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> but I never met such a person.

Probably 30-70% of every FSU republic except Belarus.

You should visit Ukraine. Ha

Visited Ukraine (Kyiv) last summer. I spoke a little Russian with them; nobody seemed to mind.

Honest question from a less than A1 level Russian student... Is there really a significant difference between the two? I have no doubt that there is different vocabulary etc. and of course that there are political reasons to count them as different languages but are they effectively mutually intelligible?

Russians often claim that Ukrainian is totally mutually intelligible, but it is easy to find counterexamples. There are Taras Shevchenko poems, for example, that if you present them to the average Russian speaker, that Russian speaker would have to guess at the meaning of a large number of words (and would guess wrong). All of the Slavic languages have retained common features and two speakers of different Slavic languages can often drop to a sort of basic shared level to communicate, but the innovations in each language – especially with the rise of complex standard languages – should not be underestimated.

Even within Ukraine, Ukrainians from Kyiv can face some difficulties understanding the Ukrainian spoken in the Carpathians (which is either transitional to Rusyn or is actually straight-up Rusyn), or the rural dialect of Trans-Carpathia that can include a great deal of Hungarian words.

A friend of mine from Lviv tells me that Ukrainian language is closer in structure and vocabulary to Polish than to Russian. I can't really assess this information, as I speak only Polish, from these three.

I always heard the same, but I'm no linguist and know nothing of Polish or Ukrainian so it would be good to have native speakers to confirm.

That's right, but only few people speak pure Ukranian language (and they do it mainly for political reasons). It is incovinient as it lacks some modern words and concepts. One can discuss prices on the market or neighbor girl, but when topic is switched to scientific or ingeneering matter - Russian is language of choise. Same with Kazakh language - the language of nomads.

Confirm: Ukrainian is perceived by russians as "peasant's" language. As for scientific and engineering matter - I observe more use of words borrowed from English.

I have an anecdote. I speak Russian proficiently (I can speak it since I've been 6, even though my native language is Romanian), and I always found understanding Ukrainian hard (not to say speaking it). I can infer a lot of words and expressions, but I would say they're fairly different.

You can try it out for yourself -- listen to some Okean Elzy on your favorite streaming service and see if you can understand him. (For all other non-Russian, non-Ukrainian speakers, the music is pretty good either way :))

I'm a Russian speaker who listens to Okean Elzy and I heartily give this suggestion a thumbs up.

I was surprised when a normally-Russian-speaking Ukrainian colleague of mine mixed up months when trying to communicate in Ukrainian with another normally-Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainian - talking about something occurring in October but using "Listopad" (which I figured from Czech was actually November). I'd guess that there's enough similarities that you could have a reasonable conversation with someone when you know Russian and the other speaks Ukrainian ... but occasionally you'll encounter words which are just completely unintelligible and not even close.

Listopad is a Ukrainian word for October

I just double checked and it seems everywhere I look lists Listopad as meaning November, with October apparently being “Жовтень”. However there are a bunch of other Slavic languages which DO have October as something like Listopad (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_calendar) so perhaps I shouldn’t be so sure of myself in future :-)

An anecdote from the other side: I have personally met several such people in former Soviet republics, such as Latvia, and believe that it is not at all uncommon.

Plenty of personal observations of this cultural friction in Latvia indeed.

I'll share an anecdote from a different place though, something that gave me an epiphany on how to judge this kind of situation. Years ago, I was on a train near the language border area within Belgium: French to the south, Dutch to the north. I had a conversation with a mentally disabled person sitting next to me. In both French and Dutch. He was switching between them fluently.

I wonder if Belgium in recent history had censorship of either language or if students were made to wear shame plates "today I spoke French/Dutch"...

If you want to imply that even mentally ill people can switch languages, but ex-USSR people can't... Plenty of them could. Many of them do that with English. Or is refusing to speak certain language in certain cases worse than mental illness?

> I wonder if Belgium in recent history had censorship of either language or if students were made to wear shame plates "today I spoke French/Dutch"...

Depends on how you define recent history. Discrimination of the Dutch speaking population was very outspoken until the 1920's (canon fodder in WW I...), common until the 1930's (difficult to get secondary education in Dutch, ...), and in some areas quite a bit longer.

> If you want to imply that even mentally ill people can switch languages, but ex-USSR people can't... Plenty of them could. Many of them do that with English. Or is refusing to speak certain language in certain cases worse than mental illness?

All people have the intellectual ability to learn a language. Obviously this includes former USSR people.

You won't see me make a statement about "everyone should have to ..." or "the rules should be...". I believe general rules are very blunt instruments when the heart of the issue is mutual courtesy and respect on an invididual level. Willingness to communicate in a specific language is often a very good proxy for that.

Every time something is threatening the local oligarchs' interests, the entire identity/language thing conveniently gets played. On either side of the cultural divide. When push comes to shove, the emperor of Ventspils and the king of Riga seem to find each other all too easily. It's the people in Latvia that pay the price.

Some totally useless random personal anecdotes. Seems like I have plenty of time to spare today:

* One of my first days in Latvia, quite a few years ago. I visit the occupation museum. Our guide is a student from a US Latvian emigre family volunteering for a month. He says something like "Really, the nazis were better for Latvia than the Soviets." Conveniently forgetting the problem for the Jewish Latvians and quite a few more things...

* I'm sitting in front of a lady in the tram in Riga. I've learned to speak Latvian rather well. I explain to her that I'm a foreigner who learned Latvian and ask her what stop I need for $well_known_shop. She completely ignores me, with an angry look. When I get off the tram, a venomous shout from her, in Latvian with a thick Russian accent: "If you know Latvian, you know Russian too!". Angry, extremely rude old lady. Don't want to get close to her.

* I'm on the ferry from Germany to the Latvian coast. My cabin mate Aleksandrs, a Russian culture Latvian, is doing his very best to speak Latvian to me, so we have at least one way to communicate. I speak it better than him, as he's away from Latvia most of the year in Western Europe, and his friends are mostly from Russian speaking circles. Bizarre, but friendly conversation. A Latvian traveller comes over and starts pestering Aleksandrs very agressively for more than half an hour with platitudes about how "none of you Russians never speak Latvian". Oh irony, we were speaking Latvian. Aleksandrs gets tired of this all, shakes his head and just gets back to our cabin.

* I'm in the center of Riga (Maxima Barona iela, near Bērnu pasaule) and I need something from a particular shop. It's so long ago I'm not even sure what it was I needed. I ask a few Russian language local teenagers hanging around the entrance of a local shop where it is. They more or less understand me after explaining them in English and Latvian. They have difficulties even with terms for left and right (!), but they courteously guide me in the right direction by pictionary, broken English and very very broken Latvian. An interesting case really of people lacking even basic awareness of what respect means in a language context. It just didn't register in their minds it seems. They're not exactly advancing their future as job seekers either...

* A friend's father was born in Siberian, to Latvian exile parents who were deported there (together with 57575 other people btw, or ~3% of the Latvian population at the time). He speaks Russian rather well and even reads Pushkin, but will reply in Latvian to questions asked in Russian. Except to some friends.

* The countless times I've had to hear "Wow! Where did you say you are from? And you don't even live here? You speak Latvian better than so many people who have been living here for ages!"

* My Latvian significant other's former boss used to be a Russian background Latvian. S.o. only learned about this after several months on the job.

> Depends on how you define recent history. Discrimination of the Dutch speaking population was very outspoken until the 1920's (canon fodder in WW I...), common until the 1930's (difficult to get secondary education in Dutch, ...), and in some areas quite a bit longer.

Got any recommended articles on that? Maybe once things settle down for several decades, Russian language will be more acceptable in Russia's neighbours too. And local Russians will accept they're no longer living in Russia/SU.

Few more personal anecdotes for your collection:

* I was walking random streets in Riga. I'm Lithuanian and I understand both Latvian and Russian about the same. Random older lady comes up to me and asks something in Russian. I answer in Russian that I don't understand Russian. She starts shouting along the lines of latviešu fashisty :/

* A friend of mine was managing a Lithuanian company's branch in Latvia. They had to keep at least 2 salesperson on the floor all the time. One ethnic Latvian and one ethnic Russian. Otherwise either client could get pissed off by the accent.

* Tallinn townhall square on a warm summer day. Everybody minding their own business and beer. A bunch of chavs/maroz/etc comes with Russian flags, shouting "slava Rosija" and do a couple circles around the square. Nobody gives a damn.

* There's a kebab joint in Vilnius run by Turkish (?) dude. He knows some Russian, but refuses to speak it with non-tourists and answers them in Lithuanian on principle. "If I learned it in few years, why can't they learn it in few decades?"

Come to Baltic states. Some people went as far as refusing to speak Russian during Soviet times. Now many young people don't speak Russian and don't even try to because of anti-Russian position.

Personally I don't respond in Russian if I'm sure the person was born or lived here for decades. If they look like tourists, I try to help with few Russian words I know or ask if they speak English... Old good pointing at the map goes a long way too.

Congrats, you are part of the problem.

-Fellow soon-to-be Ex-Lithuanian.

Which problem? That I consider myself part of the West and couldn't care less about Russia and their sphere of influence?

I bet you're not moving to Russia either...

Funny, I know at least one Mantas in Vilnius.

While I prefer speaking English when I am there (which happens pretty regularly), it seems that people are actually more willing to speak Russian. Probably because they are trying to sell you something...

You not living here for decades and refusing the local language on principle makes a huge difference.

People you’re dealing with age makes a big difference too. 35+ will speak good Russian and probably have a hard time with English. Younger are very likely to be the other way around.

P.S. Mantas was super popular name in late 80s thanks to a movie Herkus Mantas.

Well, that's true. But then I tried to learn at least "please" and "thank you" even when I was visiting in the 80's.

It does actually seem that it's the same people who would've refused to speak Russian before who are perfectly happy to do it now. Not that I would blame them at all, just find it amusing really.

Mantas I know is ~40+ years old, so probably not because of a movie.

> But then I tried to learn at least "please" and "thank you" even when I was visiting in the 80's.

Which already puts you way above local Russian-speaking population. We appreciate that. A lot.

> It does actually seem that it's the same people who would've refused to speak Russian before who are perfectly happy to do it now. Not that I would blame them at all, just find it amusing really.

It's kinda natural. People who saw obscenities in 1940s are dying out. The vocal pro-USSR/Russia people are diminishing too (although Latvia and Estonia may have different experience). Tension of the change of 1990s is gone. Those who weren't happy about the situation left for Russia or WE.

I'm pretty sure if Ukraine (as well as overall policies that caused it) hadn't happened, we'd have rather decent relations.

Thanks. Really, I can't understand how wouldn't you learn at least conversational language if you live in a country where it is spoken all the time...

I have a feeling that if not Ukraine, then something else would have happened anyway.

Me neither. I don't understand why Russian settlers after WW2 didn't feel a need to learn local languages. It looks like at least some of them feel culturally superior and try to stay away from "peasants" language.

As for the locals, when you're being forced at gunpoint to learn another language, resentment is natural. When the push is gone, it's kinda natural to exercise your newfound freedom too.

Of course, Ukraine was a symptom, not the cause. But if the cause for Ukraine was not there, it'd be damn nice. Now it will take at least another generation change for people to drop subconscious hate/fear of Russia. The clock is set back by 30 years if not more :(

Really. A lot of them don't even try to learn English in the US either.Even though unlike Lithuania you cam't really expect that random people on the street would be even a little bit familiar with it.

If the cause for Ukraine weren't there... I m afraid it would have been possible only if Russia weren't Russia.

I have met many such people (with Russian as their mother-tongue), who flat-out refuse to speak Russian.