Ukrainian

Where it’s spoken

Ukrainian is the sole official language of Ukraine. Significant Ukrainian-speaking diaspora communities live in Canada, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Poland — many descending from late-19th-century and post-WWII emigration waves. Russia’s 2022 invasion accelerated a domestic shift from Russian to Ukrainian among many bilingual citizens.

What it sounds like

Ukrainian preserves several archaic East Slavic features Russian lost — it pronounces unstressed vowels clearly without Russian-style reduction, retains the soft “h” (as in Hetman), and palatalizes consonants more selectively. Ukrainian is often called the most “melodic” of the East Slavic languages.

How it’s written

Ukrainian uses 33 Cyrillic letters distinct from Russia’s alphabet — for instance, it has є (ye), і (i), ї (yi), and ґ (g) but lacks Russian’s ё, ы, э, ъ. Spelling is highly phonemic once stress is known.

History

Ukrainian descends from Old East Slavic, distinct from Russian since at least the 14th century. The 19th-century poet Taras Shevchenko shaped the modern literary language. Soviet policies alternately promoted and suppressed Ukrainian; independence in 1991 firmly established it.