The Ukrainian language is a Slavic language that is spoken in Ukraine. It is estimated that there are over 40 million speakers of Ukrainian worldwide. The language has a rich history, and its development has been influenced by a number of different cultures.
Ukrainian language is written in a form of the Cyrillic alphabet and is deeply related to Russian and Belarusian. Ukrainian was almost identical to these languages until the 12th or 13th century.
During the 19th century, there was a movement to standardize the Ukrainian language. This effort was led by writers and scholars such as Ivan Franko and Taras Shevchenko. Although Ukrainian had been given equal status with Russian following the revolution of 1917, by the 1930s an attempt at Russification was emerging. In 1989 Ukrainian once again became the country’s official language.