To preserve Ukrainian

Preserving and keeping the national language is an important issue in Ukraine now. Since there is a huge Russian speaking population in some parts of the country, mainly in the Eastern part, many Ukrainians don’t even speak their native language, preferring Russian. This is one of the main problems that the government is now trying to solve.

The Ukrainian community in Armenia tries to keep its national language as well. Every Sunday the kids gather at school and the Ukrainian lesson starts. They learn grammar, history and try to speak Ukrainian. Every year, our teacher participates in the “World Congress of Ukrainian Community Teachers’’; here they gain more teaching skills and obtain newly published books.

Even being so far away from their homeland, Ukrainians in Armenia still try to keep their traditions and language.

“Are they same?” That’s the main question that people ask while speaking about Ukrainian and Russian alphabets. The answer is NO.

This question has become a reason for many arguments and controversies between Russians and Ukrainians as well.

The Ukrainian Alphabet, or as Ukrainians call “ Украї́нська абе́тка”, undoubtedly differs from Russian alphabet. Yet, some mistakenly call it "Russian alphabet". Though there are some similarities between the languages, they are still different. However, despite lexical and grammatical differences, Russians and Ukrainians can easily understand each other. Unlike Ukrainian alphabet, the Russian includes such letters as Ё, Ъ, Ы, Э.

On the other hand, Ukrainian alphabet has the letters I, Ґ, Є, Ї, which do not exist in the Russian one. Both Ukrainian and Russian alphabets consist of 33 letters.

Anush Safaryan

annsafaryan@gmail.com