Dobre dien. (Good morning.)
Dobranich. (Good night.)
Dyakuyu. (Thank you.)
Shcho stalos? (What happened?)
//
I was twenty years old when I promised my soon-to-be mother-in-law I would learn to speak Ukrainian. My husband was supposed to marry a good Ukrainian woman, but he was the first of three Ukrainian sons to marry American brides. This was a blow to his parents whose ancestors fled Ukraine when Stalin came to power and settled in a Ukrainian community in Paraguay. My in-laws spoke fluent Spanish but learned to speak Ukrainian before immigrating to America where my father-in-law pastored a Ukrainian Southern Baptist Church. They spoke Ukrainian at church and home.
I felt the weight of my promise even as I made it. I bought a set of Ukrainian language tapes from Barnes and Noble. I asked my husband to repeat words and phrases over and over so I could hear the subtle differences in sound. But, aside from a few phrases, I never learned to speak Ukrainian.
I can see now that I didn’t understand what I was doing when I made that promise, in part because I didn’t understand what my mother-in-law was asking. I didn’t understand my in-law’s attachment to the Ukrainian language any more than I understood conversation at the dinner table or sermons at my father-in-law’s church. Now that I think about it – half of my own wedding was in Ukrainian, a brief sermon given by my father-in-law that I let flow over me like a river and never asked to have translated.
//
Mama (Mom)
Tato (Dad)
Bunia (Grandma)
Dido (Grandpa)
//
I didn’t understand that the commitment to the Ukrainian language was a commitment to Ukrainian history, to Ukrainian sovereignty, free from Soviet rule in church and state. My father-in-law traveled frequently to Ukraine, preaching for days on end. I remember he was just back from Ukraine when he first met our youngest boys, twins. He sat in the living room in his suit and tie and lifted the babies in his arms murmuring Ukrainian endearments.
I think about language differently now. I think of the ways language is used to build bridges and sever ties. Language is part of the lifeblood of a people, a tree whose roots lead straight to the heart. Here in America, white colonists asserted dominance over native peoples, in part, by killing their languages. To this day, these same peoples struggle to reclaim and preserve the languages that were cut off and nearly died.
Some evenings, my husband sits a room apart from the rest of us, talking on the phone with his dad. My husband’s Ukrainian has only gotten worse over the years we’ve been married. I can follow most of their conversation by listening to the English words he substitutes for the Ukrainian he’s lost or never knew.
There were so many reasons not to learn Ukrainian. It’s not the language of my husband’s heart, he learned it largely by listening and speaking. I saw how language could be a barrier, how my husband grew up in a church listening to sermons he could never fully understand. When I realized his parents spoke fluent Spanish, I wondered why we couldn’t just speak Spanish at the dinner table – that was a language I had at least studied in high school and college.
//
Dyad’ko (Uncle)
Titka (Aunt)
Brat (Brother)
Sestra (Sister)
//
I never learned to speak Ukrainian. My mother-in-law mentioned it, just once, the promise I made and didn’t keep. I apologized.
The words I’ve listed here and a few other scattered phrases, these are all I know. These words for family relations, for good morning and good night, for thank you. My children know their Bunia and Dido speak with heavy accents and sometimes can’t find the right words in English for the things they want to say. I remember the day I realized my father-in-law couldn’t read an English children’s book aloud to my children. It was as difficult for him as reading a book aloud in Ukrainian would be for my husband – a task not worth tackling for the linguistic butchery that would ensue. My father-in-law seamlessly transitioned from reading to talking and engaged with them around the pictures instead. Where one language failed, he made a bridge in another.
//
Ya tebe lyublyu. (I love you.)
//
I never learned to speak Ukrainian, this is true. I didn’t understand what I was promising, I didn’t understand what was being asked. Yet, here in my heart even these few words sit like sprouted seeds. Already, their roots are deep enough that the Russian invasion on Ukrainian soil feels like an invasion on my soil. The displaced bunias and didos, dyad’kos and titkas are my grandparents, my aunts and uncles – even these few words have been enough to plant them to my heart.
Maybe this is what it means to speak Ukrainian.
//
If this is so, then we must all learn to speak Ukrainian. We must all learn to shape our tongues, our mouths and ears around strangely shaped syllables and sounds. Even one or two words might be enough to plant a seed in each of our hearts.
I was only twenty. I didn’t fully understand the promise I was making, and I didn’t fully understand what was being asked. This is what I think of – this density and ignorance, this failure to comprehend – when I think of the young Russian soldiers manning the airplanes and tanks in the streets and cities of Ukraine. I think of Jesus’ words on the cross, “forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” I can believe they don’t know, don’t really know, because there have been so many times when I have failed to know, to understand.
I read a book recently about how tree roots communicate with each other beneath the surface of the earth. They send warnings upon the invasion of intrusive insects. They share water and resources, they aid and assist each other as if held together by an unspoken language in which the same words for connection exist – brother, sister, mother, child.
Even the trees know these words and their meaning.
There are so many shared words between Russian and Ukrainian, which is not to say one should replace the other but is to say there is enough there to mean something. The word for brother, for example is nearly identical. The word for mother is the same. So, when a soldier or civilian dies on either side of this manufactured human divide the last word on their lips may be the same, “Mama.” Their hearts bear the same seeds, they have just forgotten the language.
If I had known all of this then, maybe I would have made a better promise to my mother-in-law, one that I could keep. Maybe I could have promised to love her son and his people – our people – with all my heart, to speak this language of connection that grows deep roots, that builds bridges beyond words, to help, even, spread this language far and wide.
We must all learn to speak each other’s languages, if only the simplest words.
//
Dobre dien. (Good morning.)
Dobranich. (Good night.)
Dyakuyu. (Thank you.)
Shcho stalos? (What happened?)
Ya tebe lyublyu. (I love you.)
