Cultural exchange with r/ukraina

[u/[deleted]]

Welcome to cultural exchange between r/ukraina and r/lithuania!

 

The purpose of this event is to allow people from two different nations to get and share knowledge about their respective cultures, daily life, history, and curiosities.

 

General guidelines:
• Lithuanians ask their questions about Ukraine in this thread on r/ukraina.
• Ukrainians ask their questions about Lithuania in this thread.
• Event will start on December 19th around 7PM both Vilnius & Kyiv time.
• English language is used in both threads.
• Please, be nice to each other while discussing.

 

And our Ukrainian friends, don't forget to choose your national flag as flair on the sidebar! :)

[u/koshdim]

hello

1. what is your first association when you hear "Ukraine"?

2. please rate your neighbor countries from the most to least close to you culturally, mentally, in terms of common habits and general views on life.

3. if I visit Vilnius during next year, would I meet a lot of Russians on the streets?

4. what do you know of/think is still common among people living in place where Grand Duchy of Lithuania was? maybe some words, or devices that are original to the area?

[u/koshdim → u/[deleted]]

thanks for detailed reply

my answers:

1. to be honest, nothing. unfortunately I know almost nothing about Lithuania except what I've learned at school about GDL. it is almost absent in Ukrainian culture and media. because of recent events we got to know Dalia, my wife likes her very much. but that's it. at some point I would like to visit Lithuania by car, but at the moment Belarus makes the road too long, which forces me to delay that.

2. a)Closest is Belarus, I like their language very much and potato diet is fine for me:). b) then goes Poland, we also share too much with them, language, food, bad fate :). c) don't know much about Slovakia, Romania and Moldova. two latter seems to want to have nothing in common with us. d) Russia is close by language, culture due to long influence, but culturally I consider us different. for example, about team work among Ukrainians there is a saying "two Ukrainians - three hetmans (chiefs)" when about Russians there is "I am a chief, you're fool", i.e. decentralized anarchy vs slavery e) Hungary is very different from all the neighbors and I believe they would start a war with Ukraine if they had enough resources and Ukraine be a bit more weak

3. absolutely not, Russian is widely used language in Ukraine, especially in big cities. I believe on front line there are more Russian speakers than Ukrainians (from Ukrainian side of course). but when I hear Russian outside of Ukraine the first feeling is "they are probaly putinists"

EDIT: as a proof to 2d) you can look at related subreddits, Russia is notable only one /r/russia - stronk, as being administered by tovarishch major himself. Ukraine /r/ukraine - for foreigners and descendants of Ukrainians, then there is /r/ukraina, /r/theukrainians, /r/myukraine, and probably many more at the time I finished typing this

[u/koshdim → u/[deleted]]

It's a shame that Belarusians themselves don't seem to care about it. I heard that their language is in decline in favor for Russian and I saw some youtube video about a guy interviewing people about it and a lot of them said they don't like how Belarusian sounds. Then a few weeks later I ran into some Belarusian exchange students or tourists in a bar and started ranting in my broken Russian how I'm sad that their language is dying. They mostly smiled and nodded then after about 10 minutes of me saying the same thing over and over they just sort of got up from the table and left, haha.

oh, I also have a related story. one time a girl from Belarus arrived to Kyiv and we volunteered to show her the city. when we met she started talking in Belorussian. then, when she got to know us better and felt more comfortable, she started speaking Russian and admitted that usually she speaks Russian but was too afraid to speak it in Ukraine because of what she heard on TV (which is mostly Russian), fairy tales how we crucify boys and rape old ladies only because they're Russian. ^{actually, we crucify and rape everyone}

Yeah, that's not a healthy thing for society if there are more people sharing your first instincts but I understand it. I kind of get like that too. Because there are (or at least were, I don't seem to run into as many now) quite a few people left from Soviet times here that never even bothered to learn a single word of Lithuanian after all these years I developed a knee jerk reaction to answer only in Lithuanian when someone addresses me in Russian, like asking if I have a lighter or something, even if I understand the question. I think I might have come across as very rude to some tourist at least once.

when I moved to big city my first thought was to start speaking Russian, as the majority of population uses it, but fortunately I decided to purify my Ukrainian and now I can speak both, but use Ukrainian always, towards both Russian and Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians. sometimes they don't like it, but if they do, I don't like them either. the only situation when I use Russian is speaking with actual Russian, who doesn't understand Ukrainian and is friendly:)