What is Ukraine and where it comes from.

[GePap]

Surprised this hasn't come up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusyns

I had never heard of the Rusyn until this thread, though I had heard about Ruthenians.

[onodera]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
How similar are Ukrainian and Russian. Are they close enought that Russians and Ukrainians have little difficulty understanding each other or are they distinct languages like Portugese and Spanish?

Like Dutch and German. The former looks funny if you know the latter. Also, it depends on where the person comes from. West Ukrainian is much harder to understand than Central Ukrainian, which is full of Russian loanwords. There's also Surzhik, which is basically Ukrainian grammar + Russian vocabulary.
I can understand most of the Surzhik, and can get the general meaning of written Ukrainian, but understanding fluent spoken Ukrainian is beyond me,

[Heresson]

and Poles, on the other hand, are more likely to understand western Ukrainian than eastern one... But literature ukrainian is based on central-eastern dialects, so it's going to be moving apart from polish.

[Ecthy]

There is one famous man of Rusyn descent: Andy Warhol.

[Dr Strangelove]

Are they like, just Russians with strong feminist leanings, or are they simply illiterate?

[Saras]

[Barnabas]

I remember reading many years ago, a interview to ukranian tennis player Medvedev (he los the french open final to Agassi in 1999) and he was in favour of rejoining russia, he even didn't think ukrainians existed or where different than russians.

[Heresson]

You know, there are 15 mln or so Russians in Ukraine... He may well have been one of them.

[onodera]

Originally posted by Barnabas
I remember reading many years ago, a interview to ukranian tennis player Medvedev (he los the french open final to Agassi in 1999) and he was in favour of rejoining russia, he even didn't think ukrainians existed or where different than russians.

If he was a Ukrainian, he'd be called Vedmedenko.

[Serb]

Originally posted by onodera

Like Dutch and German. The former looks funny if you know the latter. Also, it depends on where the person comes from. West Ukrainian is much harder to understand than Central Ukrainian, which is full of Russian loanwords. There's also Surzhik, which is basically Ukrainian grammar + Russian vocabulary.
I can understand most of the Surzhik, and can get the general meaning of written Ukrainian, but understanding fluent spoken Ukrainian is beyond me,

A fluent spoken Ukrainian sounds funny, but it's still understadable. I don't mean "surzhik", but "derjavna mova".
When I was in Crimea last summer, I have little trouble with watching the local news and TV-shows.

[Serb]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
How similar are Ukrainian and Russian.

Very similar. Though Ukranians did their best (esp. after collapse of the USSR and after the Oranges took power there) to make Ukranian language as less similar to Russian as possible.

Are they close enought that Russians and Ukrainians have little difficulty understanding each other or are they distinct languages like Portugese and Spanish?

I bet, norhtern and southern Italians or norhtern and southern Chinese have way more difficulties understanding each other than Russians and Ukraninans.

[Cort Haus]

Oleg Luzhni
Dynamo Kiev

[muxec]

Annexing Crimea is OK. Maybe parts of Eastern Ukraine too.

[onodera]

Originally posted by muxec
Annexing Crimea is OK. Maybe parts of Eastern Ukraine too.

[Serb]

I like this map.