Ukrainian · Українська

About Ukrainian

Language family

Indo-European, East Slavic

Where it's spoken

Ukraine

Speakers

roughly 30–40 million speakers

Ukrainian and Russian share a common ancestor in Old East Slavic but diverged over centuries, with Ukrainian absorbing more Polish influence from its long historical ties to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It uses the Cyrillic alphabet with several letters not found in Russian. A long history of Russification policy under the Russian Empire and Soviet Union makes the language's ongoing revival a matter of active cultural and political importance today.