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Ukrainian is an East Slavic language
closely related to Russian and Belarusian but with many notable differences and with heavy influence of Polish vocabulary.
History
Historically, the closest language to Ukrainian is Belarusian. 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. Ukrainian culture and language flourished in 16th and first half of 17th century, when
Ukraine was part of Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. Ukrainian was also the official language of Ukrainian provinces of Crown of Polish Kingdom. Among many schools found in that time, Kijovian Academy was the most
important. The substance of Ukrainian culture didn't stand the anarchy of Khmelnytsky Uprising and
following wars. Kijovian
Academy was taken over by Russia and most of Ukrainian nobles and schools switched
to Polish. Gradually the official language of Ukrainian provinces of Poland was changed to Polish as well, while Russian part of
Ukraine used widely Russian. After partitions of Poland, Ukrainian language was banned from printing by Alexander II of Russia, in Ems Ukaz, that retarded the development of the Ukrainian language. At the same time, in Galicia, Ukrainian langauge was widely used in the
education and in official documents.
History of Ukrainian Literature
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. Some historical chronicles from the state of Halych-Volynia (see Halych, Volhynia) are written in subsequent centuries.
A significant part of early Ukrainian culture is bylinas.
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
"Х" (and therefore it is transliterated as Latin "H"), while the Russian one is the sounded match for the Latin "G". 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 and persecution. 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 Kyiv 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 World War I 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
Phonetics
The Ukrainian language has 6 vowels (a, e, i, y, o, u) and one semi-vowel (j). The combination 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, lj, ll or
n, nj, 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.
Ukrainian alphabet is almost phonetic with the exception of the three sounds that do not have the dedicated letters and
complex but intuitive (for a native) rules of the change of softness or hardness of the consonants by the following vowels.
Grammar
Ukrainian language has 3 tenses: present, past and future. All verbs in Ukrainian fall in either of two categories: perfect or
imperfect. In order to express the idea that the action is finished one has to use a perfect verb, an imperfect verb does not
have a perfect form and vice versa.
For example, the verb pysaty (write) is an imperfect verb. For the perfect form there exist a number of related verbs
each expressing slightly different aspect of have written : napysaty, zapysaty,
perepysaty, prypysaty, dopysaty, zpysaty, etc.
In the present and future tenses, verbs are conjugated according to the person and number. Like in Russian, however, the past
tense does not indicate the person, but instead gender.
External links
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