Ukrainian
The Ukrainian language belongs to the group of Eastern Slavic languages and is the third largest Slavic language after the Russian and the Polish. In addition to the approx. 37 million native speakers in Ukraine (about 75 % of the Ukrainian population), another 10 million speakers live in the neighbouring countries like Russia, Belarus and Poland, in Central Asia and emigrant groups in North and South America. In Ukraine proper, the Ukrainian language is the sole official language, however in the southeast of the country in particular a majority of the people speaks Russian. On the political level, the status of the Russian in education, science and society is contended up to the present day. Since the Russian is widespread in the west of the country, which is characterised by the Ukrainian, the several language groups are for the most part easily able to communicate among themselves. The Ukrainian language, like the Russian, is written with the Cyrillic alphabet; it differs from the Russian version in a few letters.
