Editing Ukrainian language (section)

==Classification==
[[File:Geographical distribution of extant Slavic and East Baltic languages 2015.png|thumb|Ethnographic Map of Slavic and Baltic Languages]]
Ukrainian has varying degrees of [[mutual intelligibility]] with other [[Slavic languages]]. It is closely related to other [[East Slavic languages]] with high levels of mutual intelligibility.<ref name="classification145"/>  Ukrainian is considered to be most closely related to Belarusian.<ref>Roland Sussex, Paul V. Cubberley. (2006). ''The Slavic languages''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pg. 518</ref>

The separation of the East Slavic languages is considered to be relatively recent.<ref name="classification145"/> In the 19th century, the question of whether the Ukrainian, [[Belorusian language|Belarusian]] and [[Russian language|Russian]] languages were dialects of a single language or three separate languages was actively discussed, with the debate affected by linguistic and political factors.<ref name="classification145" /> The political situation (Ukraine and Belarus being mainly part of the Russian Empire at the time) and the historical existence of the medieval state of Kievan Rus', which occupied large parts of these three nations, led to the creation of the common classification known later as the East Slavic languages. The underlying theory of the grouping is their descent from a common ancestor. In modern times, Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian are usually listed by linguists as separate languages.<ref>Bernard Comrie and Greville G. Corbett, ed.  1993.  ''The Slavonic Languages'' (Routledge).<br />Bernard Comrie.  1992.  "Slavic Languages", ''International Encyclopedia of Linguistics'' (Oxford).  Vol. 3, pp. 452–456.</ref><ref>David Dalby. 1999/2000. ''The Linguasphere Register of the World's Languages and Speech Communities'' (The Linguasphere Observatory), Volume Two, pg. 442: "53-AAA-e, Russkiy+Ukrainska"</ref><ref name=e27/>

The Ukrainians were predominantly [[Peasant|peasants]] and [[petit bourgeois|petits bourgeois]]. In 1897, 93% of Ukrainians were peasants.<ref name="WUkraineL"/> As a result, the Ukrainian language was mostly vernacular and few earlier literary works from the period can be found. In the cities, Ukrainian coexisted with [[Church Slavonic language|Church Slavonic]]—a literary language of [[religion]] that evolved from Old Church Slavonic—and later Polish and Russian, both languages which were more often used in formal writing and communication during that time.{{cn|date=June 2024}}

===Differences from other Slavic languages===
The Ukrainian language has the following similarities with and differences from other Slavic languages:

*Like all Slavic languages with the exception of [[Russian language|Russian]], Belarusian, standard written Slovak{{NoteTag|In standard written Slovak, the vocative case is still retained in some common words, like ''mami'' — vocative (English mum) vs ''mama'' — nominative, ''oci'' or ''tati'' – vocative, (English dad) vs ''oco'', ''tato'' — nominative, ''Bože'' (God in English) vs ''Boh''}} and [[Slovene language|Slovene]], the Ukrainian language has preserved the Common Slavic [[vocative case]]. When addressing one's sister (''sestra'') she is referred to as ''sestro.'' In the Russian language the vocative case has been almost entirely replaced by the nominative (except for a handful of vestigial forms, e.g. ''Bozhe'' "God!" and ''Gospodi'' "Lord!").<ref name="comparison">J. B. Rudnyckyj. (1963) . The Position of the Ukrainian Language among the Slavic languages. In ''Ukraine: A concise Encyclopedia''. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 445–448.</ref>
*The Ukrainian language, in common with all Slavic languages other than Russian, Slovak and Slovene, has retained the Common [[Slavic second palatalization]] of the velars *k, *g and *x in front of the secondary vowel *ě of the dative and locative ending in the female [[declension]], resulting in the final sequences -cě, -zě, and -sě. For example, ''ruka'' (hand) becomes ''ruci'' in Ukrainian. In Russian, the dative and locative of ''ruka'' is ''ruke.''
*The Ukrainian language, in common with Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, has developed the ending -''mo'' for first-person plurals in verbs (''khodymo'' for "we walk").<ref name="comparison" /> In all cases, it resulted from lengthening of the Common Slavic -''mŭ''.{{citation needed|date=April 2014}}{{dubious|date=April 2014}}
*The Ukrainian language, along with Russian and Belarusian, has changed the Common Slavic word-initial ''ye''- into ''o'', such as in the words ''ozero'' (lake) and ''odyn'' (one).<ref name="comparison" />
*The Ukrainian language, in common with Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian, Belarusian and southern Russian dialects, has changed the Common Slavic "g" into an "h" sound (for example, ''noha'' – leg).<ref name="comparison" />
*The Ukrainian language, in common with some northern Russian and Croatian dialects, has transformed the Common Slavic ''yě'' into ''i'' (for example, ''lis'' – forest).<ref name="comparison" />
*The Ukrainian language, in common with Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovene, has simplified the Common Slavic ''tl'' and ''dl'' into ''l'' (for example, ''mela'' – she swept").<ref name="comparison" />
*The Ukrainian language, in common with the most of Slavic ones, is a [[Isochrony|stress-timed language]], in which syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time (on average) between consecutive stressed syllables.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Oleksandr |first=Ishchenko |date=2016 |title=Ukrainian in prosodic typology of world languages |url=https://zenodo.org/record/7548409 |journal=Dialog der Sprachen, Dialog der Kulturen. Die Ukraine aus Globaler Sicht: V. Internationale Virtuelle Konferenz der Ukrainistik |language=uk |publisher=Open Publishing LMU |publication-place=München |pages=76–85 |doi=10.5281/ZENODO.7548409 |access-date=19 January 2023 |archive-date=19 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230119113138/https://zenodo.org/record/7548409 |url-status=live }}</ref> 
*The Ukrainian language, in common with all modern Slavic languages other than Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not use [[Article (linguistics)|articles]].
*Other Slavic ''o'' in closed syllables, i.e., syllables ending in a consonant, in many cases corresponds to a Ukrainian ''i'', as in ''pod'' → ''pid'' (під, 'under'). This also includes place names such as Lviv (Львів in Ukrainian), Lwów in Polish, and Львов (Lvov) in Russian.{{cn|date=June 2024}}

Unlike all other Slavic languages, Ukrainian has a synthetic future (also termed inflectional future) tense which developed through the erosion and [[Clitic|cliticization]] of the verb "to have" (or possibly "to take"): ''pysat-ymu'' (infinitive-future-1st sg.) ''I will write''.<ref name="Languages of Europe">Bernd Kortmann, Johan van der Auwera (2011). ''The Languages and Linguistics of Europe: A Comprehensive Guide'', Volume 2. p. 103</ref> Although the inflectional future (based on the verb 'to have') is characteristic of [[Romance languages]], Ukrainian linguist A. Danylenko argues that Ukrainian differs from Romance in the choice of auxiliary, which should be interpreted as 'to take' and not 'to have.' He states that Late Common Slavic (LCS) had three verbs with the same Proto-Indo-European root {{PIE|*h₁em-}}: 
* a determined imperfective LCS *jęti: *jĭmǫ 'to take' (later superseded by numerous prefixed perfectives)
* an indetermined imperfective LCS *jĭmati: jemljǫ 'to take' (which would not take any prefixes)
* an imperfective LCS *jĭměti: *jĭmamĭ 'to hold, own, have'
The three verbs became conflated in East Slavic due to morphological overlap, in particular of *iměti "to have" and *jati "to take" as exemplified in the Middle Ukrainian homonymic imut’ from both iměti (&lt; *jĭměti) and jati (&lt; *jęti). Analogous grammaticalization of the type take ("to take", "to seize") > future is found in [[Chinese language|Chinese]] and [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]].<ref name="Danylenko">Andrii Danylenko. "Is There Any Inflectional Future in East Slavic? A Case of Ukrainian against Romance Reopened." ''Journal of the Slavic Research Center at Hokkaido University'', 2007. PP. 147–177.</ref>