How Different Are Russian and Ukrainian???
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This video is all about the differences (and similarities!) between Russian and Ukrainian!
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Special thanks to Dani Volynsky for his Russian audio samples, and Anton Som for his Ukrainian audio samples, ideas, and feedback. And additional thanks goes to some other native speakers who gave valuable input and feedback for this video, including Ihor Khodzhaniiazov (and others!).
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The following images are used under Creative Commons Sharealike license:
. Author: Lvivske. Adaptation: Anton Som.
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. Author: Samotny Wędrowiec.
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Music
Main: "Gisele Revisited" by South London Hifi.
Outro: "In the Corner" by John Deley.
Great video. Very informative. As a British guy who learned Russian while living there for 6 years and then moved to Ukraine where I’ve lived for 15 years I’d just like to add my opinion.
Pretty much everybody in Ukraine is fluent in both languages (except for the far East and West of the country) and they effortlessly switch between both. There’s a myth in Russia that Ukrainians hate Russian speakers. This is nonsense. The biggest language crime here is speaking “surzhik” – mixing the two. This is frowned upon as being uneducated. People pride themselves on speaking “pure” forms of both languages.
A typical situation might be, that a person speaks Ukrainian at work to clients, but Russian to colleagues. They might write in Ukrainian a lot but speak more Russian. It’s very common for people to speak Russian to one set of grandparents but Ukrainian to the other.
Russian speaking couples sometimes consciously chose to switch to Ukrainian after having a baby to give their kid a head start in school as lessons are taught in Ukrainian. People also change their language depending on geography. I remember driving out of Kyiv with a friend who I’d only ever heard speak Russian. We stoppped to ask for directions and he spoke Ukrainian. I asked why, he shrugged and said – coz we’re in the countryside now – we were only about 20km out of the city!
The key thing to remember is that it’s not theat people in the East speak Russian and the people in the West speak Ukrainian. People tend to switch between both languages based on a huge variety of factors many of which they don’t consciously think about. It was very, very confusing for me when I first arrived here but now I love it.
The only down side for me is that although I can more or less understand Ukrainian (except the form spoken in Zakarpatiya) I can’t speak it as I know that all Ukrainians understand Russian. Every single day I have conversations where I speak Russian but get a reply in Ukrainian as people just expect that you’ll understand.
Top comment! 🤓👍
Everything is true
You’d lived in Ukraine for 15 years but didn’t make any effort to learn Ukrainian to be able to communicate with Ukrainian speaking people.
@Taras Bilyk He may be a “foreigner in a bilingual country”: as soon as people realise he doesn’t speak Ukrainian well enough, they’ll switch to Russian. Which makes it very hard to learn Ukrainian, if one does speak Russian.
I can be fired right now, because of my next sentence. But this Zakarpattia region has it’s own language – rusyn.
They are VERY distinct.
Ukrainian: “war”.
Russian: “special operation”
lmao
No to special operation (war). нет войне
Oh, yeah, I think the Russian Word is also used in China, Syria and North Korea. The Ukrainian word is used all over the Rest of the World.
😂😂😂🤪
I am a linguist and a historian who speaks Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Polish languages of which the first two are my native languages, and I endorse this video as correct, well researched and informative. Well done!
Thank you very much for your endorsement.
Does not sound very typical for an Anderson.
For someone who speaks Czech and can understand Slovak sometimes without realizing it’s a foreign language it’s quite interesting. I would say differences are about the same. 90% of words is like slang and follows some regular patterns as they developed differently, 10% of words is different. But problem is to speak Slovak without sounding funny. And it’s really hard to tell how languages are different, because it’s hard not to be exposed to other language.
Worst part about this video for me is english transcription 🙂 j->y, ch->kh, č->ch, ě->ye 🙂
Good to read that! Thanks!
And English!
As a Ukrainian, who knows both languages, I would say that the strongest argument to highlight that these both languages are different would be to give the same text in 2 audio versions to compare. Vocally and phonetically they are very easy to differentiate.
I was at first surprised when listening to spoken Ukrainian, as I kept picking out words that sound similar to Russian. But now that I see the written text, I find it easier to hear the difference.
Lol true!
Even for foreigners it is obvious. Believe me!
Uum, no
I grew up in rural Western Ukraine. Got very little exposure to Russian until the age of 10. I gradually picked it up and can speak it fluently now. It took me years and there were many “false friends” that kept on tripping me up. I felt very self conscious about my Russian for a long time because it sounded hickish/rustic.
Какие ещё лже друзья, и щ какова пути они хотели тебя забить?
@Иван Иванов False friends это слова с похожим значением но отличным или противоположным значением
Украинский врода (красота) — русское уродство
Украинский зброя (оружие) — русское збруя (доспех)
Украинский час (время) — русское час
Украинское година (час) — русское год (в украинском это рiк)
Украинское гарбуз (тыква) — русское арбуз
И так далее
It would be very interesting to watch a video about Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish languages, as they share more similarities with each other, than with Russian
Не уверен про польский, мне кажется украинский и белорусский похоже друг на друга но дальше к ним ближе русский а не польский
@LYER only due to russification policy
@LYER There is no “mallorusian dialect”. The Ukrainian language does not come from Russian 🤦🏻♂️
@Sad Cat Theoretically it does in historically. Both Russian and Ukrainian languages have developed so much, that they are pretty distinct languages nowadays. Both come from language spoken by early Rus’ people. But because of being divided by Mongol invasions and influenced by different Western and Central European empires, Russian developed from influences of Old Church Slavonic, while Ukrainian side held to vernacular spoken language of Rus’ people. Ukrainian language especially has been influenced by German and Polish (West Slavic overall). That is why Ukrainian long ago was considered “Malorus” dialect of older spoken language.
@Marek De Marko Only the Russian imperialists called our Ukrainian language “malorusian”, moreover, they officially banned the Ukrainian language, despite its thousand-year history.
15:09 in the Ukrainian language there is another word позаяк (pozayak) with the same meaning, but it is used very little in everyday talk
It’s August 2022 and this video really helps me in my stride to aid refugee Ukrainians to learn Polish. Thank you Langfocus!
Doing a very important job. Thank you <3
Also want to point at one significant difference between these languages. Unlike Russian, in Ukrainian any word is pronounced exactly as it’s written so if you take a letter it would sound all the same (apart from the matters of simplificating the difficult words where it might partially disappear or softening). In Russian there’s letters “о” and “г” which may be represented by completely different sounds in different words, for example “гусь” – “сегодня” – “обед”.
Very good analysis. As a native speaker of both languages and to some extent of Polish and also understanding some of the western Ukrainian dialects, I can truly appreciate the work you’ve done making this presentation. Thanks.
As someone learning both Ukrainian and Russian, I find them to be both wildly similar and wildly different, meaning that when they are similar, they are near identical to me, but when they are different, they are nothing alike.
The state of Ukraine was created from the lands – the former outskirts of Russia and Poland. That’s why he’s so mixed up.
The Ukrainian language is called Mova. Mova comes from the ancient Russian word rumor (мова-молва). It means dialect.
Thus, the Ukrainian language uses Russian and Polish in the form of a dialect.
That’s why you get this feeling.
Маладец. Заработал рубль.
@reorioOrion Similar roots of a language over time turn to dialects, turn to different languages. The most common differentiation is that if people of one language don’t understand the others anymore – it has become a separate language. That bridge has been crossed by Ukrainian. Linguistically, the relationship between the Ru and UA languages is roughly the same as that between German and Dutch, both of which belong to the subgroup of West Germanic languages.
Great job. As a Ukrainian speaking most of the time Russian and having relatives both in Western Ukraine and in Russia, I confirm everything that has been said in this video. It’s been a great fun to hear these nuances from a non-native speaker. As for me only one mentioned point needs checking and it’s lacking Church Slavonic words in Ukrainian, because as for me both languages include equal amount of Church Slavonic words, or there are even more of them in Ukrainian than in Russian. Thank you so much for the wonderful video
I am from Czech republic, learning russian years ago. I was also exposed to polish (pasively) for years. So yes, ukrainian and russian are different languages (and I like them both, like all slavic langugages). But I can better understand (not to speak) ukrainian now. It is far more similar to czech than many people think (and also I am used to polish:)).
I also found many common words in Czech and Ukrainian unlike russian
I’d say it’s the best explanation I’ve seen so far. Yes, Russian and Ukrainian are similar in many aspects, yet there are a lot of differences and they are definitely two different languages.
P.S.: I am a Russian native speaker and I understand almost everything I hear in Ukrainian. I think it depends to some extent on the volume of my Russian vocabulary (I’m a linguist): there are many Russian words that used to be just normal in the past but are now considered obsolete, yet in Ukrainian they still exist or Ukrainian has developed new words based on – let say – the previous version.
And one more thing you didn’t mention are the stresses/accents in Russian and Ukrainian words: sometimes it’s almost the same word but the stressed syllable is different. It can be quite confusing especially for Russian speakers. For example, podrúga (female friend in Russian) and pódruha (same but in Ukrainian)
Странно, лингвист мог бы заметить, что языки очень разнородные
Tell it to speakers of Austrian German, Swiss German and German German.
@Hans Eisenmannand Belgium Germans 🙂
@Andrey Gujely нужен хороший словарный запас чтоб оценить однородность языков.
I leave 16 years in Ukraine, i’m from Moldova, my parents was speaking Russian, i ended school in Russian and my university as well in Russian (in Moldova 2 official languages Russian and Romanian) Of cause i know Romanian as well fluent, and got good knowledge of UK English, after university i worked in USA company few years and my english was growing to a very good level too.
So at 23 years i was a person who can speak and write 3 very different languages (i’m not a professional, but they have absolutely different grammar and words base, so believe me i had a lot of pain in my childhood! 🙂
At 23 i was moving to Kyiv, and started to live in Ukraine with my wife. In 100% cases people talked to me Russian, so i did not have any need to learn Ukranian. But i did not understood it at all! It was the same as any other foreign unknown language! I was not able to get sense from any big sentence, or long speech! I did not understand TV shows or movies, it was absolutely impossible for me to understand Ukranian speaking people, and one time i was talking in English from one guy from west Ukraine who really did not know Russian, and was not able to get the fool value of my words. Ukranian for me was the same hard as any other Slavik language, and believe me, if you understand 2 words from 7 words it give you nothing 🙂
Now i fluent speak and understand Ukranian, and not bad can understand and speak Polish. Hope my story will help to somebody. Ukranian and Russian are like Holland, Sweedish, Dutch and German, they looks similar, but i’m sure that they are not 🙂
Мэн, сорри, не знаю как твой русский, но английский однозначно оставляет желать лучшего.
@Mardiker Mardiker вау, вашу зависть лечить нужно
@Dmitry Saharov, ви справжній молодець.
Мій чоловік теж з Молдови. Але переїхав 22 роки тому. Лише після повномасштабного вторгнення повністю перейшли на українську вдома. Дуже тішуся з того. Він справжній патріот. А родичі в Молдові ватники, на жаль 🙈
краще пояснювати в двух словах що робить у молдові російська і як взагалі з’явилася. І немає західної України, це рос пропаганда, є захід України.
Virgin говорит на одном языке
Vs
Chad knows 4 languages and potentially can understand few more
I’m Polish and I lived with eastern Ukrainian roommates for several months. They considered Russian to be their native language but also spoke Ukrainian. As I spoke neither Russian nor Ukrainian and they didn’t speak English or Polish, we used to communicate by tossing synonyms at each other until we found a shared one. As time went by I had quite a bit of their vocabulary memorised, but only later did I realise that I had no idea which language all the words that I had learned actually belonged to. Come to think of it they might have been speaking surjik too and I wouldn’t have even known. The end result is that I can’t distinguish between the two languages to save my life unless it’s in writing. The vocabulary shared with Polish doesn’t even help because I expect both of these to have some vaguely eastern-sounding cognates of Polish words and I never know how much is too much for it to be Russian. I feel like I’ll continue to be screwed unless I actually properly learn the languages, separately
Интересная история)
С суржиком всё ожидаемо. Часть русских слов совпадает с польским, как и часть украинских. Для увеличения понимания украинцы говорили на суржике.
Tossing synonyms at each other lmao. I’ve tried this with a Turkish guy once. Eventually gave up, shook hands, said salaam and left 😂
Суржик и есть – диалект, смешанный из русского, украинского и польского. Современная официальная мова, кстати, смесь довоенного украинского и польского.
@iWatchWithNoAds у меня есть родственники в Грузии. Взрослые там говорят на грузинском и на русском, а молодын в идеале только на грузинском естественно, однако взрослые немного учат детей русскому языку. Так вот иногда, я со своим братом общался синонимами, потому что он не мог мне объяснить какую-то вещь)
В восточную Украину при Советском Союзе было завезено много русских, так же как и в Крым после аннексии. Это делают для того, что бы люди ассимилировались, внесли часть русского и при этом заменили часть украинского. Таким образом стирают и разницы между народами, при этом навязывают именно руссификацию а не украинизацию. Таким образом, через много десятков лет эти регионы ассоциируются себя больше с русскими и такие регионы проще аннексировать.
Заметьте, русские всегда насаждают свой язык соседним странам, а потом начинают с этой страной воевать под предлогом защиты русскоговорящих.
И да, вы очень четко отметили, что люди не знали к какому именно языку относятся определенные слова.
А все потому, что они не читали украинских книг. Если читать книги украинских авторов в оригинале, сразу понятно, в чем разница между языками и суржик это не язык-это способ лишить украинцев их языка, просто очень плавный способ и незаметный.
I’m Russian, but I used to live in Ukraine. I know that language pretty good because I used to learn it at my school. Most of people understand Russian because they had the classes of Russian language like I had an Ukrainian language class. That languages are different. Despite that both of them are having lots of similar letters, but pronouncing is different.
a lot of europians letters are similar. Cause of Latin
As a native Russian speaker, I find it often hard to understand Ukranian. I can understand somewhere about 30% just by hearing the similar words, everything else depends whether I understand the context or not. It’s very similar to how I understand both Polish and Czech. Yet often Czech language has words similar to Russian which are direct antonyms to their russian meaning.
However Belarusian despite sharing around 80% of the vocabulary with Ukranian is much more similar to Russian, based on how good I can understand it.
Кто изучал украинский язык 20 лет назад говорят, что в украинский словарь добавили много польских слов. Короче это примерно, как переиначивание истории на Украине
я тоже как то пытался начать понимать украинские русскоязычные каналы, которые после начала сво перешли на украинский, но все мимо. Ну и без обид украинцам, не выношу на слух украинский, так же как и польский и китайский. Просто не могу объяснить почему. Некрасивые языки лично для меня. А вот испанский и чистый английский (не блевотный американский) просто услада для ушей.
@Alex Black Не неси хуйни. 99% слов в современном литературном украинском это те же слова что встречаются и в советских словарях тоже. Просто качество преподавания украинского в советском союзе было ужасным, а учителям украинского платили меньше чем их коллегам по русскому.
Украинский 300-400 лет назад наоборот был более полонизированным. В письмах Мазепы любовнице он постоянно пишет частицу “же”, “жебы”, чисто как в Польском. В современном украинском эти частицы — що/щоби намного более похожи на российские что/чтобы
As a Ukrainian, I can relate to the similarities and differences between russian and Ukrainian. Both languages seemed quite similar to me because I natively speak them. With time I understood that Ukrainian is much more similar to the Bielorus language and to Polish as you mentioned at the beginning of the video. It is really nice to see the similarity in numbers.
I wonder, from your experience, do Russians in Ukraine ever say “Deikuju” ? Or do they normally always say Spasiba?
I’ve been learning and practicing Russian for over a year now, and I know the background of both these languages. I can usually catch the gist of a sign or sentence written in either language. I still struggle with listening, but it is getting better. I plan on learning Russian, Ukrainian, and Polish at least. I’m a Polish American and want to learn that, but it’s too complex to learn by itself. I’m learning the other two on the basis of familiarity. Kinda like how in English schools you (used to) learn Latin and Spanish with it.