Ukrainian language information

Ukrainian
Ukrainian
українська мова
Pronunciation	[ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ ˈmɔʋɐ]
Native to	Ukraine
Region	Eastern Europe
Ethnicity	Ukrainians
Native speakers	L1: 33 million (2016); L2: 6.0 million (2016)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Ukrainian; ; ; ;
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Balto-Slavic Proto-Slavic Old East Slavic Ruthenian (Old Ukrainian) ; ; ; ;
Dialects	Balachka; Canadian; Pokuttia-Bukovina; Hutsul; Among others, see: Ukrainian dialects;
Writing system	Cyrillic (Ukrainian alphabet); Ukrainian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Ukraine
Recognised minority; language in	Belarus; Russian Federation; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Croatia; Czech Republic; Hungary; Moldova; Poland; Romania; Serbia; Slovakia
Regulated by	National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine: Institute for the Ukrainian Language, Ukrainian language-information fund, Potebnya Institute of Language Studies
Language codes
ISO 639-1	uk
ISO 639-2	ukr
ISO 639-3	ukr
Glottolog	ukra1253 Ukrainian
Linguasphere	53-AAA-ed < 53-AAA-e; (varieties: 53-AAA-eda to 53-AAA-edq)
	This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

The Ukrainian language (українська мова, ukrainska mova, IPA: [ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ ˈmɔʋɐ]) is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family spoken primarily in Ukraine. It is the native language of a majority of Ukrainians.

Written Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet, a variant of the Cyrillic script. The standard language is studied by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Potebnia Institute of Linguistics. Comparisons are often made between Ukrainian and Russian, another East Slavic language, yet there is more mutual intelligibility with Belarusian,^[6] and a closer lexical distance to West Slavic Polish and South Slavic Bulgarian.^[7]

Ukrainian is a descendant of Old East Slavic, a language spoken in the medieval state of Kievan Rus'. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the language developed into Ruthenian, where it became an official language,^[8] before a process of Polonization began in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the 18th century, Ruthenian diverged into regional variants, and the modern Ukrainian language developed in the territory of present-day Ukraine.^[9]^[10]^[11] Russification saw the Ukrainian language banned as a subject from schools and as a language of instruction in the Russian Empire, and continued in various ways in the Soviet Union.^[12] Even so, the language continued to see use throughout the country, and remained particularly strong in Western Ukraine.^[13]^[14]

^ ^a ^b Ukrainian at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "List of declarations made with respect to treaty No. 148 (Status as of: 21/9/2011)". Council of Europe. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
^ "National Minorities Policy of the Government of the Czech Republic". Vlada.cz. Archived from the original on 7 June 2012. Retrieved 22 May 2012.
^ "Implementation of the Charter in Hungary". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Archived from the original on 27 February 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
^ "Русский союз Латвии будет сотрудничать с партией Социалистов Молдовы". Rusojuz.lv. Latvian Russian Union. Archived from the original on 18 August 2017. Retrieved 18 August 2017.
^ Alexander M. Schenker. 1993. "Proto-Slavonic", The Slavonic Languages. (Routledge). pp. 60–121. p. 60: "[The] distinction 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 and Ukrainian languages was significant and that it could be compared to the difference between Swedish and Danish. Jensen, Alfred. Slaverna och världskriget. Reseminnen och intryck från Karpaterna till Balkan 1915–16.. Albert Bonniers förlag, Stockholm, 1916, p. 145.
^ K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics (published in Ukrainian), cited in Elms, Teresa (4 March 2008). "Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe". Etymologikon. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. [graph] lexical distance Ukrainian-Polish: 26–35, Ukrainian-Bulgarian: 26–35, (...) 36–50
^ "Ukrainian language". Encyclopædia Britannica. 23 August 2023. Archived from the original on 15 July 2015.
^ Cite error: The named reference pugh was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Cite error: The named reference shevelov was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Cite error: The named reference bunčić was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy by Jonathan Steele, Harvard University Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0-674-26837-1 (p. 217)
^ Purism and Language: A Study in Modem Ukrainian and Belorussian Nationalism Archived 22 September 2023 at the Wayback Machine by Paul Wexler, Indiana University Press, ISBN 087750-175-0 (page 309)
^ Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine by Laada Bilaniuk, Cornell Univ. Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-8014-7279-4 (page 78)

[e27-1] Ukrainian at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)

[treaty-2] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "List of declarations made with respect to treaty No. 148 (Status as of: 21/9/2011)". Council of Europe. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 22 May 2012.

[languages-3] "National Minorities Policy of the Government of the Czech Republic". Vlada.cz. Archived from the original on 7 June 2012. Retrieved 22 May 2012.

[4] "Implementation of the Charter in Hungary". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Archived from the original on 27 February 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2014.

[Rusojuz-5] "Русский союз Латвии будет сотрудничать с партией Социалистов Молдовы". Rusojuz.lv. Latvian Russian Union. Archived from the original on 18 August 2017. Retrieved 18 August 2017.

[classification145-6] Alexander M. Schenker. 1993. "Proto-Slavonic", The Slavonic Languages. (Routledge). pp. 60–121. p. 60: "[The] distinction 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 and Ukrainian languages was significant and that it could be compared to the difference between Swedish and Danish. Jensen, Alfred. Slaverna och världskriget. Reseminnen och intryck från Karpaterna till Balkan 1915–16.. Albert Bonniers förlag, Stockholm, 1916, p. 145.

[7] K. Tyshchenko (1999), Metatheory of Linguistics (published in Ukrainian), cited in Elms, Teresa (4 March 2008). "Lexical Distance Among the Languages of Europe". Etymologikon. Archived from the original on 4 April 2017. [graph] lexical distance Ukrainian-Polish: 26–35, Ukrainian-Bulgarian: 26–35, (...) 36–50

[8] "Ukrainian language". Encyclopædia Britannica. 23 August 2023. Archived from the original on 15 July 2015.

[pugh-9] Cite error: The named reference pugh was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[shevelov-10] Cite error: The named reference shevelov was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[bunčić-11] Cite error: The named reference bunčić was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[schools-12] Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy by Jonathan Steele, Harvard University Press, 1988, ISBN 978-0-674-26837-1 (p. 217)

[WUkraineL-13] Purism and Language: A Study in Modem Ukrainian and Belorussian Nationalism Archived 22 September 2023 at the Wayback Machine by Paul Wexler, Indiana University Press, ISBN 087750-175-0 (page 309)

[UkrGrammar30-14] Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine by Laada Bilaniuk, Cornell Univ. Press, 2006, ISBN 978-0-8014-7279-4 (page 78)

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