Ukrainian language, also called ruthenian, Ukrainian ukrainska mova, is East Slavic language spoken in Ukraine and in Ukrainian communities in neighboring Belarus, Russia, Poland, and Slovakia. Ukrainian language is the lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus (10th-13th century).

Ukrainian language is written in a form of Cyrillic alphabet and is closely related to Russian and Belorussian, from which it was indistinguishable until the 12th or 13th century. Ukrainian language resembles Russian less closely than does Belorussian, though all three languages are mutually intelligible.

Ukrainian language - Ukrainska mova

Windows Vista installation screen on Ukrainian

After the fall of Kievan Rus in the 13th century, the dialectal characteristics that distinguish Ukrainian language from its sister languages emerged, but for many centuries thereafter the language had almost no literary expression owing to Ukraine's long political subordination. It was not until the end of the 18th century that modem literary Ukrainian language emerged out of the colloquial Ukrainian tongue.

Like Belorussian, Ukrainian language contains a large number of words borrowed from Polish, but it has fewer borrowings from Church Slavonic than does Russian.

Ukraine - the homeland of Ukrainian language

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