Ukrainian is a descendant of Old East Slavic, a language spoken in the medieval state of Kievan Rus'. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the language developed into Ruthenian, where it became an official language,[8] before a process of Polonization began in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the 18th century, Ruthenian diverged into regional variants, and the modern Ukrainian language developed in the territory of present-day Ukraine.[9][10][11]Russification saw the Ukrainian language banned as a subject from schools and as a language of instruction in the Russian Empire, and continued in various ways in the Soviet Union.[12] Even so, the language continued to see use throughout the country, and remained particularly strong in Western Ukraine.[13][14]
^"Implementation of the Charter in Hungary". Database for the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Public Foundation for European Comparative Minority Research. Archived from the original on 27 February 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2014.
^Alexander M. Schenker. 1993. "Proto-Slavonic", The Slavonic Languages. (Routledge). pp. 60–121. p. 60: "[The] distinction between dialect and language being blurred, there can be no unanimity on this issue in all instances..." C.F. Voegelin and F.M. Voegelin. 1977. Classification and Index of the World's Languages (Elsevier). p. 311, "In terms of immediate mutual intelligibility, the East Slavic zone is a single language." Bernard Comrie. 1981. The Languages of the Soviet Union (Cambridge). pp. 145–146: "The three East Slavonic languages are very close to one another, with very high rates of mutual intelligibility...The separation of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian as distinct languages is relatively recent...Many Ukrainians in fact speak a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, finding it difficult to keep the two languages apart..." The Swedish linguist Alfred Jensen wrote in 1916 that the difference between the Russian and Ukrainian languages was significant and that it could be compared to the difference between Swedish and Danish. Jensen, Alfred. Slaverna och världskriget. Reseminnen och intryck från Karpaterna till Balkan 1915–16.. Albert Bonniers förlag, Stockholm, 1916, p. 145.
^Alexander M. Schenker. 1993. "Proto-Slavonic", The Slavonic Languages. (Routledge). pp. 60–121. p. 60: "[The] distinction between dialect and language being blurred, there can be no unanimity on this issue in all instances..." C.F. Voegelin and F.M. Voegelin. 1977. Classification and Index of the World's Languages (Elsevier). p. 311, "In terms of immediate mutual intelligibility, the East Slavic zone is a single language." Bernard Comrie. 1981. The Languages of the Soviet Union (Cambridge). pp. 145–146: "The three East Slavonic languages are very close to one another, with very high rates of mutual intelligibility...The separation of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian as distinct languages is relatively recent...Many Ukrainians in fact speak a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian, finding it difficult to keep the two languages apart..."