Ukrainian and Russian are two languages with similar vocabulary words and grammar; however, they are two distinct languages. Did you know that there are 4 extra characters in Ukrainian? The four letters are: ґ, є, і, ї. There are also four letters that Russian has that Ukrainian doesn’t have. These letters are: ё, ъ, ы, э.

So, although some people may say that if you understand Russian, you can understand Ukrainian and vice versa, which is true to a point, there are many things that are different between the too, much that is driven by culture, time, and and the emergence of two separate, yet related languages.

Some words look the same but have completely different meaning. Even simple words like ‘yes’ are different. да (da) is yes in Russian and Так (tak) is yes in Ukrainian.