Thread: Russian language in Ukraine

Can anyone explain what is the situation with Russian language in Ukraine. Is it official? With how many percent is represented in Ukraine?

Russian speakers are a minority confined to the eastern and southern part of the country. Big cities are the only other place you'll hear russian spoken. Russian is not the co-official language, only Ukrainian is. But Russian would be the co-official language had Yanukovych came to power.

In eastern and southern Ukraine everybody speaks Russian albeit with a horrible accent. In western Ukraine everybody speaks Russian when you wave a few dollars in front of them. In any "normal" country, given this huge percentage of Russian speakers, Russian would have the status of one of the official languages. In "civilized" Ukraine it doesn't.

TheMoonMonst3r wrote:

Russian speakers are a minority confined to the eastern and southern part of the country.

a massive minority!

there are also russians in the ukraine who speak russian with no accent because they're regular russians

i personaly know three people with a ukrainian passport, all of them are full-time russians.

there are also russians in the ukraine who speak russian with no accent because they're regular russians

While there are indeed some people in Ukraine who speak Russian with accents close to the Russian standard TV presenter kind of accent, most of them - including those of Russian ethnicity - do have rather strong accents. They may think their Russian is accent-free, but we in Russia tend to notice it. They may learn to pronounce their g's correctly, but their vowels and peculiar intonation patterns will give them away in most cases. I once saw a shop assistant successfully identify a customer as a Ukranian (in the sense of "citizen of Ukraine") although he'd only said just one word: да.

I agree with VM on this point. Intonations are dead give-away. Even after several years of living in Russian a former inhabitant of Ukraina will still have traces of these not-quite-Russian intonations. And I am talking about ethnic Russians who went to Russian-language school. There may be exceptions, of course...