Does war drive changes in language use?Results from an online survey of Ukrainians

Ukraine has long been a multilingual nation, with the use of Ukrainian or Russian as the primary language showing notable regional differences. Importantly, the preservation of the Russian language was cited a reason for Russia to dramatically escalate the war. In order to assess whether any changes in language use have occurred since the war started, we conducted an online survey to assess language use in Ukraine. The aspects that we evaluated were the choice of language in daily life, when watching TV or films, and in internet content. The results showed a significant decrease (p < 0.0001) in the use of Russian language in all 3 domains, with a corresponding increase in Ukrainian. These decreases in the use of Russian language were seen across all age groups, in both men and women, and in all regions in which the respondents lived. It is apparent that the change in language use is a reflection of a rise in the sense of Ukrainian identity that the war has spurred. Ukrainians who had been Russophone are in the process of severing the last remaining cultural ties to Russia, i. e., the language.