How the Language Ombudsman Taught Her Daughter to Communicate in Ukrainian: Personal Experience

The new language ombudsman Olena Ivanovska shared in an interview with 'Glavkom' her experience of teaching her daughter to use the Ukrainian language on social media. She spoke about family tragedies related to repression and dispossession that helped her daughter understand the importance of her native language.

I told my daughter about the tragedies of the dispossession of her great-great-grandfather's family, about her grandfather being imprisoned for a handful of grain, about how Ukrainian intellectuals were destroyed for centuries. She perceived this not as a dry fact from a textbook, but as a personal family tragedy.

Olena Ivanovska also heard about the problem in the language behavior of teenagers, especially in Kyiv, where more and more people use the Russian language. This issue personally affects her as she is the mother of a schoolgirl.

In another part of the interview, Ivanovska talked about her own experience in teaching her daughter to appreciate the Ukrainian language. She emphasized the importance of passing on language values through family narratives and personal examples. The language, according to Ivanovska, is an intergenerational bridge that requires special attention.

The Ukrainian language continues to remain relevant and important in the modern world, and fostering a conscious attitude towards it in the younger generation plays a key role in this.