Ukrainian language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ukrainian
українська мова ukrajinśka mova
Native to	Ukraine
Ethnicity	Ukrainians
Native speakers	45 million  (2007)ne2007
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic East Slavic Ukrainian
Early forms:	Old East Slavic Ukrainian
Writing system	Cyrillic (Ukrainian alphabet) Ukrainian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Ukraine Crimea  Transnistria
Recognised minority language in	Bosnia and Herzegovina  Croatia  Czech Republic  Hungary Moldova  Poland  Romania  Serbia  Slovakia
Regulated by	National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine: Institute for the Ukrainian Language, Ukrainian language-information fund, Potebnya Institute of Language Studies
Linguasphere	53-AAA-ed < 53-AAA-e (varieties: 53-AAA-eda to 53-AAA-edq)
Ukrainian-speaking world
Ukrainian language and Ukrainians with their neighbors in the early 20th century.
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Percentage of people in Ukrainian regions who speak Ukrainian as their native language (for 2001)

The Ukrainian language (Ukrainian: українська (мова), ukrajins'ka mova) is a language spoken mainly in Ukraine. It belongs to the East Slavic group of languages. This group also includes Russian and Belarusian. Ukrainian is part of the larger Indo-European language family.

Ukrainian is the second most spoken Slavic language. It is the official language of Ukraine. About 37 million people in Ukraine speak it as their first language. Around the world, more than 50 million people speak Ukrainian.

The Ukrainian language uses the Cyrillic letters for writing. You might find some Ukrainian words that sound similar to words in the Polish language.

Ukrainian Alphabet: Letters and Sounds

The Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters. It is based on the Cyrillic alphabet. Each letter has a capital and a small form. Learning the alphabet is the first step to reading and writing Ukrainian.

This table shows the Ukrainian letters. It also shows how they are written in English and German. This helps people from other countries understand the sounds.

• The letter Й (Y) is mostly used before the letter О (O).
• The soft sign Ь (ь) is not a letter that makes a sound. It changes the sound of the letter before it, making it "softer." It never appears at the start of a word.
• An apostrophe (’) can be used to show that a consonant before it is not "softened."

Images for kids

• 

  Miniature of St Luke from the Peresopnytsia Gospels (1561).

• 

  Ukrainian speakers in the Russian Empire (1897)

• 

  The Ukrainian text in this Soviet poster reads: "The Social base of the USSR is an unbreakable union of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia".

• 

  The 1921 Soviet recruitment poster. It uses traditional Ukrainian imagery with Ukrainian-language text: "Son! Enroll in the school of Red commanders, and the defense of Soviet Ukraine will be ensured."

• 

  Anti-russification protest. The banner reads "Ukrainian School for Ukrainian kids!".

• 

  On this 1961 one-ruble note, the Ukrainian for "one ruble", один карбованець (odyn karbovanets`), directly follows the Russian один рубль (odin rubl`).

• 

  Fluency in Ukrainian (purple column) and Russian (blue column) in 1989 and 2001

• 

  Ukrainian language traffic sign for the Ivan Franko Museum in Kryvorivnia.

• 

  Sign in both Ukrainian and Romanian languages in the village of Valea Vișeului (Vyshivska Dolyna), Bistra commune, in Romania

• 

  Ethnographic Map of Slavic and Baltic Languages

See also

In Spanish: Idioma ucraniano para niños