Ukrainian is nowadays the only official language in all of Ukraine (apart from Crimea) and it is also spoken by most of its population (about 70 percent speak it as their first language). Western Ukraine is also the part of Ukraine in which Ukrainian is indeed the strongest language in everyday life.
Notwithstanding most people you will come across in Chernivtsi will also speak Russian. If you leave to the surrounding villages this situation may change. Everyone understands Russian, but some may respond in Ukrainian, a language they feel more comfortable with. Ukrainian is only partially intelligible with Russian.
If you speak Polish or Slovak you may try it as well since these languages are relatively similar to Ukrainian. There is also a Polish minority in Chernivtsi.
As the entire Bukovina used to belong to Romania prior to WWII a large Romanian population in Northern Bukovina (about 20 percent!) still speaks Romanian. This is true mostly for the areas near the Romanian border, rather than the regional capital. As with other Romanian speakers they can also understand Italian and some other Romance languages to a certain extent.
English and German are the two most common foreign languages in Ukraine (except Russian) although you should not expect finding many speakers of these languages around. Some Jews in Chernivtsi may speak Yiddish which is intelligible with German and there are some elderly native German speakers.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Chernivtsi
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Chernivtsi - updated May 2024
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Chernivtsi Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
