Talk:Ukrainian language/Archive 4

Classification and relationship - verify sources
Hi, I'm requesting verification whether the sources do contain the information they are provided for in "Classification and relationship to other languages" chapter.

In particular, there is "The question of whether contemporary Ukrainian and Russian (as well as Belorusian and Rusyn) are dialects of a single language or separate languages is not entirely decided by linguistic factors alone because there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility" backed by 3 sources, and "some linguistic references list them as dialects of a single language" backed by 1 offline source.

Quotes from sources were already requested to verify that sources do contain what has been added to the article. Quotes were provided (see article footnotes) and editor has said a number of times that quotes provided are enough to perform the verification. So the verification can be performed on quotes provided. --windyhead (talk) 08:18, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * A general comment of mine. If the other editor had a proven history of misusing sources I would completely agree with your various criticisms.  I would also be suspicious if he used only off-line foreign-language sources that would be quite hard to find and thus to verify.  This doesn't seem to be the case here.  Therefore the thing to do is to find this source yourself or get someone else to do it and in the meantime one must assume good faith and let the info stand.Faustian (talk) 13:10, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I am sick and tired of User:Windyhead's continued malicious tagging of this article. I have reported him for edit warring.  The sources cited are completely adequate for referencing this paragraph.  This paragraph was, and still is, NPOV.  The latest revisions by Faustian and myself have made it even more neutral.  Each statement has a reference and often a quote in the footnote.  Windyhead simply refuses to read the sources cited if he disagrees with my interpretation of them.  He has been warned at multiple forums that he needs to read the sources:   and  and .  This is just another case of his forum shopping.  Indeed, Windyhead's whole apparent modus operandi is "I don't like the comment that Ukrainian and Russian are mutually intelligible, I don't understand the quotes in the footnotes, and I'm not willing to actually read any books on the matter, so I'll just tag the comment because I don't like it, and keep replacing it until I wear Taivo down and get my way."  --Taivo (talk) 14:30, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I am replying per Windyhead's request at WikiProject Linguistics, though I speak only for myself. Voegelin & Voegelin and Comrie are both respected sources, and this text does not appear to misrepresent them. I have not read Schenker 1993, but article text seems consistent with similar work in the field. The paragraph in question seems to accurately and fairly represent consensus within the field of linguistics. Cnilep (talk) 17:10, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm reviewing Comrie, pages 145 - 146, and there is no mention of "dialect" at all only that "little russian" was deemed to be a dialect of Russian by Tsarist government. The maximum what can be found there is "The three East Slavonic languages are very close to one another, with very high rates of mutual intelligibility". What makes you believe that "The question of whether contemporary Ukrainian and Russian (as well as Belorusian and Rusyn) are dialects of a single language or separate languages" can be found there? Are there Voegelin & Voegelin talking about dialect / language question? --windyhead (talk) 17:25, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you kidding me? You clearly don't understand what you are reading and have no understanding of linguistics in general.  The question of mutual intelligibility is fundamental to the linguistic issue of language versus dialect.  You can read about it in any one of countless introductory linguistics textbooks.  Comrie doesn't have to say this explicitly because it is at the root of the whole theoretical question of what constitutes a language versus a dialect in linguistics.  If you don't understand fundamental linguistics, then you have no place questioning such issues in Wikipedia.  And the Voegelin and Voegelin quote is crystal clear--in terms of mutual intelligibility, the East Slavic languages are one language.  How can you question the meaning of that sentence?  --Taivo (talk) 18:04, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * What is the source that raises dialect - language question for Russian and Ukrainian? --windyhead (talk) 18:20, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Which part of "fundamental to the linguistic issue of language versus dialect" do you fail to understand, Windyhead? Every cited source that talks about mutual intelligibility has that fundamental issue at its root.  It's like "prefix".  Linguists don't need to define "prefix" every time they use the word in a language article in Wikipedia.  Every source I've cited deals with the issue of language versus dialect between Russian and Ukrainian by using the term "mutual intelligibility".  They wouldn't mention "mutual intelligibility" unless that were the underlying context.  A linguist saying "Russian and English are not mutually intelligible" would be very odd because there is never a question of them being dialects of one another.  A linguist saying "Russian and Ukrainian have a high degree of mutual intelligibility" is using that phrase because there is the question of dialect versus language to deal with.  As the article clearly states, some linguists use mutual intelligibility as the sole measurement (e.g., Linguasphere) so the East Slavic group is one language, while most linguists go beyond mutual intelligibility alone and consider sociolinguistic factors as well.  Didn't you actually read the discussion above under Talk:Ukrainian_language?  You seem oblivious to the actual linguistic issues involved.  --Taivo (talk) 18:27, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, so the sources being discussed somehow managed to live without mentioning Rus - Ukr "dialect - language" question. Why this article should mention that? --windyhead (talk) 19:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * They all "mention the Rus-Ukr issue" by talking about mutual intelligibility. Didn't you actually read and understand my post?  By using the words mutual intelligibility they automatically turn on the "language-dialect" light.  Please, please, please read an introductory linguistics book before you continue to talk about linguistics articles.  The issue is important because most of the sources mention it.  Therefore the article needs to mention it.  --Taivo (talk) 20:30, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Now, can you please tell us what that "53-AAA-e, Russkiy+Ukrainska" from Linguasphere Register means? --windyhead (talk) 19:12, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * That is the language number and language name that Linguasphere uses for the single East Slavic language. --Taivo (talk) 20:27, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Changes
I looked beyond the dialect/languge issue and see that this article needs significant work. There's a lot there about the language's persecution, usage etc. but little about the way that it developed over time (when and what kind of Polish loan words came into it? Etc.) which seems to be interesting. I've split off a section thast could serve as a start for that section. It's summer, I don't have a lot of free time, but I will slowly expand on it; hopefully others will help.Faustian (talk) 03:22, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. The article is 90% a sociolinguistic history of the language and 10% everything else.  If you look at other language articles it is the other way round.  Once the article gets fleshed out with phonology, grammar, etc., the sociolinguistic stuff needs to be moved to another article.  --Taivo (talk) 04:18, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
 * For example, compare this article with Kurdish language, another language that engenders a lot of nationalistic feeling. There the sociolinguistic history is a couple of paragraphs compared to some solid linguistically-accurate information about the language itself.  Here most of the article is a discourse on the minutiae of how Ukrainian speakers rose from second-class citizenship to have their own national language.  It's written in a barely neutral style.  The consensus (international) linguistic view that Ukrainian is part of the Eastern Slavic group of languages is presented as if it were a Russian plot to subjugate the Ukrainians further and the distinctly minority (Ukrainian) view (that Ukrainian rose independently from Proto-Slavic) is presented as the final victorious liberation from Russian rule.  That's hardly neutral writing.  It doesn't help that the majority of the references in that section of the article are not verifiable to anyone who doesn't read Ukrainian and neutral observers are unlikely to read Ukrainian.  In the article, there's virtually nothing about the language itself in and what there is is poorly formatted and minimally informative.  --Taivo (talk) 13:18, 1 August 2010 (UTC)
 * The Ukrainian language's persecution over the centuries is important enough to warrant inclusion. I agree that that ought to be a separate article (with a several-paragraph-long summary here) and the focus ought to be on the language, in accordance with how it is done in other articles. A 90/10, or perhaps 80/20 ratio would be ideal. The Kurdish language article could be a good template. To add to my earlier coment - I'm n ot a linguist and stuff such as what kind of loan words were taken and when is undrstandable to me, while issues involving more scientific terms and concepts are more difficult, so I may be less likely to include them (as a layperson some of it is hard for me to follow).Faustian (talk) 12:09, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Removed 1916 impressionistic reference
Please actually read the paragraph before adding an impressionistic, unscientific reference from 1916. There are modern sources already cited on both sides of the issue of whether Russian and Ukrainian are one language or two. Saying that two speech forms are like two other speech forms is not science since there are no scientific criteria by which such things can actually be judged. There are also linguists who consider Danish and Swedish to be varieties of a single language, so the comparison is worthless. --Taivo (talk) 19:59, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's not. The situation with Scandinavian languages are very similar since they are likewise mutually intelligible. Although no one would seriously claim them to be dialects of the same language such as some linguists have done with Ukrainian and Russian languages. Alfred Jensen was a wellknown and respected slavist and translator of many different slavic languages. Närking (talk) 20:13, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The point is that there is no scientific measurement as to what is similar and what is not. That is the point.  The reference is unnecessary and quite outdated by more recent sources (by modern Slavicists).  It doesn't matter when the languages were distinguished.  As an extraneous and outdated comment, I moved it to a footnote where it belongs.  --Taivo (talk) 22:06, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Once again you act like WP:own here and start to blame others for WP:3RR (which I didn't but you just did!) and start to talk about bans. It's also this uncivil behaviour of yours that has made many other editors leaving this article.
 * And please show me the linguist who says Danish and Swedish are the same language? If you find someone they are as unscientific as the ones who claim Russian and Ukrainian being the same language. And that also shows it's not science but politics! Närking (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but you seem to be unfamiliar with the linguistic literature. C.F. Voegelin & F.M.Voegelin, Classification and Index of the World's Languages (1977, Elsevier); David Dalby, The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities (1999/2000, Linguasphere Observatory); Einar Haugen, Scandinavian Language Structures (1982, Max Niemeyer).  All these treat Danish and Swedish as a single language.  These are all solid linguists writing solid linguistic works and just because they do not support your political agenda in these linguistic articles, does not make them politicians or bad linguists.  These works base their measurement of one language or two based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility.  Other works that separate them give more weight to sociolinguistic factors.  Neither approach is incorrect, they are just different.  And in the cases of Danish and Swedish, and Ukrainian, Belarusian, Rusyn, and Russian, the conclusions reached are different.  Neither is wrong, they are just different results based on placing different amounts of weight on different evaluation criteria.  And I did not violate WP:3RR (you should analyze that policy more clearly).  I did not remove your pointless reference a third time, I simply moved it to a footnote.  You need to read WP:BRD to refresh your memory on basic editing procedures.  If you make an edit and someone reverts it, you do not replace it, but come to the Talk Page to discuss and build a consensus before reinserting your material.  THAT is the Wikipedia process, not what you did--keep adding your information back in without discussion.  --Taivo (talk) 00:05, 20 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I have temporarily protected the page so you can find a consensus on the talk page rather than edit war. I personally prefer Taivo's (present) version balancing a controversial notion of complete mutual intelligibility of Russian and Ukrainian with the opposing opinion (that is IMHO is a mainstream). I agree that it will be better to have more modern source but it is sometimes difficult to find references for the notions that consider public knowledge. Alex Bakharev (talk) 00:34, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Poor quality of this article
Feels like someone just wrote parts of this article, to entertain himself. Especially laughable was the part where there was a table comparing Russian, Ukrainian, and then a mythical "Russian Ukrainian" languages (which I changed to Syrzhyk, which actually does exist, unlike Russian-Ukrainian). Also I got a healthy portion of laughter reading the citation 58 that said that "В Украі(и)не" (a Russian for "In Ukraine") is, quote, "more widely Used in Ukraine"--Rkononenko (talk) 03:34, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Surzhyk chart
I moved the chart comparing Russian, Surzhyk, and Ukrainian to the Surzhyk article where it is more appropriately placed. --Taivo (talk) 04:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Official Language status
I live in Poland and to my knowledge, Ukrainian is not a recognised minority language. We do have four, Lithuanian, Kasubian, German, and Belarusian. Also, I believe Moldavian in the Cyrillic is the official language, with Ukrainian and Russian as working languages. Can we get a reference on these? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 153.19.229.72 (talk) 03:42, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I've just looked for a list of recognized minority languages in Polish report for ECRML (PDF), where on page 9 it lists Ukrainian among others, 15 languages in total. Can you provide a reference on your list of only four languages? Thanks in advance. StasMalyga (talk) 16:22, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Anti-Ukrainian slant of this article
The problem is that languages are imposed to people which never spoke them, and languages are used as an instument to make people more ignorant... imagine Cosica becomes independednt and proclaims "Corse" as sole national Language, forgetting French? This articles needs serious revision, figures are fake as they all riged by newly independent now "Ukranian" KGB officials. THIS IS A QUALITY WARNING and not an agitation of pilitics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.201.97.142 (talk) 00:29, 12 December 2011 (UTC) I am so tired of reading all this anti Ukrainian nonsense on Wikipedia. Why is Ukrainian language the only selected to be described is "mutually intelligible" from Russian? Why the same phrase or a phrase that "some linguistic references list them as dialects of a single language" is not used in the Belorussian language entry? Why is Ukrainian the only language to have a section "classification and relationship to other languages" and "differences between Russian and Ukrainian" as to imply to the casual reader that this is of paramount significance, whereas again, Belorussian, a language more closely related to Russian, does not have such entries, Finally, one just needs to look at the entry for Rusyn langauage to see that again, Ukrainian gets the short end of the stick. Why doesn't it say that Rusyn and Ukrainian languages are "mutually intelligible?" After all they are practically identical and were thought to be identical until about 19 years ago. Maybe we should have a section on the modern persecution of Ukrainian language. Mykyta (talk) 04:38, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * You are free to add this section to Belarusian language. No one is stopping you.  Wikipedia has uneven coverage not because of some bias, but because some editors have worked at X location, but not at Y location.  --Taivo (talk) 05:47, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I reworded the section appropriately and added it to Belarusian language. --Taivo (talk) 05:59, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

AGAIN!!????
The anti Ukrainian slant of Wikepedia is absolutely ridiculous and it needs to stop. If the editors are allowing this garbage to be posted, then the article needs to be locked. How in the world is the entire section starting with "However its obvious closeness to Russian make critics consider it rather as a "dialect" of Russian..." even allowed?? Not only it's very offensive, I can't even begin to write how many Wikepedia rules it breaks! The part about the "no significant literature" is beyond disgusting, obviously an opinion of a prejudiced individual. I can't believe that someone actually wrote little notes like "clarification needed" and left this offensive unsupported writing of a chauvinist. Really, really, really? If I sound frustrated, I am. I'm tired of always having to watch these articles to see what's the next offensive thing that will be added. And to think I wasn't even allowed to add that Carol of the Bells is also known as Ukrainian Bell Carol with tons of supporting documents and you're allowing this gibberish? Please remove this immediately. There is no scientific supporting documents nor quotations, stop being a vehicle of the Russian propaganda. Mykyta (talk) 06:40, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for removing that section, but there is still something that should not be there:

"It is very closely related to Russian and many Western linguists consider the two (along with Belarusian) to be dialects of a single East Slavic language." Please remove it or provide actual citations where "many western linguists" call Ukrainian language a dialect. Mykyta (talk) 19:52, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * References added. I think they were here last year when you brought this issue up previously, but perhaps some nationalist editor deleted them.  --Taivo (talk) 21:13, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Found the references. They were buried down at the bottom of the article under the subsection "Classification and Relationship..."  --Taivo (talk) 21:19, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that if you are adding an opinion of some linguists that the languages are mutually intelligible, you must also add that many linguists also consider them far apart to be separate languages otherwise this article is still very biased and unbalanced.Mykyta (talk) 23:05, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No linguist thinks these languages are "far apart". None.  Not one.  If they claim this they are not real linguists, but ignoring the very close relationship between them and the fact that there is a very high degree of mutual intelligibility between them.  It's not "some linguists" who consider these languages to be mutually intelligible, it's "all linguists".  The majority opinion is exactly what the article currently states--that mutual intelligibility in this case isn't the only factor that most linguists use to call these separate languages, otherwise they would have to be called one language because they're mutually intelligible.  --Taivo (talk) 23:13, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * They're not mutually intelligible and you proabably know it very well. I speak perfect Ukrainian but understand maybe 20% of Russian on a good day. (yes, I know that's not admissible under Wikepedia rules, I'm just stating a fact). They're mutually intellgible only for people who grew up there and grew up listening to both languages so the line of why they understand both gets pretty blurred. How could they be mutually intelligible when they have completely different words for many common objects, as well as different descriptive words. Fine, I'll locate references on my own.Mykyta (talk) 23:53, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Just because you, as a non-native speaker, have a difficult time doesn't mean that linguists, the experts in these languages, agree with you. We've had this discussion before.  Indeed, I see that you visit this article annually and make the same complaint (that no one else seems to make).  The linguistic sources are crystal clear on this issue--that Russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian share a "(very) high degree of mutual intelligibility."  And, even if you are able to find some source, that does not abrogate the statements from the multiple reliable sources that I've provided.  --Taivo (talk) 00:23, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * ..um, I visit here more often than annually, I wish I didn't have to but every time I look there is something offensive or discriminatory added to the article as was the case yesterday. I see that there is a whole discussion on this issue, so I'll read this through, I don't want to start a war but I do want this article to present a balanced view.Mykyta (talk) 02:07, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * And I have family in Ukraine, so I do visit there often myself and have taught there. The problem is that the "balanced view" that many Ukrainians want is a complete divorce from anything to do with Russian.  That, however, isn't the linguistic reality based on published sources.  --Taivo (talk) 02:23, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow, that is actually a first time I saw a scholar try to argue against a balanced view. No one is asking for a complete "divorce" from Russian, as you so quaintly put. However, I'd like to know why you wrote "The question of whether contemporary Ukrainian and Russian are dialects of a single language...." if not to push your own personal opinion that they are? Is it truly a question, when you later admit that most linguists consider them a separate language? Also, is it also something that should be in the first section of the article?Mykyta (talk) 03:05, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a difference between "balanced view" that represents two different scholarly positions and "balanced view" that means a non-scholarly position is given equal weight. Scholarship is virtually uniform that Ukrainian and Russian have a high degree of mutual intelligibility.  So there is no "balance" there, we simply state the commonly stated fact.  Indeed, no one says otherwise.  As far as the comment about the "dialects of a single language", that is, actually, the "balanced view", and represents virtually a direct quote of at least one of the sources that comment on the issue.  While a few sources go all the way and link Ukrainian and Russian into a single language, most separate them, but make a specific comment about their mutual intelligibility, implying that the usual measure of "languageness"--a lack of mutual intelligibility--does not apply in this case.  --Taivo (talk) 03:28, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not asking you to remove the reference of "mutual intelligibility" since it's agreed on by all scholars. However in a very short paragraph, you refer to Ukrainian language as a dialect twice. The paragraph structure where you start with " The question is.. " implies that it's still a continuous source of a debate and controversy in the linguistic world, when you yourself state that it's not a common position of most linguists. You're leading a casual reader to believe that many scholars are of that opinion, however that's not true so I would indeed call this paragraph rather unbalanced. By the way, what does "at least one" really mean? Does it mean one? Mykyta (talk) 06:25, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Ukrainian is a dialect by the purely linguistic measurement of mutual intelligibility. When two speech varieties are mutually intelligible, they are dialects of a single language.  So in a purely linguistic sense, Russian, Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian are dialects of a single language--East Slavic.  However, non-linguistic factors come into play and linguists call them different languages (even though they admit they're not by linguistic measurements).  This is no disrespect for Ukrainian or Ukrainian speakers.  It is simply linguistic fact.  Yes, Ukrainian is a dialect by linguistic definition that is commonly called a language for non-linguistic reasons.  Last year, when this wording was created, it was deemed NPOV and accurate by everyone involved.  --Taivo (talk) 06:54, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Therefore by purely linguistic definitions, to be fair, Wikepedia, should call few other languages simply dialects. Serbian/Croatian especially comes to mind as they're practically identical as well as Slovak/Czech, While their articles talk about their mutual intelligibility they're careful enough not to call them dialects of a single language and especially not at the top of the article. If it's purely from linguistics, then place it under that section, not in the second opening paragraph of the article. As you said, there are many other factors that go into the decision, not just linguistic factors, so by placing it in the main body, you're implying the Ukrainian is not called a language even for non linguistic reasons and that's simply not true. And please state "at least one " or "one" not "some" sources if that's all you've got. By the way, do we have to indent until we get to one column, what are the rules about that? Mykyta (talk) 07:41, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you should look at Croatian language:
 * "Croatian (hrvatski jezik) is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats,[3] principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries. They are varieties of the Serbo-Croatian language, along with Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin."

The first sentence of this article (Ukrainian language) doesn't even mention the "East Slavic language" or mutual intelligibility. Indeed, it's not until the last paragraph of the lead that the dialect/language problem is mentioned and it's not overbearing at all, just a simple review of the linguistic issue. Your Ukrainian sensibilities are offended, but the existing wording has been discussed before and found to be neutral and honest with the facts. If you look at Bosnian language, you'll see the dialect/language issue addressed in the first paragraph of the lead, not the last, and it's even more pointed than at the Croatian article:
 * "Bosnian (bosanski [bɔ̌sanskiː], Cyrillic: босански) a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language,[1][2][3] spoken by Bosniaks. As a standardized form of the Shtokavian dialect, it is one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina.[4] The same subdialect of Shtokavian is also the basis of standard Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin, so all are mutually intelligible. Up until the dissolution of former SFR Yugoslavia, they were treated as a unitary Serbo-Croatian language, and that term is still used to refer to the common base (vocabulary, grammar and syntax) of what are today officially four national standards."

The Serbian language article is worded almost identically. Further afield, you can compare this with Standard Hindi:
 * "Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi (Devanagari: मानक हिन्दी), High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindi-Urdu language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi....Colloquial Hindi is mutually intelligible with another register of Hindi-Urdu called Urdu. Mutual intelligibility decreases in literary and specialized contexts which rely on educated vocabulary. Due to religious nationalism and communal tensions, speakers of both Hindi and Urdu frequently assert that they are distinct languages, despite the fact that native speakers generally cannot tell the colloquial languages apart."

And with Urdu language:
 * "Urdu (Urdu: اردو, IPA: [ˈʊrd̪u] ( listen); English: /ˈʊərduː/) is a register of the Hindi-Urdu language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family....Urdu is mutually intelligible with Standard Hindi (or Hindi-Urdu) spoken in India. Both languages share the same Indic base and are so similar in phonology and grammar that they appear to be one language."

So the notion that somehow we're singling out Ukrainian for special treatment is simply not true. We use "some" because we can never make the absolutist statement "one". Since we have not surveyed every single book in the world to count the times that Ukrainian/Russian/Belarusian/Rusyn is called "one language", we cannot make absolutist statements. "Some" is vague and can cover more than one. Indeed, this very discussion shows that other scholars are equivocal about considering these dialects of a single language. The Voegelin source specifically says that if mutual intelligibility were the only consideration, then they would be dialects of one language. So "some" is appropriate. --Taivo (talk) 11:41, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I am not asking you to remove the section on mutual intelligibility, but you still did not answer my question why you've formed that section so that it appears to the casual reader that there is still a debate whether Ukrainian is considered a language. "The question of whether contemporary Ukrainian and Russian are dialects of a single language or separate languages.."  Your sentence implies that there is still controversy surrounding Ukrainian being called a langauge, as most individuals only read first part of the sentence.  There is no question that Ukrainian is a language, by standards other the lingusitic, therefore please put it either in linguistic section or reword it so there is no implication right at the top that Ukrainian is not considered a language.Mykyta (talk) 17:33, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * To put this long section about Ukrainian being a dialect in the lead is surely POV-pushing. The Scandinavian languages are also mutual intelligibility but in their leads nothing is said about them being a dialect of another language. Närking (talk) 19:02, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I didn't notice that. I agree that this does not belong in the lead. The other articles about language (afrikaner, Norwegian, etc.) all mention mutual intelligibuility with other languages but do not state in the lead that the languages may just be dialects. The Ukrainian language shouldn't be singled out as a possible dialect here. Also interestingly, the article abou the Russian language doesn't mention that it may be a dialect, in the lead.Faustian (talk) 19:16, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Ukrainian is farther from Russian than Croat is from Serb, so the analogy is not entirely correct. However, the article as is currently written (which Taivo restores) seems to be quite balanced to me. I don't think that it gives the false impression that the view of Ukrainian being merely a dialect is a majority view among linguists. But it correctly states that some linguists believe that it is, based on a specific criterion (mutual intelligibility). I discussed this in the past with Taivo. According to the professional scientific terminology of linguists, the term mutual intelligibility doesn't mean that a Ukrainian who never in his life heard Russian will understand and speak Russian (and vice versa). According to Mutual intelligibility, "In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort." What this means is that, for example, if a Ukrainian moved to Russia, without taking any Russian courses, within a couple of months he would be able to understand and speak imperfect but decent Russian. This wouldn't happen if he moved to the United States with respect to English. He may not understand a conversation with no exposure to Russian, but with no effort or instruction after a few weeks he would be able to pick it up.  Here is a list of mutually intelligible languages: . I hope this clears it up!Faustian (talk) 19:12, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that clarification about mutual intelligibility, Faustian. It was very clearly and accurately stated.  --Taivo (talk) 14:27, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibility
The discussion about mutual intelligibity prompted an interest, however, I just couldn't find and materials to give me an idea of how mutually i=ntelligible the kanguages are, so I spent the weekend constructing some tables for mutual intelligibility of nouns for the most used nouns in English, Russian, Ukrainian Byelorusan and Polish.

My results for mutual undserstanding are:

E-E = x E-R = 20% E-U = 20% E-B = 20% E-P = 38%

R-E = 20% R-R = x R-U = 40% R-B = 64% R-P = 24%

U-E = 20% U-R = 40% U-U = x U-B = 64% U-P = 84%

B-E = 20% B-R = 48% B-U = 64% B-B = x B-P - 88%

P-E = 38% P-R = 24% P-U = 84% P-B = 88% P-P = x

Obviously this is original research. The parameters may shift when one takes into account false friends, and changes in pronounciation, but it does give one an idea of how intelligable. The list of words i English are given here http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/common_english_nouns

Some interesting things come to light. 1) Polish has almost twice as many English (read international) words (38%) as the East Slavic languages (20%), (which could be expected). 2) To a Russian, Polish (24%) is just slightly more understandable than English (20%). 3) To a Ukrainian, Russian (40%) is slightly more understood than English to a Pole (38%). 4) Belorusan (64%) is more understood by Russians than Ukrainian (40%) 5) Belorusan is more understood to Ukrainians (64%) than Russian (40%), and Polish is even more intelligable (84%). 6) Belorusan is more understood by Poles (88%) (by almost a factor of 3) than Russians (24%).

This obviously is OR, but to me it puts into doubt the statement about mutual understanding of the slavic languages.

I speak Russian and Ukrainian, and understand and can read Polish and Belorusan, however in the process of learning Russian I found that Russian speakers could not understand Ukrainian, and Polish even worse, however when in Poland and Belarus I had little difficulty when speaking Ukrainian.

Mutula intelligability between Russian and Ukrainian is dwarfed by the intelligibility of Polish and Belorusan.Bandurist (talk) 16:24, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * We all know that Ukrainian and Russian does not have a very high degree of mutual intelligibility. I speak 2 Slavic languages, including Ukrainian on a native level, but I cannot understand much Russian. Only Russians who grew up in Ukraine understand the language for obvious reasons, Russians who rarely heard Ukrainian language have a hard time understanding it. This will never be admitted on Wikepedia though. Mykyta (talk) 17:09, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

By the way, that's really cool research. I wonder if there is something like that done already officially by some linguists so it would be admissible. Proabably, but it would probably start another war somewehre else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mykyta (talk • contribs) 18:14, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * See the note at the end of the previous section by Faustian on the linguistic definition of mutual intelligibility. It's not based on lists of words like this.  Linguists do use percentage studies of lists of words like this for historical research, however.  But they're not used for mutual intelligibility studies.  See lexicostatistics for a description.  --Taivo (talk) 14:31, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow, so the definition of mutual intelligibility is wrong on wikipedia, because it talks about individuals understanding each other right away, not after being immersed in the language for few monthsMykyta (talk) 18:39, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No, that's not what the Wikipedia article says. It says, "without intentional study or extraordinary effort", not "right away".  --Taivo (talk) 18:46, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Here is an example I thought up. Ukrainian and Russian have a few systemic differences that make the languages unintelligble for a Ukrainian speaker who was never exposed to Russian and vice ersa but which, once easily learned, cease being a barrier to understanding. These include Ukr. "ee" -> Russian "o", Ukrainian "h" -> Russian "g", Ukrainian "eh" -> Russian "ye", Ukrainian "y" (like the "i" in give) -> Russian "ee". So let's pretend that English is "Ukrainian" and consider the phrase, "His goose lives in my house." The "Russian" version would sound like "Gees whose leaves een moy gouse." To someone who has never been exposed to the different rules, it's total nonsense; one can mitakenly think that there's a question about leaves, but nothing else in that phrase makes sense. However, these rules could be learned with minimal effort and once learned the phrase becomes exactly the same. That's mutual intelligibility (and yes, I realize that with Ukrainian vs. Russian there are also some vocabulary differences).Faustian (talk) 19:09, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * A good practical example from English is watching the film "Trainspotting". It's about the only film to ever reach the U.S. from Scotland with real Scots English (not English with a Scots accent).  (Scots English and American English have about the same time depth of separation as Ukrainian and Russian.)  The first time watching it, it's virtually unintelligible to an American.  But after a couple of watchings, it becomes much more comprehensible.  The only effort involved is watching the film and listening--no lessons, no workbooks, no vocabulary drills.  And the new vocabulary is learned through exposure and context.  Indeed, after just a few minutes you can figure out what "shayt" means, for example.  The same is true of Ukrainian and Russian.  How long do you think it would take a Russian speaker to understand that dyakuyu means "thank you" when they hear it in the market?  (Actually, most Ukrainians use "spasibo" now anyway--"dyakuyu" is rather formal.)  And how long would it take a Ukrainian speaker to figure out that adjectives in Russian end in -aya (Kavkaskaya) instead of '...a (Kavkas'ka)?  Not very long at all.  I figured it out right away when we moved to western Ukraine from eastern.  --Taivo (talk) 19:58, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I found Trainspotting to be much more easily understood than Russian. In fact, I could understand it after the first half hour or so. If it were so uncomprehensible the movie wouldn't have been so successful in the English-speaking world or would have required subtitles (once in Moscow they showed the Ukrainian-language movie Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The movie was subtitled into Russian). The first Russian movie I watched was Ironii Subdy; I couldn't understand it by the end.  It took several weeks immersed in Russian, in Moscow, for me to pick up workable Russian, although I did so without lessons or studying.  There are probably more sound changes, plus more divergent vocabulary. But generally I agree with you.Faustian (talk) 04:12, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Some characters in "Trainspotting" were more easily understood than others, of course. But, as you say, it illustrates the point--even when two speech varieties are labelled as "dialects of one language" and "mutually intelligible", that doesn't mean one can understand them right out of the box.  The dialects of the rural South, especially the African-American dialects, and the dialects of northern England and lowlands Scotland, are usually very difficult for people from the Western U.S. to understand without exposure.  In the documentary film "The Story of English", several of those dialects are subtitled when exemplified.  But one doesn't have to go to classes to learn to understand the other.  That's the fundamental point here.  --Taivo (talk) 15:08, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

English	Russian	Ukr	Byelo	Polish
 * 1	time	время	час	час	czas,
 * 2	person	человек (лицо, особа)	особа	чалавек	osoba,
 * 3	year	год	рік	год	rok,
 * 4	way	путь	шлях	шлях	Ścieżka
 * 5	day	день	день	дзень	dzień,
 * 6	thing	вещь	річ	рэч	rzeczy,
 * 7	man	человек	людина	чалавек	ludzi,
 * 8	world	мир (свет)	світ	свет	świata,
 * 9	life	жизнь	життя	жыццё	życia,
 * 10	hand	рука	рука	рука	ręka
 * 11	part	часть	частина	частка	część,
 * 12	child	ребенок (дитя)	дитина	дзіця	dziecko,
 * 13	eye	глаз (око)	око	вока	oko,
 * 14	woman	женщина	жінка	жанчына	kobieta,
 * 15	place	место	місце	месца	miejsca
 * 16	work	работа, 	робота, 	праца, 	pracy,
 * 17	week	неделя, 	тиждень, 	тыдзень, 	tydzień,
 * 18	case	случай, 	випадок, 	выпадак, 	przypadku,
 * 19	point	точка, 	точка, 	кропка, 	punkt,
 * 20	government	правительство, 	уряд, 	урад, 	rząd,
 * 21	compamy	компания, 	компанія, 	кампанія, 	firmy,
 * 22	number	число, 	число, 	лік, 	numer
 * 23	group	группа, 	група, 	група, 	grupy,
 * 24	problem	проблема, 	проблема, 	праблема, 	problem,
 * 25	fact	факт,	факт,	факт,	fakt,

English	x	5/20%	5/20%		7/38% Russian	5/20%	x	10/40%		8 Ukrainian	5/20%	10/40%	x	17/64%	21/84% Belorusan			17/64%	x	22/88% Polish			19-21/84%	22/88%	x

http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/common_english_nouns Common works

E-E = x E-R = 20% E-U = 20% E-B = 20% E-P = 38%

R-E = 20% R-R = x R-U = 40% R-B = 64% R-P = 24%

U-E = 20% U-R = 40% U-U = x U-B = 64% U-P = 84%

B-E = 20% B-R = 48% B-U = 64% B-B = x B-P - 88%

P-E = 38% P-R = 24% P-U = 84% P-B = 88% P-P = x
 * That's really not linguistically accurate, Bandurist. "government", "company", "fact", and "group" are not linguistically common words.  And, as we have stated above, this isn't how mutual intelligibility is measured anyway.  If you want to see the kind of list that linguists actually use to perform lexicostatistics for historical grouping, see Swadesh list.  --Taivo (talk) 21:13, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I looked at the Swadesh list, and actually did a comparison. There is a closer allignment because the bulk of the words as amny have an indo-European core. The similarities are even greter between Ukrainian and Slovak and Polish than with Russian. The above list was just the most frequently used words in English, which I assume would probably be also frequently used words in other languages. Obviously international words are going to be very similar, but I would have thought that the bulk of these words would have been much more similar. What is astoundng is the even closer similarities between Russian and Bulgarian which is closer than with Ukrainian and the similarities to SLovak, more so than Plish. Bandurist (talk) 17:40, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem that you're noticing is that all the Slavic languages are actually very close to one another. There is actually a certain degree of mutual intelligibility (the linguistic definition) among all of them.  They only began to diverge from one another after the 6th century.  By comparison, the Germanic languages began to diverge about a thousand years earlier.  The Romance languages are probably a better comparison for Slavic as their divergence also dates from the early part of the first millennium CE.  Among the Romance languages there is also a degree of mutual intelligibility comparable to the Slavic languages.  That means that lexicostatistic comparisons are not as clearcut between closely related languages as between languages that are not mutually intelligible.  But, as we stated above, lexicostatistics is not a measure of mutual intelligibility, but is one of the tools used by historical linguists to evaluate historical relationships (and not even the best or most accurate one).  You also must remember that the Swadesh list is a bit tricky to use for non-linguists.  The rules for its original and proper use are that you ask a native speaker for a term and then you use the first term that they respond with.  It's not necessarily the case of looking words up in a dictionary and finding a match in the definitions.  So if you ask a speaker of English for the word for "kő" (assuming the linguist is asking in Hungarian), if the English speaker responds with "stone", that's the word you use in the comparison, not "rock".  But this isn't the place for a discussion of lexicostatistics in Slavic.  Reliable linguistic sources say that Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, and Rusyn share a high degree of mutual intelligibility and that's what we go with.  --Taivo (talk) 18:41, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

not sure what was meant here ..........
"Theories concerning the Ukrainian language's development

A point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union." - is not a sentence. ???

Also, it seems that this section - apparently in trying to "please everyone" - is giving undue weight to some very minority (read nationalist) viewpoints. HammerFilmFan (talk) 07:33, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

The lead is a summary
The lead is supposed to be a summary of the article, not a detailed list in and of itself. The details that are being added to the lead are too extensive and need to be added to the appropriate sections of the article, not en masse to the lead. --Taivo (talk) 16:17, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Interesting Interview with a Linguist
Here: .Faustian (talk) 01:18, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

I wish this article was more about the language
I wish this article was more about the language and less about historical geopolitical influences — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.92.28 (talk) 03:44, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

verifiability
I wish the article were more substantiated. For instance, I haven't found any reliable source which could approve argument that "Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus'". According to the article policy an information must be verifiable. It would be reasonable if a source had been presented. Otherwise it is just a someone's equivocal opinion.83.149.0.100 (talk) 05:26, 10 January 2013 (UTC) Oresama
 * "Lineal descendant" means it stems from Old East Slavic, just like Russian and Belorussian. I'm not sure what kind of verification you need to that, it's a near-universally accepted point of view. Why you add the exact same text to the Russian language article if you think it's a problematic assertion? StasMalyga (talk) 10:47, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you for an explanation. But if I get you right and if what you mean is correct, why does an idea repeat itself twice? I believe it's already been mentioned: "The Ukrainian language traces its origins to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus';" But your interpretation is:"Lineal descendant" means it stems from Old East Slavic". Therefore shouldn't it be deleted to avoid a reiteration?83.149.0.100 (talk) 09:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC) Oresama
 * Good point, I'll delete it for now and see if any other editor wants to clarify it further. StasMalyga (talk) 10:50, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Much obliged, Stas. I don't see irrational statement by now.83.149.0.100 (talk) 10:56, 17 January 2013 (UTC)Oresama

Re: Classification and relationship to other languages
I edited some of the language in this section to make it more idiomatic in English, but there's still a problem--as the content stands now it seems as though the article claims that at one time it was claimed that their common descent from East Slavic means that all three are the same language. If this assertion was made, it should be documented more clearly. Someone with expertise in this field of linguistics and culture will need to do this. Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.188.185.176 (talk) 19:47, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The claim would be idiotic anyway. All Romance languages share a common descent (from Latin), which would mean, by that very same logic, that they are all the same language. So would all Slavic languages be. Heck, all Indo-European languages share a common descent! So they are all the same language? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 02:52, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

No such language
So called Ukrainian languge of Soviet period is Poltava dialect of Russian. "Modern Ukrainian" is nothing more than artificial language with Polish and new-made words inserted to Little Russian. The difference between real dialects of 19th centure Little Russia and "modern Ukrainian" is so big that it requires translations from Little Russian to Ukrainian. Nothing strange that Ukrainian population doesn't understand this "language" and prefers standart Russian or local Little Russian. The last is easily understood by any native Russian-speaker. 213.87.143.153 (talk) 17:10, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
 * So maybe you cancel the article? Or all the science about the language? Or maybe you should better write a paragraph about the difference between dialects of 19 century and modern language? I do not need any translation to understand what is written 200 years ago. You are a tipic russian chauvinist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Romari81 (talk • contribs) 06:31, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Crimea is not part of Russia
Crimea and Sevastopol are not recognized as being part of Russia by virtually the entire world. Adding "Russia" behind them in the infobox is POV. As has been done at Ukraine, the words "disputed territory" are non-POV. Any further recognition of Russian aggression is POV. --Taivo (talk) 16:49, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * The edit I made clearly states that they are partially recognized as territories of Russia. You stating that they are not part of Russia is POV because there are 15 countries and 3 partially recognized states who recognize Crimea as part of Russia. You can't just say they are disputed territories in this case since Republic of Crimea is Crimea under Russian administration, the Ukrainian administration is Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Under Russian law Crimea and Sevastopol have the Ukrainian language as official along with Russian and Crimean Tatar, if you consider Crimea as the Ukrainian territories then they are already included since Ukraine is already listed. You have to include that those territories are part of Russia because it was Russia who granted them the right to make Ukrainian an official language. --WhyHellWhy (talk) 21:41, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
 * No, they are not "part of Russia", they are disputed territories, no matter if you think otherwise. This affects more than just this article and there needs to be an overall consensus followed throughout.  That consensus was built at Ukraine.  If you want to change that consensus, then build it, but your unilateral handing over of Crimea to Russia is not WP:NPOV.  "Disputed" is the current NPOV status of those regions, without pressing the claim of either Ukraine or Russia.  --Taivo (talk) 05:43, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Republic of Crimea is Crimea under Russian administration, not Ukrainian, Autonomous Republic of Crimea is Crimea under Ukrainian administration. The Republic of Crimea is partially recognized, but nevertheless in that partially recognized region Ukrainian is an official language. Transnistria is also a disputed region between Moldova and the government of Transnistria, but it doesn't just say disputed region because under Moldovan law the Ukrainian language is not official in that region it is only official under the law of Transnistria. Stating that the two regions of Crimea are partially recognized de facto territories of Russia isn't POV, it's the truth. I didn't just say that they are Russia I included that it is not entirely recognized. --WhyHellWhy (talk) 06:00, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You are still trying to ignore the consensus that was built at Ukraine to use "disputed (territory)" for Crimea. Your fine-grained legal arguments are pretty pointless because most readers will not comprehend the difference that you are trying to make.  They will see "Crimea" and think "Crimea", not the subtlety that you are trying to force.  If you want to build a consensus for a Russian POV, then you need to build it at the place from which all this flows:  Ukraine.  Then you can apply it uniformly to these articles related to Ukraine.  --Taivo (talk) 06:05, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

visible attempts to colonize Ukraine by the Polish nobility ?

 * House of Wiśniowiecki, House of Sapieha, House of Tyszkiewicz - Ruthenian, Radziwiłł - Lithuanian.
 * The colonization included inviting pesants (mostly from overpopulated Poland) to settle in Ukraine, so some Polish peasants had Ruthenian lords, the peasants Ukrainized and the lords Polonized. These are not exactly  attempts to colonize Ukraine by the Polish nobility. Xx234 (talk) 09:32, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

State languages of Russia
State languages of Russia? WTF? This page about Ukraine or Russia?Salain (talk) 09:39, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Using "rynok" and "obitsiaty" as examples for imported Ukrainian words
I am not sure, how good these examples are. While the other words from German seem to be specific to Ukrainian, "rynok" is equally present in Russian and Belorussian. The wording still might be ok, as I'm not sure, when and how fast the word spread and might be first present in the Ukrainian area and only later in what is today's Russia. (https://uk.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BA, https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BA, https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BA) "Obitsiaty" on the other hand seems to be a wrong example of import from Polish. This seems to be a word common to ALL Slavic languages (https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%89%D0%B0%D1%82%D1%8C) including old Church Slavonic (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%82) and having the origin in Proto-Slavic (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D1%A3%D1%82%D1%8A#Old_Church_Slavonic, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Proto-Slavic/v%C4%9Bt%D1%8A) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.156.136.9 (talk) 15:08, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

The same with word "zawżdy" that is close to czech and slovak language (Same origin?). So maybe better to remove this part or to find better examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.44.30.18 (talk) 10:33, 19 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Vasmer said that old east slavic forms are something like this: "wisegda" and "obechati" or "obeshtati". If word is slavic origin it's not mean "non-importable".

repeat: this is not a sentence
Under (Linguistic development of the Ukrainian language): " Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. "  - missing a verb or something ... HammerFilmFan (talk) 20:26, 4 January 2015 (UTC)
 * "developed" is a verb. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 23:22, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * No, no, no - read the sentence again in its entirety - that is not a proper sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.169.28.48 (talk) 00:09, 26 March 2017 (UTC)
 * It has been read in it's entirety, and it is, indeed, a sentence. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 19:03, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Another theory? What's the first theory?
The "Theories concerning the development of the Ukrainian language" section begins "Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries .... Like the notable Lomonosov, they assumed .... But unlike Lomonosov's hypothesis, ...." Before this article moves on to another point of view, shouldn't it share with us at least a first point of view? Presumably this is Lomonosov's, but Wikipedia seems to have assumed that the reader already knows all about that. Largoplazo (talk) 21:58, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It is possible it was Russocentric and was sloppily deleted by Ukra nationalists. Try looking in previous versions of article history. - üser:Altenmann >t
 * I found it, a single edit almost a year and a half ago, with no edit summary. Especially given that the last chunk of material was sourced, I've restored the entire cut. Largoplazo (talk) 23:09, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry? Which chunk was sourced? None of it was sourced, nor is any of it sourced now. Thanks for tagging the article for citations, Altenmann. It's really been through the edit wars from both sides. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:38, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The last chunk that I restored is sourced. It's currently the final paragraph in the section. Largoplazo (talk) 23:51, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * That's interesting. Considering that you were complaining about content not making sense, you reinstated an unsourced WP:WEASEL statement here so that, in cahoots with the adjoining paragraph, it reads as: "... and, although it is gaining a number of supporters among Ukrainian academics, it is not seriously regarded outside Ukraine. Outside Ukraine, however, theories that distance Ukrainian from East Slavic have found few followers among international scholars and most academics continue to place Ukrainian firmly within the East Slavic group, descended from Proto-East Slavic, with close ties to Belarusian and Russian."


 * Do you have a POV to push, or are you just of the conviction that Ukrainians only come in one flavour: i.e., fascist nationalists. Do you actually have a reliable source suggesting that Right Sector and the rest of the majority of the lunatic right ethnic group known as 'Ukrainians' are pushing WP:FRINGE philology while thwacking non-Ukrainians over the head with swastikas? I've removed the offending 'inadvertently restored remnant' as being good faith, but suggest that it's best to keep your POV to yourself and focus on improving content over and above restoring propaganda. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 01:11, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't have any kind of agenda to push. Why don't you go read WP:AGF? I mean, I don't even know what would distinguish a Russian point of view from a Ukrainian point of view in this regard. I came to look at the article because something else I was looking at led me to wonder about the development of Ukrainian. I saw immediately that something was amissnot because of any political point of view of mine, but because you don't start a discussion with "another thing" when there hasn't been a first thing. I found where the missing piece was, I saw that it and other paragraphs had been blanked by an IP user who gave no reason for it, and, as I have done for years in many cases where someone has blanked content for no apparent reason, I restored it. It's that simple. There's nothing nefarious about it. OK? So go find somebody else to attack. Largoplazo (talk) 02:03, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * My apologies if this was AGF (I did note that I removed the weasel section based on AGF). I just find myself wondering how carefully content is restored by editors when they overlook something so glaringly amiss. Psychologically, I find it nigh on impossible to account for how one can overlook such a blatant conflict of attitudes when restoring derogatory content namely because I'm so unbelievably perfect that I've never made an error in judgement in my jaw-droppingly brilliant life...


 * That said, yes I've just been on a break and have come back to the usual Russophobic, anti-Ukrainian, anti-Polish, anti-anti-anti-anti and have let it get to me by drawing you into my own loopy hysteria. Whack me with a whale. My attitude was truly bad form and a do deserve a damned good squishing just to remind me that being a diva is a really, really bad thing. Cheers, for the dressing down. Happy editing, and do flick me on the nose should you find me jumping up and down like a mean-spirited grump again! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 06:17, 9 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Perhaps one already needs to be embroiled in the dispute to be aware of any association that any of the theories covered by the text I restored has with any offensive agenda. On the face of it, all I see is "Ukrainian diverged in century X from this language" versus "Ukrainian diverged in century Y from that language". Reading all this academically rather than nationalistically (I'm not even any kind of Slav), it amazes me that some people stake how wonderful they feel about themselves and their people to the answer to questions like this!
 * I appreciate your reply and the laugh you gave me, thank you! Largoplazo (talk) 10:49, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It appears that I've officially turned my back on Marxism and turned into a ranting, jingoistic fruitcake. Bizarre. A day later and I have no idea of where that came from. I've only just given up smoking (as in less than 3 weeks ago), so I'm working on the hypothesis that not smoking can lead to questionable political inclinations. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:34, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I deleted that paragraph (indicated with green color) because of wrong statement that was not supported with correct reference (one that was added didn't support statement in a sentence). "Outside Ukraine, however, theories that distance Ukrainian from East Slavic...." What theories? Who are that theorists? Nothing was said about scholars or theories that separate Ukrainian from East Slavic languages above or beyond. Nothing was in an added reference as well... Even more in reference was a statement that Russian is forerunner of Ukrainian (and Belorussian), but Russian is not like Latin or Sanscrit (I mean dead), Russian is a modern language and it can't be a forerunner for any other modern language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shuhister (talk • contribs) 10:11, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

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Map
The map is overexaggerating the geographic spread of Ukranian. Do you need to color entire countries because of "thousands"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.200.16.217 (talk) 17:23, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Language family
The "family tree" in the infobox seems to miss one step: according to a number of sources, and the article about the Ruthenian language ("Dialects of Ruthenian slowly developed into modern Belarusian, Rusyn and Ukrainian languages"), the Ukrainian language didn't evolve directly from the East Slavic language, but evolved from one of the dialects of the Ruthenian language (which did evolve directly from East Slavic), so the family tree should say "... Slavic -> East Slavic -> Ruthenian -> Ukrainian" instead of what it says now (where Ruthenian isn't mentioned). The claim in the infobox about Old East Slavic being "an early form of Ukrainian" also seems highly dubious. - Tom &#124; Thomas.W talk 14:18, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Since no one has commented I have made the change, but there's a lot more cleanup needed, since the article systematically applies the name "Ukrainian language" retroactively to Slavic languages/dialects that were spoken long before there was a Ukrainian language (claiming there was an "Old Ukrainian language" in the 12th-14th centuries, in spite of the dialect spoken in the area of Ukraine not even beginning to diverge from what was then spoken in what is now Belarus and other areas until centuries later), even though the language spoken in what is now Ukraine was commonly known as (a dialect of) the Ruthenian language as late as the end of the 19th century, and in some cases well into the 20th century. And we do not rewrite history. - Tom &#124; Thomas.W talk 10:55, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Fixed some of it. - Tom &#124; Thomas.W talk 16:21, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Official language in Crimea and Transnistria
United nations recognizes Crimea as a part of Ukraine and Transnistria - as a part of Moldova. Why putting Crimea separately, if it is a territory temporarily occupied by Russia? If it is a part of Ukraine - why separate it and attach a non-recognised flag? If consider Russian occupation - than it is not an official language there, as it is being removed from schools and Ukrainian-language newspapers were closed. No logic here. DimaV83 (talk) 08:48, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * According to the law of Russian Federation, Ukrainian is state language of the Republic of Crimea. --Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii 16:31, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia should prioritize United Nations decisions over local laws. Crimea should not be put separately as it is part of Ukraine. Deimos (talk) 11:34, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia shouldn't prioritize anyone's decisions. It is an independent source, so there must be a neutral description about both sides of this conflict. Adsterror (talk) 12:46, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Rewriting or removing the section "Persecution and russification"
This section is just terrible, not even a single citation for any of the claims being made. I don't even know how this hasn't been discussed here until now, it is painfully obvious the bias here. But okay before anything let's make clear where these claims are probably coming from. If you go to the Ukrainian language page in Ukrainian, and go to the History section, there is a link for a specific page only for discussing the situation of the Ukrainian language in the USSR. If you read all of the article you will only find 2 citations, the second one being only a dictionary; so what interests us is the first one, which gets us to this site, which the title translates to "Chronology of language events in Ukraine: external history of the Ukrainian language". So this is the font that I am assuming they are using on this article, if I am correct, the first claim they make is purely nonsensical. They claim here on this article: " In December 1932, the regional party cells received a telegram signed by V. Molotov and Stalin with an order to immediately reverse the Ukrainianization policies.[citation needed]". Obviously no sources, but if we go to the site that I've already mentioned here, and we go to the [http://movahistory.org.ua/wiki/30-%D1%82%D1%96_%D1%80%D1%80._XX_%D1%81%D1%82. 1930 section] and go to 1932, the only mention there that comes even comes close to what they say is, in the original Ukrainian version:

" Постановa РНК СРСР і ЦК ВКП(б) про хлібозаготівлю в Україні, на Північному Кавказі та у Західних областях. Водночас документ вимагав правильного проведення українізації в Україні й поза її межами в регіонах, де компактно мешкали українці. Документ також містив категоричну вимогу боротися з петлюрівськими та іншими контрреволюційними елементами.

Голод 1932-1933 років на Україні…, 292-293. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lugë Ushqimi (talk • contribs) 02:24, 2 September 2020 (UTC) 15 грудня Сталін і Молотов підписали телеграму-директиву аналогічного змісту до місцевих керівників.

Шаповал Ю. І. Сталінізм і Україна "

The translation by Google Translate:

" December 14 Resolution of the SNC of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) on grain procurement in Ukraine, the North Caucasus and the Western regions. At the same time, the document called for the proper implementation of Ukrainization in Ukraine and abroad in regions where Ukrainians lived compactly. The document also contained a categorical demand to fight Petliur's and other counter-revolutionary elements.

The famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine…, 292-293.

On December 15, Stalin and Molotov signed a telegram directive of similar content to local leaders.

Shapoval Y. I. Stalinism and Ukraine "

If this translation is reliable, then the first claim they make is purely delusional. I haven't yet checked the other claims, so I am asking here for help to revise this part of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lugë Ushqimi (talk • contribs) 02:19, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I too think the section should be rewritten or removed. I would prefer a rewrite but the current version seems pretty close to REDFLAG. Perhaps the original editor should be consulted? Acalycine (talk) 09:48, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Preferably yes, but still, if they know the sources and the article has been here so long with many citation requests, and they still hasn't shown the sources. It would be better off just removing all the not sourced claims in the Soviet Era section, until someone can provide good sources on them, including the Ukrainization one, because it also has no sources to it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lugë Ushqimi (talk • contribs) 12:46, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Recent edits
DanyloPushkar,

I suggest you discuss here and stop uncivil comments. Thank You.(KIENGIR (talk) 17:26, 21 March 2021 (UTC))

Your edit summaries have included such comments as "I provided citations" when you provided no citations and "Please read" when I, for one, did read the existing source, and what you'd replaced the existing text with was the opposite of what the source says. So, stop. If you disagree with the text that's there, you must discuss it and reach consensus. Largoplazo (talk) 18:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Cinema section: a proposal
I don't think choosing films by IMDb rating is a good selection criteria. The ratings for these movies has changed a lot since this section was created. Furthermore, each of IMDbs metrics is problematic: average rating can be very high for films with very few reviews, the films with the most reviews may not be the best, and I don't understand IMDbs "Popularity" metric.

I propose someone with knowledge of recent Ukrainian cinema just chooses a few movies that critics agree are outstanding and feature them, with reference to reviews/news rather than simply IMDb, which is a tertiary source.

PS I added interlanguage links for a few of the films, and recommend anyone adding/removing films from the list to do the same.

Dhalamh (talk) 13:42, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

"Ykpaihcbka moba" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Ykpaihcbka moba and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 January 22 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. signed,Rosguill talk 19:49, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

"The Ukrainian language retains a degree of mutual intelligibility with Belarusian" -- What degree?
As it stands, this is near meaningless: "The Ukrainian language retains a degree of mutual intelligibility with Belarusian." High degree? Low degree? Any two closely cognate languages are going to have "a degree" (a range, actually, depending on individual speakers) of mutual intelligibility. Some specification is necessary, and expansion beyond just Belarusian. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 14:40, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Allowed for rather than created by
The current article text contains:

"Other word orders are common due to the free word order created by Ukrainian's inflectional system."

I doubt the inflectional system created the free word order; I suppose it merely allows for it. Any objections?Redav (talk) 15:55, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Good point. I've eased it off to 'enabled by'. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 14:26, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Isizulu
Ngefuna ubala isizulu kotwa Nina a nefuni ho nyega phanzi or methane amapages  ngezo bona me bale Plz nyaleqela ngelini lisho Pl nyagena funda Plz isizulu is my real language Plz accept me Ngefuni u msebenzi — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.114.142.34 (talk) 19:45, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Odessa § Requested move 11 July 2022
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Odessa § Requested move 11 July 2022. Rei (talk) 00:38, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

pronunciation of Taras Shevchenko
Is correct? Why isn't Тарас tɐˈrɑs? --Espoo (talk) 16:04, 31 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Perhaps because it's followed by a voiced [ɦ] and in fast speech [s] would assimilate with it to yield [z]. Durchgeknallte (talk) 09:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Dead link in keyboard layout caption
Template:Dead link is currently in the caption of the keyboard layout image in. This was added in (maybe the bot checked for « https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:KB_Ukrainian.svg|right|thumb|250x250px|Ukrainian »?). This image was originally added with the section in (the File: namespace was added right after that, ). As, if I'm understanding correctly, the default behaviour is already to link to the file page and this is an image from commons (so it is probably ok to point to its page in this wiki?), I will remove both the dead link template and the URL pointing to ukwiki, but please revert if this is there for a reason. -- njsg (talk) 21:43, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

2015 study
I just deleted mention of a lexicostatistical calculation from the article whose results do not only suggest that the East Slavic languages were already distinct by the time of the earliest mentions of the Slavs in the mid-6th century, and that the South Slavic languages were already distinct even before Slavs migrated into the Southeastern Europe! That's absolutely bonkers and patently illogical if you know anything about the history of the Slavs and the Slavic languages, frankly. There is no way that South Slavic can already have been differentiated at the time because loanwords from Latin and Greek and even renderings of names imply that the differentiation of (South) Slavic can only have begun after the migration across the Danube, and differences were very minor as late as about 800. While a unified South Slavic dialect may never have existed, nor even a West Slavic counterpart, if anything the differentiation into dialects that later became the South Slavic languages started in the 7th century at the earliest (and it's extremely unlikely and makes no sense from the point of history and linguistics to postulate that Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian should already have been distinct by 700, let alone by the 5th century). Like practically all lexicostatistic studies, this one is completely off in its results. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 19:01, 23 October 2022 (UTC)


 * @Florian Blaschke thank you for work Gerçois (talk) 19:45, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:08, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Idioma ucraniano.png

"Ukrainian jargon" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ukrainian_jargon&redirect=no Ukrainian jargon] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 00:07, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

About faulty sweeping statement in the ingress & footnote 15
I hereby quote he initial 'synopsis' (such an intro+summary section is called ingress in my native tongue, not sure about english) on the subject of the Russian Communist Party (basically the same as Soviet Russia's executive organ) and its official opinions on the Ukrainian language as a medium and as a part of a culture:

" Russification saw the Ukrainian language banned as a subject from schools and as a language of instruction in the Russian Empire, and continued in various ways in the Soviet Union."

That last claim is the fact (or, to me spontaneously, disinformation) in question. I checked the footnote that supposedly confirmed that the sneaky ruskies also in their soviet form found wicked ways to oppress a local culture without doing it "on paper" I guess the article-maker means. It stands to reason that the footnote reinforce the notion in the wiki article. The text referenced reads as follows;

"From 1804 until the 1917 revolution the Ukrainian language was banned from schools as a subject and a medium for instruction.

This almost total suppression of Ukrainian culture eased somewhat under the Bolsheviks. They permitted a controlled Ukrainization of the party and administrative elite (...)".

The book continues to mention among other things that the relations between "big brother" Moscow and vassal govt in Kiev wasnt as tense as for example between Soviet Russia and Poland. The text also continues to, just two sentences after the above quoted sentence, mention the 1930's great famine, which by most laymen, and many historians, and wiki writers is blamed on Stalin's administration who requisitioned a lion's share of the harvests and left local peasants to starve. This - however!! - is NOT anywhere in any works of fact defined as a general Russian tendency to love to cause mass-death but a well known historical event, perpetrated by a combination of 1. a chaotic logistic and political situation, 2. the recurring unknowns, mistakes, sabotages, and aggressive stress factors all systems who deny capitalism get to experience (if not from within or planted from outside by massive military force) and 3. JV Stalin, the Purger of the executive branch's too sharp minds and of the Party's and the Revolution's veterans, poster boy for the dictator mustache style, arbitrary evil and despotic rule both in the liberal West and Reactionary East, but even Stalin can't be blamed for ever having the Ukrainian culture or language in his crosshairs. The kulaks, yes, as a class even. They were not endemic to Ukraine but existed all over former Imperial Russia and all neighboring nations with farmland a-plenty.

There you have it. I wouldnt have written this oddly long comment if the wiki page simply threw isht at all things red, many articles lack objectivity and use Robert Conquest as basically their only source when it comes to the nitty gritty, the real headlining "crimes", Conquest; ultraconservative, bordering on fascist and at any rate an avid apartheid fan and right wing junta supporter (specifically of Ian Smith's Rhodesia), warfare romantic and most importantly a continous distributor of known Gestapo falsifications. But he IS at the same time such a big established name I gotta take that standing. The rules of the game. BUT: making such a sweeping propagandistic claim - that Russia in itself, in all forms, Tsarist, Socialist, Authoritarian, Anarcho-Capitalist, third world-poor and defenseless, lacking real administration except puppet functionaries who sign off priceless amounts of property, land and resources for cheap to transnational big money players ("free" Russia in the 90's), - want to destroy Ukrainian culture and in spite of its different forms and real pressing problems and threats to its own well being, finds sneaky ways to do it even when it cant be seen and add a footnote to the claim WHICH DOESNT SUPPORT THE CLAIM AT ALL - that grinds my gears something fierce (sry for the rhyme and the worn phrase).

I won't edit the ingress text today. All articles and keywords even remotely connected to Ukraine, Russia, the 2014 events, Russias invasion or more supercontroversial: Nato's expansion or the Zelenskyj regime's blut und boden rhetorics or worst of all: Vladimir Putin himself or actually any stupid little thing that can be perceived as having anythinng to do with it will blow up a storm. Wikipedia is usually good with balance but when it comes to views opposed to the current politicial paradigm Ive given up. But if ppl are gonna lie, its degrading to the entire academic tradition to use a reference that says almost the opposite of your claim. IHSjohansson (talk) 12:24, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm going to ignore the assumptions of bad faith and outright genocide denial in this comment, and just address the substance of the discussion, which is the claim that:
 * "[Russification] continued in various ways in the Soviet Union"


 * You are indeed right to point out that the source cited does not address this issue comprehensively, although in my view it is probably sufficient. Either way, this is an entirely fair and helpful claim to make.
 * Again, I am going to focus on language only in an attempt to keep this discussion on-track: an exhaustive overview of Russification policies in Soviet Ukraine is beyond the scope of this talk page, but I am happy to provide a couple of examples of ways in which the Ukrainian language suffered during that period.
 * Publication in Ukrainian was a hot topic throughout Soviet history, but there can be no doubt that the publication of newspapers and other periodicals in Ukrainian was severely limited during the 1930s. See Martin, Terry. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, pp. 108, 369.
 * Monolingual Ukrainian education was withdrawn, while monolingual Russian eduation remained an option in Ukraine. See Weinstein, Harold. 1941. 'Language and Education in the Soviet Ukraine', The Slavonic Year Book, 1, 124-148.
 * Ukrainian was not used as a language in the workplace in most of Ukraine's cities. See Martin, Terry. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, p. 122.
 * Literature was rarely translated from/into Ukrainian, apart from where the other language involved was Russian. Foreign literature was experienced "through" the lens of Russian, and Russian literature was very rarely translated into Ukrainain (some authors in fact objected to this practice personally). See Kamovnikova, Natalia. 2019. Made Under Pressure: Literary Translation in the Soviet Union, 1960-1991, chapters 1 and 3.
 * There you go. If you would like to improve the page, I suggest tidying up vague/overly general statements, adding concrete examples, and adding better references. All the best, Akakievich (talk) 17:15, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Change the number of native speakers
There are officially 32,6M people with Ukrainian as their first language. It's also state on the Ukrinian language page in other languages. The number on this page is too little to be real and the source links to a non-existent page. Meli.roden (talk) 08:21, 26 June 2023 (UTC)