Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language 2019
Fifteen years of speaking it, and a practical note for anyone arriving now and wondering whether it is worth the effort.
A greeting on the Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language.
A practical note, for anyone who has recently arrived and is calculating whether learning the language is worth the time.
It is, and not for the reason usually given. The argument you hear is about respect, and that is true but it is not the commercial case. The commercial case is that every layer of translation between you and a market removes information. Not the facts — the facts survive translation. What is lost is emphasis, hesitation, the thing said lightly that was not light, and the joke that tells you what someone actually thinks.
Those are the signals that let you judge a counterparty. An interpreter cannot pass them to you because they are not in the words.
Fifteen years in, that is the return I would point to. To everyone still at the difficult stage: it arrives.
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