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Ukrainian is an Eastern Slavic language related to Russian and Polish. It evolved from Old Church Slavonic.
Linguistically Ukrainian is something like midway between Russian and Polish closer to Russian. While there are many similarities with Russian there is heavy influence from Polish.
At some time the Kievan Rus or Ruthenia as it was later known in the West, collapsed and it's territory was divided between the Rus the part east of the river and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania west of the river.
Under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania the official language became Polish because of the fact that the nobility and big land-owners were Polish.
As a result there was heavy influence of Polish on Ukrainian.
There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility with Russian and Belorussian and as well as Polish to some extent.
A Ukrainian native speaker will understand both languages to a great extent while a Russian speaker will have great difficulty understanding Ukrainian without some knowledge of Polish.
Kievan Rus
Роусь (Old East Slavic) Garðaríki (Old Norse)
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| A map of later Kievan Rus' (after the death of Yaroslav I in 1054). |
Knyaz Vladimir of the Rurikid dynasty hailing from Scandinavia was a major figure in the history of the Kievan Rus. He was responsible for uniting many lands under his rule and the Christianisation of the Rus.
