Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language 2010
Six years in, at the stage where a language stops being a subject and becomes a tool you no longer notice using.
A greeting on the Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language.
Six years in, and I had reached the stage nobody describes: the language had stopped being a subject I was studying and become a tool I used without noticing. You realise it retrospectively. A meeting ends and you cannot recall which language it was in.
What I had not expected is that this changes how people treat you. Not because they are impressed — most are not, and rightly. It is that they stop editing themselves. The version of a conversation you get when nobody is simplifying for you is a different conversation, and it is the one that contains the useful information.
To everyone marking the day: thank you for the years of patience that got me to it.
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