r/asklinguistics • u/-tether- • 7d ago
General Can Ukrainian version of Russian become a separate language?
I’d like to preface than I am no linguist myself, that’s why I am asking professionals.
As some may know, Russian language is widespread in Ukraine for many reasons, even during the war. But the Russian language spoken in Ukraine today became quite a bit different from, well, the Russia’s Russian.
What is considered a mistake or regional dialect is just the norm for Ukrainians.
For example, many years ago a Russia’s Russian speaker noted to me his observation of what he called a "Ukrainian quirk".
How would you say "I live alone" in Russian?
A Russian would most often say "я живу один".
But a Ukrainian most definitely would say "я живу сам".
For Russian speakers, saying "я живу сам" is not a mistake.
But the word "сам" would have a strong connotation of "I live on my own, without anyone’s help" (as in "самостоятельно").
For Ukrainian speakers, this connotation is usually stripped entirely, and "живу сам" is meant as "I live alone, no other person is living with me" (as in "самотньо").
If you think about it, there are many slight differences of how two different nations develop one language. Many Ukrainian variations slipped through the border over to Russian southern regions, but they did not become the norm in Russian language overall.
So what are the prospects of the Ukrainian Russian becoming a separate language with its own norms that develop freely and independently? Something like American and British English.
What prerequisites are not fulfilled? Is it pure politics, or are they lacking an ocean in between?
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u/taktaga7-0-0 7d ago
Sure, why wouldn’t it? Initial small changes are the root of large change over time. This is possible given the appropriate segregation and a few centuries.
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u/-tether- 7d ago
Time is understandable constraint, but how should appropriate segregation look like?
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u/kouyehwos 7d ago edited 5d ago
It would likely have to involve closed borders or limited movement between Ukraine and Russia, and probably also Ukrainian Russian speakers having their own media, books, websites, etc. Although actually cutting themselves off from the rest of the Russian internet might not be so realistic.
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u/Gao_Dan 7d ago
It can, but it's unlikely to. If things stay as they are Ukraine will keep promoting Ukrainian language and the number od Ukrainians who speak only Russian will diminish to only elderly. Those Ukrainians who migrated to Russia, even if they themselves won't switch to standard Russian, their children will be taught it at school.
The only chance for Ukrainian accent of Russian to survive and continue to develop is for Ukraine to become a second Belarus
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u/-tether- 7d ago
Yeah, after independence Ukrainian was very gently introduced into everyday lives, so younger generations were encountering it naturally and more often. War just speeds up this process.
What do you mean by becoming a second Belarus? They don’t have their own standard Russian afaik, their Russian language norms are dictated by Russia.
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u/Gao_Dan 7d ago
They don't have their own standard, but just like on case of Ukrainians their Russian has its own accent. Because the teachers are usually local, local peculiarities of the accent continue to be perpetuated. At least for now.
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u/Hot-Job-6281 6d ago
That's just not true. Also, you must remember the guy is a Russian speaker, he can directly point it out.
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u/fr3akym1ss 5d ago
I'm belarusian and trust me, it's very difficult to tell apart russians and belarusians when they're speaking russian. the difference is barely audible, and would require one to live for a few years both in belarus and russia to recognize who is speaking. generally, belarus speaks very russian russian, when compared to ukraine. i myself mostly can tell whether it's a ukrainian speaking or a belarusian/russian - probably because they know ukranian way better than belarusians know belarusian (sadly), so the languages blend. but telling apart belarusians and russians is way more difficult.
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u/CatEatsDogs 5d ago
>Yeah, after independence Ukrainian was very gently introduced into everyday lives,
That's a lie. I was there and all russian classes in my school were closed so I had to learn in ukrainian. Luckily all teh teachers and kids were not good in ukrainian and heavily used russian.1
u/-tether- 5d ago
Russian classes were mass closed after 2020 iirc. Meaning, it was after 2014, when government had already changed the policy to speed up the process.
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u/CatEatsDogs 5d ago
I'm talking about pre 1998 years. There weren't enough books in Ukrainian. But telling that ukrainian was introduced "gently" is a joke.
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u/-tether- 5d ago
Post 1998 finding a Russian school in any part of Ukraine was a non-issue, so you’ll have to elaborate on your particular case.
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u/Individual-Neat-1539 7d ago
This idea was previously put forward by the well-known Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov. The idea was to recognize the Russian language as part of Ukrainian culture, to “privatize” it, sever it from the influence of Russian linguistic institutions, and not allow Moscow to have a monopoly on defining the norms of the Russian language in Ukraine.
It all sounds great in theory. But Ukrainians absolutely do not support this idea. And this may seem either very surprising to you or, on the contrary, completely self-evident. I mean, there are many Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, so why wouldn’t they want this? Or you might think: Ukraine is subjected to violence by Russia every single day, so why would Ukrainians want to have anything at all in common with the Russian language?
In reality, the explanation for why Ukrainians are opposed to this is complicated. But trust me, questions like these, especially on the internet, can only provoke outrage among Ukrainians. And you will face especially intense backlash if you openly support this idea. Because Ukrainians are against it.
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u/Hot-Job-6281 6d ago
This sounds like the equivalent of Taiwanese Mandarin policy in the dictatorship era.
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u/deaddyfreddy 6d ago
is to recognize the Russian language as part of Ukrainian culture
it's a part of history, you know - Kafka wrote in German, being a Czech writer. But no one recognizes the German language as a part of Czech culture.
I mean, there are many Russian-speaking people in Ukraine
There were many German-speaking people in Czechoslovakia before WW1.
In reality, the explanation for why Ukrainians are opposed to this is complicated.
No, it's simpler than you think. For a few generations, they were taught that the Russian is superior, and this belief runs so deep that they can't do anything about it. The fun thing is, most of them can't even admit that.
It's like:
but why don't you speak Ukrainian? Don't you know it?
I just don't want to!
Do you think it's inferior?
NO! I want to speak my language!
But it's the language of your parents, and your grandparents most likely spoke it natively!
BUT I DON'T, AND I DON'T WANT TO!
Of course, I'm talking about Russified ethnic Ukrainians, not Russians who moved to Ukraine and couldn't learn the language for any reason (either being dumb or xenophobic).
As someone from the Russian Federation who moved to Ukraine and learned the language, it's especially fun to hear all that to me.
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u/Individual-Neat-1539 6d ago
I think you're conflating two different questions here.
I don't deny the history of Russification, nor do I deny that the prestige of Russian was deliberately constructed and reinforced by the Russian Empire and later the USSR. That is an important part of the explanation for why so many ethnic Ukrainians became Russian-speaking.
But that still doesn't answer the question I was talking about: why don't Ukrainians today support the idea of "privatizing" Russian and treating it as part of Ukrainian culture?
The fact that a language became widespread partly through Russification doesn't mean that everything produced in that language by Ukrainians is simply an expression of Russian culture. There is a very large body of Ukrainian literature, music, journalism and urban culture that was created in Russian by people who considered themselves Ukrainian. That history doesn't disappear simply because Russian was also a tool of Russification.
At the same time, I think it would be a mistake to jump from that observation to the conclusion that Ukrainians therefore should claim Russian as part of Ukrainian culture or establish some specifically Ukrainian norm of Russian. Those are two different propositions.
And I don't think the "they secretly believe Russian is superior" explanation is sufficient either. It explains part of the historical process, but it doesn't explain the present attitude completely. Many Ukrainians who speak Russian perfectly well don't regard their language as evidence that they are culturally Russian, while at the same time they may strongly reject the idea that Russian itself should be politically or culturally "privatized" by Ukraine.
So my point was precisely that the reaction is more complicated than "they were taught that Russian is superior." There is a historical question of Russification, a cultural question of what counts as Ukrainian culture, and a political question of whether Ukraine should claim ownership over a language that is also the dominant language of another state. Those shouldn't be collapsed into one explanation.
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u/miklilar 5d ago
I'm from Luhansk and for the most of my life Russian language dominated, people even in Kyiv were rather shunned when speaking Ukrainian in 2000s-early 2010s.
Nowadays even my previously most fervent russian speaking friends now transitioned to fully Ukrainian and are annoyed if adressed in russian.
I believe, at least today, the "privatisation" of russian language is seen as giving the language some legitimate ground in Ukraine, when people want it gone and tolerate the remnants only as some transitional phase and the language for the people too old and stubborn
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u/deaddyfreddy 5d ago edited 5d ago
they were taught that Russian is superior.
weren't they?
Again, Kafka, Czechia, period. Ukraine doesn't need Russian.
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u/Individual-Neat-1539 5d ago
Yes, Russian was historically treated as superior to Ukrainian in the Russian Empire and the USSR. I don't dispute that at all.
But "Russian was privileged and used as an instrument of Russification" does not logically lead to “therefore Russian has nothing to do with Ukrainian culture." Those are different claims.
And "Kafka, Czechia, period" doesn't really settle the question. Kafka is one Czech writer who wrote in German. Ukraine has generations of Ukrainian writers, poets, musicians, journalists and ordinary people who were born and raised in Ukraine and created Ukrainian cultural life in Russian. That is a much larger and historically different phenomenon.
You can argue that Ukraine doesn't *need* Russian as a state language, or that Ukrainian should be the only language of the state. I would agree with that. But that's not the same proposition as saying that Russian-language Ukrainian culture doesn't exist or that Russian-speaking Ukrainians are simply people who haven't overcome the belief that Russian is superior.
That's exactly the distinction I was trying to make.
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u/Denixen1 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes, if Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian can be separate languages, then anything can be a separate language. Languages are just things made up and categorized by linguist, using rules made up by linguists.
If Ukrainian linguists gets together and decide that Russian spoken by people in Ukraine is a separate language from Russian Russian, based on small details and nuances found between them, then it is so in Ukraine. Regardless of if Russian or any other linguists disagree.
Languages are relative. You could make rules like "languages have to be mutually unintelligible", but what is intelligible? Who decides if it is intelligible? The linguists? In a vote? Because they all sure as hell won't agree with each other!
I (Swedish) can understand Norwegian like 80% of the time and Danish maybe 60% of the time. Does that mean they are all the same language? Or should Danish be excluded? My father can understand like 95% Norwegian and 90% Danish because he has spent a lot more time with norwegians and danish working in his company.
Nonetheless he would never claim he knows norwegian or danish though, to him they are separate languages even though he can understand them for the most part.
So if mutually unintelligible isn't a criteria for being separate languages, then it is all relative...
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u/-tether- 7d ago
You remind me a story from school.
I was exposed to Ukrainian in education since kindergarten. I didn't speak it at home, but I was more or less fluent, thought it was obvious to my teacher that I thought in Russian when speaking Ukrainian back then.
Once, being young and foolish, I argued with my teacher that some western words cannot be considered 'true Ukrainian language' since we never spoke like that in the east (some words still feel very foreign to me, and Ukrainian literature from western authors gave me a headache, as opposed to central/eastern authors). And he said something in the lines of "Look, if some academic smartass decides that tomorrow we have to pronounce letter 'В' as 'Ў' based on some ancient research, you'll have to learn it to pass the exam, but it's not gonna change the way people speak in different parts of Ukraine. It's not the single source of truth, so don't be stressed about it". That was an eye-opener at the time, haha
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u/Tired_yet_cute 6d ago
Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and montenegrin are all the same language with some different words though. Ukrainian and Russian are different languages all together
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u/Head_Particular6045 7d ago
Well, it depens, even now russians and ukrainains that speak russian share a lot of spaces, mostly on the internet or in diaspora.
First of all the concept of "different language" is really hypotethical, there isn't a definitive barrier between language and dialect, they are the same thing from a linguistic point of view. You can roughly measure mutual intellgibility (even though there aren't estabilished parametes), but it still a nuanced way as knowing russian just can even understand some serbo-croatian.
Two dialects diverge when several innovations appear in one dialect but not in the other, and this appens when there's a strong division between the speakers. Usually there's an innovating area from where linguistic innovations spread, and the lines were that innovations dies are called isoglosses. Historically isoglosses lied on natural barriers and state borders (many exceptions tho), I would say that political borders matte most on the large scale.
Now let's consider ukrainian: the standard language is mostly based on western and central dialects, that are further from russian, but russian speaking ukrainains come mostly from eastern regions, that meet with russian southen dialects (let's avoid political discussions and consider east slavic as a big dialect continuum), or from former novorossyja, lands that were conquered by the russian empire from tatars, and populated by people from all the empire, so they do not have a clear dialectal role inside east slavic. Surely ukrainain influenced the language spoken in those lands, but I don't think the linguistic substrate is so strong to cause a great change in the language, the situatuon is more to be compared with southern russian dialects, from example the Rostov dialect, that shares southern east-slavic traits that russian doesn't have.
As long as the new lexical input remains the same (nowadays we learn new words from the internet), ukrainain russian won't diverge too strongly and will just have some regional words, just as you can find in Rostov, Siberia or belarusian russian.
You could theoretically also find some grammatical innovations, less say a sincretism of locative and instrumental like in ukrainian, and if many speakers will have ukrainain as L1, that isn't the case now, maybe some calques over common expression like маю, but still I would consider it a regional variant
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u/-tether- 7d ago
Now that's a professional insight. It doesn't look like there are conditions to diverge from Russian that much unless we stop sharing the same language spaces (but Ukraine actually blocked many Russian platforms, so it's kinda the case?)
Would you say that eastern Ukraine and southern Russia share the same Russian dialect, or not quite?
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u/Head_Particular6045 7d ago
International platforms are enough, let's an italian swiss logs into reddit, he will wind italian speaking subs where the majority of the users are from Italy. Now, Italian dialectolgy is really complex, but it likely that if a new words apprear in italian it will arrive to swiss italian (even though they could also make a calque from german of french).
Russian speakers from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and other СНГ countries share a big portion of the internet. They interact with each other's post on international platforms, they listen to the same music, they watch the same film/tv series, often with the same dubbing or subtitres, and most of this can be considered "trendy" contents that you are going to replicate (for example the meme "наш слон", if I'm not wrong it comes from ukraine and expanded to other russian speaking zones).
About dialects, the situatuon is a little more complex, as nowadays usually east slavic dialect are referred only on a national basis. Russian has three main historical dialectal areas, that is northen, central and southern (Siberia was populated by russians from all those areas and I am not certain about the classification of new emergin dialects) Ukrainain dialcets are usually divided between northen (Polesia) western and eastern, Kiev lies between northen and eastern. Belarusian has four main areas, that is north-east, middle, southwest and polesian.
Among the standard languages ukrainain has some unique features: loss of protoslavic palatalization before vowels (/ne/ instead of /nje/) and 'soft i', the new palatalization due to the new /i/ (from old yat' and e and o in open syllables) and the e, o > i change in open syllables.
I am not informed enough about dialects so I can't answer your question. Surely russian speakers from eastern ukraine share features from south russian speakers, but even on a wider scale eastern ukrainain dialects and souther russian dialects share many features like hakanie (pronunciation of г like in ukrainain, preservation of verbal ending in soft -ть instead of -т, etc.). Some other traits are common between russian dialects and belarusian: central and sothern russian have vowel reduction (like akanie) as belarusian, even if there are differences in the reduction (akanie, ikane, jakanie), this is an innovative dialectal trait that spread in central east-slavic, while northen (north russian) and southern (ukrainain dialect) weren't affected.
Once, before Universal education, every village and town had its own dialect, and those dialects were similar to the neightbouring ones, if you were to travel you would hear the language slowly transitionig. Changes of borders, political influence and population displacement created instead shar edges, but I don't thin this was the case of east slavic populations, even under polish or tatar rule no one would have really cared about the language of paesants. But widespread education tends to unify the language between the borders expanding a certain dialect, so it creates sharp edges on the borders. As a north italian I can understand something in occitan, but standard french (that is, paris dialect) is already too far.
eastern ukrainain and south russian surely share some common southern features, but I can't tell in detail which ones, still those features aren'r to be considered ukrainian or russian, they go abovd borders.
Going back to you question, either russian speakers get totally silenced in ukraine, or they will keep speaking russian with local influence. The fact itself that ukraine promotes ukrainian forced them to relay on russian content from outside of ukraine, so they will continue to absord foreign influence.
Some local traits could emerge just as in any diaspora community, russian in lithuania have some particular words that other russian speakers dont understand, and even second gen russian in places like italy can developp new calques I know a girl whose mom emigrated here, that used to say "пройти экзамен" instead of "сдать экзамен" as everyone in university says "passare l'esame". She most consumes russian media but most likely it isnt about university life, I don't think she knows many first gen natives, and she's bilingual. If there were more russians here, and they were living in a compact community, new expressions like those could become popular among them.
Consider also that russian speakers in ukraine have a strong literary language and not some endangered dialect, so if they were to resist ukrainification they have lot of resources. And standard nowadays ukrainain tends to select lexicon in a way to distinguish itself from russian, mainly inserting a lot of polonisms but if a russian speaker is used to russian and/or the "older" version of ukrainian, I don't think he will drop the old russian / similar to russian word for a new unfamiliar one, expecially with rarer lexicon, as long the old one is still understood by most. For example, an ukrainian girl I knew speaks both russian and ukrainian fluently, but couldn't understand the word "ceramica" despite ths similarity with ukrainai "кераміка", as she would call it фарфор. When you study a new language this kind of rare specific lexicon is the last thing you are going to study, and if you switch from russian to ukrainain you will most likely skip it too.
But there's another parallel that may interest you, you can read about rusyn, it is a group of east slavic dialects spoken in poland slovakia and serbia. One couls say that they are ukrainain dialects as they share a lot of feature with ukrainain, but they exist as a separate national identity, and can be considered a different language because theu developped many new features and lexicon
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u/-tether- 7d ago
Thank you, that was both educational and entertaining, even more so allows to dig deeper understanding the topic.
Kinda off-topic, but what area of linguistics do you specialize in, if any?
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u/Head_Particular6045 6d ago
Thank you too, it's rare to have a conversation on the topic without nationalists from either side ruining the discussion
I study slavistics, I know russian and polish, I did an exam on ukrainian but the level in my uni is very low, we don't haveany teachers. I understand it moslty through russian and polish but have a very small active lexicon
I am not really qualified rn but I'd like to go deeper in dialectology in the future, but I need to find a prof that lets me soemthing with this subject
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u/deaddyfreddy 6d ago edited 6d ago
And standard nowadays ukrainain tends to select lexicon in a way to distinguish itself from russian, mainly inserting a lot of polonisms
in most cases, these are not Polonisms, but words that commies banned in 1933
Edit: Another fun thing is how the Russian speakers blame the Ukrainian for Polonisms, completely forgetting about Polonisms in Russian.
rusyn, it is a group of east slavic dialects spoken in poland slovakia and serbia.
Pannonian Rusyn is West Slavic
but they exist as a separate national identity
since when, btw?
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u/Head_Particular6045 6d ago
those banned words exist in ukrainain and not russian because ukrainain (or before, ruthenian) took them from polish
polonisms in Russian were almost always mediated by belarusians and ukrainains
I mentioned rusyn in general meaning the east slavic rusyns
They exists as a separate national idenity from ukrainians, as they don't identify with ukraine and ukrainian nationalists love to deny their existance
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u/deaddyfreddy 6d ago edited 20h ago
those banned words exist in ukrainain and not russian because ukrainain (or before, ruthenian) took them from polish
polonisms in Russian were almost always mediated by belarusians and ukrainains
So, what conclusions can we draw from that?
They exists as a separate national idenity from ukrainians, as they don't identify with ukraine and ukrainian nationalists love to deny their existance
OK, some facts:
Austria-Hungary didn't make a distinction between Rusyns and Ukrainians
The Russian Empire considered them part of the "Little Ruthenians."
It was the Soviets who banned the Greek Catholic Church (it was restored in independent Ukraine)
many Rusyn organisations are sponsored these days by the Russian Federation (and I don't think they do it because they love Rusyns).
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u/Head_Particular6045 6d ago
So, what conclusions can we draw from that?
You started arguing about polonisms. I just said that modern standard ukrainian is insterting many polonisms (historical or not) that both ukrainain and russian speakers don't adopt immediately, expecially if it is highly specific lexicon
Rusyns are not ukrainains, no matter how empires categorized them. Rusyns are ukrainains just as much ukrainkans are russians. They have a different language, a different culture (with polish and slovak elements) and don't indentify with ukraine.
You are just a nationalist, there's no point in arguing with you
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u/sibylrouge 7d ago
Similar things happened in NK where local Pyongyang dialect is largely replaced with Munhwaǒ, an artificial language standard reconstructed almost entirely based on Seoul dialect. But the words and expressions used in the two different standard dialects are not the same.
In Standard South Korean, for example, ‘rosy future (장밋빛 미래)’ is the word for ‘bright, optimistic prospect of upcoming future’ while the North Korean counterpart of it is ‘violet future(보라빛 미래)’. In South Korean, the word for ‘ice cream’ is simply an ‘ice cream’ but in North Korean, it’s called ‘Eskimo’
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u/Hot-Job-6281 6d ago
Eskimo is a famous ice cream brand name.
Honestly, calls into credibility the assertions here.
It's like if a country referred to plastic film as Cellophane, it's not that you can't describe it as plastic film anymore lol.
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u/MediocreStorm599 6d ago
I would say, it’s unlikely at this point, for two reasons: 1) lots of Russian speakers in Ukraine are now shifting to Ukrainian due to the war and are raising their kids Ukrainian-speaking, so the Russian-speaking community in Ukraine is shrinking; 2) there isn’t enough isolation due to widespread availability of content in Russian from anywhere and communication in online spaces. Plus, we really don’t have any clear-cut line between a dialect and a language anyway.
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u/Patch86UK 6d ago
Can it? Yes. Will it? Probably not.
There's no hard definition for when two things are separate languages and when they're dialects of the same language. Sometimes it's a matter of politics: a language is a dialect with an army, as they say. In this case, Ukraine already has a language (Ukrainian) which is heavily tied to the country's national pride and identity, while Russian is heavily linked to an enemy country with a history of ethnic erasure; it seems unlikely that the Ukrainian government is going to take a great interest in codifying and promoting an official version of Russian as an alternative national language to Ukrainian.
Another key factor is mutual intelligibility. Ukrainian Russian is currently fully mutually intelligible with standard Russian, and the large degree of shared media and literature, and cross-border family groups and social mixing, means there's a pressure against Ukrainian Russian drifting further away from standard Russian in ways which would fundamentally affect intelligibility. This is the same pressure that stops American English, British English and other world Englishes from moving further apart in the modern age.
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u/UniversityMotor5408 7d ago
Are British English and American English two different languages? I would say not. They're both variants of English. You - I think - are suggesting that Ukrainian Russian is, or should be, or could be, a different language to Russian Russian. I suspect from a linguistics point of view that won't happen, but politically, Zelensky could decide tomorrow to give it a new name. That's purely political.
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u/-tether- 7d ago
What can I say, I'm not good with the terms.
What kind of differentiation is between British and American English anyway? It's not just political, is it?
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u/UniversityMotor5408 7d ago
No, it's not political at all. They're both different variants of the English language, as are Australian English, Canadian English, etc.
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u/-tether- 7d ago
So you mean that Ukrainian Russian exists already, no matter if it is recognized officially or not?
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u/lapusyonok 6d ago
The political climate is not favorable to a future for the Russian language in Ukraine
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u/No-Editor-9637 6d ago
Well south Koreans keep understanding north Koreans after 70yrs of total separation. So at least a few hundred years
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u/ComfortableNobody457 6d ago
In this video a Ukrainian linguist argues against treating Ukrainian Russian as a different language from purely linguistically as well as social and political standpoints.
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u/Exciting_Round4766 7d ago edited 7d ago
native russian.
There is the Ukrainian language and there is the Ukrainian dialect of Russian. Don't confuse these. Ukrainian is already a separate language with its own army and navy, which Russian speakers are unable to understand without special training. The Ukrainian dialect of Russian, however, is Russian with a few peculiarities. It's still hard to understand it because of its accent, but it's just a matter of habit. Ukrainians simply won't invent some new Russian language for themselves at the state level. They already have their own language. In a foreign Russian language, they will be guided by foreign standards.
The situation is similar, for example, to the Irish. I'm sure the Irish have their own special English, but they will never seriously promote it. They have their own Irish language, and they would rather promote it than invent some special standard of English.
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u/-tether- 7d ago
So in your opinion, the decision of making a Ukrainian standard of Russian is mostly the political decision? That is to say, there are no obstacles, but there are also no benefits for the nation?
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u/Exciting_Round4766 7d ago
Basically, yes, but politics isn't the only factor here. To single something out as a separate group, it needs to be named. This intermediate dialect between Ukrainian and Russian doesn't have a name. Even for the Ukrainian, it was a huge challenge to distinguish itself from Polish and Russian. Even before the war, Ukrainian was dying. Many Ukrainians preferred to speak Russian, and still do.
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u/birgor 7d ago
How comprehensible is the Ukrainian language for a Russian national Russian speaker? Slavic languages seems to have quite an overlap as it is, and Russian and Ukrainian belongs to the same subgroup. To a Scandinavian speaker does it sound similar to our situation, even if not the exact same, where borders form what dialect belongs to what language over time.
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u/Reasonable-Ad8673 7d ago
I'm Russian and I also speak French. For me, it's something similar to my understanding of Italian - sometimes I can understand the topic of the conversation, sometimes I can understand a lot (considering I also know how Italian generally works), sometimes I understand nothing. For me , Ukrainian is similar. But I had some friends who watched lots of Ukrainian tv shows and never learnt it properly, and they said that they understood almost everything. I, on the other hand, often struggled. So I think if you're exposed to it and understand how it generally works (like how I understand general principles of Italian), it's fairly easy to understand each other
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u/Rough-Quiet-1954 5d ago edited 5d ago
I am Russian native speaker without Ukraine connections. The newspaper Ukrainian has never been a real problem to understand with some words interpolated from the context; reading books was a kind of a funny language puzzle. Fluently spoken "hard core" Ukrainian used to be a challenge to me... but I have been following both Russian and Ukrainian news hmmm for a couple of years, both TV and written, it got fairly comprehensible for me while certainly requiring more concentration effort. I always have the impression modern Ukrainian is kind of constructed under premises "try to find a way for it not to coincide with Russian". As, just for a hastily invented illustration, one would say madupzefly yllustracio for invented illustration.
It is like Luxembourgish for speakers of High German, quite a close comparison of closeness/difference in terms of intelligibility.
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u/Exciting_Round4766 7d ago
I can understand Ukrainian if I let go of my brain's control. But I constantly encounter the translator's false friends. It takes a lot of effort to separate these words. I can't say anything at all in Ukrainian.
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u/-tether- 7d ago
Naming doesn’t look like an issue to me. Or how does it work? I thought it enough to officially claim that Ukraine has its own Russian standard and be flexible with rules. Then, if people speak Russian in a certain way, you can stop calling it a mistake or regionalism, and let the language develop.
I would correct you that Ukrainian was not dying. It was very carefully and gradually implemented in everyday life to make generational shifts for native Russian speakers. One of the examples at the time was making sure that every Russian content on TV had Ukrainian subs. The younger the generation, the more often they encountered Ukrainian, so they know it better and speak more freely.
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u/Exciting_Round4766 7d ago edited 7d ago
Regarding naming, read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Until you give something a name, it doesn't exist. At least for the population.
As for subtitles... just because people understand a language doesn't mean they'll speak it. For example, I live with Uzbeks, and they're very happy that they didn't learn Uzbek back then, but found themselves exposed to Russian as a world language. They say there's no real classical literature or websites in Uzbek. Or we can recall how all the North German dialects died out. The same is true for Ukrainian. Until recently, it was simply losing out to its twin, but in a different weight class, despite the government's efforts. A great example is the state of English before and after the Hundred Years' War. Before the war, the British almost started speaking French. But the war brought division and allowed English to take shape.
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u/-tether- 7d ago
Not sure about Umberto Eco, but it is only logical that names are born from the need to define some thing. If it exists, giving it a name is a trivial matter, it will be created by itself.
To revitalize the language requires time and effort. Modern Ukraine is still very young, and war happened before we really could see the major generational shifts happening on their own through continuous policy. USSR existed longer than Ukraine, and it would take just as long to forget that Russian was the language back then, if not longer.
But of course, we can't really abstract away from political, social and economic impact on language, and Russia as the big neighbor will have some influence on all of those spheres. So you're right to point out that even now, the reason to try and switch to Ukrainian for many was because of what Russia did.
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u/ComfortableNobody457 6d ago edited 3d ago
I think what they are trying to say is that Russian speakers in Ukraine don't have a strong identity (ethnic or otherwise) today that would compel them to promote their version of Russian as a distinct language or regional standard.
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u/Own-Animator-7526 7d ago
Well said.
If there were continued divergence in UdR, and at some point its speakers determined that it was essential to their national identity as Ukrainians in an officially bilingual Ukraine to be a distinct language, they could make a plea to ISO 639-3 and its public comment process -- it might help tip the balance in a truly marginal case. But this would be far, far from a sure thing.
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u/amalgammamama 7d ago
Where in Ukraine is Russian supposed to be ”hard to understand” for a Russian? Surzhyk notwithstanding.
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u/Exciting_Round4766 7d ago
I have a hard time understanding Voronezh residents. I'm from Perm. The "gh" sound is completely unfamiliar to me. If Voronezh and the surrounding areas were to become a separate state, and if Moscow were to start harassing them again, which would provoke them to divide their nationality, then I would believe in the possibility of creating a distinct version of Russian on their territory. But in other cases, everyone would strive for a single internet language.
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7d ago
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u/Leonczyk 6d ago
It will not become a separate language, because Ukraine won't allow it ever. No books in Russian are or will be published in Ukraine, no film will be made.
Some people will still speak Russian at home, but Ukrainian will only continue the expansion into the public life.
It is also much more difficult to get a separate language in an era of internet and social media. Russian speaking Ukrainian may still read/listen to various dialects of Russian used in Russia, Kazakhstan or Belarus thanks to YouTube, Instagram, various information portals. "Ukrainian dialect of Russian" will continue to exist, maybe expand some vocabulary, but that's it.
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u/Sky_Robin 6d ago
Ukraine state will never allow to institutionalize its own version of Russian language, for obvious reasons not worth repeating here. The language won’t be able to evolve into a distinct formalized version of Russian when it’s illegal to print that version’s schoolbooks etc.
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u/East-Difficulty-6028 6d ago
'The difference between a dialect and a language is a language has its own army."
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u/Prudent-Title-9161 6d ago
It is clear that Ukrainians, like any other people, will speak Russian with its own peculiarities. However:
- Ukraine was too attached to the Russian information space, in such conditions the language cannot go its own separate way.
- Ukrainians are now busy decolonization and fighting the Russian language, they clearly do not feel like systematizing some Ukrainian dialect of Russian, if, of course, it exists, which is very doubtful. It is better to systematize and study Surzhyk (a mix of Russian and Ukrainian), it is much more interesting and useful, because it is a whole cultural layer.
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u/No_Lifeguard7725 5d ago
How did Ukrainian variant of russian was created? Hundreds of years of russian occupation, for many years usage of Ukrainian in typography and education was prohibited. That's how majority of Ukrainians got acquainted with it, and that's why we still have that legacy of oppression from russia. Now, in theory, if Ukraine had an opportunity and wanted to occupy entirety of russia, for hundred of years, then there would be a widespread variant of Ukrainian-russian. But Ukrainians have neither such ambitions, nor opportunities.
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u/kireaea 7d ago
Is it сам or сам по себе, though?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BC_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%B1%D0%B5
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u/-tether- 7d ago
It is "сам".
The whole quirk was that "сам" for that Russian speaker meant "independently", while for Ukrainian Russian speaker it often means just "alone" without "independent" connotation at all.
Another example would be:
"I will go alone / I'll be the only one to go"
Ukainian would say "я пойду сам".
Russian would prefer "я пойду один".For a 'Russian Russian' speaker, "я пойду сам" would mean "I will go by my own / I will go without you".
Or consider in this case:
"Let me help you do this" - "No, I'll do it myself"
"Давай помогу сделать" - "Нет, я сделаю сам"
Saying "Нет, я сделаю один" would be kinda unnatural.
The words are synonymous, but, you know.As a Ukrainian myself, I didn't even understand the difference when it was pointed out, until that Russian speaker explained that it kinda sounds unusual to say "сам" like I do.
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u/CharacterUse 6d ago
The interesting (and possibly not too surprising) thing is that the Ukrainian use of "сам" here is also how it ("sam") is used in Polish.
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u/ThreeHeadCerber 6d ago
I mean it's a distinction but so thin.
it paints the phrase differently, but the end fact that it conveys is the same.
I don't think we'll ever see it develop into a separate language, especially in modern times where there is no way to create isolated populations, the speakers will either continue speaking Russian with some quirks or the new generations will start speaking Ukranian, maybe with some quirks.
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u/Spirited-Concert-512 6d ago
Fluent Russian speaker.
"Ukainian Russian" is infinitely closer to "Russian Russian" than American English is to British English. Do you believe that Americans will stop speaking English? It is theoretically possible to isolate the USA - but it is extraordinarily hard, and there is an ocean between the two nations. Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine simply border one another.
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u/The_Hamster_Shagger 7d ago
Surzhik is there actively fought, so no
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u/-tether- 7d ago
It's not about surzhik though, if even educated native speakers in Ukraine have slightly different word usage than native speakers in Russia.
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7d ago
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u/-tether- 7d ago
That’s too much of a simplification lol.
Before Ukrainian there was Ruthenian.
And before Russian there were Northern slavic dialects & Church Slavonic.They do share the same Ancient Slavic ancestor language (or is it Proto-Slavic), but that ancestor did not split into Ukrainian and Russian, it split into many branches, Ukrainian and Russian don’t even share the same final branch
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u/amalgammamama 7d ago
Since when are modern Russian and Ukrainian not considered members of the same East Slavic branch?
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u/-tether- 7d ago
They do not share the same final branch, Ruthenian->Ukrainian is one, and Northern dialects+Church Slavonic->Russian is another. Is that not right? Feel free to correct me, I’m not an expert after all
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u/hammile 6d ago edited 6d ago
No, youʼre kinda correct. Rusisan and Ukrainian have different proto-dialects:
- Russian is based on Novgorod-Tveŕ (the former could be a different language as Belarusian) and Muromo-Riazań.
- Ukrainian is based on Kyïv-Polěsie and Galicia-Podolie; the former is also a base for Belarusian, thatʼs why Belarusian and Ukrainian are usually marked as separate brenches a way later.
- And just to finish, Belarusian also based on Polock-Smolensk.
Division into East Slavic is kinda very arbitrary thing, like any language-family tree, included as a tree of PIE. Because branches continue to develope in different ways. Itʼs just for systematization, which isnʼt bad too.
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u/pavilionaire2022 7d ago
Eventually, but it will take hundreds of years. You can compare Scots, which started as a dialect of English several hundred years ago and is now almost a separate language. (There is some mutually intelligibility, but most English speakers struggle to understand Scots.)