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Is Ukrainian Hard to Learn? Language Intro.
How hard is it to learn Ukrainian? In short, it is not too hard because Ukrainian has some relationship with European languages, and not only Slavic.
Have you ever created your top list of the loveliest world languages?
A long time ago, in 1934 Ukrainian has acquired the title of the second most melodic language after Italian and the third most beautiful after French and Persian. You may wonder how is it possible to measure the beauty of the language?
There were several benchmarks, primarily taken into account: phonetics, vocabulary, phraseology, and sentence structure. Does it mean that Ukrainian is worth studying? And if yes, is Ukrainian difficult to learn for English speakers?
Benefits of Learning Ukrainian Language.
So, is Ukrainian difficult to learn? Firstly, let us look at the basics. Being an official language of Ukraine, the largest European country, Ukrainian belongs to the Slavic language branch and remains the second most widespread Slavic language, after Russian.
Now you may be surprised that it is not so closely related to Ukrainian, as Belarusian and Polish. That is why Ukrainian speakers can easily understand Belarusian and nearly 70 per cents of Polish vocabulary. Also, Slovak, Chernogorian, and a few other eastern European languages.
Around half of Ukrainians speak their official language, with the majority of Ukrainian speakers located in the west of the country. The remaining half of people are more stick to Russian like they used to during the period of the Soviet Union.
Over the last few years, however, the Ukrainian language has become incredibly popular, thanks to contemporary Ukrainian music and music videos in particular. That is not surprising, as because of nearly an equal number of vowels and consonants even small talks may sound like a song in Ukrainian.
Another interesting phonetic fact is that Ukrainian does not have several consonants in the same place. It would certainly not true to say that mastering Ukrainian is a piece of cake for English speakers. But it is not like Arabic or Chinese. What do you think – is Ukrainian language hard to learn?
Apart from beauty and melodiousness, with more than 5 million synonyms, the Ukrainian language is diverse and versatile. To be specific, a verb “мовити” (to talk) has more than 108 synonyms.
The rich lexical fund of Ukrainian manifests itself in homonyms, words, which are written or spelled similarly but have different meanings. The Ukrainian alphabet is one-of-the-kind because of 2 unique letters, Ґ [g] and Ї [ji], found nowhere else in all languages of the word.
Is Ukrainian a hard language to learn? Here is the final answer.
Still due to language characteristics and numerous loanwords, utilized internationally, studying Ukrainian does not seem to be a hard language to learn.
How hard is it to learn Ukrainian – this issue was investigated by professional linguist researchers. According to Language Difficulty Ranking, created by The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), it would take approximately 44 weeks for English speakers to study it. Some English-speakers are even convinced that Ukrainian is much easier, comparing to Russian.
5 Reasons Why Ukrainian Is Easy to Learn
1. Ukrainian phonetics. Sounds and letters are starting points when it comes to learning a new language. And the lucky thing about Ukrainian is that you can read the letters similarly to sounds in the Ukrainian alphabet. No exceptions or surprises in this case, as you read what you see, based on phonetics.
Likewise, you can generally write what you hear without thinking about how to choose the right letter for a sound you have heard. In Russian, it does not work like this most of the time. Unlike Eastern languages, Ukrainian also has no tones. If you tried to learn Chinese, for example, then you do understand, how helpful the phonetic concept is.
2. 3 verb tenses. To acquire a good level of Ukrainian, you are to study 3 verb tenses. It will be enough for you to talk about actions, taken place in the past, present, and future. Such constructions can be conventionally compared with Past Simple, Present Simple, and Future Simple tenses respectively.
3. The absence of articles. Now you know, why it is hard enough for Slavic peoples to deal with articles in English. The Ukrainian language does not have articles, so you do not have to worry about this part of learning. During your speech, you don’t have to spend some time, selecting an appropriate article. Indeed, it may ease your tension during speaking practices.
4. Flexible word order. This feature of the Ukrainian language is exceptionally helpful when you need to build a sentence. Quite opposite to English sentence structure, it does not matter, which part of speech you put at the beginning of the sentence.
5. Loanwords. As we were mentioned previously, there is a multitude of international words, regularly used by Ukrainians, especially by teenagers and young adults. What is more, specialist jargon of it workers of managers, for instance, is filled with anglicized words. It does not enhance Ukrainian language at all as well as your knowledge, yet helps you understand more when you need it.
Here is short video with Ukrainian Alphabet. Try it out.
Two Things May Challenge English Speakers
1. 3 genders + the inanimate. In Ukrainian living beings are grammatically divided into 3 genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Apart from that, there is the inanimate property, which acts grammatically different. Although it is quite unusual to hear and takes some time getting used to, this one can be explained by grammatical rules.
2. 7 cases of nominal declension. Cases changing implies changing of words endings. Ukrainian needs 7 cases for nouns, such as nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative, because of the flexibility of language.
As word order is not regulated by rules, only words endings show, whether a noun is an object or a subject. That is probably one of the most difficult parts of learning Ukrainian. However, the case table can provide you with a framework to put the right word ending.
Please bear in mind that, as with other languages, practice makes perfect. The more you listen, read, write, and speak, the clearer language becomes. To stay motivated, you should select a learning program, which will sparkle your interest and build up a feel for the language.
In this case, you will enjoy being on a steep learning curve more than playing truant. And let us shown you, how best learning websites can help you to study Ukrainian interactively. It is got to be not only effective but also surprisingly fun!
Please remember that, as with other languages, practice makes perfect. The more you listen, read, write, and speak, the clearer language becomes. To stay motivated, you should select a learning program, which will sparkle your interest and build up a feel for the language.
In this case, you will enjoy learning the ropes more than playing truant. And let us shown you, how best learning strategies can help you to study Ukrainian. Some of them got to be not only effective but also surprisingly fun!
Top 5 Tips For Studying Ukrainian
1. Define what is your learning purpose. Whether you need Ukrainian for study, work or travel, learning strategies are slightly different. You should know exactly, which part of learning (listening, reading, speaking, or writing) you have to focus on and choose learning resources, appropriate for you.
There are numerous web sites, created for learning Ukrainian effectively, however, each of them offers special learning methods. And if you have to acquire speaking skills, for instance, seek opportunities to communicate in Ukrainian during your lessons.
2. Create associations. If you need to study lots of Ukrainian vocabulary and you have a fertile imagination, then associations can be a perfect solution. For instance, you can create associations of similarity, related to your native language or divide a new word into several parts and build up associations, depending on sounding. There are no rules, it is pure creation indeed.
All your bright, weird, or awkward associations help you to easily remember a particular word when you need it. When you feel overwhelmed or experience a lack of inspiration, you may ask friends and acquaintances to help you. Creating associations is a fascinating activity, which brings you not only knowledge but pleasure. Bear in mind that funny pictures can be also added in your notes as expressive illustrations of definitions.
3. Write sentences to learn new words. It is better to write words down and add them to sentences, taking a context into account. This strategy allows you to discover Ukrainian as it is spoken by learning collocations, not only words. Making notes is more beneficial than typing.
However, you can still type new words and sentences and revise them regularly, if typing is more convenient for you. If your goal is to get rid of spelling errors in a particular word, write that one more and more.
4. Listen to Ukrainian for your pleasure. Learners are often inclined to believe that listening exercises enhance the ability to fully understand language. Listening for pleasure can be more fruitful, if you practice it regularly. Find a topic you are excited about and listen to Ukrainian podcasts or videos on Youtube.
You may also watch Ukrainian movies or cartoons in case you are at the beginning of exploring language. Try to be relaxed why listening and do not concentrate on unknown vocabulary instead of catching the main sense.
Practice active listening by writing down all you hear. Slow down the audio, if you need it and watch it over and over again. Continue to write what you hear until you feel that you have done your best.
5. Dive into the Ukrainian language. This is probably the most powerful tool for your learning progress. The ideal way to dive into language is to create an atmosphere, filled with it. Listen to Ukrainian podcasts, watch movies with subtitles, read newspapers and magazines, type in Ukrainian via social networks, and communicate with natives online or offline.
By doing this, you practice listening, reading, writing, and speaking respectively. To master your speaking skills even more, choose a topic, talk to yourself in front of a mirror, and do not forget to record it.
Then listen to your recording carefully, analyze your mistakes, and try again. Whatever section you practice, divide your goals into smaller key-points to reach and motivate yourself for your achievements.
Ukrainian Phonetics: soft and hard consonants
Let’s say a few more words about the phonetics of the Ukrainian language. Besides, it is worth mentioning the letter of the Ukrainian alphabet, which can confuse the English-speaking person.
This is the so-called soft sign “ь”. The fact is that this letter does not denote any sound. This is a unique letter in the Ukrainian language, because it has no sound expression. The function of the soft sign is as follows: it indicates the softening of the previous consonant.
And here we move on to the next difference between Ukrainian and English: consonants can be soft and hard. It should be noted here that one letter can denote two types of one consonant, its two states: hard and soft.
Whether a consonant is soft is clear from which letter in the word is next to it. So, you don’t have to learn which words have a softened consonant and which don’t. All you need to know is that a certain letter indicates the softness of the previous consonant.
And here in the Ukrainian language everything is simple, because there are no exceptions. There are several vowels (plus a soft sign) that indicate the softness of the previous consonant.
If you learn to distinguish them and pronounce them correctly, you will lose much of the English accent. But don’t worry, even at the beginning of language learning, when you can’t tell them apart, Ukrainian speakers
will understand you anyway.
Thus, the softness and hardness of consonants are not among the top priorities in learning the Ukrainian language. But if you want to speak like a native speaker – then you just have to learn to pronounce them correctly.
Historical Roots of Both English and Ukrainian languages
It is necessary to note another important detail when it comes to learning Ukrainian by English-speaking people. From a historical point of view, Ukrainian and English have common roots – Proto-Indo-European language. So, around 3500 BC, there was the Proto-Indo-European language, from which Germanic and Slavic languages evolved.
From the Germanic languages, among others, the English language evolved. And from the Slavic languages, among others, the Ukrainian language evolved. Because the Ukrainian and English languages have common roots, some of the roots of words have the same or similar semantics, sound.
It will also make it easier for an English-speaking person to learn Ukrainian language. For example: English “mother” and Ukrainian “матір”, English “brother” and Ukrainian “брат”. Of course, not all words that sound similar in Ukrainian and English have the same or similar meaning.
This should also be taken into account when studying Ukrainian. But the common origin of these languages facilitates the study of English for Ukrainian-speakers and the study of Ukrainian for English-speakers.
A Few More Words About Ukrainian Verbs
Speaking of the study of Ukrainian verbs, one cannot avoid the fact that verbs in the Ukrainian language have a perfective aspect and an imperfective aspect. What it is? These are grammatical aspects of verbs. Generally speaking, the perfective aspect of the verb expresses the completed action.
It doesn’t matter if the action is completed in the past or the future. The main point is that the action in question has been completed. Similarly, the imperfective aspect of a verb expresses an incomplete action, an action that continues or repeats at any time: past, present, or future.
There is nothing super complicated about it, but it is worth noting that it may challenge English speakers.
Any foreign language has its features of structure and grammar. Therefore, the study of any language is associated with certain difficulties that lie in the differences between the structure of a person’s native language and the foreign language he learns.
Most often the main differences and difficulties are in grammar. This article outlines all the possible difficulties in learning Ukrainian. As you can see, there are few of them, it is quite possible to easily overcome them all, if you have a goal to learn Ukrainian.
Here are some facts about Ukraine on CIA’s web-site.
