Tag: Ukraine

Ivano-frankivsk railway station, Western Ukraine

Five ways to learn the Ukrainian language

On By Michelle LawsonIn Western UkraineLeave a comment

How to learn Ukrainian language using less conventional means

I’ll be honest, I wrote this post after seeing Amanda Holden’s role as the UK’s Eurovision Song Contest jury spokesperson in 2021. Holden said Good evening in French and Dutch, followed by although I’ve got absolutely no idea which is which.

Whoever came up with that lame idea of a joke? They clearly misread the room – even the Brits perceived it as embarrassing or arrogant. It’s bad enough that the UK is hellbent on wiping out our language education. Why make out that being monolingual is some kind of cuddly national characteristic?

The first time I went to Western Ukraine, I used an interpreter to visit my father’s village. We found the family of my father’s first wife, a young Ukrainian woman who died in the 1930s. Despite these people not being related to me, they welcomed me and invited me back to stay next year, to look for my other family. I was up for that! But none of them spoke English. What to do?

Now it’s 2023, and more people are interested in learning Ukrainian than ever. The Duolingo app is useful, and great for giving you practice, but on its own it’s not enough. Here are some fun ways to learn Ukrainian language.

#1: Listen to the language
Ukrainian Lessons Podcast is my all-time recommendation. The podcast itself is free, but subscribe to get the lesson notes, to see what you’re hearing. There’s also a handy set of flashcards for the most common Ukrainian words, with each word shown in sentences for context.

The ULP blog has useful information on almost everything you can think of. Using this site I learned c.150 words for my first trip. Useful stuff, simple words you might use to ask WTF is going on in this courtyard in Lviv:

The Yard of Lost Toys, Lviv, learning Ukrainian language
The Yard of Lost Toys, Lviv

#2: Take a course
Some universities run online classes, such as Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. There’s a time commitment, but it’s great if you enjoy learning with others. The Ukrainian Language Academy in Lviv also runs residential courses and offers individual Skype conversation.


Most valuable was being able to ask questions about customs in the rural villages. ‘No’ can sometimes mean the opposite! Useful if you find yourself staying in a village house where the only English word you hear is selfie.

Rural house in Rakhiv painted in colours of Ukrainian flag


#3: Listen to Ukrainian music
People claim they learned English through listening to music. Why not learn Ukrainian the same way? The lyrics may not be the most useful for conversation, but you’ll start recognising common words. Even better, search for the song on the Lyrics Translate site, and you’ll get the original lyrics along with a translation.

One of my favourite Ukrainian bands is Okean Elzy, Ukraine’s most famous rock band, with an international following.

If you enjoy acoustic music, you’ll probably enjoy listening to the wonderful Один в каное (Alone in a canoe). Useful if you find yourself by the River Smotrych chatting to strangers, who then invite you on an actual canoe or kayak:

Kayaking on River Smotrych, Kamyanets-Podilsky, Ukraine
Not alone on a kayak in Kamyanets-Podilsky

#4: Get out there and talk! To anyone!
Bus stations in Western Ukraine are the best places to talk to random strangers. I learned to recognise the call to a stranger: звідки? — where are you from? — and off we would go. Useful if you find yourself again and again at bus station no.3 in Ivano-Frankivsk, where I heard many life stories. If you’re lucky, someone might invite you into their garden to drink apple juice.  

Of course this isn’t possible during the war, but if you or your town is hosting refugees, don’t be shy about talking to them. They’ll appreciate it.

Road with chapel from Ivano-Frankivsk to the Carpathians, Western Ukraine

#5: When all else fails, try a translate app.
You can speak into translate apps, such as Google Translate, and the app will speak back in the other language. My current favourite app is Say Hi, which Ukrainians tell me churns out decent translations. It’s been incredibly useful for those hosting refugees.

When I was travelling in Ukraine, elderly people in the villages didn’t bat an eyelid when I whipped out the smartphone. Could be useful if you find yourself looking for your grandmother’s grave and a local person shouts something unintelligible. Google Translate told me the woman was suggesting I gate-crash a funeral and ask the mourners if they knew where my grandmother was. I did say could be useful.

Abandoned grave-marker crosses in a Ukrainian cemetery; learning and using Ukrainian language.

Remember, although you might see this1

Underground Pub sign in Kolomiya, Ukraine


and this2

Painting of Winston Churhill hanging in the British Club, Lviv, Ukraine

in Western Ukraine, it doesn’t mean you can get away with doing an Amanda Holden.

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1 = British Club, Lviv

2 = The Underground Pub, Kolomiya

Kyiv, View from the Great Bell Tower Pechersk-Lavra

A nudge further east: Kyiv in December

On By Michelle LawsonIn Western Ukraine6 Comments

A visit to Kyiv before the recent war escalation

People in Ukraine were surprised that I hadn’t yet visited Kyiv. It’s true that Western Ukraine has drawn me ever since I set foot there, one reason being that it’s where my father’s family and descendants are from.

But I was asked to travel to London to pick up a dog, and I decided I’d make the journey more interesting and go from Devon to London via Kyiv.

Illogical? Not exactly; I had a hunch that going further east would help me understand the west. You get a different perspective on something by seeing what it isn’t. I’d also been assured that members of my late father’s former in-laws, who lived in the city, would be happy to meet me.

The taxi from the airport made me homesick for the local bus from L’viv airport that weaves past the trams and ancient Ladas. Ruslana, sitting next to me on the plane, had warned me about Kyiv’s dangers, which I tried to take with a pinch of salt, but her story about an ex-neighbour found dead in the forest had set me on edge.

Continue reading “A nudge further east: Kyiv in December” →
Ivano-Frankivsk from the town hall viewing platform

Track changes, eastward bound: London to Western Ukraine by train

On By Michelle LawsonIn Western Ukraine11 Comments

When I booked the eight trains spanning four days of travel from London to the formerly Polish ancestral village of my father (now lying within western Ukraine), I hadn’t realised that I’d be following the same route, more or less, that my father had driven us as a family in the late 1960s.

A wartime Polish exile, unable to visit his real homeland when it became part of the USSR, he would drive us to Poland as a second-best option. Back then it involved what my nervous mother referred to as ‘going behind the Iron Curtain’ that divided the West from the communist East. I remember hours standing next to the car at checkpoints as unsmiling DDR border guards pulled out the back seat and slid mirrors beneath the chassis. Long days were spent driving along the transit corridor through the forests of East Germany and Poland, where small crowds would gather whenever we stopped, and I had the job of handing out sweets and oranges to the wide-eyed children.

Some fifty years later I decided to travel east again, although this time it was possible to keep going into Ukraine, to the town closest to my dad’s village – the town of Ivano-Frankivsk, closed off by the Soviets until the early 1990s.

The lack of direct flights to western Ukraine gave a good excuse to do it by train.  Ryanair’s forthcoming route to Lviv will win for speed and price, but a couple of hours strapped into a budget aircraft will hardly convey the same sense of travelling through central Europe to the east.  And a train trip encourages some wonderfully atmospheric stopovers. Just don’t expect it to be restful.

Continue reading “Track changes, eastward bound: London to Western Ukraine by train” →