The geographical and social distribution of native languages in central Ukraine

By declaring a language as their native language or mother tongue, people carry out an act of identification with this language, and via this language with people and ideas to whom they assign the same language. This comes to the fore especially when external conflicts are transferred to the linguistic constellation. This is the case in Ukraine, where three languages / codes are at the disposal: the state’s official language Ukrainian, but also Russian, and “suržyk”, a widespread form of speech containing both Ukrainian and Russian elements. Based on a survey from 2014 in the central regions of Ukraine, this article examines which of these languages / codes are chosen as a native language and how this choice is connected with more objective aspects of language use. By means of generative additive mixed-effects modeling, it will be shown how this choice varies both socially and geographically.