken) for political reasons? – MWB Sep 14 '23 at 16:42
  • The article you sent is about eastern ukrainians. As I said in my response, in the South and East people tend to speak better russian. In this case yes, there is a political response, russian being seen as the enemy's language. In a city like Lviv (in the West), people didn't wait the war to speak ukrainian. – Gospadi Sep 15 '23 at 08:44
  • Sorry if you were expecting a clear-cut answer like "yes, most speak russian": this is really not true. We had friends as guests last saturday (a couple, about 30 y.o., from Bila Tserkva (80 km from Kyiv): they speak ukrainian when together, they spoke russian with us because of me. I cannot say that someone speaks good ukrainian or no, but I see when someone forces himself to speak russian for me, because he thinks, and make mistakes or inadvertly uses ukrainian words (which are close to russian) – Gospadi Sep 15 '23 at 08:49
  • Overall your question is very relevant and I anwered because I have really investigated it. It had some ideas, e.g. I was thinking that my russian-speaking wife would hesitate to choose her side at the beginning of the war, but no: she has ukrainian identity despite the language. Any simple statistic (like the ones cited above) seems dumb to me, because it abruptly reduces the complexity of the real world in a forced way. At least it is not better than a few dozens real examples with real conversations. – Gospadi Sep 15 '23 at 08:56
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    Last comments: russian is a great language, I learned it with passion because I fell in love with russian literature and St Petersburg. It is close to ukrainian, but they really differ: a russian speaker cannot understand ukrainian "for free" and vice versa. Subjectively (I need to study it further), the russian literature is much more developed than the ukrainian one, but counter-intuitively the russian language does not seem to be as pure and genuinely slavic as the ukrainian one. Finally, some ukrainians refuse to speak russian, and some say that language is not to blame (язык не виноват). – Gospadi Sep 15 '23 at 09:04