“The war leaked into every lesson”: a British journalist learns Ukrainian in a country under siege
After her first reporting trip to Ukraine in October 2022, a British journalist decided to learn Ukrainian, discovering the language's beauty and complexity, and how the war has shaped every lesson.
A British journalist who returned from her first reporting trip to Ukraine in October 2022 decided to start learning Ukrainian, not only as a gesture of solidarity but also to better understand her work and be more courteous to the people she met. Since then she has been meeting her teacher Olha, who lives in Ivano-Frankivsk, for weekly video calls from London.
The journalist describes the pleasure of learning the Cyrillic alphabet, admiring the shapes of letters such as Л, Ю and Ж. The Ukrainian-only letter Ї, absent from the Russian alphabet, has also become a symbol of resistance – in 2022 it was chalked on streets in occupied Mariupol. Another rare letter, Ґ, which was removed from the alphabet under Stalin and reinstated after Ukrainian independence in 1991, also caught her attention.
Grammar has its challenges: Ukrainian has seven cases, one more than Latin. Number usage can be puzzling, as $50 takes the genitive case while $52 takes the nominative, and $51 yet another ending. Verbs of motion also require careful attention, with different forms depending on whether movement is on foot or by transport, and whether it is one-way or round trip.
The war has seeped into every lesson. The first sentences the journalist read were about Olha's longing for her pre-war life in Kyiv. Grammar examples often came from wartime contexts: “No one likes Putin”, “We must prepare for war”, “We need 300 tanks”. Vocabulary grew to include words for drones, rockets, bomb shelters and air-raid alerts. The journalist learned that the Ukrainian word “тривога” means both “anxiety” and “alarm”.
That winter, Russian attacks on infrastructure caused blackouts even in far-western Ivano-Frankivsk, and several lessons were cancelled. The journalist admits that learning the language put her back in the role of a speechless child and caused frustration, but Ukrainians responded with warmth and gratitude even to her imperfect attempts. She now plans to return to Ukraine, aiming to visit Kyiv, Izium, Kharkiv and Kherson, with her husband's understanding.
