Ukrainian is an East Slavic language closely related to Russian but with some regular differences.

History

Historically, the closest language to Ukrainian is Byelorusian. Some historians find their common ancestor in the Old Ruthenian language of Rus', the common ancestor of both the Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, which began to diverge from each other markedly by the 1600s. Polish influences on both languages, especially Ukrainian were noteworthy during this time. As the Ukrainian language developed further some borrowings from Tatar and Turkish occurred. The loss of Ukrainian/Ruthenian statehood from the 14th to the 17th century, and the gradual suppression of independence after 1654 retarded the development of the Ukrainian language. The twelfth-century document The Lay of Ihor's Campaign an early classic example of the Old Ruthenian/Ukrainian language, was discovered in a Russian library in the nineteenth century. The political climate of denial of the separate existence of the Ukrainian nation/language led to some consternation among the intelligentsia of the Tsarist Empire when this document became known. The document was recognizably non-Russian, and bore traces of Polish influence. Later influential literary figures in the development of Ukrainian literature included the philosopher Skovoroda, Kostamarov, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Lesia Ukrainka.

Comparative grammar

Russian o often corresponds to Ukrainian i, as in pod/pid "under". This also happens when Ukrainian words are declined, such as rik (nom):rotsi (loc) "year". Also, the letter "Г" renders different consonants in Russian and Ukrainian, see language notes in Cyrillic alphabet. Ukrainian "Г" is the sounded match for Cyrillic "X" (and therefore it is transliterated as Latin "H"), while the Russian one is the sounded match for "К". East Slavic "non-mainland" Russian speakers "contaminate" the Russian speech with what is called "soft Ukrainian 'Г'".

Ukrainian case endings are somewhat different from Russian, and the vocabulary includes a large overlay of Polish terminology. Russian na pervom etazhe "on the first floor" is in the prepositional case. The Ukrainian corresponding expression is na pershomy poversi, which to the Russian ear is a mishmash. -omy is the standard locative (=prepositional) ending, but variants in -im are common in dialect and poetry, and allowed by the standards bodies. The x of Ukrainian poverx has mutated under the influence of the soft vowel i (k is similarly unstable in final positions).

Current usage

The Ukrainian language is currently emerging from a long period of disuse. Although there are almost fifty million ethnic Ukrainians worldwide, including roughly 38-39 million in Ukraine (three-quarters of the total population), only in western Ukraine is the Ukrainian language commonly spoken. In Kiev and central Ukraine Russian is the language of nearly all city-dwellers, although there is a shift towards Ukrainian; in eastern Ukraine, Russian is dominant and a Russified Ukrainian spoken in some circles, while in the Crimea Ukrainian is almost absent. Use of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine can be expected to increase, as the rural population of Ukraine (still overwhelmingly Ukrainophone) migrates to Ukrainian cities and the Ukrainian language enters into wider use in central Ukraine.

Ukrainian is also spoken by a large emigre population, particularly in Canada. The founders of this population primarily emigrated from Galicia that used to be part of Austria-Hungary before WW1 and between the World Wars belonged to Poland. Their vocabulary reflects somewhat less Russification than the modern language of independent Ukraine -- for "store/shop" they might prefer kramnytsya to mahazyn (cf. Russ. magazin, orig. French), whereas in Ukraine mahazyn is much more common and kramnytsya somewhat self-conscious.

Language Structure

The Ukrainian language has 6 vowels (a, e, i, y, o, u) and one semi-vowel (^j). The combintion of the semi-vowel with each of the vowels produces a new sound (^ja, ^je, ^ji, ^jy, ^jo, ^ju). ^jy is used in certain dialects only. These sounds all have separate letters, except for ^jy and ^jo, which are written using two letters.

Most of the consonants come in 3 forms: hard, soft and long, for example, l, l^j, ll or n, n^j, nn. In writing the vowels change the preceding consonant from hard to soft or vice versa. In special cases, for example, at the end of the word a special soft sign is used to indicate that the consonant is 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. The letter is repeated to indicate that the sound is long. Ukrainians tend to pronounce long sounds where the letters are double in other language, English or Russian, for example.

Sounds dz and dzh do not have dedicated letters in the alphabet and are rendered by two letters. Yet, they are single sounds rather than two sounds d z and d zh, pronounced separately. dzh is like English g in huge, dz has no English equivalent, it is pronounced like Japanese z in kamikaze.

External links

• Ukrainian Language Online Course
• Ukrainian Language Online Resources: Language Profile, Dictionaries, Grammar and Language History
• Radio Canada International daily Ukrainian language news broadcasts and transcripts