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Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Moderator: HeyMarlana

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HeyMarlana
Canada

Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by HeyMarlana »

If you're new to Ukrainian and find that out in the world on social media or otherwise you can't tell if you're reading Ukrainian or Russian, here are some tips:

These letters are typically or exclusively Russian:
ё, ъ, ы, э.

If ё is used, I haven't yet seen it, and may only be emphasized with foreign words.
э is the reverse-elliptical E. In Ukrainian it's є.

The giveaway letter for me every single time is the use of ы. It's not used in Ukrainian, as the letter и is used instead. Because of the "i" sound (as in the word "ill"), it is such a common sound for those letters to be used in many words. It's hard to read any amount of text without spotting either ы or и. If you see one or the other, these two letters will be the giveaway of which language you're reading.

Then there is the problem when it comes to short text, for example on Twitter or Instagram, and someone doesn't use those letters when saying a few words. Look for other clues like key words often used in social media -- in Russian such as: нет (no), да (yes), Спасибо (thanks), as opposed to Ukrainian: ні (no), так (yes), дякую (thanks).

Aside from those different letters, and those three words, for someone at A1 or A2, may have difficulties knowing whether you don't know the word yet (thinking it might be Ukrainian), or if it's a Russian word and shouldn't feel so bad not knowing. Improving vocabulary is going to be critical to know the difference between the words, but also understand that many words are indeed shared or incredibly similar.

Remember...do something nice for yourself today.

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Sofia222677

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Sofia222677 »

Another difference I know of is that Ukrainian features the letter і, which isn't present in Russian as far as I know.

:it: N - :gb: B2 (working towards C1) - Learning :de: - Dabbling in :cn:, :ru:

User avatar
Fnirk1
Sweden

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Fnirk1 »

I started to try out a bit Ukrainian on Duolingo not far ago. And my first obstacle was the alphabet - being used to the Russian, made it even more complicated.

And I have not yet fully understand the sound of "i". There are two versions of them in each language, and if I have got it right:

Russian ы is the Ukrainian и
Ukrainian і is the Russian и

And the letter й is a bit different.
And the letter ї are also Ukrainian only

And the Russian г have two Ukrainian letters г and ґ...

Why so complicated? :(

:sweden: N :gb: C1 :ru: B2 :fr: :es:B1 :de: :it: :netherlands: A1

User avatar
HeyMarlana
Canada

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by HeyMarlana »

Yes those are all correct. Why so different? Not sure. It's just how Ukrainian evolved I guess. Polish influences also play a factor into some of the dialects.

Remember...do something nice for yourself today.

DmGabin

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by DmGabin »

And the Russian г have two Ukrainian letters г and ґ...

The Ukrainian letters mean two different sounds, [h] and [g] respectively. The letter ґ was not used during the Soviet era, and now it is optional, as I understand. Notably, ґ is used (rarely) in Belarusian dictionaries as well to designate the same sound.

And the letter ї are also Ukrainian only

Not really. It is also used in the Rusyn Cyrillic alphabet and was used in Russian just a couple of centuries ago.

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Fnirk1
Sweden

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Fnirk1 »

DmGabin wrote: Tue Feb 15, 2022 7:12 pm

And the letter ї are also Ukrainian only

Not really. It is also used in the Rusyn Cyrillic alphabet and was used in Russian just a couple of centuries ago.

I know Russian Cyrillic has dropped some letters during time.

But to me it seems that the Ukrainian has not... Or?

Interesting anyway.

:sweden: N :gb: C1 :ru: B2 :fr: :es:B1 :de: :it: :netherlands: A1

DmGabin

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by DmGabin »

Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian Cyrillic scripts (as well as Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian) evolved from the same root, the original Slavic Cyrillic, and each of them dropped certain letters from the old alphabet (and invented a couple of new letters as necessary). Russian just preserved redundant letters a bit longer.

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Enzfj2
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Enzfj2 »

Russian ы is the Ukrainian и
Ukrainian і is the Russian и

And the letter й is a bit different.
And the letter ї are also Ukrainian only

Russian and Ukrainian sounds are not exactly matched, they can be ranged like this:
(ukr) і – (rus) и – (ukr) и – ы
i.e. Russian и is somewhere between Ukrainian і and и,
Ukrainian і and и are close to what you hear in beet and bit (disregarding the length of the vowel),

and very few European languages have something similar to ы
(afaik, Romanian, Turkish, European Portuguese and Welsh do).

Deleted User 1414

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Deleted User 1414 »

Thank you 🏅💎

Steve579062

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Steve579062 »

I started with Russian and moved to Ukrainian after a visit. I like spotting similar words. The animal Bear is one of my favourites. I will let you find it for yourself. It's more fun that way. Enjoy !

I'm using language to keep my old brain working.

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LICA98
Finland

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by LICA98 »

Enzfj2 wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 4:21 pm

Russian ы is the Ukrainian и
Ukrainian і is the Russian и

And the letter й is a bit different.
And the letter ї are also Ukrainian only

Russian and Ukrainian sounds are not exactly matched, they can be ranged like this:
(ukr) і – (rus) и – (ukr) и – ы
i.e. Russian и is somewhere between Ukrainian і and и,
Ukrainian і and и are close to what you hear in beet and bit (disregarding the length of the vowel),

and very few European languages have something similar to ы
(afaik, Romanian, Turkish, European Portuguese and Welsh do).

Ukrainian і = Russian stressed и [i]
Ukrainian и = Russian unstressed и [ɪ] (however the Russian letter palatalizes the previous consonant whereas the Ukrainian one does not, that's why people say it sounds like ы)
Russian ы = [ɨ]

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Davey944676
Great Britain

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Davey944676 »

A couple of people mention Romanian Cyrillic. Thanks for that - it was interesting reading up on it a bit. I'm also curious about the sign pictured in this article...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_ ... c_alphabet

"В?НЕ АЦЬ ВЕН?Т!" (Bine ați venit!). The characters I've replaced with a question mark here look like a Latin "u" in the picture. I don't know what characters they are. ..

🇬🇧 British Native....Learning Polish 🇵🇱, Russian 🇷🇺, Romanian 🇷🇴, Ukrainian 🇺🇦, French 🇫🇷, Welsh :wales:

User avatar
LICA98
Finland

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by LICA98 »

Davey944676 wrote: Sun Oct 02, 2022 9:47 pm

A couple of people mention Romanian Cyrillic. Thanks for that - it was interesting reading up on it a bit. I'm also curious about the sign pictured in this article...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_ ... c_alphabet

"В?НЕ АЦЬ ВЕН?Т!" (Bine ați venit!). The characters I've replaced with a question mark here look like a Latin "u" in the picture. I don't know what characters they are. ..

it's a Cyrillic и - бине аць венит

User avatar
Davey944676
Great Britain

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Davey944676 »

LICA98 wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:15 am

it's a Cyrillic и - бине аць венит

Thanks, Lica.

I'm guessing it must be a relatively unusual font/form? Looking through a random selection of various signs and other writing in Cyrilic I can see various styles, but they all have at least some similarity to their "standard" characters. I haven't come across that one anywhere. :)

🇬🇧 British Native....Learning Polish 🇵🇱, Russian 🇷🇺, Romanian 🇷🇴, Ukrainian 🇺🇦, French 🇫🇷, Welsh :wales:

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LICA98
Finland

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by LICA98 »

Davey944676 wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 1:14 pm
LICA98 wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:15 am

it's a Cyrillic и - бине аць венит

Thanks, Lica.

I'm guessing it must be a relatively unusual font/form? Looking through a random selection of various signs and other writing in Cyrilic I can see various styles, but they all have at least some similarity to their "standard" characters. I haven't come across that one anywhere. :)

well no it's fairly common to see и written like that

for example I use the Segoe Print font in my browser and there it looks almost the same as on that sign
Image

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Enzfj2
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Enzfj2 »

LICA98 wrote: Sun Oct 02, 2022 8:15 pm
Enzfj2 wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 4:21 pm

Russian ы is the Ukrainian и
Ukrainian і is the Russian и

And the letter й is a bit different.
And the letter ї are also Ukrainian only

Russian and Ukrainian sounds are not exactly matched, they can be ranged like this:
(ukr) і – (rus) и – (ukr) и – ы
i.e. Russian и is somewhere between Ukrainian і and и,
Ukrainian і and и are close to what you hear in beet and bit (disregarding the length of the vowel),

and very few European languages have something similar to ы
(afaik, Romanian, Turkish, European Portuguese and Welsh do).

Ukrainian і = Russian stressed и [i]
Ukrainian и = Russian unstressed и [ɪ] (however the Russian letter palatalizes the previous consonant whereas the Ukrainian one does not, that's why people say it sounds like ы)
Russian ы = [ɨ]

1st, I thanked you by mistake, but there's no way to rewoke it
2nd, you're absolutely wrong here, I just state it here and won't further discuss it. Anyone who can hear, can tell the difference, without regard to IPA.

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Davey944676
Great Britain

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Davey944676 »

LICA98 wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 5:58 pm

...well no it's fairly common to see и written like that

for example I use the Segoe Print font..

Right, yes - your picture of the Segoe Print font there provides the "missing link"for me. The resemblance to "и" is much more obvious in that one. I thought I had already familiarised myself (in a very basic way) with the italic/handwriting forms, but I must have had a blind spot with that one. Thanks again. :)

🇬🇧 British Native....Learning Polish 🇵🇱, Russian 🇷🇺, Romanian 🇷🇴, Ukrainian 🇺🇦, French 🇫🇷, Welsh :wales:

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LICA98
Finland

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by LICA98 »

Enzfj2 wrote: Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:04 pm
LICA98 wrote: Sun Oct 02, 2022 8:15 pm
Enzfj2 wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 4:21 pm

Russian and Ukrainian sounds are not exactly matched, they can be ranged like this:
(ukr) і – (rus) и – (ukr) и – ы
i.e. Russian и is somewhere between Ukrainian і and и,
Ukrainian і and и are close to what you hear in beet and bit (disregarding the length of the vowel),

and very few European languages have something similar to ы
(afaik, Romanian, Turkish, European Portuguese and Welsh do).

Ukrainian і = Russian stressed и [i]
Ukrainian и = Russian unstressed и [ɪ] (however the Russian letter palatalizes the previous consonant whereas the Ukrainian one does not, that's why people say it sounds like ы)
Russian ы = [ɨ]

1st, I thanked you by mistake, but there's no way to rewoke it
2nd, you're absolutely wrong here, I just state it here and won't further discuss it. Anyone who can hear, can tell the difference, without regard to IPA.

so professional linguists vs "it sounds different to me" 🤔 I think trust the former more 😬

User avatar
Enzfj2
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Enzfj2 »

But deliver us from the Russians, who know better how to speak Ukrainian than the Ukrainians themselves...

User avatar
LICA98
Finland

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by LICA98 »

Enzfj2 wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 3:59 pm

But deliver us from the Russians, who know better how to speak Ukrainian than the Ukrainians themselves...

so for real your argument is that "I don't like Russians therefore Ukrainian letters aren't pronounced like Russian ones?" 😂

User avatar
Enzfj2
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Enzfj2 »

... І всі мови
Слав’янського люду —
Всі знаєте. А своєї
Дас[т]ьбі... Колись будем
І по-своєму глаголать,
Як німець покаже
Та до того й історію
Нашу нам розкаже...
Т.Г.Шевченко

User avatar
Apogee
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Apogee »

These are two different languages. Russians do not understand the Ukrainian language. Russians physically cannot pronounce many Ukrainian words. The Russian language is included in the list of artificially created languages. Lomonosov went to the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy for help during the creation of the grammar of the Russian language. The number of words in the Ukrainian language is greater than in Russian. So don't look for similarities, it doesn't make sense.

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Corinnebelle

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Apogee[/mention] How was Russian artificially created? Is that like English, a language made from scrambled "eggs" a smattering of other languages all mixed together?

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Apogee
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Apogee »

Corinnebelle wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:03 pm

@Apogee How was Russian artificially created? Is that like English, a language made from scrambled "eggs" a smattering of other languages all mixed together?

There are lists of artificially created languages. You can find them through google. It has a very large percentage of foreign words. I know both of these languages ​​perfectly. Therefore, I allow myself to cite these facts.

User avatar
Enzfj2
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Enzfj2 »

Corinnebelle wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:03 pm

@Apogee How was Russian artificially created? Is that like English, a language made from scrambled "eggs" a smattering of other languages all mixed together?

Yes, the analogy is quite sound, even for the names of the country and language.
The name of Русь /Rus'/ referred to the lands which are roughly Central Ukraine now, with its center in Kyiv, but the territory under control of Kyivan princes—Kyivan Rus—expanded from the White to the Black Sea at most.
The lands of the present-day central Russia were called then Залесье /Zalesye/, 'behind the woods', it would be 'Transilvania' in Latin, but the name is reserved for another region :) The indigenous Finno-Ugric tribes were subjugated to the princes from Rus (not Russian in the present-day meaning of the word) starting from 10th century. They created new principalities, but the Great Prince of Kyiv was considered as the highest authority, until the Mongol invasion in 1230-40s, when Kyiv was totally destroyed and lost its influence.
Then north-east principalities evolved into Grand Principality (or Duchy), then Tsardom of Moscow (Muscovy), which usurped the name of Russia.

The language of Muscovy, of course, was not 'artificially created', but was a result of imposing the language of the ruling class, i.e. Kyivan Russian, plus Old Bulgarian aka Church Slavonic, on the non-homogeneous Finno-Ugric substrate, plus an influx of Mongolian and Tatar words. Unlike English, however, the grammar didn't become much simpler, remaining Slavic, with some foreign artefacts like the construct "у меня есть..." ~ 'there is ... in my possession' (natural for e.g. Hungarian and Turkish) instead of the straight equivalent of 'I have ...' = "я имею ..." which is absolutely correct grammatically but no native speaker would say so. Unfortunately, this and some other constructs became common in Ukrainian after 300+ years of the Russian domination over Ukraine, though at the moment both versions "у мене є ..." and "я маю ..." are equally used in Ukrainian, with a gradual shift to the second one for the obvious reasons.

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Corinnebelle

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Corinnebelle »

Apogee wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 1:37 pm
Corinnebelle wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 10:03 pm

@Apogee How was Russian artificially created? Is that like English, a language made from scrambled "eggs" a smattering of other languages all mixed together?

There are lists of artificially created languages. You can find them through google. It has a very large percentage of foreign words. I know both of these languages ​​perfectly. Therefore, I allow myself to cite these facts.

It is a new term to me, and perhaps one that has another name in English. English is "called" an "illegitimate" language because of its admixture.

Artificial Languages

The term artificial languages can refer to several types of objects. The subject of this article will not be computer languages such as BASIC and C++ or systems of logic such as predicate logic, both of which sometimes are called artificial languages, but rather languages which have been constructed to be similar in function (broadly speaking) to natural languages.

Some proponents of artificial languages apparently feel that the term artificial languages has negative connotations and thus use other terms for them, planned languages or constructed languages. Another terminological issue is that many Esperantists refer to Esperanto as “the international language”; this is misleading, since many artificial languages were designed to be international languages, and some of them have functioned as such (to a limited extent), not to mention the fact that some natural languages have functioned or currently function as international languages, such as Latin and English.

It might be claimed that it is also misleading to refer to these languages as artificial, since many of them consist of material gathered from several natural languages, or even a single natural language. However, if one holds this view, to be consistent one would have to agree with the assertion that there is nothing artificial in the physical world, as even highly artificial things, such as computers and spacecraft, ultimately consist of materials which occur naturally, such as iron. What is artificial about those artificial languages which draw on natural languages is the choice and arrangement of the items from natural languages which they use (and often also the modifications to these items).

On the other hand, one could argue that many or all supposedly natural languages are in part artificial, as they also have been subject to conscious modification, or attempts at it, for example, prescriptivist efforts to try to prevent the “degeneration” of a language.

Artificial languages are informally called conlangs (constructed languages), and the study of artificial languages and related matters is interlinguistics.

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Corinnebelle

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Enzfj2[/mention] This is quite interesting. I was listening to someone who was a native of northern Russian in the Sakha region and their language sounded somewhat like Finnish.

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Enzfj2
Ukraine

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Enzfj2 »

Corinnebelle wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 10:16 pm

@Enzfj2 This is quite interesting. I was listening to someone who was a native of northern Russian in the Sakha region and their language sounded somewhat like Finnish.

But Wikipedia says that Sakha/Yakut is a Turkic language.
However, in the past Hungarian also was classified as a Turkic, but now it, together with Finnish and Estonian, is considered to belong to the Uralic family, also called somehow tautologically Ugro-Finnic or Finno-Ugric.

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Stasia
Poland

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Stasia »

Corinnebelle wrote: Thu Dec 08, 2022 10:06 pm

It is a new term to me, and perhaps one that has another name in English. English is "called" an "illegitimate" language because of its admixture.

From a linguistic point of view, a language like that would be called a pidgin. English can be considered a pidgin of Old English (Germanic) with French (Romance).

That being said, all languages include borrowings from other languages - that's just how languages evolve.

Native: :poland:; Fluent: :es:, :us:; Getting there: Image; Intermediate: :fr:; Beginner: :ukraine:

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Corinnebelle

Re: Russian or Ukrainian - how to tell some differences

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Stasia[/mention] How interesting! I didn't know I was speaking pidgin. Is it pidgin Germanic or pidgin French? [Today "pidgin English" is used in the Pacific region.]I know the French took over England at one point and made everyone speak the language so it had a great effect on English. Then I think they changed the vowels after that, once the English got rid of the French.

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