How Different Are Russian and Ukrainian???

This video is all about the differences (and similarities!) between Russian and Ukrainian!

Special thanks to Dani Volynsky for his Russian audio samples, and Anton Som for his Ukrainian audio samples, ideas, and feedback. And additional thanks goes to some other native speakers who gave valuable input and feedback for this video, including Ihor Khodzhaniiazov (and others!).

Andres Resendez Borgia, Andrew Heckenberg, Anjo Barnes, Auguste Fields, Behnam Esfahbod, Bennett Seacrist, Brandon Gonzalez, Clark Roth, Fiona de Visser, Georgina Toland, Guillermo Jimenez, Jacob Madsen, John Moffat, Marcelo Loureiro, Matthew Etter, Michael Arbagi, Michael Cuomo, Nobbi Lampe-Strang, Patrick W., Rosalind Resnick,
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Gus Polly, Hannes Egli, Harry Kek, Henri Saussure, Herr K, Ina Mwanda, Jack Jackson, James and Amanda Soderling, James Lillis, Jay Bernard, Jens Aksel Takle, JESUS FERNANDO MIRANDA BARBOSA, JK Nair, JL Bumgarner, Justin Faist, Kevin J. Baron, Klaw117, Konrad, Kristian Erickson, Krzysztof Dobrzanski, Laura Morland, Lee Dedmon, Leo Coyne, Leo Barudi, Lincoln Hutton, Lorraine Inez Lil, Luke Jensen, M.Aqeel Afzal, Maanas Nukala, Mahmoud Hashemi, Margaret Langendorf, Maria Comninou, Mariana Bentancor, Mark, Mark Grigoleit, Mark Kemp, Markzipan, Maurice Chou, Merrick Bobb, Michael Regal, Mike Frysinger, mimichi, Mohammed A. Abahussain, Nicholas Gentry, Nicole Tovar, Oleksandr Ivanov, Oto Kohulák, Panot, Papp Roland, Patrick smith, Patriot Nurse, Paul Shutler, Pauline Pavon, Paulla Fetzek, Peter Andersson, Peter Nikitin, Peter Scollar, Pomax, Raymond Thomas, Renato Paroni de Castro, Robert Sheehan, Robert Williams, Roland Seuhs, Ronald Brady, Ryan Lanham, Saffo Papantonopoulou, Samuel Croes, Scott Irons, Scott Russell, Sergio Pascalin, Shoji AKAO, Sierra Rooney, Simon Blanchet, Spartak Kagramanyan, Steeven Lapointe, Stefan Reichenberger, Steven Severance, Suzanne Jacobs, Theophagous, Thomas Chapel, Tomáš Pauliček, Tryggurhavn, veleum, William MacKenzie, William O Beeman, William Shields, yasmine jaafar, Yeshar Hadi, and Éric Martin.

The following images are used under Creative Commons Sharealike license:

Still images which contain the above images (or adaptations thereof) are offered for use under the CC Sharealike license.

Music
Main: "Gisele Revisited" by South London Hifi.
Outro: "In the Corner" by John Deley.

[drewboyd]

Great video. Very informative. As a British guy who learned Russian while living there for 6 years and then moved to Ukraine where I've lived for 15 years I'd just like to add my opinion.
Pretty much everybody in Ukraine is fluent in both languages (except for the far East and West of the country) and they effortlessly switch between both. There's a myth in Russia that Ukrainians hate Russian speakers. This is nonsense. The biggest language crime here is speaking "surzhik" - mixing the two. This is frowned upon as being uneducated. People pride themselves on speaking "pure" forms of both languages.
A typical situation might be, that a person speaks Ukrainian at work to clients, but Russian to colleagues. They might write in Ukrainian a lot but speak more Russian. It's very common for people to speak Russian to one set of grandparents but Ukrainian to the other.
Russian speaking couples sometimes consciously chose to switch to Ukrainian after having a baby to give their kid a head start in school as lessons are taught in Ukrainian. People also change their language depending on geography. I remember driving out of Kyiv with a friend who I'd only ever heard speak Russian. We stoppped to ask for directions and he spoke Ukrainian. I asked why, he shrugged and said - coz we're in the countryside now - we were only about 20km out of the city!
The key thing to remember is that it's not theat people in the East speak Russian and the people in the West speak Ukrainian. People tend to switch between both languages based on a huge variety of factors many of which they don't consciously think about. It was very, very confusing for me when I first arrived here but now I love it.
The only down side for me is that although I can more or less understand Ukrainian (except the form spoken in Zakarpatiya) I can't speak it as I know that all Ukrainians understand Russian. Every single day I have conversations where I speak Russian but get a reply in Ukrainian as people just expect that you'll understand.

[helvette]

i'm belorussian, and i must say that russians poorly understand belorussian and ukrainian, but we and ukrainians understand each other very good

[mjzloje]

I am Ukrainian and my native language is Ukrainian, but I can write and speak Russian easily. But Ukrainian sounds very different from Russian. And yes, having lived for 1.5 years in the Czech Republic and having studied their language a little more, I can say that if you try, you can understand any Slavic language.

[Slov]

I am Ukrainian. I understand Belarusian 90% and Russian 100%. This is because I lived in the USSR where Russian was mandatory in schools and universities. Indeed, we are part of the eastern group of Slavs; Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are very similar, with about 70% of the words sounding almost the same. However, the remaining 30% are unique or resemble Polish or Slovak, as we occupy an intermediate position. Among other languages, I best understand Slovak, and slightly less Czech and Polish. But I can understand the topic being discussed in all these languages.
We need to love and appreciate each other, as it's clear we are descendants of common ancestors. It's regrettable that today Russia has committed such aggression and occupied our eastern territories. It's not true that speaking Russian was banned. Many people communicated, and many of our soldiers still speak Russian because of the USSR's policy of Russification of the republics. All republics, not just Ukraine, experienced this, but it was easier in Ukraine and Belarus because the languages are similar. For example, it was harder for Tajiks to learn Russian, and therefore less successful there.
Now Ukraine has started to support the Ukrainian language more, establishing quotas on television and radio, and similar measures. Putin dislikes this because he dreams of reviving the USSR, where Moscow would again be the capital of the empire and exert decisive influence on other nations. We don't want this; we just want to go our own way and be good neighbors to everyone.

[PerryPerry]

as a Persian, I must say, , , I really don't know why i'm watching this video comparing russian and ukranian.
I guess i'm kinda addicted to this channel.

[Korwinexile]

I am a linguist and a historian who speaks Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Polish languages of which the first two are my native languages, and I endorse this video as correct, well researched and informative. Well done!

[chirrion]

I'm Polish and I lived with eastern Ukrainian roommates for several months. They considered Russian to be their native language but also spoke Ukrainian. As I spoke neither Russian nor Ukrainian and they didn't speak English or Polish, we used to communicate by tossing synonyms at each other until we found a shared one. As time went by I had quite a bit of their vocabulary memorised, but only later did I realise that I had no idea which language all the words that I had learned actually belonged to. Come to think of it they might have been speaking surjik too and I wouldn't have even known. The end result is that I can't distinguish between the two languages to save my life unless it's in writing. The vocabulary shared with Polish doesn't even help because I expect both of these to have some vaguely eastern-sounding cognates of Polish words and I never know how much is too much for it to be Russian. I feel like I'll continue to be screwed unless I actually properly learn the languages, separately

[yxwhhul]

Once we rested on the sea in Croatia. A young russian family was sitting next to us on the beach. They didn't even understand that we were Ukrainians (we spoke Ukrainian). But we understood them. They commented on some of our actions, thinking that we are Croats or Slovenians and do not understand Russian. it was funny

[__SVAROG__]

I am Ukrainian, but before the the school I have spoken only Russian. I love my native language, but still speak Russian the most. I have never met Ukrainians, who didn`t understand Russian, but almost every Russian didn't know Ukrainian. Those languages are really similar, but I hate, when anyone says, Ukrainian is Russian`s dialect. I'm trying to speak only Ukrainian. Thank you for video. And sorry for my English.

[mistyy_midnight]

As a person who grew up speaking both of these languages, I believe their grammar is quite similar, but the pronunciation has major differences.
Also, I'm genuinely impressed by how in-depth your analysis was. The facts were very accurate.
Love your videos, keep up the amazing work😄

[DmitrySaharov]

I leave 16 years in Ukraine, i'm from Moldova, my parents was speaking Russian, i ended school in Russian and my university as well in Russian (in Moldova 2 official languages Russian and Romanian) Of cause i know Romanian as well fluent, and got good knowledge of UK English, after university i worked in USA company few years and my english was growing to a very good level too.

So at 23 years i was a person who can speak and write 3 very different languages (i'm not a professional, but they have absolutely different grammar and words base, so believe me i had a lot of pain in my childhood! :)

At 23 i was moving to Kyiv, and started to live in Ukraine with my wife. In 100% cases people talked to me Russian, so i did not have any need to learn Ukranian. But i did not understood it at all! It was the same as any other foreign unknown language! I was not able to get sense from any big sentence, or long speech! I did not understand TV shows or movies, it was absolutely impossible for me to understand Ukranian speaking people, and one time i was talking in English from one guy from west Ukraine who really did not know Russian, and was not able to get the fool value of my words. Ukranian for me was the same hard as any other Slavik language, and believe me, if you understand 2 words from 7 words it give you nothing :)

Now i fluent speak and understand Ukranian, and not bad can understand and speak Polish. Hope my story will help to somebody. Ukranian and Russian are like Holland, Sweedish, Dutch and German, they looks similar, but i'm sure that they are not :)

[insquared]

As a native Russian speaker, I find it often hard to understand Ukranian. I can understand somewhere about 30% just by hearing the similar words, everything else depends whether I understand the context or not. It's very similar to how I understand both Polish and Czech. Yet often Czech language has words similar to Russian which are direct antonyms to their russian meaning.
However Belarusian despite sharing around 80% of the vocabulary with Ukranian is much more similar to Russian, based on how good I can understand it.

[loza]

I'm a native Ukrainian speaker and I'm also fluent in Russian (though I never studied it). Your video is impressively correct! You did a really great job.

[haganesan]

There is one thing that can be constantly seen in Ukraine, but shocks most of foreigners. It is when dialogues happen in both languages at the same time, when one speaker asks questions in Russian and the other answers in Ukrainian and they continue to talk like that without switching to one language.


Thanks for the video, I will show it to any foreigner who thinks Ukrainian and Russian are the same.

[valman]

6:54 in addition, you can get this sound with combinations of letter "ьо". Basically, the first letter makes the previous sound softer and this leads to softer O. For example:
Сьогодні (Sohodni, "Today"), льон (lon, "flax"), всього (vsoho, "in all, in total, altogether"), сьомий (somyi, "seventh").

[LukasKamin]

Wow, it's an impressive extensive comparison of the two languages. I generally agree to what is said in the video, maybe some details were arguable, but nothing really significant. I was amazed to jear such a good analysis from an English speaking specialist, my appreciation 🙏. I myself am Ukrainian, who speaks mostly Russian, but can speak Ukrainian fluently 👍 when addressed in Ukrainian, and sometimes I give Zoom lessons in Ukrainian ( not as a subject, but as a language to deliver material in natural sciences and maths). Russian is totally understandable by Ukrainians because of the exposure that was quite intensive up to the active phase of the russian- Ukrainian war, now it's changing, though not so drastically as official media tend to present. Now there's a lot of hate against everything russian as well as associated with former USSR. And Belorussian and Polish are quite understandable maybe the first more, than the second, although some words may cause confusion, primarily false cognates, besides Polish has a significant amount of purely Latin lexics or borrowed via German, somme of the meanings are not obvious.

[Jiffzzy]

I am from the Netherlands and if I got a euro for every time someone told me: "if you speak German, you basically speak Dutch, trust me." I would be rich. I imagine it is kind of the same for Ukraine. The fact that it sounds the same at first doesn't mean it is the same. XD

[viktortrubaiev]

I'm astonished by the accuracy of this video. You've done a great research and emphasized the major part of similarities and differences. I'm saying this as native Ukrainian and Russian speaker from the north of Ukraine

[tmteam]

There is also a form of "a pluperfect conjugation" in russian: "Я БЫЛО читал эту книжку, да забыл ее содержание"
It is old form, and you don't hear it often in every day conversation

Actually a lot of different words from your video - are also exists in russia. Like in example
"Девушка которая сидит" can be pronounced like "Девушка что сидит", witch is very simmilar to ukrainian form. It is also old forms, but they exist in russian language and everybody understood you

[whybother]

I speak English, Dutch, Ukrainian and Russian. If an English speaker wants to get a feel for the difference between Ukrainian and Russian just try to listen to Dutch. Dutch and English even share a bit more vocabulary than Ukrainian and Russian, the grammar is pretty similar but the conjugations are somewhat different and some verb forms. Also differences in pronunciation. I'd say it's a comparable experience.