I learnt Ukrainian for some time. I picked it up because I like how Ukrainian sounds, it's very harmonious. I'm Polish and from what I've heard people in West Ukraine prefer Poles to speak Polish than Russian even though they would understand it much better. But it seems right only for the older generation. All people studying with me come from Western cities like Lutsk, Rivne, or Kovel. I managed to learn Ukrainian so I can understand it when it's spoken. Ukrainian has a lot of vocabulary coming from Polish and words are just simply adjusted to Ukrainian orthography and inflection rules, thus it's definitely one of the Slavic languages that are very similar to Polish (let's leave different writing systems). Also, there are some unique consonants that Polish and Ukrainian share and they're not present in Russian (like /d͡ʐ/ for instance).
I'm older than most of these people not counting 2 men older than me, so the average is 17-19 among these Ukrainians, I guess, I'm 22. They talk in Russian! I thought it had been a torment for Ukrainians to be forced to learn Russian in schools even after dissolution of the USSR and now when it's not obligatory, young people prefer to speak Russian rather than Ukrainian. I was aware of this happening in East Ukraine, Crimea, and some other regions but West Ukraine was always "Ukrainian" for me. They use a lot of Russian vocabulary, e.g. the verb <понимать> instead of Ukrainian <розуміти> for "to understand" or <любить> instead of <кохати> for "to love". At first I was very excited to be able to talk to Ukrainian girls in Ukrainian and maybe improve my skills (and, well, Ukrainian girls are very very pretty
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Does anyone know to what extent this phenomenon is spread in West Ukraine? This is the first step for Ukrainian to die out completely eventually, something what is happening in Belarus where Belarusian is used very rarely.