Because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, people around the world are getting more exposure to Ukrainian and Russian through social media posts, news stories, viral videos of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and signs from protesters. On Duolingo, we saw a 200% increase in learners studying Ukrainian between the weeks of February 14 and February 21, which we take to reflect growing interest in Ukraine and its people and is perhaps even an act of solidarity.
Languages and how people use them represent personal identities and the political and cultural histories of a community. As a company dedicated to language education, we wanted to provide a (brief) overview of Ukrainian and Russian, what people speak in Ukraine and why, and the linguistic complexities behind the videos and signs you've been seeing.
What language do they speak in Ukraine?
Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine. It's a Slavic language, which means it's related to languages such as Russian, Czech, and Polish. This is a huge language family with lots of linguistic diversity, so modern Ukrainian shares some commonalities with its closest relatives, Russian and Belorussian, and fewer with its more distant cousins (like Czech). (If you're more familiar with Western European languages, Romance languages may provide a helpful analogy.) Like its neighbors, Ukrainian uses a version of the Cyrillic alphabet, which shares a lot of letters with the Russian writing system but which also has a few unique letters to represent sounds specific to Ukrainian.
If you’re an English speaker learning Ukrainian, the grammar will likely be complex at first, but there will also be some familiar features, too. One mostly unfamiliar feature is Ukrainian's robust case system. This means that nouns change their form depending on what role they play in the sentence. A number of languages have case systems, including Russian, Latin, German, and even English — though in English, we only mark case on a few words. (Basically, the case system is the reason we say “I love him” but “He loves me.”) In Ukrainian, case gets marked on regular nouns (house, newspaper, child, country), pronouns (I, they, it, we), and even people's names.
The following table has just a few examples of how case works in Ukrainian. Pay attention to how the Ukrainian word for woman changes:
Ukrainian | English | Case system |
---|---|---|
Я бачу жінку. Ya bachu zhinku. |
I see the woman. | Here, “zhinka” (“woman”) is in the accusative case as "zhinku." This means it’s the direct object, or the recipient of the verb “see.” |
Жінка бачить мене. Zhinka bachyt mene. |
The woman sees me. | Here, "zhinka" is in the nominative case, which is the case used when a noun is the subject of a sentence. |
Я розмовляю з жінкою. Ya rozmovliaiu z zhinkoiu. |
I speak with the woman. | “Zhinka” here is in the instrumental case form, appearing as "zhinkoiu." You use the instrumental case when you’re doing something with someone. |
Ukrainians often know Russian, but Russians don't often know Ukrainian
So while Ukrainian and Russian are distinct linguistically, there is an important asymmetry to be aware of: even though most Russians don't know or understand Ukrainian because it's a different language, most Ukrainians know and understand Russian. This isn't because of linguistics but because of politics and history: because the Russian-speaking Soviet Union occupied Ukraine for almost 70 years, Russian was the only official language of Ukraine. Government, schools, and business were all required to only use Russian, so even though most families continued using Ukrainian at home, much of their public lives required Russian. As a result, older Ukrainians grew up around Russian, and even younger generations still see Russian in their daily life.
How different are Ukrainian and Russian?
Before diving into the facts of these languages, we should take a moment to consider what people mean when they ask this question and what people are actually saying when they answer it. Because sometimes, this question is a very political one. In the course of world history, groups could often justify their right to have an independent nation by proving that they had their own unique language — and so sometimes, people who try to minimize the differences between two languages might be attempting to diminish another country’s nationhood. So be aware that political ideology, rather than linguistic fact, can sometimes shape someone's opinion about how similar or different the languages are.
Ukrainian and Russian are distinct languages that are, effectively, cousins to one another. Over a thousand years ago, there was a language spoken in central Europe that we now call proto-Slavic, an ancestor to all the Slavic languages spoken today. Speakers of proto-Slavic migrated across Europe, spread out, and settled down, and taught their children to speak their language. However, because they were so spread out into multiple communities, each community started doing things a little differently — and then, as time went on, things got more and more different, until eventually members of these communities that once spoke the same tongue became unable to understand one another. (This divergence of dialects over time and distance is how many languages evolve.)
Because they come from a common ancestor, there are a lot of similarities between Ukrainian and Russian. For example, the case system described earlier also exists in Russian, though the endings sometimes look different. Both Ukrainian and Russian have three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. They also have similar patterns of verb conjugations. However, verb and noun endings are often distinct in these languages, and there are some grammatical features (such as a unique future tense) that Ukrainian has that Russian does not.
Ukrainian and Russian vocabulary
Some of the most notable differences between Ukrainian and Russian are in its vocabulary. This is often what stumps a Russian speaker trying to understand Ukrainian, or vice versa: many common Russian words look totally different from their Ukrainian translations. That said, because the languages come from a common ancestor, sometimes a speaker of one language could deduce the meaning of a word based on its roots — the same way an English speaker might be able to look at the word Hund in German, relate it to “hound,” and figure out, with some work, that it means “dog.”
Here you can see how these languages do share some vocabulary, while other words can be really different:
Ukrainian | Russian | English |
---|---|---|
брат brat |
брат brat |
brother |
хліб khlib |
хлеб khleb |
bread |
неділя nedilia |
воскресенье voskresenye |
Sunday |
тиждень tyzhden |
неделя nedelya |
week |
лютий liutyi |
февраль fevral |
February |
Ukrainian and Russian sounds and pronunciation
Ukrainian and Russian also have some important differences in the sounds of the language and how those sounds are represented in writing. For example, you've probably also heard some differences in the name of Ukraine's capital city. The Russian name for Ukraine's capital is Киев (Kiev), which, as you would expect, uses Russian sounds. (Just like English speakers use English sounds to say Madrid, Istanbul, and Reykjavik!) But the Ukrainian name of Ukraine's capital is Київ (Kyiv), which, naturally, uses the native Ukrainian sounds to say its own capital's name. The letter и is like the English "i" in "kit," and the letter ї is pronounced "yee": put it together, and you have "ki-yeev" and spell it "Kyiv" in English.
The Ukrainian alphabet is meant to represent Ukrainian sounds, so sometimes sounds and distinctions get lost when Ukrainian words are written in the Latin alphabet. One result is that sometimes the same Ukrainian word or name ends up with multiple different representations in the Latin alphabet. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's name is a good example of this. In the Ukrainian nominative case (that's the one for the subject of the sentence), the last two letters of his name are и (y) and й (i). Since the English pronunciation of "y" and "i" is the same at the end of the word, you'll often see "Zelensky," but you might also see "Zelenskyi" or "Zelenskyy," which more closely reflect the Ukrainian spelling. Zelenskyy's own Twitter account uses this last option, as does Duolingo curriculum designer Mykhaylo Zakryzhevskyy!
How language is being used in the Russian-Ukrainian war today
Language is always political: what language(s) you use, which dialect(s) you have, and whether you adjust how you speak is closely related to the political and cultural history of your community, and what people in power say (or legislate!) about your languages.
Some of these language differences are large and very noticeable. As one example, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has switched between Ukrainian and Russian in the same speech, depending on whether he's directly addressing his fellow Ukrainians or sending a message to the Russian forces in his country. Another example of the politics of language can be seen in the recent law requiring print media publications registered in Ukraine to publish in Ukrainian, a law that was explicitly tied to national security.
How grammar can be political
Other linguistic differences might be more subtle. For example, it used to be the norm in English to say "the Ukraine" instead of just "Ukraine," which is what you hear today. This change may seem small, but there is a complex history (and lots of politics!) behind it: using "the" creates the impression that Ukraine is a region, part of some larger whole, like another country. We do this in U.S. English with our regions, like the Midwest (of the U.S.) or the South (of the U.S.). However, in 1991, when Ukraine declared independence from the USSR, the government also stated a preference that “the” not be used in English-language publications. That's why you now see just "Ukraine," to show it is an independent country.
Something analogous happens in Ukrainian and Russian, too. In Russian, there are two words that can mean “in”: в (v) and на (na). The difference between them is, essentially, what words you use them with: you use в for a place that has recognized borders, like a city or a building, and на for territories without borders, like fields and dependent regions. For example, you use в when you’re talking about Russia, the U.S., or England, but use на when talking about the West or the South. Historically, на has been used when saying “in Ukraine” — a preposition use that tacitly implies that Ukraine is not a country of its own. In recent times, however, there has been a push to use в with Ukraine, instead of на; subsequently, which preposition a speaker uses has become a sign of their political sympathies, with Russians who have sympathies towards Ukraine deliberately using в and those who minimize Ukraine’s right to statehood using на.
Accents as signs of identity
As Dear Duolingo readers will know, accents reflect lots of parts of your identity, including the languages you know. When people judge someone's pronunciation of a word to decide if the person is part of their (language) group, this word is known as a shibboleth.
Because of differences in the Ukrainian and Russian sound systems, shibboleths are also being used in Ukraine to quickly identify Russian soldiers (at shouting distance!) by their pronunciation of Ukrainian words that are particularly difficult for Russian speakers to say. In this video clip, the shibboleth is паляниця (palianytsia), which is pronounced with "i" in Ukrainian (like the "i" in English "kit," or like in "Kyiv"!) but "ee" by Russians (like in English "meet"). In fact, Russian does have this "i" in "kit" sound in the language – but it just can't be pronounced in this position in a word. (Languages have a lot of rules like this, like how in English words can't start with the sound "ng" but we have that sound in the middle and end of words like "song" and "ringing.") This subtle difference in vowels, in the middle of the word, reflects the language and pronunciation the speaker knows best.
Even the pronunciation of the Russian word for "Ukrainian" can get political. Depending on where a speaker puts the stress (or emphasis) in the word, it can sound more like the word for a borderland, or region at the edge of a larger area, or it can sound like a separate word entirely, emphasizing Ukrainian sovereignty. So Russian speakers who want to suggest that Ukraine is part of Russia will put the stress on the "a" in the Russian word украинский (Ukrainskiy), which makes it sound more like a borderland. Ukrainians and Russians who support Ukrainian sovereignty will pronounce "Ukrainian" with the stress on the "yi" in украинский (Ukrayinskiy).
Standing with Ukrainians
We at Duolingo know language, and how political language can be, and we're keeping the people behind the languages at the forefront of our thoughts. If you speak Ukrainian and other Slavic languages, you can support Ukrainians by volunteering with Translators without Borders. If you're able to donate financially, UNICEF USA supports children in need and is focusing efforts on helping Ukrainian children.
To learn more about the Slavic languages available on Duolingo, you can start learning Ukrainian, Russian, Czech or Polish today.