Northumberland woman writes Ukraine phrasebook for British hosts

Ruth Darby teaches Spanish and speaks a little bit of Polish, French and German – but admits it was ‘challenging’ to get her head around Ukrainian.

"The cyrillic alphabet is difficult to learn, although my knowledge of Polish helped a bit, so there have been long days getting it all done,” Ruth admits.

When war broke out a few weeks ago, Ruth, started to write a phrasebook for people working in schools who might be welcoming Ukrainian children.

"I’ve barely been able to watch the news, it just makes me cry,” she admits, “but I wanted to do something.

"As I wrote it, I decided to add a few basic phrases for adults who are offering living space to refugees,” she explained.

"There are key words and phrases such as hello, this is your room and would you like a drink?

"I have included little dialogues for people to practice saying, and ten tests so people can get active and see how much they are making progress.

"I have also included a little bit of cultural information about Ukraine.”

Ruth continued: “I have included Ukrainian vocabulary in the text to help people learn, especially where I found cognates.

"As a complete beginner myself, I found that the Ukrainian words embedded in English text stuck in my head much more easily than the phrases I was explicitly trying to teach.

“I used Google Translate a lot. My knowledge of languages put me in a good position to look out for the idiosyncrasies of Ukrainian, and hopefully ask the right questions to make my book as accurate as possible, while still keeping it really accessible and beginner-friendly.”

She has also created a video on YouTube so viewers can copy her ‘super slow re-creations of the sounds’.

"If it helps people who are going to host Ukrainians to learn a little bit of the language, then it will have been worth all the effort,” admits Ruth.

The 107-page Ukrainian, one day at a time is available in paperback: https://amzn.to/3DbfjxV and on Kindle: https://amzn.to/3tFkqUg

All proceeds will go to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) appeal.