5 interesting facts about the Ukrainian language

Ukrainian language is a very beautiful and euphonious language that occupies its unique place in the international linguistic space. UAportal tells about five interesting facts that show the charm and uniqueness of the Ukrainian language.

1. The modern Ukrainian language has about 256 thousand words

The Ukrainian language boasts an astounding vocabulary of about 256 thousand words. Indeed, a significant number. For comparison, everyday communication often requires only 2-3 thousand words. Interestingly, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine even suggests that this figure is not definitive, leaving room for the possibility that the Ukrainian language may contain up to a million words.

2. In the Ukrainian language, a noun has 7 cases

With seven declensions of nouns, Ukrainian differs from other East Slavic languages, which usually have six cases. The nominative case is used when referring to persons or even inanimate beings, which makes it a distinctive feature of the Ukrainian language.

Read also: How to say "drinking buddy" in Ukrainian

3. Ukrainian language has a large number of synonyms

Dictionaries testify to the existence of more than 10,000 synonyms, which speaks of the ability of speech to constant development and discovery. People keep looking for new facets and nuances, deepening their understanding of subjects and phenomena. The word "biti" boasts 45 synonyms, while "hurtovina" has almost 40 synonyms.

4. The letter "p" is used most often in the Ukrainian language

Of all the letters "p" in the Ukrainian language is a notable leader, from which a huge number of words are formed. Conversely, the least used letter is "f", which indicates that most of the words that begin with this letter are borrowings that came into Ukrainian from other languages.

5. As for the lexical level, the Belarusian language is closer to the Ukrainian language

As for the similarity at the lexical level, the Ukrainian language has a close connection with the Belarusian language, in particular, in the vocabulary 84% of coincidences are recorded. The second place is occupied by Polish language with 70% of common vocabulary, followed by Czech with 68%.

Russian matches Ukrainian at the level of 62% of vocabulary. However, it is important to remember that languages differ in their phonetic, morphological and lexical characteristics. Unique aspects may also lie in phraseology and spelling.

We will remind, linguist Oleksandr Avramenko explained how to say "apartment with all amenities" in Ukrainian.

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