Difference between Russian and Ukrainian languages

[RobertX]

For someone who speaks either Russian or Ukrainian, or both, how different are the languages? Is it like Cantonese and Mandarin?

I don't think I have time in my life to seriously seek a job in the United Nations, but, hey, you can't resist not knowing about it.

Now when I ask this in this forum, I know for sure that I can Google the difference, but I am asking on request of student experience.

Additionally, I might like some insight on topics like transitioning between both languages or difficulties in juggling with two languages.

Lastly, I'm talking about languages, not politics, so please leave political views out of it. I just want a discussion about an interesting topic, nothing more and nothing less.

Thank you.

[EddieXTC]

As someone who doesn't speak Cantonese or Mandarin, how should i know?
Ur searching for someone who speaks Russian, Ukrainian, Cantonese and Mandarin. Small group i guess.

As someone who talks alot on discord (voice), russians and ukrainians seem to understand eachother mostly

I'm pretty sure it's not as close as British and American are.




But the interwebs say:
Because of their shared past, Russian and Ukrainian do have a lot of words in common. Both of them also use the Cyrillic alphabet, too. But exactly how similar the two are — linguistically —  is where things get complicated again.

Both of the alphabets consist of 33 letters. Russian has the letters Ёё, ъ, ы and Ээ, which are not used in Ukrainian. Instead, Ukrainian has Ґґ, Єє, Іі and Її. The pronunciation of words and letters varies as well: И in Russian is pronounced like [ee] in the words “seed” or “meet”. In Ukrainian, “И” is pronounced like a short [i], as in “kill” or “live.”

How about words that are written the same way in both languages? Surprisingly, they could mean totally different things. For example, приклад: in Russian, the word means “rifle butt,” while in Ukrainian it means “example.”

Months in Russian have a lot in common with other European languages: Январь/Yanvar’ — January, Февраль/Fevral’ — February, while Ukrainian saved the Slavic names: Січень/Sichen’ (meaning “the one that cuts”) — January, Лютий/Lyutyi (meaning “the harsh one”) — February.

The grammar in both languages is similar, but, predictably, there are a few differences: While Ukrainian includes the past continuous tense, there are only three tenses in Russian (past, present and future). In Ukrainian, one might say “I am waiting for you” — Я чекаю на тебе; however, there is no need for a conjunction in Russian: Я жду тебя. Ukrainian also uses forms of “to be”: бути, and while Russian has the word itself — быть — it is completely omitted in the present tense.

[rezwaki]

Mostly I can understand it but it's because of the context (that's made up of certain bits that I catch from the whole speech/sentence),, all in all Id say they're similar enough for most of the people to understand each other or that's how my experience been over the years

[RobertX]

So if I say "I want you to hit me as hard as you can" in Russian to a Ukrainian, or vice versa, they'll do it?

EDIT: See, with Cantonese and Mandarin, speech can be misunderstood, but they can normally write stuff down because written Chinese can be understood by all Chinese if it's in standard form.

[rezwaki]

Most of Ukrainians know Russian really well, I'd say on the native level I have quite a few friends from there and they all understand and speak to me perfectly fine, so if I said that to a Ukrainian they'd understand, as for a Ukrainian saying this to a Russian personally myself--- I'd be able to understand it yes.
In Ukrainian it'd be "Я хочу, щоб ти вдарив мене якомога сильніше" which is totally understandable, the only word that I don't know for sure what means is the one before the last one (якомога) which from the context understandably means 'as [much] as [possible/you can]'

Russian: ya hochu chtobi ti udaril menia kak mojno silnee
Ukrainian: ya hochu shob ti vdariv mene yakomoga silnishe --- you can see they're similar enough or at least that's how I see it

PS: yak means kak, so you can logically see that yakomoga is the same as kak mojno

[RobertX]

So it's the accents that are what separates between the languages?

Can you say that they're dialects instead of languages?

[rezwaki]

No I wouldn't say so, and it's not different accents really, it's two close languages, close but different,,,, Belarussian can be understood by Russians too but it's more different (my experience)

[RobertX]

Has the Soviet Union era helped the closeness of the Russian and Ukraine languages, among other former Soviet states like Poland and Belarus, or has Russian and Ukrainian been closer before the Soviet Union?

[EddieXTC]

Guess its more like Swedish and Norwegian they also get eachother but it are two dif languages.

[rezwaki]

Has the Soviet Union era helped the closeness of the Russian and Ukraine languages, among other former Soviet states like Poland and Belarus, or has Russian and Ukrainian been closer before the Soviet Union?

The Soviet Union has TRIED to help in the BEGINNING (the 1920s so called Ukrainization) after that there was a strong shift in their policies and Ukrainian language as well as Belarussian was being disposed of almost in all possible spheres of everyday-life, (Ukrainian became a tad (maybe not a tad but it got closer) closer to Russian because of that as well)

the result of it is more than visible in Belarus where Belarussian is basically non-existent, neither on the official level (jurisprudence, documents etc) nor in the 'folk' sphere (people talking to each other)

in Ukraine it's better because of the political course it had taken after the collapse of the USSR and some other reasons I know nothing about

... PRior to the Soviet Union Ukrainian and Russian was close, Russian was so called 'church-slavic' language while Ukrainian was more like the language of the folk, prior to even that Ukrainian was a language spoken by people(s) and Russian did not exist