Languages of Ukraine
| Languages of Ukraine | |
|---|---|
 Orange — Ukrainian language has an absolute majority Purple — Ukrainian language has a plurality. Blue — Russian language has an absolute majority |
|
| Official language(s) |
|
| Significant unofficial language(s) |
|
| Indigenous language(s) |
|
| Regional language(s) |
|
| Minority language(s) |
|
| Main foreign language(s) |
|
| Sign language(s) | Ukrainian Sign Language |
| Common keyboard layout(s) |
 |
| Source | Census-2001 |
The official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, an East Slavic language which is the native language of 67.5% of Ukraine's population. Russian is the native language of 29.6% of Ukraine's population and the rest (2.9%) are native speakers of other languages. Ethnologue lists 40 minority languages and dialects; nearly all are languages of the former Soviet Union.
According to Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine the state has an obligation to ensure the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout Ukraine while guaranteeing the free development, use and protection of the Russian language and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine.
Contents |
[edit] Language and daily life
In an October 2009 poll by FOM-Ukraine 52% of the respondents state they use Russian as their "Language of communication"; 41% of the respondents state they use Ukrainian and 8% stated they use a mixture of both.[1]
A March 2010 poll[2] by Research & Branding Group showed that 65% considered Ukrainian as their native language and 33% Russian. This poll also showed the standard of knowledge of the Russian language (free conversational language, writing and reading) in current Ukraine is higher (76%) than the standard of knowledge of the Ukrainian language (69%). More respondents preferred to speak Ukrainian (46%) than Russian (38%) with 16% preferring to speak both in equal manner.
A poll held November 2009 revealed that 54.7% of the population of Ukraine believed the language issue in Ukraine is irrelevant, that each person can speak the language he or she prefers and that a lot more important problems exist in the country; 14.7% of those polled stated that the language issue was an urgent problem that cannot be postponed and that calls for immediate resolution; another 28.3% believed that, while the language issue needs to be resolved, this could be postponed.[3]
[edit] Historical facts
According to the Russian census 1897 on the territory of the nine Russian guberniyas yielded the following results:
- Language composition
- Ukrainians - 14,931.5 (73%)
- Russians - 2,146.1 (11%)
- Hebrew - 1,871.8 (9%)
- Germans - 451.3 (2%)
- Poles - 375.9 (2%)
- Belorussians - 208.5 (1%)
- Romanians - 185.7 (1%)
- Other - 1%
- List of mentioned regions
- Poltava Governorate
- Kharkov Governorate
- Podolie Governorate
- Kiev Governorate
- Volyn Governorate
- Yekaterinoslav Governorate
- Chernigov Governorate
- Kherson Governorate
- Taurida Governorate
-
Ukrainian
-
Russian
-
Fluency in Ukrainian (red column) and Russian (blue column)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] Bibliography
- Linguistic composition of the population, according to the Ukrainian census of 2001
- Languages of Ukraine by Ethnologue
- Суржик - проблема української мови
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
