Ukrainian, pronounced  is an East Slavic language. It is the official state language of Ukraine and the principal language of Ukrainians. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script (see Ukrainian alphabet).

The Ukrainian language traces its origins to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus'. From 1804 until theRussian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire, of which biggest part of Ukraine(Central, Eastern and Southern) was a part at the time. It has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors.

The standard Ukrainian language is regulated by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU), particularly by itsInstitute for the Ukrainian Language, Ukrainian language-information fund, and Potebnya Institute of Language Studies. Lexically, the closest to Ukrainian is Belarusian (84% of common vocabulary), followed by Polish (70%), Serbo-Croatian (68%),Slovak (66%) and Russian (62%).The Ukrainian language retains a degree of mutual intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian