Ukrainian

In Ukrainian (own name українська (мова)/ukrajinska (mowa), wiss. Transliteration ukrajins'ka mova, becomes also outdated Small-Russian) is a language from the ostslawischen sub-group of the Slavic branch of the indogermanischen languages.

In Ukrainian is after the Russian and Polish the third-biggest Slavic language as well as sole officialese of the Ukraine and is spoken there from 37 million people as a mother tongue. Besides there are the non-Ukrainians who use Ukrainian as a Zweitsprache. All together there is more than 47 million speakers.

In Ukrainian it is written with the Cyrillic alphabet and the Ukrainian version deviates in some letter from the Russian ones.
In Ukrainian belongs together with the Russian and the Belorussian to the ostslawischen linguistic group.

The name for the whole East Slavic territory led regularly to mistakes because "Rus" was equated with Russia. Thus it came, for example, to the linguistic names "Large-scale Russian" for Russian, "Small-Russian" for Ukrainian with which Ukrainian was often arranged as a dialect or subspecies of the Russian.

In the oldest epoch (about up to the 14th century) all east Slavs had a common written language (Altostslawisch), in middle (from the approx. 15th to the 18th century) the forefathers of the today's Ukrainians and Byelorussian used together the ruthenische language.

By the end of 18th century an Ukrainian written language coming from the Volkssprache and literature developed beside the church-Slavic common till then. In the 19th century the Ukrainian culture and with it also experienced her literary language a period of bloom; the development concentrated less upon political ones than on scientific subjects. Belletrists like Gogol preferential Russian.

A far-reaching ban of Ukrainian-speaking publications (Emser decree) was still imposed in 1876 because of fear of separatistischen attempts by czar Alexander II on incentive of the tsarist censorship authority in bath Ems. Till 1906 Ukrainian scientific publications, readings, exhibitions and concerts were defeated by this dictation. The most important Ukrainian writer Tara Schewtschenko (1814-1861) was sent for his texts and poems in the Turkmen exile.

In the Karpatoukraine and in the area of Hungary and later Slovakia there were already in the 19th century attempts to own written language which was based though also on the local Ukrainian dialects, however, differed from the Ukrainian standard language. These attempts have increased from the end of the eighties of the 20th century again, her result was the Kodifikation of the karpato-russinischen language on the basis of the dialect of Zemplin. The jugoslawo-russinische language in the Vojvodina which is based, however, also originally on an Ukrainian dialect is stronger divergent.

With the foundation of an Ukrainian national republic in 1918 Ukrainian became first the Staatssprache, later also in the Ukrainian Soviet republic. During the Soviet time Ukrainian was not forbidden, however, the Russian language as a lingua franca dominated all scientific and literary works as well as the media. Therefore, the colloquial language is defeated till this day by strong Russian influence. This is sensible particularly when a comparison with the vocabulary of the strong Ukrainian Diaspora is carried out in Canada: here less concepts of Russian origin appear substantially.