question from student re Russian vs. Ukrainain language

[Oleh Kotsyuba (Harvard Univ)]

 From the perspective of a Ukrainian native speaker, Ukrainian is  
closer to Polish than to Russian. This is especially true for  
vocabulary. As for Ukrainian grammar and spelling, they were  
significantly adapted to Russian in the course of the 70 years of the  
Soviet Union.

Any comparison in pairs of languages is very problematic. If I had to  
choose one though, it would probably be Spanish vs. Portugese,  
definitely not Czech vs. Slovak.

Best,
Oleh

Oleh Kotsyuba

Ph.D. Candidate
Dept. of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Harvard University




On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:54 PM, Anne L Lounsbery wrote:

>
> Hello all,
>
> I realize that this is both an “amateurish” question and a loaded  
> one, but because a student is asking me and I have no answer for  
> her, I thought I’d present her question to the list:  “How different  
> are the Russian and Ukrainian languages? As different as, say,  
> Spanish is from Portuguese? Mandarin Chinese from Cantonese?”
>
> What might be a good analogy to offer here?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --Anne
>
> Anne Lounsbery
> Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Study
> Department of Russian & Slavic Studies
> New York University
> 19 University Place, 2nd floor
> New York, NY 10003
> (212) 998-8674
>
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