Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian ( uk, украї́нська мо́ва, translit=ukrainska mova, label=native name, ) is an
East Slavic language The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siber ...
of the
Indo-European language family The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
. It is the
native language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...
of about 40 million people and the official state language of
Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
in
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...
. Written Ukrainian uses the
Ukrainian alphabet The Ukrainian alphabet ( uk, абе́тка, áзбука алфа́ві́т, abetka, azbuka alfavit) is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the ...
, a variant of the
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
. The
standard Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...
Ukrainian language is regulated by the
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU; uk, Національна академія наук України, ''Natsional’na akademiya nauk Ukrayiny'', abbr: NAN Ukraine) is a self-governing state-funded organization in Ukraine th ...
(NANU; particularly by its Institute for the Ukrainian Language), the Ukrainian language-information fund, and
Potebnia Institute of Linguistics Potebnia Institute of Linguistics is a research institute in Ukraine, which is part of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine department of literature, language, and art studies. It is focused on linguistic research and studies of linguistic ...
. Comparisons are often drawn to
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, a prominent
Slavic language The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ea ...
, but there is more
mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
with Belarusian,Alexander M. Schenker. 1993. "Proto-Slavonic," ''The Slavonic Languages''. (Routledge). pp. 60–121. p. 60: " hedistinction between dialect and language being blurred, there can be no unanimity on this issue in all instances..."
C.F. Voegelin and F.M. Voegelin. 1977. ''Classification and Index of the World's Languages'' (Elsevier). p. 311, "In terms of immediate mutual intelligibility, the East Slavic zone is a single language."
Bernard Comrie. 1981. ''The Languages of the Soviet Union'' (Cambridge). pp. 145–146: "The three East Slavonic languages are very close to one another, with very high rates of mutual intelligibility...The separation of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian as distinct languages is relatively recent...Many Ukrainians in fact speak a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, finding it difficult to keep the two languages apart..."
The Swedish linguist Alfred Jensen wrote in 1916 that the difference between the
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and Ukrainian languages was significant and that it could be compared to the difference between
Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
and
Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
. Jensen, Alfred. ''Slaverna och världskriget. Reseminnen och intryck från Karpaterna till Balkan 1915–16.''. Albert Bonniers förlag, Stockholm, 1916, p. 145.
Ukrainian's closest relative. Historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to Old East Slavic, a language of the early medieval state of
Kyivan Rus' Kievan Rusʹ, also known as Kyivan Rusʹ ( orv, , Rusĭ, or , , ; Old Norse: ''Garðaríki''), was a state in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical Atlas of ...
. Modern linguistics denies the existence of a stage of a common East Slavic language, therefore, referring the Ukrainian language to "East Slavonic" is also more of a tribute to the academic tradition. After the fall of the Kyivan Rus' as well as the
Kingdom of Ruthenia Kingdom commonly refers to: * A monarchy ruled by a king or queen * Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy Kingdom may also refer to: Arts and media Television * ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...
, the language developed into a form called the Ruthenian language, and enjoyed as such the status of one of the official languages of the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. The state was founded by Lit ...
for several centuries. Along with Ruthenian, in the territory of modern Ukraine, the Kyiv version (''Kyiv Izvod'') of Church Slavonic was also used in
liturgical Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...
services. The Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the
Cossack Hetmanate The Cossack Hetmanate ( uk, Гетьманщина, Hetmanshchyna; or ''Cossack state''), officially the Zaporizhian Host or Army of Zaporizhia ( uk, Військо Запорозьке, Viisko Zaporozke, links=no; la, Exercitus Zaporoviensis) ...
. From 1804 until the 1917–1921
Ukrainian War of Independence The Ukrainian War of Independence was a series of conflicts involving many adversaries that lasted from 1917 to 1921 and resulted in the establishment and development of a Ukrainian republic, most of which was later absorbed into the Soviet U ...
, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
, of which the biggest part of Ukraine (Central, Eastern and Southern) was a part at the time.Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy
by
Jonathan Steele Jonathan Steele may refer to: *Jonathan Steele (journalist), British journalist and author * Jonathan Steele (comics), the comic book series * Jonny Steele, footballer See also *Jon Steel Jon Steel , full name Jonathan Steel (born 14 March 19 ...
,
Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retir ...
, 1988, (p. 217)
Through folk songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors, the language has always maintained a sufficient base in
Western Ukraine Western Ukraine or West Ukraine ( uk, Західна Україна, Zakhidna Ukraina or , ) is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austria ...
, where the language was never banned.Purism and Language: A Study in Modem Ukrainian and Belorussian Nationalism
by Paul Wexler, Indiana University Press, (page 309)
Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine
by Laada Bilaniuk, Cornell Univ. Press, 2006, (page 78)


Linguistic development


Theories

Specifically Ukrainian developments that led to a gradual change of the Old East Slavic vowel system into the system found in modern Ukrainian began approximately in the 12th/13th century (that is, still at the time of the Kyivan Rus') with a lengthening and raising of the Old East Slavic mid vowels ''e'' and ''o'' when followed by a consonant and a weak yer vowel that would eventually disappear completely, for example Old East Slavic котъ /kɔtə/ > Ukrainian кіт /kit/ 'cat' (via transitional stages such as /koˑtə̆/, /kuˑt(ə̆)/, /kyˑt/ or similar) or Old East Slavic печь /pʲɛtʃʲə/ > Ukrainian піч /pitʃ/ 'oven' (via transitional stages such as /pʲeˑtʃʲə̆/, /pʲiˑtʃʲ/ or similar). This raising and other phonological developments of the time, such as the merger of the Old East Slavic vowel phonemes и /i/ and ы /ɨ/ into the specifically Ukrainian phoneme /ɪ ~ e/, spelled with и (in the 13th/14th centuries), and the fricativisation of the Old East Slavic consonant г /g/, probably first to /ɣ/ (in the 13th century), with the result /ɦ/ in Modern Ukrainian, never happened in Russian, and only the fricativisation of Old East Slavic г /g/ occurred in Belarusian, where the result is /ɣ/. The first theory of the origin of the Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov. This theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus'. According to Lomonosov, the differences that subsequently developed between Great Russian and Ukrainian (which he referred to as
Little Russia Little Russia (russian: Малороссия/Малая Россия, Malaya Rossiya/Malorossiya; uk, Малоросія/Мала Росія, Malorosiia/Mala Rosiia), also known in English as Malorussia, Little Rus' (russian: Малая Ру ...
n) could be explained by the influence of the Polish and Slovak languages on Ukrainian and the influence of
Uralic languages The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
on Russian from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Another point of view was developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by other linguists of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. But unlike Lomonosov's hypothesis, this theory does not view "
Polonization Polonization (or Polonisation; pl, polonizacja)In Polish historiography, particularly pre-WWII (e.g., L. Wasilewski. As noted in Смалянчук А. Ф. (Smalyanchuk 2001) Паміж краёвасцю і нацыянальнай ідэя ...
" or any other external influence as the main driving force that led to the formation of three different languages (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian) from the common Old East Slavic language. The supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at later time periods (14th through 16th centuries). According to this view, Old East Slavic diverged into Belarusian and Ukrainian to the west (collectively, the Ruthenian language of the 15th to 18th centuries), and Old East Slavic to the north-east, after the political boundaries of the Kyivan Rus' were redrawn in the 14th century. Some researchers, while admitting the differences between the dialects spoken by East Slavic tribes in the 10th and 11th centuries, still consider them as "regional manifestations of a common language". In contrast,
Ahatanhel Krymsky Ahatanhel Yukhymovych Krymsky ( uk, Агатангел Юхимович Кримський, russian: Агафангел Ефимович Крымский; – 25 January 1942) was a Ukrainian Orientalist, linguist, polyglot (knowing up to 35 lan ...
and Aleksey Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the common spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century. Russian linguist
Andrey Zaliznyak Andrey Anatolyevich Zaliznyak ( rus, Андре́й Анато́льевич Зализня́к, p=zəlʲɪˈzʲnʲak; 29 April 1935 – 24 December 2017) was a Soviet and Russian linguist, an expert in historical linguistics, accentology, diale ...
stated that the
Old Novgorod dialect Old Novgorod dialect (russian: древненовгородский диалект, translit=drevnenovgorodskij dialekt; also translated as Old Novgorodian or Ancient Novgorod dialect) is a term introduced by Andrey Zaliznyak to describe the dia ...
differed significantly from that of other dialects of Kyivan Rus' during the 11th–12th century, but started becoming more similar to them around 13th–15th centuries. The modern Russian language hence developed from the fusion of this Novgorod dialect and the common dialect spoken by the other Kyivan Rus', whereas the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed from the dialects which did not differ from each other in a significant way. Some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. Ukrainian linguist
Stepan Smal-Stotsky Stepan Yosypovych Smal-Stotsky ( uk, Степан Йосипович Смаль-Стоцький, pl, Stepan Smal-Stocki) was a Ukrainian linguist and academician, Slavist, cultural and political figure, member of the Union for the Liberation ...
denies the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by
Yevhen Tymchenko Yevhen ( uk, Євге́н, Jevhén ), also spelled Evhen, is a common Ukrainian given name. Its Old Church Slavonic form ''Евгении'' came from the Greek ''Eugenios'' (masculine form), names derived from the Greek adjective , literally " ...
,
Vsevolod Hantsov Vsevolod or Wsewolod (russian: Все́волод ; uk, Все́волод ) is a Slavic male first name. Its etymology is from Slavic roots 'vse' (all) and 'volodeti' (to rule) and means 'lord-of-everything/everybody', (similar to another princ ...
,
Olena Kurylo Olena Kurylo (7 October 1890 – 1946) was a Ukrainian linguist and specialized in Ukrainian dialects and folklore. She helped in codifying the orthography in 1928-1929. Her contributions in Ukraine linguistics include both theoretical as well ...
,
Ivan Ohienko Metropolitan Ilarion (secular name Ivan Ivanovitch Ohienko; uk, Іван Іванович Огієнко; 2 January (14 January), 1882 in Brusilov, Kiev Governorate – 29 March 1972 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) was a Ukrainian Orthodox cleri ...
and others. According to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to an intensive migration of the population within the territory of today's Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was also supported by
George Shevelov , birth_date = , birth_place = Łomża, Łomża Governorate, Russian Empire (now Poland) , death_date = , death_place = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates = , home_town = , other_names ...
's phonological studies.


Origins and developments during medieval times

As a result of close Slavic contacts with the remnants of the
Scythian The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern * : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Centra ...
and
Sarmatian The Sarmatians (; grc, Σαρμαται, Sarmatai; Latin: ) were a large confederation of ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic peoples of classical antiquity who dominated the Pontic steppe from about the 3rd century BC to the 4th cen ...
population north of the
Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
, lasting into the early
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
, the appearance of the voiced fricative γ/г (romanized "h"), in modern Ukrainian and some southern Russian dialects is explained by the assumption that it initially emerged in
Scythian The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern * : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Centra ...
and related eastern Iranian dialects, from earlier common
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
''*g'' and ''*gʰ''. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of the Kingdom of Ruthenia, German words began to appear in the language spoken in Ukraine. Their influence would continue under
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts. Examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include ''dakh'' (roof), ''rura'' (pipe), ''rynok'' (market), ''kushnir'' (furrier), and ''majster'' (master or craftsman).History of the Ukrainian Language. R. Smal-Stocky. In ''Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia.''(1963). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 490–500


Developments under Poland and Lithuania

In the 13th century, eastern parts of Rus (including Moscow) came under Tatar rule until their unification under the Tsardom of
Muscovy Muscovy is an alternative name for the Grand Duchy of Moscow (1263–1547) and the Tsardom of Russia (1547–1721). It may also refer to: *Muscovy Company, an English trading company chartered in 1555 * Muscovy duck (''Cairina moschata'') and Domes ...
, whereas the south-western areas (including
Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...
) were incorporated into the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state that existed from the 13th century to 1795, when the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Habsburg Empire of Austria. The state was founded by Lit ...
. For the following four centuries, the languages of the two regions evolved in relative isolation from each other. Direct written evidence of the existence of the Ukrainian language dates to the late 16th century. By the 16th century, a peculiar official language formed: a mixture of the liturgical standardised language of Old Church Slavonic, Ruthenian and
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
. The influence of the latter gradually increased relative to the former two, as the nobility and rural large-landowning class, known as the szlachta, was largely Polish-speaking. Documents soon took on many Polish characteristics superimposed on Ruthenian phonetics.
Nikolay Kostomarov Mykola Ivanovych Kostomarov or Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov (russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Костома́ров, ; uk, Микола Іванович Костомаров, ; May 16, 1817, vil. Yurasovka, Voronezh Governorate, ...
, ''Russian History in Biographies of its main figures'', Chapter
Knyaz Kostantin Konstantinovich Ostrozhsky
' (
Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski (2 February 1526 – 13 or 23 February 1608, also known as ''Kostiantyn Vasyl Ostrozkyi'', uk, Костянтин-Василь Острозький, be, Канстантын Васіль Астрожскi, lt, Konst ...
)
Polish rule and education also involved significant exposure to the
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
language. Much of the influence of Poland on the development of the Ukrainian language has been attributed to this period and is reflected in multiple words and constructions used in everyday Ukrainian speech that were taken from Polish or Latin. Examples of Polish words adopted from this period include ''zavzhdy'' (always; taken from old Polish word ''zawżdy'') and ''obitsiaty'' (to promise; taken from Polish ''obiecać'') and from Latin (via Polish) ''raptom'' (suddenly) and ''meta'' (aim or goal). Significant contact with
Tatars The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary
is an umbrella term for different
and
Turks Turk or Turks may refer to: Communities and ethnic groups * Turkic peoples, a collection of ethnic groups who speak Turkic languages * Turkish people, or the Turks, a Turkic ethnic group and nation * Turkish citizen, a citizen of the Republic ...
resulted in many Turkic words, particularly those involving military matters and steppe industry, being adopted into the Ukrainian language. Examples include ''torba'' (bag) and ''tyutyun'' (tobacco). Due to heavy borrowings from Polish, German, Czech and Latin, early modern vernacular Ukrainian (''prosta mova'', "
simple speech Simple speech ( uk, проста мова, prosta mova, pl, mowa prosta, po prostu, be, про́стая мова; па простаму, prostaya mova; "(to speak) in a simple way"), also translated as "simple language" or "simple talk", is an in ...
") had more lexical similarity with
West Slavic languages The West Slavic languages are a subdivision of the Slavic language group. They include Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian. The languages have traditionally been spoken across a mostly continuous region encom ...
than with Russian or Church Slavonic. By the mid-17th century, the linguistic divergence between the Ukrainian and Russian languages had become so significant that there was a need for translators during negotiations for the
Treaty of Pereyaslav The Pereiaslav AgreementPereyaslav Agreement
, between Bohdan Khmelnytsky, head of the
Zaporozhian Host Zaporozhian Host (or Zaporizhian Sich) is a term for a military force inhabiting or originating from Zaporizhzhia, the territory beyond the rapids of the Dnieper River in what is Central Ukraine today, from the 15th to the 18th centuries. These i ...
, and the Russian state.


Chronology

The accepted chronology of Ukrainian divides the language into Old, Middle, and Modern Ukrainian.
George Shevelov , birth_date = , birth_place = Łomża, Łomża Governorate, Russian Empire (now Poland) , death_date = , death_place = , resting_place = , resting_place_coordinates = , home_town = , other_names ...
explains that much of this is based on the character of contemporary written sources, ultimately reflecting socio-historical developments, and he further subdivides the MU period with Early and Late phases. * Proto-Ukrainian (abbreviated PU, Ukrainian: , until the mid-11th century), with no extant written sources by speakers in Ukraine. Corresponding to aspects of Old East Slavic. * Old Ukrainian (OU, or , mid-11th to 14th c., conventional end date 1387), elements of phonology are deduced from written texts mainly in Church Slavic. Part of broader Old East Slavic. *Middle Ukrainian ( or , 15th to 18th c.), historically called Ruthenian. ** Early Middle Ukrainian (EMU, , 15th to mid-16th c., 1387–1575), analysis focuses on distinguishing Ukrainian and Belarusian texts. ** Middle Ukrainian (MU, , mid-16th to early 18th c., 1575–1720), represented by several vernacular language varieties as well as a version of Church Slavic. ** Late Middle Ukrainian (LMU, , rest of the 18th c., 1720–1818), found in many mixed Ukrainian–Russian and Russian–Ukrainian texts. * Modern Ukrainian (MoU, from the very end of the 18th c., or , from 1818), the vernacular recognized first in literature, and subsequently all other written genres. Ukraine annually marks the Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language on November 9, the
Eastern Orthodox Eastern Orthodoxy, also known as Eastern Orthodox Christianity, is one of the three main branches of Chalcedonian Christianity, alongside Catholicism and Protestantism. Like the Pentarchy of the first millennium, the mainstream (or " canonical ...
feast day of
Nestor the Chronicler Saint Nestor the Chronicler ( orv, Несторъ Лѣтописецъ; 1056 – c. 1114, in Principality of Kiev, Kievan Rus') was the reputed author of '' Primary Chronicle'' (the earliest East Slavic letopis), ''Life of the Venerable The ...
.


History of the spoken language


Rus and Kingdom of Ruthenia

During the
Khazar The Khazars ; he, כּוּזָרִים, Kūzārīm; la, Gazari, or ; zh, 突厥曷薩 ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire coverin ...
period, the territory of Ukraine was settled by Iranian (post-
Scythian The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern * : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Centra ...
), Turkic (post-Hunnic, proto-Bulgarian), and Uralic (proto-Hungarian) tribes and Slavic tribes. Later, the
Varangian The Varangians (; non, Væringjar; gkm, Βάραγγοι, ''Várangoi'';Varangian
" Online Etymo ...
ruler
Oleg of Novgorod Oleg ( orv, Ѡлегъ, Ольгъ; non, Helgi; died 912), also known as Oleg the Wise (russian: Олег Вещий, lit=Oleg the Prophet; uk, Олег Віщий), was a Varangian prince of the Rus' who was ruler of Novgorod. He later con ...
would seize Kyiv and establish the political entity of Kyivan Rus'. The era of Kyivan Rus is the subject of some linguistic controversy, as the language of much of the literature was purely or heavily Old Church Slavonic. Literary records from Kyivan Rus testify to substantial difference between
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
and Ruthenian form of the Ukrainian language as early as Kyivan Rus time. Some theorists see an early Ukrainian stage in language development here, calling it Old Ruthenian; others term this era Old East Slavic. Russian theorists tend to amalgamate Rus to the modern nation of Russia, and call this linguistic era Old Russian. However, according to Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak, Novgorod people did not call themselves Rus until the 14th century, calling Rus only
Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...
,
Pereiaslav Pereiaslav ( uk, Перея́слав, translit=Pereiaslav, yi, פּרעיאַסלעוו, Periyoslov) is a historical city in the Boryspil Raion, Kyiv Oblast (province) of central Ukraine, located near the confluence of Alta and Trubizh riv ...
and
Chernihiv Chernihiv ( uk, Черні́гів, , russian: Черни́гов, ; pl, Czernihów, ; la, Czernihovia), is a city and municipality in northern Ukraine, which serves as the administrative center of Chernihiv Oblast and Chernihiv Raion within ...
principalities (the Kyivan Rus state existed till 1240). At the same time as evidenced by the contemporary chronicles, the ruling princes of
Kingdom of Ruthenia Kingdom commonly refers to: * A monarchy ruled by a king or queen * Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy Kingdom may also refer to: Arts and media Television * ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...
and Kyiv called themselves "People of Rus" –
Ruthenians Ruthenian and Ruthene are exonyms of Latin language, Latin origin, formerly used in Eastern and Central Europe as common ethnonyms for East Slavs, particularly during the late medieval and early modern periods. The Latin term Rutheni was used in ...
, and Galicia–Volhynia was called the Kingdom of Ruthenia. Also according to Andrey Zaliznyak, the Novgorod dialect differed significantly from that of other dialects of Kyivan Rus during the 11th–12th century, but started becoming more similar to them around 13th–15th centuries. The modern Russian language hence developed from the fusion of this Novgorod dialect and the common dialect spoken by the other Kyivan Rus, whereas the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed from the dialects which did not differ from each other in a significant way.


Under Lithuania/Poland, Muscovy/Russia and Austro-Hungary

After the fall of
Kingdom of Ruthenia Kingdom commonly refers to: * A monarchy ruled by a king or queen * Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy Kingdom may also refer to: Arts and media Television * ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...
, Ukrainians mainly fell under the rule of Lithuania and then
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
. Local autonomy of both rule and language was a marked feature of Lithuanian rule. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Old East Slavic became the language of the chancellery and gradually evolved into the Ruthenian language. Polish rule, which came later, was accompanied by a more assimilationist policy. By the 1569
Union of Lublin The Union of Lublin ( pl, Unia lubelska; lt, Liublino unija) was signed on 1 July 1569 in Lublin, Poland, and created a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest countries in Europe at the time. It replaced the per ...
that formed the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and, after 1791, as the Commonwealth of Poland, was a bi- confederal state, sometimes called a federation, of Poland and Lithuania ru ...
, a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from Lithuanian rule to Polish administration, resulting in cultural
Polonization Polonization (or Polonisation; pl, polonizacja)In Polish historiography, particularly pre-WWII (e.g., L. Wasilewski. As noted in Смалянчук А. Ф. (Smalyanchuk 2001) Паміж краёвасцю і нацыянальнай ідэя ...
and visible attempts to
colonize Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...
Ukraine by the Polish nobility. Many Ukrainian nobles were forced to learn the Polish language and convert to Catholicism during that period in order to maintain their lofty aristocratic position. Lower classes were less affected because literacy was common only in the upper class and clergy. The latter were also under significant Polish pressure after the Union with the Catholic Church. Most of the educational system was gradually Polonized. In Ruthenia, the language of administrative documents gradually shifted towards Polish. The
Polish language Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In a ...
has had heavy influences on Ukrainian (particularly in
Western Ukraine Western Ukraine or West Ukraine ( uk, Західна Україна, Zakhidna Ukraina or , ) is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austria ...
). The southwestern Ukrainian dialects are transitional to Polish.Geoffrey Hull, Halyna Koscharsky.
Contours and Consequences of the Lexical Divide in Ukrainian
. ''Australian Slavonic and East European Studies''. Vol. 20, no. 1-2. 2006. pp. 140–147.
As the Ukrainian language developed further, some borrowings from
Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary
is an umbrella term for different
and Turkish occurred. Ukrainian culture and language flourished in the sixteenth and first half of the 17th century, when Ukraine was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, albeit in spite of being part of the PLC, not as a result. Among many schools established in that time, the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium (the predecessor of the modern Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), founded by the
Moldavia Moldavia ( ro, Moldova, or , literally "The Country of Moldavia"; in Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, Romanian Cyrillic: or ; chu, Землѧ Молдавскаѧ; el, Ἡγεμονία τῆς Μολδαβίας) is a historical region and for ...
n
Orthodox Orthodox, Orthodoxy, or Orthodoxism may refer to: Religion * Orthodoxy, adherence to accepted norms, more specifically adherence to creeds, especially within Christianity and Judaism, but also less commonly in non-Abrahamic religions like Neo-pa ...
Metropolitan
Peter Mogila Metropolitan Petru Movilă ( ro, Petru Movilă, uk, Петро Симеонович Могила, translit=Petro Symeonovych Mohyla, russian: Пётр Симеонович Могила, translit=Pëtr Simeonovich Mogila, pl, Piotr Mohyła; ...
, was the most important. At that time languages were associated more with religions: Catholics spoke
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
, and members of the Orthodox church spoke Ruthenian. After the
Treaty of Pereyaslav The Pereiaslav AgreementPereyaslav Agreement
, Ukrainian high culture went into a long period of steady decline. In the aftermath, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was taken over by the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
and closed down later in the 19th century. Most of the remaining Ukrainian schools also switched to Polish or Russian in the territories controlled by these respective countries, which was followed by a new wave of
Polonization Polonization (or Polonisation; pl, polonizacja)In Polish historiography, particularly pre-WWII (e.g., L. Wasilewski. As noted in Смалянчук А. Ф. (Smalyanchuk 2001) Паміж краёвасцю і нацыянальнай ідэя ...
and Russification of the native nobility. Gradually the official language of Ukrainian provinces under Poland was changed to Polish, while the upper classes in the Russian part of Ukraine used Russian. During the 19th century, a revival of Ukrainian self-identification manifested in the literary classes of both Russian-Empire
Dnieper Ukraine The term Dnieper Ukraine (: "over Dnieper land"), usually refers to territory on either side of the middle course of the Dnieper River. The Ukrainian name derives from ''nad‑'' (prefix: "above, over") + ''Dnipró'' ("Dnieper") + ''‑shchyna'' ...
and Austrian Galicia. The
Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius ( uk, Кирило-Мефодіївське братство, russian: Кирилло-Мефодиевское братство) was a short-lived secret political society that existed in Kiev (now Kyi ...
in Kyiv applied an old word for the Cossack motherland, ''Ukrajina'', as a self-appellation for the nation of Ukrainians, and ''Ukrajins'ka mova'' for the language. Many writers published works in the Romantic tradition of Europe demonstrating that Ukrainian was not merely a language of the village but suitable for literary pursuits. However, in the Russian Empire expressions of Ukrainian culture and especially language were repeatedly persecuted for fear that a self-aware Ukrainian nation would threaten the unity of the empire. In 1804 Ukrainian as a subject and language of instruction was banned from schools. In 1811 by the Order of the Russian government, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was closed. The academy had been open since 1632 and was the first university in Eastern Europe. In 1847 the
Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius The Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius ( uk, Кирило-Мефодіївське братство, russian: Кирилло-Мефодиевское братство) was a short-lived secret political society that existed in Kiev (now Kyi ...
was terminated. The same year
Taras Shevchenko Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko ( uk, Тарас Григорович Шевченко , pronounced without the middle name; – ), also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar (a kobzar is a bard in Ukrainian culture), was a Ukrainian poet, wr ...
was arrested, exiled for ten years, and banned for political reasons from writing and painting. In 1862
Pavlo Chubynsky Pavlo Platonovych Chubynsky ( uk, Павло Платонович Чубинський; 1839 – January 26, 1884) was a Ukrainian poet and ethnographer whose poem ''Shche ne vmerla Ukraina'' (Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished) was set to music and ad ...
was exiled for seven years to
Arkhangelsk Arkhangelsk (, ; rus, Арха́нгельск, p=ɐrˈxanɡʲɪlʲsk), also known in English as Archangel and Archangelsk, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina near ...
. The Ukrainian magazine ''
Osnova The Ukrainian journal ''Osnova'' (meaning ''Basis'' in English) was published between 1861 and 1862 in Saint Petersburg. It contained articles devoted to life and customs of the Ukrainian people, including regular features about their wedding c ...
'' was discontinued. In 1863, the tsarist interior minister
Pyotr Valuyev Count Pyotr Aleksandrovich ValuevAlso transliterated Peter Alexandrovich Valuyev. ( rus, Граф Пётр Алекса́ндрович Валу́ев; September 22, 1815 – January 27, 1890) was a Russian statesman and writer. Life Valuev ...
proclaimed in his decree that "there never has been, is not, and never can be a separate Little Russian language". A following ban on Ukrainian books led to Alexander II's secret
Ems Ukaz The Ems Ukaz or Ems Ukase (russian: Эмский указ, Emskiy ukaz; uk, Емський указ, Ems’kyy ukaz), was a secret decree (''ukaz'') of Emperor Alexander II of Russia issued on May 18, 1876, banning the use of the Ukrainian lang ...
, which prohibited publication and importation of most Ukrainian-language books, public performances and lectures, and even banned the printing of Ukrainian texts accompanying musical scores. A period of leniency after 1905 was followed by another strict ban in 1914, which also affected Russian-occupied Galicia. For much of the 19th century the Austrian authorities demonstrated some preference for Polish culture, but the Ukrainians were relatively free to partake in their own cultural pursuits in
Halychyna Galicia ()"Galicia"
''
Bukovina, where Ukrainian was widely used in education and official documents. The suppression by Russia hampered the literary development of the Ukrainian language in Dnipro Ukraine, but there was a constant exchange with Halychyna, and many works were published under Austria and smuggled to the east. By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of Austro-Hungary in 1918, Ukrainians were ready to openly develop a body of national literature, institute a Ukrainian-language educational system, and form an independent state (the
Ukrainian People's Republic The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), or Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was a country in Eastern Europe that existed between 1917 and 1920. It was declared following the February Revolution in Russia by the First Universal. In March 1 ...
, shortly joined by the
West Ukrainian People's Republic The West Ukrainian People's Republic (WUPR) or West Ukrainian National Republic (WUNR), known for part of its existence as the Western Oblast of the Ukrainian People's Republic, was a short-lived polity that controlled most of Eastern Gali ...
). During this brief independent statehood the stature and use of Ukrainian greatly improved.


Speakers in the Russian Empire

In the Russian Empire Census of 1897 the following picture emerged, with Ukrainian being the second most spoken language of the Russian Empire. According to the Imperial census's terminology, the Russian language (''Русскій'') was subdivided into Ukrainian (Малорусскій, '
Little Russian Little Russia (russian: Малороссия/Малая Россия, Malaya Rossiya/Malorossiya; uk, Малоросія/Мала Росія, Malorosiia/Mala Rosiia), also known in English as Malorussia, Little Rus' (russian: Малая Ру ...
'), what is known as Russian today (Великорусскій, ' Great Russian'), and Belarusian (Бѣлорусскій, 'White Russian'). The following table shows the distribution of settlement by native language (''"по родному языку"'') in 1897 in
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
governorates ('' guberniyas'') that had more than 100,000 Ukrainian speakers. Although in the rural regions of the Ukrainian provinces, 80% of the inhabitants said that Ukrainian was their native language in the Census of 1897 (for which the results are given above), in the urban regions only 32.5% of the population claimed Ukrainian as their native language. For example, in Odessa (then part of the Russian Empire), at the time the largest city in the territory of current Ukraine, only 5.6% of the population said Ukrainian was their native language.''Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923–1934''
by George O. Liber,
Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
, 1992, (page 12/13)
Until the 1920s the urban population in Ukraine grew faster than the number of Ukrainian speakers. This implies that there was a (relative) decline in the use of Ukrainian language. For example, in
Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...
, the number of people stating that Ukrainian was their native language declined from 30.3% in 1874 to 16.6% in 1917.


Soviet era

During the seven-decade-long
Soviet era The history of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (USSR) reflects a period of change for both Russia and the world. Though the terms "Soviet Russia" and "Soviet Union" often are synonymous in everyday speech (either acknowledging the dominance ...
, the Ukrainian language held the formal position of the principal local language in the
Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...
.The Ukraine
''Life'', 26 October 1946
However, practice was often a different story: Ukrainian always had to compete with Russian, and the attitudes of the Soviet leadership towards Ukrainian varied from encouragement and tolerance to de facto banishment. Officially, there was no
state language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...
in the Soviet Union until the very end when it was proclaimed in 1990 that Russian language was the all-Union state language and that the constituent
republics A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th ...
had rights to declare additional state languages within their jurisdictions. Still it was implicitly understood in the hopes of minority nations that Ukrainian would be used in the Ukrainian SSR, Uzbek would be used in the
Uzbek SSR Uzbekistan (, ) is the common English name for the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (Uzbek SSR; uz, Ўзбекистон Совет Социалистик Республикаси, Oʻzbekiston Sovet Sotsialistik Respublikasi, in Russian: Уз ...
, and so on. However, Russian was used in all parts of the Soviet Union and a special term, "a language of inter-ethnic communication", was coined to denote its status. Soviet language policy in Ukraine may be divided into the following policy periods: *
Ukrainianization Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation), sometimes referred to as Ukrainianization (or Ukrainianisation) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of ...
and tolerance (1921–1932) * Persecution and Russification (1933–1957) * Khrushchev thaw (1958–1962) * The Shelest period: limited progress (1963–1972) * The Shcherbytsky period: gradual suppression (1973–1989) * Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika (1990–1991)


Ukrainianization

Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Empire was broken up. In different parts of the former empire, several nations, including Ukrainians, developed a renewed sense of
national identity National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or to one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity ...
. In the chaotic post-revolutionary years the Ukrainian language gained some usage in government affairs. Initially, this trend continued under the
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
government of the Soviet Union, which in a political struggle to retain its grip over the territory had to encourage the national movements of the former Russian Empire. While trying to ascertain and consolidate its power, the Bolshevik government was by far more concerned about many political oppositions connected to the pre-revolutionary order than about the national movements inside the former empire, where it could always find allies. The widening use of Ukrainian further developed in the first years of Bolshevik rule into a policy called
korenizatsiya Korenizatsiya ( rus, wikt:коренизация, коренизация, p=kərʲɪnʲɪˈzatsɨjə, , "indigenization") was an early policy of the Soviet Union for the integration of non-Russian nationalities into the governments of their speci ...
. The government pursued a policy of
Ukrainianization Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation), sometimes referred to as Ukrainianization (or Ukrainianisation) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of ...
by lifting a ban on the Ukrainian language. That led to the introduction of an impressive education program which allowed Ukrainian-taught classes and raised the literacy of the Ukrainophone population. This policy was led by Education Commissar
Mykola Skrypnyk Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk ( uk, Микола Олексійович Скрипник; – 7 July 1933), also known as Nikolai Alekseyevich Skripnik (russian: Никола́й Алексе́евич Скри́пник), was a Ukrainian Bolshe ...
and was directed to approximate the language to
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
. Newly generated academic efforts from the period of independence were co-opted by the Bolshevik government. The party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking but were encouraged to learn the Ukrainian language. Simultaneously, the newly literate ethnic Ukrainians migrated to the cities, which became rapidly largely Ukrainianized – in both population and in education. The policy even reached those regions of southern
Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
where the ethnic Ukrainian population was significant, particularly the areas by the
Don River The Don ( rus, Дон, p=don) is the fifth-longest river in Europe. Flowing from Central Russia to the Sea of Azov in Southern Russia, it is one of Russia's largest rivers and played an important role for traders from the Byzantine Empire. Its ...
and especially Kuban in the
North Caucasus The North Caucasus, ( ady, Темыр Къафкъас, Temır Qafqas; kbd, Ишхъэрэ Къаукъаз, İṩxhərə Qauqaz; ce, Къилбаседа Кавказ, Q̇ilbaseda Kavkaz; , os, Цӕгат Кавказ, Cægat Kavkaz, inh, ...
. Ukrainian language teachers, just graduated from expanded institutions of higher education in Soviet Ukraine, were dispatched to these regions to staff newly opened Ukrainian schools or to teach Ukrainian as a second language in Russian schools. A string of local Ukrainian-language publications were started and departments of Ukrainian studies were opened in colleges. Overall, these policies were implemented in thirty-five
raions A raion (also spelt rayon) is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet states. The term is used for both a type of subnational entity and a division of a city. The word is from the French (meaning 'honeycomb, department'), and is co ...
(administrative districts) in southern
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
.


Persecution and russification

Soviet policy towards the Ukrainian language changed abruptly in late 1932 and early 1933, with the termination of the policy of Ukrainianization. In December 1932, the regional party cells received a telegram signed by
V. Molotov Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov. ; (;. 9 March Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O._S._25_February.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O. S. 25 February">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dat ...
and Stalin with an order to immediately reverse the Ukrainianization policies. The telegram condemned Ukrainianization as ill-considered and harmful and demanded to "immediately halt Ukrainianization in
raion A raion (also spelt rayon) is a type of administrative unit of several post-Soviet states. The term is used for both a type of subnational entity and a division of a city. The word is from the French (meaning 'honeycomb, department'), and is co ...
s (districts), switch all Ukrainianized newspapers, books and publications into Russian and prepare by autumn of 1933 for the switching of schools and instruction into Russian". Western and most contemporary Ukrainian historians emphasize that the cultural repression was applied earlier and more fiercely in Ukraine than in other parts of the Soviet Union, and were therefore anti-Ukrainian; others assert that Stalin's goal was the generic crushing of any dissent, rather than targeting the Ukrainians in particular. Stalinist policies shifted to define Russian as the language of (inter-ethnic) communication. Although Ukrainian continued to be used (in print, education, radio and later television programs), it lost its primary place in advanced learning and republic-wide media. Ukrainian was demoted to a language of secondary importance, often associated with the rise in Ukrainian self-awareness and nationalism and often branded "politically incorrect". The new Soviet Constitution adopted in 1936, however, stipulated that teaching in schools should be conducted in native languages. Major repression started in 1929–30, when a large group of Ukrainian intelligentsia was arrested and most were executed. In Ukrainian history, this group is often referred to as "
Executed Renaissance The Executed Renaissance (or "Red Renaissance", uk, Розстріляне відродження, Червоний ренесанс, translit=Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia, Chervonyi renesans) is a term used to describe the generatio ...
" (Ukrainian: розстріляне відродження). "Ukrainian
bourgeois nationalism In Marxism, bourgeois nationalism is the practice by the ruling classes of deliberately dividing people by nationality, race, ethnicity, or religion, so as to distract them from engaging in class struggle. It is seen as a divide-and-conquer stra ...
" was declared to be the primary problem in Ukraine. The terror peaked in 1933, four to five years before the Soviet-wide "
Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
", which, for Ukraine, was a second blow. The vast majority of leading scholars and cultural leaders of Ukraine were liquidated, as were the "Ukrainianized" and "Ukrainianizing" portions of the Communist party. Soviet Ukraine's autonomy was completely destroyed by the late 1930s. In its place, the glorification of Russia as the first nation to throw off the capitalist yoke had begun, accompanied by the migration of Russian workers into parts of Ukraine which were undergoing industrialization and mandatory instruction of classic Russian language and literature. Ideologists warned of over-glorifying Ukraine's Cossack past, and supported the closing of Ukrainian cultural institutions and literary publications. The systematic assault upon Ukrainian identity in culture and education, combined with effects of an artificial famine ('' Holodomor'') upon the peasantry—the backbone of the nation—dealt Ukrainian language and identity a crippling blow. This sequence of policy change was repeated in
Western Ukraine Western Ukraine or West Ukraine ( uk, Західна Україна, Zakhidna Ukraina or , ) is the territory of Ukraine linked to the former Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austria ...
when it was incorporated into Soviet Ukraine. In 1939, and again in the late 1940s, a policy of Ukrainianization was implemented. By the early 1950s, Ukrainian was persecuted and a campaign of Russification began.


Khrushchev thaw

After the death of Stalin (1953), a general policy of relaxing the language policies of the past was implemented (1958 to 1963). The Khrushchev era which followed saw a policy of relatively lenient concessions to development of the languages at the local and republic level, though its results in Ukraine did not go nearly as far as those of the Soviet policy of Ukrainianization in the 1920s. Journals and encyclopedic publications advanced in the Ukrainian language during the Khrushchev era, as well as transfer of Crimea under Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction. Yet, the 1958 school reform that allowed parents to choose the language of primary instruction for their children, unpopular among the circles of the national intelligentsia in parts of the USSR, meant that non-Russian languages would slowly give way to Russian in light of the pressures of survival and advancement. The gains of the past, already largely reversed by the Stalin era, were offset by the liberal attitude towards the requirement to study the local languages (the requirement to study Russian remained). Parents were usually free to choose the language of study of their children (except in few areas where attending the Ukrainian school might have required a long daily commute) and they often chose Russian, which reinforced the resulting Russification. In this sense, some analysts argue that it was not the "oppression" or "persecution", but rather the ''lack of
protection Protection is any measure taken to guard a thing against damage caused by outside forces. Protection can be provided to physical objects, including organisms, to systems, and to intangible things like civil and political rights. Although th ...
'' against the expansion of Russian language that contributed to the relative decline of Ukrainian in the 1970s and 1980s. According to this view, it was inevitable that successful careers required a good command of Russian, while knowledge of Ukrainian was not vital, so it was common for Ukrainian parents to send their children to Russian-language schools, even though Ukrainian-language schools were usually available. While in the Russian-language schools within the republic, Ukrainian was supposed to be learned as a second language at comparable level, the instruction of other subjects was in Russian and, as a result, students had a greater command of Russian than Ukrainian on graduation. Additionally, in some areas of the republic, the attitude towards teaching and learning of Ukrainian in schools was relaxed and it was, sometimes, considered a subject of secondary importance and even a waiver from studying it was sometimes given under various, ever expanding, circumstances. The complete suppression of all expressions of separatism or
Ukrainian nationalism Ukrainian nationalism refers to the promotion of the unity of Ukrainians as a people and it also refers to the promotion of the identity of Ukraine as a nation state. The nation building that arose as nationalism grew following the French Revol ...
also contributed to lessening interest in Ukrainian. Some people who persistently used Ukrainian on a daily basis were often perceived as though they were expressing sympathy towards, or even being members of, the political opposition. This, combined with advantages given by Russian fluency and usage, made Russian the primary language of choice for many Ukrainians, while Ukrainian was more of a
hobby A hobby is considered to be a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time. Hobbies include collecting themed items and objects, engaging in creative and artistic pursuits, playing sports, or pursuing oth ...
. In any event, the mild liberalization in Ukraine and elsewhere was stifled by new suppression of freedoms at the end of the Khrushchev era (1963) when a policy of gradually creeping suppression of Ukrainian was re-instituted. The next part of the Soviet Ukrainian language policy divides into two eras: first, the Shelest period (early 1960s to early 1970s), which was relatively liberal towards the development of the Ukrainian language. The second era, the policy of Shcherbytsky (early 1970s to early 1990s), was one of gradual suppression of the Ukrainian language.


Shelest period

The Communist Party leader from 1963 to 1972,
Petro Shelest Petro Yukhymovych Shelestrussian: Пётр Ефи́мович Ше́лест, translit=Pyotr Yefimovich Shelest (14 February 190822 January 1996) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician. First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian Sovi ...
, pursued a policy of defending Ukraine's interests within the Soviet Union. He proudly promoted the beauty of the Ukrainian language and developed plans to expand the role of Ukrainian in higher education. He was removed, however, after only a brief tenure, for being too lenient on Ukrainian nationalism.


Shcherbytsky period

The new party boss from 1972 to 1989,
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky Volodymyr Vasylyovych Shcherbytsky, russian: Влади́мир Васи́льевич Щерби́цкий; ''Vladimir Vasilyevich Shcherbitsky'', (17 February 1918 — 16 February 1990) was a Ukrainian Soviet politician. He was First Secr ...
, purged the local party, was fierce in suppressing dissent, and insisted Russian be spoken at all official functions, even at local levels. His policy of Russification was lessened only slightly after 1985.


Gorbachev and perebudova

The management of dissent by the local
Ukrainian Communist Party The Ukrainian Communist Party ( uk, Українська Комуністична Партія, ''Ukrayins’ka Komunistychna Partiya'') was an oppositional political party in Soviet Ukraine, from 1920 until 1925. Its followers were known as Ukap ...
was more fierce and thorough than in other parts of the Soviet Union. As a result, at the start of the Mikhail Gorbachev reforms perebudova and hlasnist’ (Ukrainian for ''perestroika'' and ''glasnost''), Ukraine under Shcherbytsky was slower to liberalize than Russia itself. Although Ukrainian still remained the native language for the majority in the nation on the eve of Ukrainian independence, a significant share of ethnic Ukrainians were russified. In
Donetsk Donetsk ( , ; uk, Донецьк, translit=Donets'k ; russian: Донецк ), formerly known as Aleksandrovka, Yuzivka (or Hughesovka), Stalin and Stalino (see also: cities' alternative names), is an industrial city in eastern Ukraine loca ...
there were no Ukrainian language schools and in
Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...
only a quarter of children went to Ukrainian language schools. The Russian language was the dominant vehicle, not just of government function, but of the media, commerce, and modernity itself. This was substantially less the case for western Ukraine, which escaped the artificial famine,
Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...
, and most of Stalinism. And this region became the center of a hearty, if only partial, renaissance of the Ukrainian language during independence.


Independence in the modern era

Since 1991, Ukrainian has been the official state language in Ukraine, and the state administration implemented government policies to broaden the use of Ukrainian. The educational system in Ukraine has been transformed over the first decade of independence from a system that is partly Ukrainian to one that is overwhelmingly so. The government has also mandated a progressively increased role for Ukrainian in the media and commerce. In some cases the abrupt changing of the language of instruction in institutions of secondary and higher education led to the charges of
Ukrainianization Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation), sometimes referred to as Ukrainianization (or Ukrainianisation) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of ...
, raised mostly by the Russian-speaking population. This transition, however, lacked most of the controversies that arose during the de- russification of the other former
Soviet Republics The Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the Union Republics ( rus, Сою́зные Респу́блики, r=Soyúznye Respúbliki) were national-based administrative units of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( ...
. With time, most residents, including ethnic Russians, people of mixed origin, and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, started to self-identify as Ukrainian nationals, even those who remained
Russophone This article details the geographical distribution of Russian-speakers. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the status of the Russian language often became a matter of controversy. Some Post-Soviet states adopted policies of derussi ...
. The Russian language, however, still dominates the print media in most of Ukraine and private radio and TV broadcasting in the eastern, southern, and, to a lesser degree, central regions. The state-controlled broadcast media have become exclusively Ukrainian. There are few obstacles to the usage of Russian in commerce and it is still occasionally used in government affairs. Late 20th-century
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n politicians like
Alexander Lebed Lieutenant General Alexander Ivanovich Lebed (russian: Алекса́ндр Ива́нович Ле́бедь, link=no; 20 April 1950 – 28 April 2002) was a Soviet and Russian military officer and politician who held senior positions in the Ai ...
and
Mikhail Yuryev Mikhail Zinovyevich Yuryev (russian: Михаил Зиновьевич Юрьев; 10 April 1959 – 15 February 2019) was a Russian politician who served as a member of the State Duma between 1996 and 1999. Yuryev came from a Jewish family. His ...
still claimed that Ukrainian is a Russian dialect.Contemporary Ukraine: Dynamics of Post-Soviet Transformation
by
Taras Kuzio Taras Kuzio (born 1958) is a British academic and expert in Ukrainian political, economic and security affairs. He is Professor of Political Science at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy ( Kyiv, Ukraine). Education Taras Kuzio received a ...
, M.E. Sharpe, 1998, (page 35)
In the 2001 census, 67.5% of the country's population named Ukrainian as their native language (a 2.8% increase from 1989), while 29.6% named Russian (a 3.2% decrease). For many Ukrainians (of various ethnic origins), the term ''
native language A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...
'' may not necessarily associate with the language they use more frequently. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Ukrainians consider the Ukrainian language ''native'', including those who often speak Russian. According to the official 2001 census data, 92.3% of Kyiv region population responded "Ukrainian" to the ''native language'' (''ridna mova'') census question, compared with 88.4% in 1989, and 7.2% responded "Russian". The part of other languages, specified like mother tongue was 0.5%. On the other hand, when the question "What language do you use in everyday life?" was asked in the sociological survey, the Kyivans' answers were distributed as follows: "mostly Russian": 52%, "both Russian and Ukrainian in equal measure": 32%, "mostly Ukrainian": 14%, "exclusively Ukrainian": 4.3%. Ethnic minorities, such as Romanians, Tatars and Jews usually use Russian as their lingua franca. But there are tendencies within these minority groups to use Ukrainian. The Jewish writer
Olexander Beyderman Olexander Abramovytsch Beyderman (Ukrainian language, Ukrainian , Scientific transliteration '; also: Bejderman ; * 1949 in Odessa) is a USSR, Soviet-Ukraine, Ukrainian writer of Jewish descent. He is a lecturer of Hebrew, Russian language, Russian ...
from the mainly Russian-speaking city of Odessa is now writing most of his dramas in Ukrainian. The emotional relationship regarding Ukrainian is changing in southern and eastern areas. Opposition to expansion of Ukrainian-language teaching is a matter of contention in eastern regions closer to Russia – in May 2008, the
Donetsk Donetsk ( , ; uk, Донецьк, translit=Donets'k ; russian: Донецк ), formerly known as Aleksandrovka, Yuzivka (or Hughesovka), Stalin and Stalino (see also: cities' alternative names), is an industrial city in eastern Ukraine loca ...
city council prohibited the creation of any new Ukrainian schools in the city in which 80% of them are
Russian-language Russian (russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, link=no, ) is an East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians, and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living Eas ...
schools. In 2019, the law "On supporting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the State language" was approved by the Ukrainian parliament, formalizing rules governing the usage of Ukrainian and introducing penalties for violations. For its enforcement the office of Language ombudsman was introduced.


Literature and literary language

The literary Ukrainian language, which was preceded by Old East Slavic literature, may be subdivided into two stages: during the 12th to 18th centuries what in Ukraine is referred to as "Old Ukrainian", but elsewhere, and in contemporary sources, is known as the Ruthenian language, and from the end of the 18th century to the present what in Ukraine is known as "Modern Ukrainian", but elsewhere is known as just Ukrainian. Influential literary figures in the development of modern Ukrainian literature include the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda,
Ivan Kotlyarevsky Ivan Petrovych Kotliarevsky ( uk, Іван Петрович Котляревський) ( in Poltava – in Poltava, Russian Empire, now Ukraine) was a Ukrainian writer, poet and playwright, social activist, regarded as the pioneer of modern Ukra ...
,
Mykola Kostomarov Mykola Ivanovych Kostomarov or Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov (russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Костома́ров, ; uk, Микола Іванович Костомаров, ; May 16, 1817, vil. Yurasovka, Voronezh Governorate, R ...
,
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky Mykhailo Mykhailovych Kotsiubynsky ( uk, Михайло Михайлович Коцюбинський), (September 17, 1864 – April 25, 1913) was a Ukrainian author whose writings described typical Ukrainian life at the start of the 20th centur ...
,
Taras Shevchenko Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko ( uk, Тарас Григорович Шевченко , pronounced without the middle name; – ), also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar (a kobzar is a bard in Ukrainian culture), was a Ukrainian poet, wr ...
,
Ivan Franko Ivan Yakovych Franko (Ukrainian: Іван Якович Франко, pronounced ˈwɑn ˈjɑkowɪtʃ frɐnˈkɔ 27 August 1856 – 28 May 1916) was a Ukrainian poet, writer, social and literary critic, journalist, interpreter, economist, ...
, and
Lesia Ukrainka Lesya Ukrainka ( uk, Леся Українка ; born Larysa Petrivna Kosach, uk, Лариса Петрівна Косач; – ) was one of Ukrainian literature's foremost writers, best known for her poems and plays. She was also an active ...
. The earliest literary work in the Ukrainian language was recorded in 1798 when
Ivan Kotlyarevsky Ivan Petrovych Kotliarevsky ( uk, Іван Петрович Котляревський) ( in Poltava – in Poltava, Russian Empire, now Ukraine) was a Ukrainian writer, poet and playwright, social activist, regarded as the pioneer of modern Ukra ...
, a playwright from Poltava in southeastern Ukraine, published his
epic poem An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants. ...
, ''Eneyida'', a burlesque in Ukrainian, based on
Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
's ''
Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of th ...
''. His book was published in vernacular Ukrainian in a satirical way to avoid being censored, and is the earliest known Ukrainian published book to survive through Imperial and, later, Soviet policies on the Ukrainian language. Kotlyarevsky's work and that of another early writer using the Ukrainian vernacular language, Petro Artemovsky, used the southeastern dialect spoken in the Poltava, Kharkiv and southern Kyiven regions of the Russian Empire. This dialect would serve as the basis of the Ukrainian literary language when it was developed by
Taras Shevchenko Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko ( uk, Тарас Григорович Шевченко , pronounced without the middle name; – ), also known as Kobzar Taras, or simply Kobzar (a kobzar is a bard in Ukrainian culture), was a Ukrainian poet, wr ...
and
Panteleimon Kulish Panteleimon Oleksandrovych Kulish (also spelled ''Panteleymon'' or ''Pantelejmon Kuliš'', uk, Пантелеймон Олександрович Куліш, August 7, 1819 – February 14, 1897) was a Ukrainian writer, critic, poet, folklori ...
in the mid 19th century. In order to raise its status from that of a dialect to that of a language, various elements from folklore and traditional styles were added to it. The Ukrainian literary language developed further when the Russian state banned the use of the Ukrainian language, prompting many of its writers to move to the western Ukrainian region of Galicia which was under more liberal Austrian rule; after the 1860s the majority of Ukrainian literary works were published in Austrian Galicia. During this period Galician influences were adopted in the Ukrainian literary language, particularly with respect to vocabulary involving law, government, technology, science, and administration.


Current usage

The use of the Ukrainian language is increasing after a long period of decline. Although there are almost fifty million ethnic
Ukrainians Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian. The majority of Ukrainians are Eastern Ort ...
worldwide, including 37.5 million in Ukraine in 2001 (77.8% of the total population at the time), the Ukrainian language is prevalent mainly in western and central Ukraine. In Kyiv, both Ukrainian and Russian are spoken, a notable shift from the recent past when the city was primarily Russian-speaking. The shift is believed to be caused mainly by an influx of migrants from western regions of Ukraine but also by some Kyivans opting to use the language they speak at home more widely in public settings. Public signs and announcements in Kyiv are displayed in Ukrainian. In southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian is the prevalent language in most large and some small cities. According to the Ukrainian Census of 2001, 87.8% of people living in Ukraine were fluent in Ukrainian.D-M.com.ua
In August 2022, a survey in Ukraine by Rating Group found that 85% said they speak Ukrainian or Ukrainian and Russian at home, 51% only Ukrainian, an increase from 61% and 44% in February 2014. In the same survey, 76% considered Ukrainian their native language (), up from 57% in July 2012, including 30% of Russian-speakers.


Popular culture


Music

Ukrainian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in the Ukrainian language. The most popular Ukrainian rock bands, such as
Okean Elzy Okean Elzy ( uk, Океан Ельзи, translation: ''Elza's Ocean'') is a Ukrainian rock band. It was formed in 1994 in Lviv, Ukraine. The band's vocalist and frontman is Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. In April 2007 Okean Elzy received ''FUZZ Magazine'' ...
,
Vopli Vidopliassova Vopli Vidopliassova ( uk, Воплі Відоплясова ), also shortened to VV (), is a Ukrainian rock band. It was created in 1986 in Kyiv, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union (present-day Ukraine). The leader of the band is singer Ol ...
, BoomBox perform regularly in tours across
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
,
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
,
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
and especially
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
. In countries with significant Ukrainian populations, bands singing in the Ukrainian language sometimes reach top places on the charts, such as Enej (a band from
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
). Other notable Ukrainian-language bands are
The Ukrainians The Ukrainians are a British band, which plays traditional Ukrainian music, heavily influenced by western post-punk. Career The Ukrainians were formed in 1990 by Wedding Present guitarist Peter Solowka, with singer/violinist Len Liggins and ...
from the United Kingdom, Klooch from
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, Ukrainian Village Band from the United States, and the
Kuban Cossack Choir Kuban Cossack Chorus (russian: Кубанский Казачий Хор, uk, Кубанський козачий хор) is one of the leading Folkloric ensembles in Russia. Its repertoire and performances reflect the songs, dances and folklo ...
from the Kuban region in
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
.


Cinema

The 2010s saw a revival of Ukrainian cinema. The top Ukrainian-language films (by IMDb rating) are:


Argots

Oleksa Horbach's 1951 study of argots analyzed historical primary sources (argots of professionals, thugs, prisoners, homeless, school children, etc.) paying special attention to etymological features of argots, word formation and borrowing patterns depending on the source-language (Church Slavonic, Russian, Czech, Polish, Romani, Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, German).


Dialects

Several modern
dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
s of Ukrainian exist * Northern (Polissian) dialects: ** (3) ''Eastern Polissian'' is spoken in
Chernihiv Chernihiv ( uk, Черні́гів, , russian: Черни́гов, ; pl, Czernihów, ; la, Czernihovia), is a city and municipality in northern Ukraine, which serves as the administrative center of Chernihiv Oblast and Chernihiv Raion within ...
(excluding the southeastern districts), in the northern part of
Sumy Sumy ( uk, Суми ) is a city of regional significance in Ukraine, and the capital of Sumy Oblast. The city is situated on the banks of the Psel River in northeastern Ukraine with a population of according to the 2021 census, making it the 23 ...
, and in the southeastern portion of the
Kyiv Oblast Kyiv Oblast ( uk, Ки́ївська о́бласть, translit=Kyïvska oblast), also called Kyivshchyna ( uk, Ки́ївщина), is an oblast (province) in central and northern Ukraine. It surrounds, but does not include, the city of Kyiv, w ...
as well as in the adjacent areas of Russia, which include the southwestern part of the
Bryansk Oblast Bryansk Oblast (russian: Бря́нская о́бласть, ''Bryanskaya oblast''), also known as Bryanshchina (russian: Брянщина, ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast). Its administrative center is the city of Bryansk. As of th ...
(the area around
Starodub Starodub ( rus, links=no, Староду́б, p=stərɐˈdup, ''old oak'') is a town in Bryansk Oblast, Russia, on the Babinets River (the Dnieper basin), southwest of Bryansk. Population: 16,000 (1975). History Starodub has been known ...
), as well as in some places in the
Kursk Kursk ( rus, Курск, p=ˈkursk) is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym rivers. The area around Kursk was the site of a turning point in the Soviet–German stru ...
,
Voronezh Voronezh ( rus, links=no, Воро́неж, p=vɐˈronʲɪʂ}) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on ...
and
Belgorod Belgorod ( rus, Белгород, p=ˈbʲeɫɡərət) is a city and the administrative center of Belgorod Oblast, Russia, located on the Seversky Donets River north of the border with Ukraine. Population: Demographics The population of B ...
Oblasts. No linguistic border can be defined. The vocabulary approaches Russian as the language approaches the Russian Federation. Both Ukrainian and Russian grammar sets can be applied to this dialect. ** (2) ''Central Polissian'' is spoken in the northwestern part of the
Kyiv Oblast Kyiv Oblast ( uk, Ки́ївська о́бласть, translit=Kyïvska oblast), also called Kyivshchyna ( uk, Ки́ївщина), is an oblast (province) in central and northern Ukraine. It surrounds, but does not include, the city of Kyiv, w ...
, in the northern part of
Zhytomyr Zhytomyr ( uk, Жито́мир, translit=Zhytomyr ; russian: Жито́мир, Zhitomir ; pl, Żytomierz ; yi, זשיטאָמיר, Zhitomir; german: Schytomyr ) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative ...
and the northeastern part of the
Rivne Oblast Rivne Oblast ( uk, Рі́вненська о́бласть, translit=Rivnenska oblast), also referred to as Rivnenshchyna ( uk, Рі́вненщина) is an oblast (province) of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Rivne. The surface area of th ...
. ** (1) ''West Polissian'' is spoken in the northern part of the
Volyn Oblast Volyn Oblast ( uk, Воли́нська о́бласть, translit=Volýnsʹka óblastʹ; also referred to as Volyn or Lodomeria) is an oblast (province) in northwestern Ukraine. Its administrative centre is Lutsk. Kovel is the westernmost town ...
, the northwestern part of the
Rivne Oblast Rivne Oblast ( uk, Рі́вненська о́бласть, translit=Rivnenska oblast), also referred to as Rivnenshchyna ( uk, Рі́вненщина) is an oblast (province) of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Rivne. The surface area of th ...
, and in the adjacent districts of the
Brest Voblast Brest Region or Brest Oblast or Brest Voblasts ( be, Брэ́сцкая во́бласць ''(Bresckaja vobłasć)''; russian: Бре́стская о́бласть (''Brestskaya Oblast)'') is one of the regions of Belarus. Its administrative cent ...
in Belarus. The dialect spoken in Belarus uses Belarusian grammar and thus is considered by some to be a dialect of Belarusian. * Southeastern dialects: ** (4) ''Middle Dnieprian'' is the basis of the
Standard Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...
Literary Ukrainian. It is spoken in the central part of Ukraine, primarily in the southern and eastern part of the
Kyiv Oblast Kyiv Oblast ( uk, Ки́ївська о́бласть, translit=Kyïvska oblast), also called Kyivshchyna ( uk, Ки́ївщина), is an oblast (province) in central and northern Ukraine. It surrounds, but does not include, the city of Kyiv, w ...
. In addition, the dialects spoken in
Cherkasy Cherkasy ( uk, Черка́си, ) is a city in central Ukraine. Cherkasy is the capital of Cherkasy Oblast ( province), as well as the administrative center of Cherkasky Raion (district) within the oblast. The city has a population of C ...
, Poltava, and
Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the seventh-most populous city in Europe. Kyi ...
regions are considered to be close to "standard" Ukrainian. ** (5) ''Slobodan'' is spoken in
Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Sumy Sumy ( uk, Суми ) is a city of regional significance in Ukraine, and the capital of Sumy Oblast. The city is situated on the banks of the Psel River in northeastern Ukraine with a population of according to the 2021 census, making it the 23 ...
,
Luhansk Luhansk (, ; uk, Луганськ, ), also known as Lugansk (, ; russian: Луганск, ), is a city in what is internationally recognised as Ukraine, although it is administered by Russia as capital of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). A ...
, and the northern part of
Donetsk Donetsk ( , ; uk, Донецьк, translit=Donets'k ; russian: Донецк ), formerly known as Aleksandrovka, Yuzivka (or Hughesovka), Stalin and Stalino (see also: cities' alternative names), is an industrial city in eastern Ukraine loca ...
, as well as in the
Voronezh Voronezh ( rus, links=no, Воро́неж, p=vɐˈronʲɪʂ}) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on ...
and
Belgorod Belgorod ( rus, Белгород, p=ˈbʲeɫɡərət) is a city and the administrative center of Belgorod Oblast, Russia, located on the Seversky Donets River north of the border with Ukraine. Population: Demographics The population of B ...
regions of Russia. This dialect is formed from a gradual mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, with progressively more Russian in the northern and eastern parts of the region. Thus, there is no linguistic border between Russian and Ukrainian, and, thus, both grammar sets can be applied. ** A (6) ''Steppe'' dialect is spoken in southern and southeastern Ukraine. This dialect was originally the main language of the
Zaporozhian Cossacks The Zaporozhian Cossacks, Zaporozhian Cossack Army, Zaporozhian Host, (, or uk, Військо Запорізьке, translit=Viisko Zaporizke, translit-std=ungegn, label=none) or simply Zaporozhians ( uk, Запорожці, translit=Zaporoz ...
. ** A ''Kuban'' dialect related to or based on the Steppe dialect is often referred to as ''
Balachka Baláchka ( uk, балачка, p=bɐˈlat͡ʃkɐ – conversation, chat) is a Ukrainian dialect spoken in the Kuban and Don regions, where Ukrainian settlers used to live. It was strongly influenced by Cossack culture. The term is connect ...
'' and is spoken by the
Kuban Cossacks Kuban Cossacks (russian: кубанские казаки, ''kubanskiye kаzaki''; uk, кубанські козаки, ''kubanski kozaky''), or Kubanians (russian: кубанцы, ; uk, кубанці, ), are Cossacks who live in the Kuban ...
in the Kuban region in Russia by the descendants of the
Zaporozhian Cossacks The Zaporozhian Cossacks, Zaporozhian Cossack Army, Zaporozhian Host, (, or uk, Військо Запорізьке, translit=Viisko Zaporizke, translit-std=ungegn, label=none) or simply Zaporozhians ( uk, Запорожці, translit=Zaporoz ...
, who settled in that area in the late 18th century. It was formed from a gradual mixture of Russian into Ukrainian. This dialect features the use of some Russian vocabulary along with some Russian grammar.Viktor Zakharchenko, Folk songs of the Kuban, 1997 , Retrieved 7 November 2007 There are three main variants, which have been grouped together according to location. * Southwestern dialects: ** (13) ''Boyko'' is spoken by the Boyko people on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains in the
Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...
and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts. It can also be heard across the border in the
Subcarpathian Voivodeship Subcarpathian Voivodeship or Subcarpathia Province (in pl, Województwo podkarpackie ) is a voivodeship, or province, in the southeastern corner of Poland. Its administrative capital and largest city is Rzeszów. Along with the Marshall, it i ...
of Poland. ** (12) ''Hutsul'' is spoken by the Hutsul people on the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, in the extreme southern parts of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, and in parts of the Chernivtsi and Transcarpathian Oblasts. ** ''Lemko'' is spoken by the
Lemko people Lemkos ( rue, Лeмкы, translit= Lemkŷ; pl, Łemkowie; uk, Лемки, translit=Lemky) are an ethnic group inhabiting the Lemko Region ( rue, Лемковина, translit=Lemkovyna; uk, Лемківщина, translit=Lemkivshchyna) of Ca ...
, whose
homeland A homeland is a place where a cultural, national, or racial identity has formed. The definition can also mean simply one's country of birth. When used as a proper noun, the Homeland, as well as its equivalents in other languages, often has ethn ...
rests outside the borders of Ukraine in the Prešov Region of
Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
along the southern side of the Carpathian Mountains, and in the southeast of modern Poland, along the northern sides of the Carpathians. ** (8) ''Podillian'' is spoken in the southern parts of the
Vinnytsia Vinnytsia ( ; uk, Вінниця, ; yi, װיניצע) is a city in west-central Ukraine, located on the banks of the Southern Bug. It is the administrative center of Vinnytsia Oblast and the largest city in the historic region of Podillia. ...
and
Khmelnytskyi Khmelnytskyi ( uk, Хмельни́цький, Khmelnytskyi, ), until 1954 Proskuriv ( uk, Проску́рів, links=no ), is a city in western Ukraine, the administrative center for Khmelnytskyi Oblast (region) and Khmelnytskyi Raion (dist ...
Oblasts, in the northern part of the
Odessa Oblast Odesa Oblast ( uk, Оде́ська о́бласть, translit=Odeska oblast), also referred to as Odeshchyna ( uk, Оде́щина) is an oblast (province) of southwestern Ukraine, located along the northern coast of the Black Sea. Its administ ...
, and in the adjacent districts of the
Cherkasy Oblast Cherkasy Oblast ( uk, Черка́ська о́бласть, Cherkaska oblast, ), also referred to as Cherkashchyna ( uk, Черка́щина, ) is an oblast (province) of central Ukraine located along the Dnieper River. The administrative center ...
, the
Kirovohrad Oblast Kirovohrad Oblast ( uk, Кіровоградська область, translit=Kirovohradska oblast; also referred to as Kirovohradschyna — uk, Кіровоградщина) is an oblast (province) of Ukraine. The administrative center of the ...
, and the
Mykolaiv Oblast Mykolaiv Oblast ( uk, Микола́ївська о́бласть, translit=Mykoláyivsʹka óblastʹ, ), also referred to as Mykolaivshchyna ( uk, Микола́ївщина, Mykoláivshchyna, ) is an oblast (province) of Ukraine. The administra ...
. ** (7) ''Volynian'' is spoken in
Rivne Rivne (; uk, Рівне ),) also known as Rovno (Russian: Ровно; Polish: Równe; Yiddish: ראָוונע), is a city in western Ukraine. The city is the administrative center of Rivne Oblast (province), as well as the surrounding Rivne Raio ...
and
Volyn Volhynia (also spelled Volynia) ( ; uk, Воли́нь, Volyn' pl, Wołyń, russian: Волы́нь, Volýnʹ, ), is a historic region in Central and Eastern Europe, between south-eastern Poland, south-western Belarus, and western Ukraine. The ...
, as well as in parts of
Zhytomyr Zhytomyr ( uk, Жито́мир, translit=Zhytomyr ; russian: Жито́мир, Zhitomir ; pl, Żytomierz ; yi, זשיטאָמיר, Zhitomir; german: Schytomyr ) is a city in the north of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative ...
and
Ternopil Ternópil ( uk, Тернопіль, Ternopil' ; pl, Tarnopol; yi, טאַרנאָפּל, Tarnopl, or ; he, טארנופול (טַרְנוֹפּוֹל), Tarnopol; german: Tarnopol) is a city in the west of Ukraine. Administratively, Ternopi ...
. It is also used in
Chełm Chełm (; uk, Холм, Kholm; german: Cholm; yi, כעלם, Khelm) is a city in southeastern Poland with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some ...
in
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
. ** (11) ''Pokuttia (Bukovinian)'' is spoken in the
Chernivtsi Oblast Chernivtsi Oblast ( uk, Черніве́цька о́бласть, Chernivetska oblast), also referred to as Chernivechchyna ( uk, Чернівеччина) is an oblast (province) in Western Ukraine, consisting of the northern parts of the regio ...
of Ukraine. This dialect has some distinct vocabulary borrowed from
Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language *** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language ** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
. ** (9) ''Upper Dniestrian'' (Kresy) is considered to be the main Galician dialect, spoken in the
Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukrain ...
,
Ternopil Ternópil ( uk, Тернопіль, Ternopil' ; pl, Tarnopol; yi, טאַרנאָפּל, Tarnopl, or ; he, טארנופול (טַרְנוֹפּוֹל), Tarnopol; german: Tarnopol) is a city in the west of Ukraine. Administratively, Ternopi ...
, and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts. Its distinguishing characteristics are the influence of Polish and the German vocabulary, which is reminiscent of the Austro-Hungarian rule. Some of the distinct words used in this dialect can be found here. ** (10) ''Upper Sannian'' is spoken in the border area between Ukraine and Poland in the San river valley. * The Rusyn language is considered by Ukrainian linguists to be also a dialect of Ukrainian: ** ''Dolinian Rusyn or Subcarpathian Rusyn'' is spoken in the
Transcarpathian Oblast The Zakarpattia Oblast ( uk, Закарпатська область, Zakarpatska oblast) is an administrative oblast located in western Ukraine, mostly coterminous with the historical region of Carpathian Ruthenia. Its administrative centre is ...
. ** '' Pannonian or Bačka Rusyn'' is spoken in northwestern
Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...
and eastern
Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...
.
Rusin language Rusyn (; rue, label= Carpathian Rusyn, русиньскый язык, translit=rusîn'skyj jazyk; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, руски язик, translit=ruski jazik),http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2781/1/2011BaptieMPhil-1.pdf , p. 8. is an Eas ...
of the Bačka dialect is one of the official languages of the Serbian Autonomous Province of
Vojvodina Vojvodina ( sr-Cyrl, Војводина}), officially the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, is an autonomous province that occupies the northernmost part of Serbia. It lies within the Pannonian Basin, bordered to the south by the national capital ...
. ** ''Pryashiv Rusyn'' is the Rusyn spoken in the Prešov (in Ukrainian: Pryashiv) region of
Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
, as well as by some émigré communities, primarily in the United States of America.


Neighbouring countries

All the countries neighbouring Ukraine (except for
Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
) historically have regions with a sizable Ukrainian population and therefore Ukrainian language speakers. Ukrainian is an official minority language in Belarus, Romania, and Moldova.


Ukrainian diaspora

Ukrainian is also spoken by a large
émigré An ''émigré'' () is a person who has emigrated, often with a connotation of political or social self-exile. The word is the past participle of the French ''émigrer'', "to emigrate". French Huguenots Many French Huguenots fled France followin ...
e population, particularly in Canada (see
Canadian Ukrainian Canadian Ukrainian (, ) is a dialect of the Ukrainian language specific to the Ukrainian Canadian community descended from the first three waves of historical Ukrainian diaspora, Ukrainian emigration to Western Canada. Canadian Ukrainian was wi ...
), the United States, and several countries of South America like
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
,
Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, and
Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
. The founders of this population primarily emigrated from Galicia, which used to be part of
Austro-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
before World War I, and belonged to Poland between the World Wars. The language spoken by most of them is the Galician dialect of Ukrainian from the first half of the 20th century. Compared with modern Ukrainian, the vocabulary of Ukrainians outside Ukraine reflects less influence of Russian, but often contains many loanwords from the local language. Most of the countries where it is spoken are ex-USSR, where many Ukrainians have migrated. Canada and the United States are also home to a large Ukrainian population. Broken up by country (to the nearest thousand): #
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
1,129,838 (according to the 2010 census); #
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
200,525 (67,665 spoken at home in 2001, 148,000 spoken as "mother tongue" in 2001) Ukrainian is one of three official languages of the breakaway Moldovan republic of
Transnistria Transnistria, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is an unrecognised breakaway state that is internationally recognised as a part of Moldova. Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester riv ...
. Ukrainian is widely spoken within the 400,000-strong (in 1994) Ukrainian community in Brazil.Oksana Boruszenko and Rev. Danyil Kozlinsky (1994). ''Ukrainians in Brazil'' (Chapter), in ''Ukraine and Ukrainians Throughout the World'', edited by Ann Lencyk Pawliczko, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, pp. 443–454


Language structure

: ''Cyrillic letters in this article are romanized using
scientific transliteration Scientific transliteration, variously called ''academic'', ''linguistic'', ''international'', or ''scholarly transliteration'', is an international system for transliteration of text from the Cyrillic script to the Latin script (romanization). Thi ...
.''


Grammar

Ukrainian is a
fusional Fusional languages or inflected languages are a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use a single inflectional morpheme to denote multiple grammatical, syntactic, or semantic features. For e ...
, nominative–accusative, satellite-framed language. It exhibits
T–V distinction The T–V distinction is the contextual use of different pronouns that exists in some languages and serves to convey formality or familiarity. Its name comes from the Latin pronouns '' tu'' and '' vos''. The distinction takes a number of forms ...
, and is null-subject. The canonical word order of Ukrainian is SVO. Other
word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
s are common due to the free word order enabled by Ukrainian's
inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and ...
al system. Nouns have one of 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; nouns
decline Decline may refer to: *Decadence, involves a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, or skill over time * "Decline" (song), 2017 song by Raye and Mr Eazi * ''The Decline'' (EP), an EP by NOFX *The Decline (band), Australian ...
for: * 7 cases: nominative,
accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
, genitive, dative,
instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...
, locative,
vocative In grammar, the vocative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and numer ...
; * 2
numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
:
singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
,
plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
.
Adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s agree with nouns in
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
, case, and
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
. Verbs conjugate for: * 4
tenses In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns. The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, ...
:
past The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience ...
,
pluperfect The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...
, present, future; * 2 voices:
active Active may refer to: Music * ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea * Active Records, a record label Ships * ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name * HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...
,
mediopassive The mediopassive voice is a grammatical voice that subsumes the meanings of both the middle voice and the passive voice. Description Languages of the Indo-European family (and many others) typically have two or three of the following voices: acti ...
; * 3
persons A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
: first, second, third; * 2
numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
:
singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
,
plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
. Ukrainian verbs come in aspect pairs:
perfective The perfective aspect ( abbreviated ), sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect that describes an action viewed as a simple whole; i.e., a unit without interior composition. The perfective aspect is distinguished from the i ...
, and
imperfective The imperfective (abbreviated or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical aspect used to describe ongoing, habitual, repeated, or similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. Although many languages have a g ...
. Pairs are usually formed by a
prepositional Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
prefix and occasionally a root change. The
past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some ha ...
agrees with its subject in
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
and
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
(but ''not''
person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
), having developed from the perfect
participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
. The Old East Slavic and Russian ''o'' in syllables ending in a consonant, often correspond to a Ukrainian ''i'', as in ''pod'' → ''pid'' (під, 'under'). Thus, in the declension of nouns, the ''o'' can re-appear when it is no longer located in a closed syllable, such as ''rik'' (рік, 'year') (
nom NOM may refer to: * National Organization for Marriage * Natural organic matter * New Order Mormons * Nickelodeon Original Movies * ''Nintendo Official Magazine'', official British Nintendo magazine; now discontinued, superseded by ''Official Ni ...
): ''rotsi'' (
loc LOC, L.O.C., Loc, LoC, or locs may refer to: Places * Lóc, a village in Sângeorgiu de Pădure, Mureș County, Romania * Lócs, a village in Vas county, Hungary * Line of Contact, meeting place of Western and Eastern Allied forces at the e ...
) (році). Similarly, some words can have ''і'' in some cases when most of the cases have ''o'', for example ''слово'' (nominative singular), ''слова'' (nominative plural) but ''слiв'' (genitive plural). Ukrainian case endings are somewhat different from Old East Slavic, and the vocabulary includes a large overlay of Polish terminology. Russian ''na pervom etaže'' 'on the first floor' is in the locative (prepositional) case. The Ukrainian corresponding expression is ''na peršomu poversi'' (на першому поверсі). ''-omu'' is the standard locative (prepositional) ending, but variants in ''-im'' are common in dialect and poetry, and allowed by the standards bodies. The ''kh'' of Ukrainian ''poverkh'' (поверх) has mutated into ''s'' under the influence of the soft vowel ''i'' (''k'' is similarly mutable into ''c'' in final positions).


Phonology

The Ukrainian language has six vowels, , , , , , . A number of the consonants come in three forms: hard, soft ( palatalized) and
long Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
, for example, , , and or , , and . The letter represents the
voiced glottal fricative The voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the usual ''phoneti ...
, often transliterated as Latin ''h''. It is the
voiced Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer ...
equivalent of English . Russian speakers from Ukraine often use the soft Ukrainian in place of Russian , which comes from northern dialects of Old East Slavic. The Ukrainian alphabet has the additional letter for , which appears in a few native words such as ''gryndžoly'' 'sleigh' and ''gudzyk'' 'button'. However, appears almost exclusively in loan words, and is usually simply written . For example, loanwords from English on public signs usually use for both English ''g'' and ''h''. Another phonetic divergence between the Ukrainian and Russian languages is the pronunciation of Cyrillic ''v/w''. While in standard Russian it represents , in many Ukrainian dialects it denotes (following a vowel and preceding a consonant (cluster), either within a word or at a word boundary, it denotes the allophone , and like the off-glide in the English words "flow" and "cow", it forms a diphthong with the preceding vowel). Native Russian speakers will pronounce the Ukrainian as , which is one way to tell the two groups apart. As with above, Ukrainians use to render both English ''v'' and ''w''; Russians occasionally use for ''w'' instead. Unlike Russian and most other modern Slavic languages, Ukrainian does not have
final devoicing Final-obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as Catalan, German, Dutch, Breton, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Turkish, and Wolof. In such languages, voiced obstruents in fina ...
.


Alphabet

Ukrainian is written in a version of Cyrillic, consisting of 33 letters, representing 38
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...
s; an apostrophe is also used. Ukrainian orthography is based on the phonemic principle, with one letter generally corresponding to one phoneme, although there are a number of exceptions. The orthography also has cases where the semantic, historical, and morphological principles are applied. The modern Ukrainian alphabet is the result of a number of proposed alphabetic reforms from the 19th and early 20th centuries, in Ukraine under the Russian Empire, in Austrian Galicia, and later in Soviet Ukraine. A unified Ukrainian alphabet (the '' Skrypnykivka'', after
Mykola Skrypnyk Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk ( uk, Микола Олексійович Скрипник; – 7 July 1933), also known as Nikolai Alekseyevich Skripnik (russian: Никола́й Алексе́евич Скри́пник), was a Ukrainian Bolshe ...
) was officially established at a 1927 international Orthographic Conference in
Kharkiv Kharkiv ( uk, wikt:Харків, Ха́рків, ), also known as Kharkov (russian: Харькoв, ), is the second-largest List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Ukraine.Ukrainization Ukrainization (also spelled Ukrainisation), sometimes referred to as Ukrainianization (or Ukrainianisation) is a policy or practice of increasing the usage and facilitating the development of the Ukrainian language and promoting other elements of ...
in Soviet Ukraine. But the policy was reversed in the 1930s, and the Soviet Ukrainian orthography diverged from that used by the diaspora. The Ukrainian letter ge ''ґ'' was banned in the Soviet Union from 1933 until the period of Glasnost in 1990. The letter щ represents two consonants . The combination of with some of the vowels is also represented by a single letter ( = я, = є, or = ї, = ю), while = йо and the rare regional = йи are written using two letters. These
iotated In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek alphab ...
vowel letters and a special
soft sign The soft sign (Ь, ь, italics ) also known as the front yer, front jer, or er malak (lit. "small er") is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Old Church Slavonic, it represented a short (or "reduced") front vowel. As with its companion, the b ...
change a preceding consonant from hard to soft. An apostrophe is used to indicate the hardness of the sound in the cases when normally the vowel would change the consonant to soft; in other words, it functions like the
yer A yer is either of two letters in Cyrillic alphabets, ъ (ѥръ, ''jerŭ'') and ь (ѥрь, ''jerĭ''). The Glagolitic alphabet used, as respective counterparts, the letters (Ⱏ) and (Ⱐ). They originally represented phonemically the "ult ...
in the Russian alphabet. A consonant letter is doubled to indicate that the sound is doubled, or long. The phonemes and do not have dedicated letters in the alphabet and are rendered with the digraphs дз and дж, respectively. is equivalent to English ''ds'' in ''pods'', is equivalent to ''j'' in ''jump''. As in Russian, the acute accent may be used to denote vowel stress.


Transliteration


Orthography

Spelling search, which began in the late 18th century with the emergence of modern literary language, led to the emergence of several spelling options. In particular, there was the spelling system of Oleksii Pavlovskyi, the spelling version of "Mermaid of the Dniester" (1837), Kulishivka (P. Kulish's spelling system),
Drahomanivka Drahomanivka ( uk, драгоманівка, ) was a proposed reform of the Ukrainian alphabet and orthography, promoted by Mykhailo Drahomanov. This orthography was used in a few publications and in Drahomanov's correspondence, but due to cult ...
(produced in Kyiv in the 1870s by a group of cultural figures led by linguist P. Zhytetskyi, which included and M. Drahomanov),
Zhelekhivka Zhelekhivka ( uk, Желехі́вка) was Ukrainian phonetic orthography in Western Ukraine from 1886 to 1922 (sometimes until the 1940s), created by on the basis of the Civil Script and phonetic spelling common in the Ukrainian language at tha ...
(system of Yevhen Zhelekhovskyi (1886), enshrined in the ''Russian Grammar'' by
Stepan Smal-Stotsky Stepan Yosypovych Smal-Stotsky ( uk, Степан Йосипович Смаль-Стоцький, pl, Stepan Smal-Stocki) was a Ukrainian linguist and academician, Slavist, cultural and political figure, member of the Union for the Liberation ...
i and Theodore Gartner 1893).
Borys Hrinchenko Borys Dmytrovych Hrinchenko ( uk, Борис Дмитрович Грінченко, December 9, 1863 – May 6, 1910) was a classical Ukrainian prose writer, political activist, historian, publicist, and ethnographer. He was instrumental in the ...
used some corrections in the fundamental four-volume ''Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language'' (1907–1909). Most of the spelling rules (practically based on phonetics – "write as you hear") used in Hrinchenko's dictionary are still valid. Hrinchenko's work became an informal spelling and model for Ukrainian writers and publications from 1907 until the creation of the first official Ukrainian spelling in 1918. On January 17, 1918, the Central Rada of Ukraine issued the "Main Rules of Ukrainian orthography", which, however, did not cover the entire scope of the language. On May 17, 1919, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences approved the "Main Rules of Ukrainian Orthography", which became the basis for all subsequent revisions and amendments. On July 23, 1925, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decided to organize a State Commission for the Organization of Ukrainian Spelling (State Spelling Commission). It included more than 20 academics from the USSR, who also expressed a desire to invite representatives of Western Ukraine:
Stepan Smal-Stotsky Stepan Yosypovych Smal-Stotsky ( uk, Степан Йосипович Смаль-Стоцький, pl, Stepan Smal-Stocki) was a Ukrainian linguist and academician, Slavist, cultural and political figure, member of the Union for the Liberation ...
i,
Volodymyr Hnatiuk , image = Hnatiuk Volodymyr.jpg , imagesize = , caption = Volodymyr Hnatiuk , pseudonym = , birth_name = , birth_date = , birth_place = Velesniv, Galicia, Austria-Hungary , death_date = , death_place = Lwów, Poland (now Lviv, Ukrai ...
and Vasyl Simovych. After almost a year of work in April 1926, the "Project of Ukrainian Spelling" was published to acquaint the general public with the new system. After several months of discussion and consideration of the project at the All-Ukrainian Spelling Conference (May 26 – June 6, 1927), the Ukrainian orthography of 1928 was adopted in accordance with the RNC resolution of September 6, 1928. It went down in history as "Kharkiv" or "Skrypnik orthography" – from the place of creation, or from the surname of the People's Commissar of Education
Mykola Skrypnyk Mykola Oleksiiovych Skrypnyk ( uk, Микола Олексійович Скрипник; – 7 July 1933), also known as Nikolai Alekseyevich Skripnik (russian: Никола́й Алексе́евич Скри́пник), was a Ukrainian Bolshe ...
. In 1929, Hryhorii Holoskevych published the ''Ukrainian Spelling Dictionary'' (about 40,000 words), agreed with the full spelling produced by the State Spelling Commission and approved by the People's Commissar for Education (September 6, 1928). In 1933, a spelling commission headed by Andrii Khvylia branded the Ukrainian orthography of 1928 as "nationalist", immediately stopped publishing any dictionaries, and without any discussion, in a very short time (five months), created a new spelling that unified as never before the Ukrainian and Russian languages. The letter ґ was removed from the alphabet, and Ukrainian scientific terminology was revised and harmonized with Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries (the Institute of Ukrainian Scientific Language was abolished in 1930). This version of the spelling was approved by the resolution of the People's Commissar of Education of the USSR of September 5, 1933. Some minor changes were made in the spelling of 1946 and 1959 (published the following year). It was connected with the document "The rules of Russian spelling and punctuation", published in 1956. From 1960 until 1990, the 1960 edition was the official standard. After the beginning of " perestroika", the issue of improving Ukrainian spelling became relevant again: the editing of the spelling code was started by the Orthographic Commission at the LMM of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The project was also discussed in the newly established Ukrainian Language Society. T. Shevchenko (headed by
Dmytro Pavlychko Dmytro Pavlychko ( uk, Дмитро Васильович Павличко; born September 28, 1929) is a Ukrainian poet, translator, scriptwriter, culturologist, political and public figure. Biography Dmytro Pavlychko was born on September 2 ...
). The new version was approved on November 14, 1989, and published in 1990. The main achievements were the restoration of the letter ґ and the accusative case (in Soviet times it was optional and was called the ''accusative form''). Today, despite the existence of the official spelling of the Ukrainian language, it is not the only spelling standard in use. Even in Ukraine itself, many publishers and publications use other versions of the spelling, which either tend to "skrypnykivka", or else differ from the official rules of transmission of words of foreign origin. On May 22, 2019, the
Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine ( uk, Кабінет Міністрів України, translit=Kabinet Ministriv Ukrainy; shortened to CabMin), commonly referred to as the Government of Ukraine ( uk, Уряд України, ''Uriad Ukrai ...
approved a new version of the orthography prepared by the Ukrainian National Commission on Spelling. The new edition brought to life some features of orthography in 1928, which were part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition. At the same time, the commission was guided by the understanding that the language practice of Ukrainians in the second half of the 20th to the beginning of the 21st century has already become part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition.


Vocabulary

''The Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language'', in 11 volumes, contains 253,000 entries. Lexical card catalog of the Ukrainian Institute of Language Studies has 6 million cards. As mentioned at the top of the article, Ukrainian is most closely related lexically to Belarusian, and is also closer to Polish than to Russian (for example, можливість, ''mozhlyvist'', "possibility", and Polish ''możliwość'', but Russian возможность, ''vozmozhnost'').


False cognates with Russian

The standard Ukrainian language which is based on the Kyiv–Poltava dialect has a plethora of
false friend In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...
s with the standard Russian language which is based on the Moscow dialect. Many people intentionally do or do not use them, causing their language shift into what is known as Surzhyk where the meaning of some words mimicking Russian could be understood out of context rather than their literal meaning in Ukrainian.


Classification

Ukrainian has varying degrees of
mutual intelligibility In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...
with other Slavic languages and is considered to be most closely related to Belarusian. In the 19th century, the question of whether Ukrainian, Belarusian and
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
languages are dialects of a single language or three separate languages was actively discussed, with the debate affected by linguistic and political factors. The political situation (
Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
and
Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...
being mainly part of the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...
at the time) and the historical existence of the medieval state of Kievan Rus', which occupied large parts of these three nations, led to the creation of the common classification known later as the
East Slavic languages The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of the Slavic languages, distinct from the West and South Slavic languages. East Slavic languages are currently spoken natively throughout Eastern Europe, and eastwards to Siber ...
. The underlying theory of the grouping is their descent from a common ancestor. In modern times, Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian are usually listed by linguists as separate languages.David Dalby. 1999/2000. ''The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities'' (The Linguasphere Observatory), Volume Two, pg. 442: "53-AAA-e, Russkiy+Ukrainska" Until the 17th and 18th centuries (the time of national and language revival of Ukraine) the
Ukrainians Ukrainians ( uk, Українці, Ukraintsi, ) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine. They are the seventh-largest nation in Europe. The native language of the Ukrainians is Ukrainian. The majority of Ukrainians are Eastern Ort ...
were predominantly peasants and petits bourgeois; as a result, the Ukrainian language was mostly vernacular and few earlier literary works from the period can be found. In the cities, Ukrainian coexisted with Church Slavonic—a literary language of
religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...
that evolved from Old Church Slavonic—and later
Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
and
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, both languages which were more often used in formal writing and communication during that time.


Differences with other Slavic languages

The Ukrainian language has the following similarities and differences with other Slavic languages: *Like all Slavic languages with the exception of
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, Belarusian, standard written Slovak and Slovene, the Ukrainian language has preserved the Common Slavic
vocative case In grammar, the vocative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) being addressed, or occasionally for the noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and nume ...
. When addressing one's sister (''sestra'') she is referred to as ''sestro.'' In the Russian language the vocative case has been almost entirely replaced by the nominative (except for a handful of vestigial forms, e.g. ''Bozhe'' "God!" and ''Gospodi'' "Lord!").J. B. Rudnyckyj. (1963) . The Position of the Ukrainian Language among the Slavic languages. In ''Ukraine: A concise Encyclopedia''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 445–448. *The Ukrainian language, in common with all Slavic languages other than Russian, Slovak and Slovene, has retained the Common
Slavic second palatalization The Slavic second palatalization is a Proto-Slavic sound change that manifested as a regressive palatalization of inherited Balto-Slavic velar consonants that occurred after the first and before the third Slavic palatalizations. Motivation The se ...
of the velars *k, *g and *x in front of the secondary vowel *ě of the dative and locative ending in the female
declension In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ...
, resulting in the final sequences -cě, -zě, and -sě. For example, ''ruka'' (hand) becomes ''ruci'' in Ukrainian. In Russian, the dative and locative of ''ruka'' is ''ruke.'' *The Ukrainian language, in common with Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, has developed the ending -''mo'' for first-person plurals in verbs (''khodymo'' for "we walk"). In all cases, it resulted from lengthening of the Common Slavic -''mŭ''. *The Ukrainian language, along with Russian and Belarusian, has changed the Common Slavic word-initial ''ye''- into ''o'', such as in the words ''ozero'' (lake) and ''odyn'' (one). *The Ukrainian language, in common with Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian, Belarusian and southern Russian dialects, has changed the Common Slavic "g" into an "h" sound (for example, ''noha'' – leg). *The Ukrainian language, in common with some northern Russian and Croatian dialects, has transformed the Common Slavic ''yě'' into ''i'' (for example, ''lis'' – forest). *The Ukrainian language, in common with Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovene, has simplified the Common Slavic ''tl'' and ''dl'' into ''l'' (for example, ''mela'' – she swept"). *The Ukrainian language, in common with all modern Slavic languages other than Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not use
articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
. *Other Slavic ''o'' in closed syllables, i.e., syllables ending in a consonant, in many cases corresponds to a Ukrainian ''i'', as in ''pod'' → ''pid'' (під, 'under'). This also includes place names such as Lviv (Львів in Ukrainian), Lwów in Polish, and Львов (Lvov) in Russian. Unlike all other Slavic languages, Ukrainian has a synthetic future (also termed
inflectional In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
future) tense which developed through the erosion and cliticization of the verb "to have" (or possibly "to take"): ''pysat-ymu'' (infinitive-future-1st sg.) ''I will write''.Bernd Kortmann, Johan van der Auwera (2011). ''The Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide'', Volume 2. p. 103 Although the inflectional future (based on the verb 'to have') is characteristic of
Romance languages The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
, Ukrainian linguist A. Danylenko argues that Ukrainian differs from Romance in the choice of auxiliary, which should be interpreted as 'to take' and not 'to have.' He states that Late Common Slavic (LCS) had three verbs with the same
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
root : * a determined imperfective LCS *jęti: *jĭmǫ 'to take' (later superseded by numerous prefixed perfectives) * an indetermined imperfective LCS *jĭmati: jemljǫ 'to take' (which would not take any prefixes) * an imperfective LCS *jĭměti: *jĭmamĭ 'to hold, own, have' The three verbs became conflated in East Slavic due to morphological overlap, in particular of *iměti "to have" and *jati "to take" as exemplified in the Middle Ukrainian homonymic imut’ from both iměti (< *jĭměti) and jati (< *jęti). Analogous grammaticalization of the type take ("to take", "to seize") > future is found in
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
and Hungarian.Andrii Danylenko. "Is There Any Inflectional Future in East Slavic? A Case of Ukrainian against Romance Reopened." ''Journal of the Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University'', 2007. PP. 147–177.


See also

*
Chronology of Ukrainian language bans The chronology of Ukrainian language suppression presents a list of administrative actions aimed at limiting the influence and importance of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine. Language situation in Ukrainian lands before the 19th century Befo ...
* Languages of Ukraine *
Language policy in Ukraine Language policy in Ukraine is based on its Constitution, international treaties and on domestic legislation. According to article 10 of the Constitution, Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, and the state shall ensure the comprehensive ...
* Ukrainian Braille *
Ukrainian Sign Language Ukrainian Sign Language (USL) ( uk, Українська жестова мова (УЖМ)) is the sign language of the deaf community of Ukraine. Ukrainian Sign Language belongs to the family of French sign languages. Worldwide awareness of U ...


Notes


References


Citations


Sources

* * Lesyuk, Mykol
"Різнотрактування історії української мови"
* (revised and updated edition) * Nimchuk, Vasyl'. Періодизація як напрямок дослідження генези та історії української мови. Мовознавство. 1997.- Ч.6.-С.3–14; 1998. *
Magocsi, Paul Robert Paul Robert Magocsi (born January 26, 1945 in Englewood, New Jersey) is an American professor of history, political science, and Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. He has been with the university since 1980, and became a F ...
(1996). ''A History of Ukraine.'' Toronto:
University of Toronto Press The University of Toronto Press is a Canadian university press founded in 1901. Although it was founded in 1901, the press did not actually publish any books until 1911. The press originally printed only examination books and the university cale ...
. .
Litopys.kiev.ua
* . Ukrainian translation is partially availabl

*
"What language is spoken in Ukraine"
in ''Welcome to Ukraine'', 2003, 1., wumag.kiev.ua
All-Ukrainian population census 2001
ukrcensus.gov.ua

1996, rada.kiev.ua

rada.kiev.ua.
1897 census
demoscope.ru


External links


Dialects of Ukrainian Language / Narzecza Języka Ukraińskiego by Wł. Kuraszkiewicz

Hammond's Racial map of Europe, 1919
"National Alumni" 1920, vol.7, anesi.com

cla.calpoly.edu



* ttp://www.101languages.net/ukrainian/history.html 101languages.net – Ukrainian 101 {{DEFAULTSORT:Ukrainian Language Ruthenian language Languages of Ukraine Subject–verb–object languages Ukrainian studies East Slavic languages Languages written in Cyrillic script