question from student re Russian vs. Ukrainain language

[Natalia Pylypiuk]

Colleagues,

Both Spanish and Ukrainian are languages I acquired in very early childhood and continue to use in a variety of professional and informal contexts.  

In high school, I found that, knowing Spanish, it was much easier to learn Italian than it was to learn Russian, knowing Ukrainian.

I also studied French. I discovered then that the distance between Spanish and Italian is much shorter than the distance between Ukrainian and Russian. Thus, the analogy I would propose is:

Spanish to French is like Ukrainian to Russian.

This is not the point of view of a linguist, but of a (bi-lingual) native speaker acquiring additional languages within each family...

Best,

Natalia Pylypiuk, PhD, Professor
Ukrainian Culture, Language & Literature Program
[www.arts.ualberta.ca/~ukraina/] 
Modern Languages & Cultural Studies, University of Alberta
President of the Canadian Association for Ukrainian Studies




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