Ukrainian refugee children in UK risk losing mother tongue, study warns
Posted on Monday 20 July 2026
Around 7 million Ukrainian refugees are still waiting for a resolution to the conflict, including around 230,000 living in the UK. Of those, roughly 34,000 arrived as children.
A new study from the University of York, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy, has found that many of these children are rapidly losing their ability to speak Ukrainian as they adapt to life in English-speaking schools.
Researchers working on the project Negotiating Multilingualism in Situations of Conflict assessed the language abilities of 100 Ukrainian child refugees in Britain. They found that after just 12 months, many had developed strong English skills but had begun to lose fluency in Ukrainian.
Recall struggle
In some cases, the decline was significant enough that children struggled to recall basic vocabulary in their mother tongue.
Researchers say parents and caregivers are often unaware of how quickly a child’s first language can deteriorate when it is no longer used regularly and that this loss is likely to be permanent.
Professor Monika Schmid, from the University of York’s Department of Language and Linguistics, said: “We know that knowledge of a language becomes astonishingly stable over long periods of time after puberty, compared to other subjects we learn such as maths, history or sciences, but this is likely because of the way language is stored in memory.
“This means that for adults, who have exercised the ‘muscle memory’ of a language for a significant period of time, their recall of another language will be high. In children, however, there is not sufficient entrenchment of the linguistic knowledge, and previous research has shown that it is vulnerable to rapid and permanent loss until about the age of 12.
“We wanted to know whether there would also be such a rapid process of decline in these Ukrainian refugee children, most of whom are in close and regular contact with family and friends, often including a parent, back in Ukraine.”
Later life
Previous studies suggest that once a child loses a language in early life, it can be extremely difficult to regain later. Linguists say that if individuals attempt to relearn it as adults, they typically have little advantage over someone starting from scratch.
The potential consequences could extend beyond language learning. Many refugee children still have close relatives in Ukraine who may not speak English. A loss of Ukrainian could make long-term communication within families increasingly difficult.
Researchers also warn the shift could affect the country’s future. If children grow up unable to speak Ukrainian fluently, it may limit their ability to return to the country once the war ends and contribute to rebuilding communities affected by the conflict, even if they should wish to do so.
Professor Schmid said: “Four years into the war in Ukraine, it is now urgent that children are supported in maintaining their native language alongside English. Without targeted programmes and greater awareness among families and schools, the opportunity to preserve these language skills may soon be lost.”
The research continues and has started its second phase of fieldwork, which will inform experts on what has happened to children’s language skills over the last two years.
