Learning Ukrainian with experience in Russian.

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Dylan95
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Learning Ukrainian with experience in Russian.

Postby Dylan95 » Wed Sep 12, 2018 8:44 pm

This past week, I began taking Ukrainian at my university. I intend to study Ukraine for the entire year. So far it's going well. Already having an advanced knowledge of Russian is obviously a great help. Declensions, verbs of motion, and verbal aspect are certainly not that great of a challenge when you have already learned these concepts once through.

However, I am deeply afraid that learning Ukrainian will interfere with my Russian, and I'm also afraid that learning Ukrainian, I might rely too heavily on my Russian, and end up speaking some sort of pidgin Russian that isn't actually true Ukrainian. Does anyone have any advice as to how I can go about learning Ukrainian efficiently while keeping interference to a minimum?

Also, if anyone know's of any good Ukrainian language resources, I would appreciate any recommendations!
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Glossy
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Re: Learning Ukrainian with experience in Russian.

Postby Glossy » Wed Sep 12, 2018 11:43 pm

A huge percentage of Ukraine’s population, maybe half, speak something that’s neither standard Ukrainian nor standard Russian. Instead it’s a mixture of the two. They call it суржик. In Ukraine, as you go from the southeast to the northwest, the language gradually becomes less Russian.

If you end up mixing the two standard languages in your mind in a spontaneous fashion, it’ll actually become eaiser for you to communicate with Ukrainians. The media is mostly in standard Ukrainian though.
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ilmari
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Re: Learning Ukrainian with experience in Russian.

Postby ilmari » Thu Sep 13, 2018 7:53 am

There is an Assimil Ukrainian, but I think only a French version (it is called "L'Ukrainien"). It was published in 2012, and looks pretty good.
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