How Close Are Ukrainian and Russian?

А где канал Ксении?

Как это классно знать языки,обожаю таких людей❤😊Пусть всё у всех получится❤

Russian English Always Makes Me So happy and Proud ❤️

Did you really have to publish this video on December 2022, out of all times 😂

Native Qazaq speaker, language enthusiast and activist here, I make Qazaq videos on this channel. To answer your question: Qazaqs can't understand Turkish speech at first (reading is easier), can understand 30% of what is said after getting used to the differences between the two phonologies (because the grammar is very similar) and, I suspect, can get to conversational level within just 6 months of learning.

It's funny that I first hear you mention Qazaq under this particular video, because the Qazaq and Kirgiz societies face the same problem that the Ukrainians do (Özbeks seems to have faired better). Russian is everywhere and prestigious. One can't find a good job without Russian, but the national languages are optional. Russian Federation citizens are welcomed in those jobs, on the other hand. We have to watch Hollywood movies in Russian dub, because Qazaqs dubs don't get funding, and the people show little interest when they do get it. Book stores are 95% Russian. Small businesses only write signs in Russian. Qazaq speaking parents register their kids into Russian schools (40% of school sign-ups in Astana this year were for Russian schools, despite Astana being 79% ethnic Qazaq). Qazaq language activists like myself are often treated with disregard, even called Nazis (the term adopted from the Russian narrative). The Qazaq population is very much Russified to the point of being ashamed to of its own language and heritage. They see no world without reliance on Russian. And that upsets me very much.

I watch all these videos of Georgians and Ukrainians reclaiming their language and both respect and envy them. I would like to visit their countries, learn their languages and immerse myself in societies that truly appreciate their heritages. But I can't even get a job without compromising my beliefs. On Ехо України you mentioned that Francophones couldn't get good jobs in Québec at some point, but the will of the people eventually persevered. I hope that by the time I'm your age I can finally look back on all this the same way. I just don't know what it would take to get there.

How close are Ukrainians with Ukrainians?

Czech and Ukrainian as far as I heard of are quite similar also the level of comprehension of Czech among Ukrainians is pretty high. Surprisingly even in light of war with Russia there is no idea in Ukrainian elites to switch to Latin script when both Czechs and Poles (closest allies) does use Latin alphabet for centuries.

why the author is not speaking russian with the interviewed?

Ukrainian is a sort of a dialect of Russian or prerussian slavic languages..... The truth is no one really knows, but we understand each other quite easily.... I mean there's no language gap between us.

my mom grew up in russia speaking russian but was raised by her grandmother who spoke ukrainian. to this day, she can’t speak ukrainian but she understands it. my dad speaks russian and when he hears ukrainian he maybe understands a word or two. i think they’re not as similar as people think.

Ukrainian and Russian it's like Bavarian and German. There is less difference between them than German dialects and standard German have.

English: An educated person should use independent sources.
Russian: Образованный человек должен пользоваться независимыми источниками.
Obrazovannyy chelovek dolzhen pol'zovat'sya nezavisimymi istochnikami.
Ukrainian: Освічена людина має користуватися незалежними джерелами.
Osvichena lyudyna maye korystuvatysya nezalezhnymy dzherelamy.
Polish: Osoba wykształcona powinna korzystać z niezależnych źródeł.

Here we see that the words "use" and "independent" are similar in Ukrainian and Polish and maybe "source" also, which is źródło (Polish) to compare with dzherelo/джерело (Ukrainian). A synonym to людина/lyudyna is особа/osoba which is the same as in Polish. But in the phrase above the word чоловік could have been used instead, which corresponds to человек/chelovek in Russian and człowiek in Polish. Finally enlightened in Polish is oświecony which is similar to osvicheny which means educated in Ukrainian. In Russian enlightened is просвещенный/prosveshchennyy. Educated and enlightened are by the way close concepts. People in Polish is ludzie which is similar to Russian and also Ukrainian люди/lyudi.

Very interesting. About correcting mistakes: I don't know much about Americans, but Brits tend not to correct anyone, even if they're asked to do so. I understand that they just want to be nice and respectful and on one hand I appreciate that. On another hand, this is a practical problem for foreigners because we keep making the same mistakes - virtually forever.

«if you only know russian you don't understand ukrainian» this is absurd, I understand what Ukrainians say without any problems, Ukrainians like to emphasize differences due to political reasons. Even Belarusian is harder to understand, not to mention Polish.

I am from Poland :) I learn english :) Polish language was not influence by German language. We don't understand German language and vice versa.

LIke Serbian and Slovenian.

It was so interesting to listen to you and your guest. I'm from kharkov, Ukraine. We speak Russian and we can understand Ukrainian wery well however our speaking skills is not very high.
I'd like to know your opinion. Now most of Ukrainian people especially in the west hate if someone speaks russian. What do you think about it?

The Russian of a healthy person. Very cool video

I really wanted to watch this video. I am learning Russian. I have found that I can understand some words in Ukrainian. Other words I can sort of guess based on the root word. I like the way Ukrainian sounds; it seems a lot softer than Russian. And by the way, in terms of great literature, some of the great writers, artists, and musicians in Russian culture were actually from Ukraine. Nikolai Gogol's father was Ukrainian. Dmitri Bortniansky was of Cossack-Ukrainian heritage. There's also a lot of Ukrainian musical influence in the works of composers like Peter Tchaikovsky.

I once had to interpret for a Pole who visited church. I've taken Russian; at the time it was the only Slavic language I knew much of. I understood about half of what he said, and I think vice versa.
In Wikipedia there's a picture of a demonstration, where one person has a sign saying "Для половины населения Украины, русский язык родной!" That was in 2006. How is it now?
Bulgarian seems to me the most different Slavic language from Russian, though it's also the only other Slavic language that uses no letter that Russian doesn't. What Slavic language is most different from Bulgarian?

The only reason that russian language close to Ukraine cuz moscow stole it from Ukraine! They are thugs

Do not need to forget that Russian is artificial.

Contemporary Russian is full of directly borrowed English words especially from the business sphere.

Ukraine is finished. Everybody knows it.

There are two sides to every story and I agree with the Russian side. It is the one that matches up with reality. The war started 8 years ago after the US overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine and installed a Nazi regime. The people of the Donbass have been resisting this tyranny and now Russia has come to take care of business.

How do I click on the Belford Notifications?

What should I do? I have been learning Korean for 2 years and am at upper-beginner level. I decided to stop learning Korean for now and start Fari(Persian) as persian is kind of similar language to my native language(Urdu). I think I can reach intermediate level in persian much faster than Korean. Is this the right step?

Some German "dialects" are much farther from the standard German than Russian is from Ukrainian. Same thing is with Italian "dialects". But still they are called dialects. And in the same time we have Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian "languages". The difference between them are minuscule. This is a political thing.

Hello there! I think the influence of Turkish and Tatar language to Ukrainian in several times a lot.

russian language it's a worlds biggest mistake.

I enjoyed listening to that interview. I like your guest's positive attitude in wanting to learn the native language of the country that she was living in. Fantastic!

Very good interview! I could have listened 20 minutes more. Will there be a part 2 in the future?

If you arę a Polish native speaker and know same Russian you can understand Ukrainian quite well: Polish translation of the sentence: Educated people should use independent sources is: Wykształceni ludzie powinni używać niezależnych źródeł.

Great video, thanks! Just a small remark: there are approximately 10-20% of russian native speakers in Ukraine due to the latest sociology studies before the 24th of Februrary

I have a friend who is Polish who has worked with a couple of Russian guys. One doesn't have great English, so they had a tendency to fall into Russian when talking amongst themselves. Konrad doesn't have any Russian, but he said he caught enough cognate words in their conversation that he could figure out what they were talking about, even if he didn't catch the details. Some of the first words I learned in Polish were cognates of words in Russian that I already knew (like "prawda").

When I was still relatively early in my journey of learning Polish, I watched a video by someone who was learning Macedonian. He spoke to his wife, who was a native speaker, in Macedonian. (Which I had no idea was a Slavic language. I would have assumed they spoke some relative of Greek.) Funny enough, at the time, I understood him more than I could understand native Polish speakers. I think speaking slowly had a lot to do with it.

Дякую , 😊 Thanks

Very informative. Ksenia was so enjoyable to listen to I wish I was learning Russian or Ukrainian. But I'm instead learning Norwegian. The video had some useful points for me in that my goal is to add Swedish and Danish to the mix.

I have never studied Ukrainian. But when I started listening to Zelensky, I understand everything.
But there is no Russian in Russia who has never heard the Ukrainian language. Because we have heard songs in Ukrainian on Russian radio stations. We had Ukrainian TV channels. For example, I watched a Ukrainian TV show. And at first I understood 90%, then 100%. But I can't speak fluently. Because I have never spoken Ukrainian.

As a Polish native speaker, I decided to learn Ukrainian and Russian on my own (with a little help of tutors).
What is interesting, many people in Poland think that both Russian & Ukrainian are very similar to each other. When I started to learn both, after some time I realised how much Ukrainian and Russian are different. Even I found many Slovakian words in Ukrainian.
However I need to admit that your, Steve's method (massive input before start) were very helppful in learning Uktlrainian.
Reading in Ukrainian as interesting, but of course not all words were understandable.

As a Russian speaker I want to say that unfortunately if I am listening to a Ukranian radio station (and I am not familiar with the subject) I understand 5 %, if I am watching TV the comprehension certainly will be better, maybe 15 %, and only because you see what you are listening to.

there are no Russian-speaking Ukrainians. There are Ukrainians, whose ancestors were killed, tortured and forced to speak Russian. Due to such traumas, which were not reflected on, they did not convey to their children the understanding that Ukrainian is extremely important.And as a Ukrainian, it is very unpleasant for me to see a video comparing two languages, one of which has been trying to be destroyed for centuries.
I would like to ask you, do you know that during the occupation by the Soviet Union, the Russians specially changed many words in the Ukrainian language or simply deleted them forever?
This is a very inappropriate video during the terrible war in Ukraine, which has actually been going on for centuries

皆さんこんにちは、皆さん、本当にありがとうございました! 💜
Herkese merhaba, hepinizin iyi yaptığını umuyorum! 😘
Saluton [esprimas al vi] - [iu persono, kiu persono estas] Blazio! 🙏
Bonjour à tous, j'espère que vous allez bien ! 🤪
مرحباً جميعاً، أتمنى أن تكونوا بخير! ❤
Hallo iedereen, ik hoop dat jullie het goed doen! 🖖
在座各位,我希望你们大家正 fine! 😉
Hello mindenki, remélem, mindannyian jól csinálsz! 😇
Hei kaikki, toivottavasti te kaikki pärjäätte! 🤚
Dia duit gach duine, Tá súil agam go bhfuil tú go léir ag déanamh fíneáil! 💛

Wow!
This lady speaks such perfect English, despite her mild Slavic accent.
I believe her only mispronunciation was "Crimean", understandable from its cultural context.
She informed me so efficiently in this interview; succinctly, concisely, and perfectly vernacular and natural.
Well done, Steve, for finding such an eloquent, informed and informative speaker.
I can imagine her radio programs are of the very best quality.
When will you have a speaker of Belarusian to complete the picture?

I’m studying Chinese at Leiden university and I love your methods but because I study at university I some times have to diverge from your methods for the sake of making exams hahahahah. I was wondering: do you have any insight on how to effectively study for an upcoming exam? ( a reading and listening exam, and I have gotten 6 videos and 6 texts to revise )

Nice interview, Steve. BTW, I've also started learning Crimean Tatar ... 😉

Let me tell you, I am Russian. The first time I heard Ukrainian was when I was 5 years old. From the point of view of a child, it was a funny twisted Russian language. It was funny to me and I was waiting for the adults to give out another batch of funny phrases in Ukrainian. And so it remained for life. Funny rural language.

Come on Steve the more similar the student's native language is to the target language the easier it is to learn it. There's no doubt about it. That's common sense. The simillarity cannot be an disadvantage when it comes to aquiring a foreign language.