Ukrainian is an East Slavic language closely related to Belarusian and Russian, but it is distinct in its vocabulary and grammar.

It uses a Cyrillic alphabet with 33 letters.

It is the official state language of Ukraine.

Ukrainian is one of the oldest recorded Slavic languages, with roots dating back over 1,000 years.

The first Ukrainian dictionary was compiled in 1596 by Lavrentiy Zyzaniy.

The Ukrainian alphabet includes the unique letter “Ї”, which does not exist in Russian.

The letter “Ґ” was banned during Soviet rule and reintroduced in 1990.

Ukrainian shares about 70% of its basic vocabulary with Belarusian, which is slightly more than it shares with Russian.

The word “Ukraine” in Ukrainian (Україна) is commonly interpreted as “land” or “country”.

Ukrainian verbs have 7 tenses: 3 simple and 4 compound.

The most used letter in Ukrainian is “О”.

The least used letter is “Ф”, because there are relatively few native words containing it.

The language has a large number of synonyms for everyday words, especially those related to nature.

In Ukrainian, the word for “Saturday” (субота) is borrowed from Hebrew (Shabbat).

Ukrainian proverbs are a major part of the culture; over 100,000 have been recorded.

Ukrainian features many loanwords from Polish due to historical contact.

Ukrainian uses no articles (no “a”, “an”, or “the”), just like Russian.

The longest Ukrainian word is дихлордифенілтрихлорметилметан (a chemical compound).

There are more than 45 million Ukrainian speakers worldwide.

The Ukrainian alphabet previously contained several letters that no longer exist, such as Ѣ.

Ukrainian survived multiple bans and suppressions, especially under Imperial Russia and the USSR.

Despite these bans, Ukrainian folk songs preserved the language across centuries.

The language contains words with no exact English equivalents, such as тужити, meaning to feel longing mixed with sadness.