Why do a lot of Ukrainians speak Russian?

6 Comments

1. Alex says:

   January 24, 2012 at 9:32 pm

   Most of Southern and Eastern Ukraine plus the capital Kiev are predominantly Russian-speaking, because Russian is the native language of the majority of these regions’ population. Ukrainian is predominant in Central and Western Ukraine, although Russian is also perfectly understood and sometimes spoken. This is due to historic reasons – long and strong ties of Russia and Ukraine, closeness of cultures and languages and the fact that Ukraine has for a long time been a part of the Russian empire and later the Soviet Union. For a very long time Russian was considered a more prestigious and more developed language, while Ukrainian was regarded as a "peasant dialect". Even today Ukrainian sounds very funny to many Russians because it contains a lot of words and grammar structures which would be identified by native Russian-speakers as belonging to "low style" or "incorrect" or only characteristic for uneducated people living in provincial areas.

   According to Ukrainian constitution only Ukrainian is granted the rights of a "national language", however it also guarantees free development, use and protection of the Russian language as well.
2. Ruckus Jorgee says:

   January 24, 2012 at 9:32 pm

   Ukrainian is similar to Russian based on their words and sounds. Just like how the Japanese writing in Kanji is somewhat similar to Chinese writing but with Japanese characters. That is why Japanese people and can read some Kanji there, but not every one of them. Especially when one an have different meaning respectively in Chinese and Japanese.
3. 黎文后 says:

   January 24, 2012 at 9:32 pm

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus‘
4. nikolay says:

   January 24, 2012 at 9:32 pm

   Think of Ireland, where overwhelmingly more people speak English than Irish.

   On the other hand, the proportion of Ukrainians speaking Ukrainian is much greater (than of Irish people speaking Irish), and even more people understand it; partly because Russian and Ukrainian are related, partly because of Ukrainian language policies.
5. Eugene B says:

   January 24, 2012 at 9:32 pm

   This info is a bit wrong: few Ukrainians understand Ukrainian. Yeah, may be few Ukrainians use Ukrainian in daily life but definitely practically everyone understands it. Ukrainian is the official language here so without knowing it, it’s quite hard to get around: all documents are in this language, exams in universities, etc. As for "why", the answers likely lies in history. Check Kiev Rus, this was one single country in the beginning, then during later history Ukraine was under heavy Russian influence and then even later they again spent quite some time as a single country – USSR.
6. Nathan says:

   January 24, 2012 at 9:32 pm

   Because they are bordering countries.

   Think of it like (Mexico and the United States)

   Not everyone from Mexico can speak English, but a ton of people from the United States can speak Spanish.

   So you could pretend that the Ukraine was the US and Russian was Mexico, if that makes sense to you.