Is Ukrainian is Really a Separate Language or Is It Just a Dialect of Russian? And Where Can You Learn Ukrainian For Free?
Frequently Russians will say that Russians and Ukrainians are “brother Slavs” with completely similar cultures and traditions even though the average Ukrainian will dispute that notion. In addition, Russians will say that the Ukrainian language that Ukrainians speak really isn’t a separate language at all—Ukrainian is actually a dialect of Russian.
In order to determine whether Ukrainian is a separate language or a dialect of Russian, we need to first know the difference between a language and a dialect.
A language is defined as system of communication used by a particular county or community. One country will speak one language while another country will speak a completely different language. If you get a person who speaks only Spanish and a person who speaks only Chinese together they will not understand each other unless an interpreter who knows both languages is also present who can translate what the other two are saying.
A dialect is defined as a form of a language that is unique to a particular region. An example of a dialect is this situation: Two native English speakers from the United States and Australia talk with each other. The American and Australian will understand each other about 90-99 percent of the time. There are some slight variations in words, how they are pronounced, and their meanings. One example is “barbie.” An American will think that the word is a reference to the name of the 11.5 inch fashion doll. To an Australian, that word is a shortened form of the word “barbecue.” Other than slight variations, an American and Australian can still engage in a conversation and still understand each other without requiring an interpreter.
Now it’s time to find out if Ukrainian is actually a separate language or is it just a dialect of Russian. I admit that I am no expert on this. My formal foreign language education is limited to the time that my middle school decided to expose our 8th grade class to just two or three weeks of German in an effort to convince us to consider signing up for a foreign language course in high school the following year, taking a year of French in high school and three semesters of Spanish in college. (I’m currently trying to relearn all three using the Duolingo app.)
I’ve briefly looked at Ukrainian in the Duolingo app but I’m definitely far from fluent in that language compared to the other three. As for Russian, I only know a few words like da (yes), nyet (no), babushka (grandmother), pravda (truth), mir (peace), and do svidaniya (goodbye).
So to get an answer on the issue of whether Ukrainian is a language or a Russian dialect, I did the next best thing: I did a Google search to find linguistic experts who can answer that question much better than I ever can.
Duolingo’s official blog has this to say about the Ukrainian and Russian languages:
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.”
Ukrainian and Russian also have some important differences in the sounds of the language and how those sounds are represented in writing.
The Conversation Site has this to say about Ukrainian and Russian:
As Russian and Ukrainian diverged from each other relatively recently (less than a millennium ago), they still share a lot of basic and core vocabulary – but not enough to be considered dialects of a single language.
One frequently cited figure is that Ukrainian and Russian share about 62% of their vocabulary. This is about the same amount of shared vocabulary that English has with Dutch, according to the same calculations.
Here is Optilingo on whether Ukrainian is a language or a Russian dialect.
These two languages only share about 60 percent of the same vocabulary. In fact, Ukranian is closer to Belarusian than it is to Russia concerning vocabulary. In other words, there is a greater difference between Russian and Ukrainian in terms of vocabulary than there is between most of the Romance languages.
Basically the consensus from the experts I found online is that despite some similarities between the two languages, Ukrainian and Russian should be considered as separate languages.
I can understand that conclusion based on my own experiences with the numerous times I’ve read online posts that I think are in Spanish only to read them more closely and realize that the writing is actually in Portuguese. While I can partially decipher what the person is writing based on my knowledge of Spanish, there are enough differences between the two languages (such as how words are spelled and how verbs are conjugated) that I definitely need that message to be translated into English in order to completely understand it. There are so many differences between Spanish and Portuguese that if I ever want to understand Portuguese more, I would have to take a separate Portuguese language class.
So the next time someone tells you that Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian, feel free to tell that person that he or she is simply wrong.
If you wish to learn the Ukrainian language, here are some sites and apps where you can take free lessons. (Many of these same sites and apps also offer Russian as well so you could take lessons in both languages and find out for yourself how different they really are.)
Duolingo offers a free class in Ukrainian in a fun gaming-style format. You can access the site on a desktop computer or download the free app to your favorite mobile device.
https://www.duolingo.com/course/uk/en/Learn-Ukrainian
LingoHut offers a free Ukrainian class in bite-sized five-minute lessons, which is great for people with busy schedules.
https://www.lingohut.com/en/l83/learn-ukrainian
Ukrainian Course is another place for free lessons in that language.
https://www.ukrainiancourse.com/
Drops is an app that uses flashcards and puzzles to teach Ukrainian.
LingApp teaches Ukrainian using native speaker voiceovers and related exercises.
DuoCards uses flashcards and other exercises to teach Ukrainian.
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