Mova--tse dusha narodu (The language is the soul of the people). For
Ukrainians, the proverb is indeed rooted in truth.
Centuries of subjugation and oppression by neighbouring conquerors and
imperialists took their land and liberty but not their language which remains
a strong symbol of Ukrainian national identity.
Since independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, the language has
experienced a revival and rebirth in Ukraine and was named the official
language of the Ukrainian Republic after the declaration of statehood on
August 24. The Union's policies of Russification repressed and restricted but
did not destroy.
Ukrainian, together with Russian and Belarussian, belongs to the eastern
group of the Slavic family of Indo-European languages.
Called the most ancient living Slavic language, it is said to the one most
closely related to Old Church Slavic, the pre-modern literary language used by
all Slavs.
Unique syntactic, morphological and phonological features characterize and
separate it from the other East Slavic languages.
The Ukrainian alphabet is Cyrillic but differs slightly from the Russian
and Belarussian languages which are also written in modified Cyrillic script.
The language is richly inflected, employing a system of seven cases
(nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental, locative)
in which nouns, adjectives and most pronouns decline in the singular and
plural, marking the difference between animate and inanimate nouns with
separate paradigms, and in three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter).
Verbs possess an "aspect" in which their use may be imperfective, for
actions which are considered ongoing, or perfective, used to describe
completed actions.
Accent in Ukrainian is unfixed and does not observe strict rules for its
placement.
Word order is generally free owing to the system of inflections which keeps
roles and relationships defined. Ya mayu khyzhku. Mayu ya knyzhku. Knyzhku
ya mayu. These are all grammatically correct ways in which to say "I have
a book."
The spoken language is both musical and melodious with a rhythm and meter
to its expression.
Today Ukrainian is used by approximately 45 million speakers in Ukraine and
hundreds of thousands of immigrants and New World-decendents in numerous
diaspora communities, most notably Canada, the United States, Brazil,
Argentina and Australia, among others.
A unique development in the history of the Ukrainian language has been what
socio-linguists and philologists have been calling the creation of new
variants of Ukrainian in which the dominant language of the new environment
(English in Canada or Portuguese in Brazil, for example) influences
linguistically the transplanted mother tongue.
Strengthening and increasing the use and prestige of the Ukrainian language
in Ukraine continues simultaneously with trends towards renewed and increased
use and abilities of the ancestral language among Ukrainians abroad.
--Prepared by Jeffrey Picknicki Morski, University of Winnipeg