Peculiarities of the Ukrainian language
When studying such melodious and, at the same time, complex language,
one should pay attention to its peculiarities which make it easier to
understand the language properly and thus facilitate mastering it.
It is worth mentioning that Ukrainian has a lot in common with other
east European Slavic languages belonging to the vast Indo-European
family but at the same time it differs considerably from them. For
example, only Ukrainian preserved a vocative case which is used in
addressing people, while other languages use it only in addressing the
God.
Another feature of the Ukrainian language as compared to Russian is
that it has fewer homonyms (the words that are different in meaning
but similar in writing or sound), which testifies to the language
vocabulary richness. For example, in Russian the same word is used in
the meaning of “be ill” and “cheer for a team”, while in Ukrainian
there are two different words. Besides, Ukrainian contains a number of
adjectives which are derived from the same noun but differ in meaning,
which is not characteristic of Russian.
On the other hand, Ukrainian has fewer synonyms as compared to Russian
but, in our opinion, it should be considered not as a shortcoming but
rather as one of the peculiarities which make this language unique and
different from other languages.
