Oh look, not so much sun today.

In the light of my long week-end next week in L'viv, I've started reading "Culture Shock! Ukraine". It's an ok book, it's made me think a bit.

In the book, the author clearly states that L'viv and western Ukraine are different from the rest of the country and I'm fine with that but I can't help but feel that he's saying in a way that this fact that it's different is bad. Like it's not normal to have a part of the country that mainly speaks Ukrainian. He talks in depth about his friends in Kharkiv, a city close to the Russian border, where they don't like it being called "Kharkiv" and would rather always use the old name and he doesn't say anything bad about that.

I'll repeat myself for saying this but I'm really tired of meeting people and answering their stupid questions about Ukraine when they actually learn that I'm from there. These days I actually state that I'm from the south of France, no mention is made of my past in Ukraine, northern France or the US. There are only so many times that I can tell people that no, Ukrainian is not the same as Russian and that no, not everyone is bilingual there and that no, the alphabets are not the same. What I love to tell them is the fact that Ukrainian and Russian are in no way alike to me, it's as if someone said that Spanish and Italian are very similar. They're not, there are roots that are the same because they're both Roman languages but that's it. I have no trouble switching to Ukrainian and coming up with lots of sentences... it takes me a lot of effort to switch to Russian. Actually I think part of the effort is to fight my inner impulse not to speak Russian.

So there, those are my daily two cents. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again but hey, it makes me feel better.

Edit: a good paragraph in the book about language:
The Ukrainian language is not a dialect of the Russian language as Soviets wanted the outside world to believe. Rather, each language penetrated and interacted with the other's syntax and vocabulary. The similarities between Ukrainian and Russian have been compared to those between German and Dutch, although there are different dialects within the Ukrainian language, especially around Galicia (called Halychyna in Ukrainian, the capital of which is Lviv) and Volhyn. These dialects are almost incomprehensible to heartland Russians.