If you’ve ever read at least one of my posts here, you know they are all about international communication in English. Today, let me make an exception and dedicate this one to Ukrainian, my native language.

In Ukraine we have a holiday of Ukrainian Writing and Language, which is celebrated annually on 9 November. The biggest event of this day is the All-Ukrainian Dictation of National Unity when speakers of Ukrainian from all over the world tune their radios and other modern gadgets to write the dictation. It’s often someone famous preparing the text and reading it and the genres vary from year to year.

Some say they see no point in checking how accurately you can recreate a piece of writing, while others argue it helps you improve as a language user. To me, it’s a wonderful illustration of how much effort and practice we need to learn and understand each other.

While listening to the reader, you have to pay very close attention to every pause to get your spelling and punctuation correct. Isn’t that similar to what we do when we communicate internationally? We focus not only on primary meaning but what’s written between the lines and what’s communicated through intonation and body language. And most of all on how we build bridges across hearts and minds using the language.

How do you celebrate your language?

Yours,

Oksana

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