For untrained ears, Russian and Ukrainian may sound extremely similar to one another. In fact, some people may falsely believe that Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian. A close look at both languages, however, shows that despite sharing the same linguistic roots, Russian and Ukrainian are distinct in multiple aspects.<\/p>\n
In this article, we will provide a brief account of these languages\u2019 shared history, and then delve deep into the main differences that set Russian and Ukrainian apart.<\/p>\n
\u2192Sign Up Now: Free Trial Ukrainian Lesson With a Native Teacher!\u2190<\/a><\/p>\n The fact that Russian and Ukrainian sound so much alike has to do with their shared origin. Just like English and German or Spanish and Italian, these are two separate languages that derive from the same sub-group of the Indo-European family: the Eastern Slavic stem.<\/p>\n Believed to have splintered just before the 13th century, these languages grew apart as Ukrainian became more and more influenced by Polish and Slovak languages and Russian started to borrow characteristics from Old Church Slavonic.<\/p>\n It was a single man, Peter the Great, who helped Ukrainian even more distant from Russian in his attempt to make Russian more akin to Western languages. At the same time, political tensions between the two kingdoms resulted in a ban of the Ukrainian language in the Russian Empire, more specifically, in the Eastern region of present-day Ukraine.<\/p>\n But the shared history between these two languages was far from over. When the Soviets occupied modern-day Ukraine in the early 20th century, Russian spread throughout the country like never before. In fact, Russian became the main language taught in schools throughout the Soviet Union, which not only explains the similarities between both languages but also accounts for the prevalence of Russian speakers in Ukraine today.<\/p>\n Since the early 1930s, time, politics and cultural differences have pushed Russian and Ukrainian apart, and they have given way to the differences I will analyze below with the help of our native teachers.<\/p>\n If you were to compare English with German, you would find that the letters used in these languages are almost identical, with a few exceptions. \u00c4 and \u1e9e, for example, are extremely common in German but are nowhere to be found in English.<\/p>\n The case of Russian and Ukrainian is quite similar: while they share a mostly similar version of the Cyrillic alphabet, there are a few significant differences to set them apart. The most noticeable of them are:<\/p>\n The idea that two languages must be the same because they share the same writing system is a common misconception. To understand why it would be wrong to assume that Russian and Ukrainian based on this argument, our Ukrainian teacher, Maryia, suggests taking English and Dutch as a parallel case.<\/p>\n Though these languages have exactly the same 26 letters, you would never say they are the same language because they share a writing system, would you? Nor would we say that Spanish and French are the same because they share most of their characters. Russian and Ukraine may look equally strange to English speakers, but this doesn\u2019t mean that they are variations of the same language.<\/p>\n Russian and Ukraine also present significant differences in some key grammatical concepts.<\/p>\n Our Russian teacher Mischa says that, in order to understand why so many people claim Russian is hard to learn<\/a>, we need to delve into its robust case system. \u2018Case\u2019 refers to the form a word (usually a noun) takes depending on the function it performs in a sentence. The English language, for example, has just three cases: genitive\/subjective (I), genitive\/possessive (mine) and accusative\/objective (me). When Argentine pop-star Lali infamously said \u201cI love she\u201d<\/a> after being asked about Lady Gaga in an interview, she failed to remember (or ignored altogether) that the personal pronoun \u201cshe\u201d becomes \u201cher\u201d when it acts as a direct object in a sentence.<\/p>\n If you (like Lali) believe the English system case is difficult, wait till you hear there are six grammatical cases in Russian. In this language, grammatical case gets marked on regular nouns (table, woman, chair, city), pronouns (you, we), and even people's names in three extra cases: instrumental (for temporal relation), prepositional (it answers the question \u201cabout whom?\u201d), and dative (for indirect objects). Ukrainian words, on the other hand, are declined for all these cases while providing a seventh one that has been termed as vocative. This is the case people use when calling someone by name, greeting them, or retaining someone\u2019s attention during a conversation.<\/p>\n In the table below, you can see how case works in the Ukrainian language by paying attention to the different forms of the word \u2018woman\u2019.<\/p>\n Ya By now, it is clear that Russian and Ukrainian have at least as many differences as similarities. When it comes to pronunciation, these differences may not be noticeable enough for someone who doesn\u2019t speak any Slavic language, but they should be quite salient for people who are familiar with either Russian or Ukrainian:<\/p>\nA Common History<\/h2>\n
Alphabets<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
Vocabulary<\/h2>\n
\n\n
\n English<\/td>\n Italian<\/td>\n Spanish<\/td>\n Russian<\/td>\n Ukrainian<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n cat<\/td>\n gatto \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n gato \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u041a\u043e\u0442 \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u041a\u0456\u0442 \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n love<\/td>\n amore \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n amor \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u043b\u044e\u0431\u043e\u0432\u044c \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u043b\u044e\u0431\u043e\u0432 \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n person<\/td>\n persona \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n persona \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u0447\u0435\u043b\u043e\u0432\u0435\u043a <\/span>\u2718<\/td>\n \u043b\u044e\u0434\u0438\u043d\u0430 <\/span>\u2718<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n school<\/td>\n scuola \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n escuela \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u0448\u043a\u043e\u043b\u0430 \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u0448\u043a\u043e\u043b\u0430 \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n life<\/td>\n vita \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n vida \u2713<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0434\u043e\u043b\u0436\u0438\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044c \u0436\u0438\u0437\u043d\u0438<\/span> \u2718<\/td>\n \u0442\u0440\u0438\u0432\u0430\u043b\u0456\u0441\u0442\u044c \u0436\u0438\u0442\u0442\u044f <\/span>\u2718<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n Grammar<\/h2>\n
\n\n
\n UKRAINIAN<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n ENGLISH<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n CASE SYSTEM<\/span><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n \u0416\u0456\u043d\u043a\u0430<\/span><\/b>
\n\u0431\u0430\u0447\u0438\u0442\u044c \u043c\u0435\u043d\u0435.<\/span>Zhinka bachyt mene.<\/span><\/i><\/td>\nThe
\nwoman sees me.<\/span><\/td>\nHere, \"zhinka\" is in
\nthe nominative <\/i>or subjective case,
\nwhich means \u2018woman\u2019 is the subject in this sentence.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n \u042f<\/span> \u0431\u0430\u0447\u0443<\/span> \u0436\u0456\u043d\u043a\u0443<\/span><\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nbachu zhinku.<\/span><\/i><\/td>\nI
\nsee the woman.<\/span><\/td>\nIn this example, \u201czhinka\u201d
\n(\u201cwoman\u201d) corresponds to the accusative<\/i>
\ncase, as it acts as the direct object of the verb \u2018see\u2019.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n \u042f<\/span> \u0440\u043e\u0437\u043c\u043e\u0432\u043b\u044f\u044e<\/span>
\n<\/span>\u0437<\/span> \u0436\u0456\u043d\u043a\u043e\u044e<\/span><\/b>.<\/span>Ya
\nrozmovliaiu z zhinkoiu.<\/span><\/i><\/td>\nI speak with the woman.<\/span><\/td>\n Here, \u201cZhinka\u201d is instrumental<\/i>. We use the instrumental<\/i> case when we say that we
\nare doing something with<\/i> someone.<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nPronunciation<\/h2>\n
\n