Ukrainian language is very similar to Russian. In fact, it used to be the same language some time ago, just as Russia first started as a state with the capital in Kiev (Kyiv). Today Kiev is the capital of Ukraine!
What is different between Russian and Ukrainian languages?
There is a bit of difference in the whole pronunciation of words, as well as spelling. Both languages use Cyrillic alphabet at the moment, although there were talks in Ukraine about moving to Latin alphabet, as Kazakhstan did.
Most Ukrainians can understand and speak Russian, although most Russians cannot speak Ukrainian and often struggle to understand it.
The reason is that Russian language used to be taught in all schools of the former Soviet Union and compulsory to know for people living in all republics.
Speaking Russian was compulsory during the times of the USSR
There were 15 republics in the Soviet Union. Russia was the largest, but even within Russia itself there are several autonomous republics where people speak different languages. The most famous are Tatar, Bashkir, Chechen, Chuvash, and many others.
Thus, Russian was legally the unifying language of all the nations living in the Soviet Union. USSR collapsed in 1991, less than 30 years ago, and people who were educated during the Soviet times still can speak Russian.
There were also a lot of Russians living in all 15 republics. This is why there were TV channels in Russian, which are still popular in many republics that didn’t try to get rid of them.
For instance, in Belarus Russian is still one of the official languages in the country.
But Ukraine took a different path. The government worked hard to make locals learn the national language, which wasn’t highly popular in large cities at the time when the USSR collapsed. They did a good job teaching kids Ukrainian since kindergartens and making it compulsory to speak the country’s national tongue (many people who were born in Ukraine were unable to speak Ukrainian by the end of 20th century).
Nowadays, Ukrainians are able to speak Ukrainian.
Ukrainian has a lot of influence from Polish, which is due to the long history of Poland ruling the lands, which are now called Ukraine (all of these lands used to be called “Rus”).
So, yes, Ukrainian and Russian are quite similar, and if you know one of them, it’s easy to learn another. Just try not to mix them up!
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