Russian-Ukrainian share only 60% lexical similarity - the same as English-German. For comparison: French-Spanish is 75%, Ukrainian-Belarusian is 84%, and Ukrainian-Polish is 70%. So, claiming Russian-Ukrainian are ‘the same’ is like saying English speakers MUST understand and speak German fluently🤷♀️
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It’s too bad she didn’t speak German to us when we were children, because then I could have been fluent. Ah well.
Ich kann doch noch ein bisschen Deutsch verstehen
I can say Hi, my name is Lisa. The sky is blue. The sky is grey, it’s raining. I don’t know. And best of all - meine Nase lauft - only I can’t umlaut the a on lauft with this keyboard, darn it. And it’s true - due to allergies, my nose runs 🙃
Es tut mir leid dass deine Nase l*a*uft (budget umlaut 😂)
I also know “Scheiße am Stiel ist auch ein bouqet” something my grand-opa used to say (he was from Berlin).
1) Be born in or live at least 10 years in Germany or Austria
2) That's it.
I did the first one and it did wonders for my German.
Englisch und Französisch kann ich halbwegs verstehen. Aber Spanisch? Leider nein ... 🤔
On the other hand, Ukrainian language formed much earlier than Russian, 400-500 years earlier.
I dont know anything about linguistics, so I cant say how good this source or study is, but at first glance it seems legitimate.
https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/PLSA/article/download/5467/5121/10944
Russians have been fighting Ukrainians while complaining that they are fighting Poles and NATO because they hear Ukrainian.
Btw, even Slovakian is closer to Ukrainian (68% lexical similarity) than russian is.
Another fact: Ukrainian is much older than russian (4-500 years older).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeXlQnBNy98&ab_channel=%D0%A2%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%8F%D0%9F%D1%96%D0%B4%D0%BF%D1%96%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%93%D1%83%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%96%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BA%D0%B0
https://bsky.app/profile/emir-of-ukraine.bsky.social/post/3lcmt3j7pg22g
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Croats
For example, Spanish-Italian lexical similarity is a whopping 87%, yet they are distinctively different languages. And nope you can't properly communicate in Spanish if you speak Italian or vice versa.
Danish and Norwegian are also very close in vocabulary and grammar, yet no one would lie they are the same language.
😦
OK I can imagine that for people, who are not familiar with Slavic languages it all kind of sounds similar.
And I can imagine that this was the main reason why Nork Mission is failing: Ruzzians didn't teach North Korean vatniks the difference.
What cld possibly go wrong?
😏
It’s their playbook.