COLUMBUS, Ind. — A Ukrainian refugee living in Columbus recently helped Indiana University create a phrase book to help U.S. military personnel understand her native language.
Yuliia Dybka worked on the project this past spring with the Language Training Center at IU.
“I was so excited, because for me, first, knowing that people here care of Ukraine, they want to create such a meaningful project for military partners so they could communicate more effectively with Ukrainians, and to build this kind of relationship, partnership, building in trust, preventing misunderstanding,” she said. “So of course, I said ‘Yes, I’m in, 100%.’”
According to IU, the Language Training Center is an initiative of the U.S. Defense Language and National Security Education Office that offers language and culture training for active-duty military and reserve personnel.
“Within a month of the Russian invasion in February 2022, about one-quarter of Ukraine’s population had fled the country,” university officials said. “They were displaced throughout the world, with the majority relocating to eastern and western Europe. Bridging the language barrier between members of the U.S. military and Ukrainian military partners and refugees became increasingly important, driving the military’s request for IU to create a Ukrainian phrase book.”
Phrase books provide a “range of conversational basics” that can be used between soldiers and their Ukrainian allies, said Nathaniel Lanaghan, associate director of defense and strategic initiatives at IU’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.
The Language Training Center has completed similar projects for military partners in the past, such as a Pashto-Dari phrase book for Camp Atterbury.
For more on this story, see Tuesday’s Republic.
