Ukrainian language

Back in Soviet times Ukrainian language was neglected and underestimated. It lost its status of being national and state one as Ukraine was part of the great Soviet State and was subject to its policy and regulations, thus it was not allowed to have its own official language. In 1993 only 31 million Ukrainian residents (slightly over 59%) spoke Ukrainian, but after the country gained its independency the number of people willing to learn and speak it at home has started to increase. And today about 67.5% of Ukrainian citizens refer to the language as to their mother tongue despite the previous pressing influence of the Soviet Union.

A great many of linguists consider Ukrainian to be one of the languages recognized from the earliest times, a few even suppose it’s the parent and the oldest one among other Slavic languages. And although it is hard to trace its history down to the pre-written period, it is obvious that Ukrainian language existed early enough to leave written symbols on the items dated by the beginning of the Bronze Age. Most of those writings looked like Greek, but no doubt belonged to the local language spoken in the ancient settlements of northern Black Sea area.

And you’ll ask what about the situation with Ukrainian language today? Luckily the government realized the importance of preserving the beautiful songlike Ukrainian language and giving it enough room to develop. And today the great majority of offices and administrative bodies use it for communication as well as in correspondence. It is spoken during sessions in Rada, by the President, by Prime Minister and a considerable part of deputies and officials. Moreover, such extensive use of the language by bureaucracy leads to the widening of Ukrainian language studies both in schools and higher educational establishments. Still more books, textbooks and manuals are published in the national language and indeed more people started to write books in Ukrainian.

Due to the mass media the Ukrainian language is taken outside Ukraine and is gaining stable, consolidated and more significant position among other world important languages broadening the frontiers and introducing unique Ukrainian culture to other nations. It is no doubt that sooner or later the whole of the population of the country will speak Ukrainian as a mother tongue or else there will be many bilinguals and multilinguals speaking not only the national language, but Russian and, for example, English, French or German as well.