What language do Ukrainians prefer reading in?

For most Ukrainians the language it is written in is not decisive when choosing a book: the main thing is being comfortable with and understanding the language in which the text is written. This is one of the findings of a study carried out across the whole of Ukraine and titled “Ukrainian Reading Publishing Data 2018”. The study was published by the Chytomo cultural and publishing project in conjunction with the GUTENBERGZ digital publishing house and in co-operation with the Razumkov Centre sociological service.

45.3% of the respondents consider the choice of book language to be not important. Among them, 33.3% prefer reading books in the original language, if they are fluent in that language, and 12% are equally comfortable reading in any language they understand.

24.2% of the respondents said that it is more convenient for them to read in Ukrainian, 28.3% in Russian. Another 2% of the respondents did not decide on their answer.

47% of the respondents said that they use Ukrainian as the language to communicate at home, 31% speak Russian at home, and 21% of the respondents said that they use both languages.

By comparison, in 2014 41% of Ukrainians said that they communicate in Ukrainian at home and 40% said that Russian was their home language. Back then 24% of the respondents stated a preference for books written in the Ukrainian language, while 44% preferred Russian.

The full text of the study is available here.

The study was conducted with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.

The study was conducted by the Razumkov Centre sociological service between 26 October and 1 November 2018 in all regions of Ukraine except the Crimea peninsula and the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 2,013 respondents aged 15–59 years old were interviewed. The theoretical sampling error is 2.3%.