Interesting Facts about the Ukrainian Language

Ukrainian is not a language that we hear much about or refer to very often which means you could easily be forgiven for not knowing very much about it. However just because we don’t all know very much about Ukrainian as a language that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much to know.

In fact with over 46 million people calling Ukraine home and Ukrainian being the office language of the country there is more people than you realise speaking this language. On top of this Ukrainian is spoken in other countries such as Hungary, Serbia, Romania and Bosnia.

The History of Ukrainian

You’ll notice that Ukrainian shares some of its words with other nearby Slavic nations although mostly Polish, Russian and Slovak.

Although we don’t know much about its history we can trace some of its origins back to Old East Slavic languages. It is thought that it was previously known as Ruthenain, back in the medieval state of Kievan Rus’. Throughout its time the language has been often looked down upon and often people have tried to ban it, although it has seen its way through and now we have the version of Ukrainian that over 46 million people speak today.

 There isn’t much known about Ukrainian or where it originated from. However one really nice thing to know about the language is that in won a Parisian linguistic competition held in 1934. This put it in the top three of the world’s most beautiful languages in the world, alongside French and Persian.

The Alphabet

Although there are some letters that might recognise from the English alphabet there are also very many letters that are different. If you do learn Ukrainian then you’ll notice that most of their words actually start with the letter “п” although actually the letter “o” is the letter used most frequently throughout words overall. The least used letters are “ф” and “г”.

Learning the Language

As the language has a different alphabet to English it can make it a difficult language to learn. However your learning curve is  made much easier if you already have a knowledge of languages such as Slovak, Polish or Russian. Either way if you do want to learn it you can, you just might need to make sure that you spend time learning it as it might take you a little longer to learn than other more European languages.