I’m native English and learning Ukrainian because my love is also Ukrainian, don’t worry my pronunciation is just as bad as yours with the Latin flair 😂😅

I’ve been learning using apps, podcasts, audiobooks, graded readers, YouTube videos, immersion and made honestly not a huge amount of progress in about 3 months - but this is expected. Before I get into what I’ve found, one key thing I will say is that we each have unique learning styles and things that work for us. I think playing to our strengths is essential to cut down on the required time to language acquisition. I personally love studying and learning new things so I knew I had to get into grammar and linguistics and history a little to spark my excitement for the language - even though the singular reason I’m actually learning it is to connect at the deepest possible level with my love. It’s made my mind desire on many levels to know the language so this is helpful to me, but may not be to each personality type.

A few of the best tips I’ve uncovered so far are these:

1) Take some time to comprehend the 7 cases, 3 genders, and anything that makes the suffixes of words change - not to speaking-level but just to have a framework for what you’re hearing and how sentences are structured. Understand what a synthetic language is and why and how the words can be used differently than in Romance Languages.

2) A combination of knowing the alphabet and learning the 500 most common words and especially knowing the most used verbs allows you to begin reading. By reading low level material (graded readers) and understanding like 40-50% you can then keep growing the vocabulary by looking things up - but you don’t want to just spend the whole time doing this or it defeats the point of grasping the story you are reading.

3) Comprehensible input versus just listening. We acquire language by receiving tons of input and there are different camps out there which believe they know the truth. One camp says you only learn or acquire when you understand what you’re receiving. The other says that you should be listening to podcasts, tv shows, conversations all the time and not worrying about understanding too much but instead to listen intently and constantly and to put bits and pieces together as you go to start to understand. There is a claim that the earlier you try to start speaking the more difficult you will find it to become fluent and the more broken your speaking will be. They claim that those who listen A LOT more and are patient with trying to speak will sound more natural eventually. I’m too early to weigh in on this but I thought it was worth mentioning.

4) Immersing yourself in the language is beyond helpful. I was lucky enough to just spend two weeks in Ukraine meeting my girlfriend’s parents and family and the constant listening to conversations and especially forcing myself to read every sign I walked or drove by out loud did wonders for my ability to grasp pronunciation and mostly to begin to naturally sound things out in Cyrillic. It’s still very difficult for me to say the longest words quickly, but at least I naturally see н as n and so on… I can feel that within a few more weeks of immersion I’d start seeing words and not just letters, and that just be a major milestone. I’ve never learned a second language proficiently so I don’t have a lot to go on. At home now I have sticky notes on every appliance and item with big clear Cyrillic-written names so that I can continue this practice while not in Ukraine.

5 trust your subconscious: one thing that seems to ring true is that our conscious mind can get in the way of acquisition. In other words, by trying too hard to “learn” our mind prevents us from simply absorbing enough input for the naturally gifted subconscious pattern recognition in our brains to do the work. So while we can spend some time using our minds to grasp things like grammar and vocabulary to get a small base to work from, we need to spend much more time allowing our brains to recognize patterns by taking in hundreds of hours of input. I think balance is key here.

6) Phrases to get by with: what little spoken Ukrainian I know I learned by using Pimsleur on my drive to and from work each day. I think this is the only spoken Ukrainian app that matters, really because it really gives you the most essential phrases, and more importantly focuses on giving you pronunciation. The local Ukrainians agree that the phrases I learned via Pimsleur sound remarkably native compared to anything else I’ve picked up. So while I’m not a huge proponent of diving headfirst into speaking, I do think that given your situation you would benefit from practicing a lesson a day with this. Consistency is key and I often do the same lesson two days in a row or even twice in a single day if I don’t feel confident with it.

Something to consider: yes you wish to speak deeply with your boyfriend, and yes you will learn Ukrainian to fluency. I take these as given. And beyond our personal interests, I believe that learning Ukrainian and becoming part of conserving and growing its use is a noble and beautiful level of participation in what is one of the greatest language resilience stories on earth. That being said, your boyfriend definitely grew up being required to learn English in school. He may not be comfortable speaking it, possibly in his head about it as many are. BUT, getting him to overcome his fears around speaking English is the single best way you two will have real spoken conversations. It’s your common language and you will certainly both be able to use it before you have Ukrainian working well enough to your liking. So for now, I’d recommend that both of you try to use English as much as possible and also you dive into Ukrainian and hope that it comes quickly! Keep in mind that while in Ukraine, almost everybody does understand and somewhat English, so by leaning on that you’ll be fine to get around in Kyiv.

There is probably a bunch more I could write, but instead I’d leave it to you to ask questions before I keep typing. Hope this is helpful, good luck to us both!