Is Russian language similar to Ukrainian?

Russian and Ukrainian are different in pronunciation. To non-native speakers and for those not familiar with the language, they can sound the same. However, they are only roughly similar, and enough to be noticeable by people familiar with the languages. Ukranian has more soft consonants.

Is Russian and Ukrainian written the same?

Both of the alphabets consist of 33 letters; Russian has the letters Ёё, ъ, ы and Ээ, which are not used in Ukrainian. Instead, Ukrainian has Ґґ, Єє, Іі and Її. The pronunciation of words and letters varies as well: И in Russian is pronounced like [ee] in the words “seed” or “meet”.

Can Belarusians understand Ukrainian?

As one of the East Slavic languages, Belarusian shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group. To some extent, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian, and Belarusian retain a degree of mutual intelligibility. About 6,984,000 (85.6%) of Belarusians declared it their “mother tongue”.

Are Russian and Ukrainian mutually intelligible?

Not only are these Slavic languages very similar to Russian in written form, but they are also around 70% mutually intelligible. Interestingly, Ukrainians can understand the Russian language better than the Russians would understand the Ukrainian.

Are Russian and Ukrainian accents the same?

The accent depends on the region rather than country. Russians from South speak really close to so-named “Ukrainian” accent. Many Ukrainians from Kiev speak “standard” Russian which is better than you can hear in many Russian regions. Although, Ukrainians tend to use different colloquial phrases.

Is Ukrainian easier than Russian?

So, although the two languages are equally complex in many ways, when it comes to the beginning stages of learning to read and pronounce words correctly, Ukrainian seems to be somewhat easier than Russian for native English speakers. Beyond that, the two languages are both equally difficult.