That the Ukrainian language is independent and entirely different from Russian or Polish is known to every illiterate peasant from one end of the Ukraine to the other. He does not understand the Pole and the Russian; likewise his language is unintelligible to a Pole or Russian. Polish is the more easily understood by the uneducated Ukrainian, since the living together of the Poles and Ukrainians for centuries in the Polish-Lithuanian state resulted in important influences in both directions, especially in the vocabulary. But Russian, with its strange vocabulary and phonetic character, different manner of word-building,
declension and conjugation, is for a Ukrainian a difficult foreign language. How much trouble must the Ukrainian peasantry endure at every step because the unintelligible Russian language is used exclusively in administration, court, school and church! The educated Ukrainian who has been trained in Russian schools has had much trouble to learn his Russian, and he never has so complete a command of it that a Russian could not immediately recognize "the Khakhol in him." For an educated Ukrainian trained outside of Russia, Russian is as hard to learn, if not more so, than the Polish, Czechic or Serbian. Such obvious facts convince us of the independence of the Ukrainian language, perhaps, more forcibly than the arguments of learned philologists.
The Ukrainian language, like every other great European language, is not uniform. Because of the great extent of the Ukrainian territory and the great population, favorable conditions have always been present for the formation of dialects and idioms. The Ukrainian language has four dialects, — the South Ukrainian, the North Ukrainian, the Galician (Red Ruthenian), and the Carpathian mountain dialect. The South Ukrainian dialect embraces the south of the region of Kiev, Kursk, Voroniz, the entire regions of Poltava, Kharkiv, Kherson, Katerinoslav, Tauria, Don and Kuban. It possesses three idioms; — the northern, which constitutes the basis of the present Ukrainian literary language, the central, and the southern or steppe idiom. The North Ukrainian dialect includes the Chernihov country, the northern part of the Kiev district, Northern Volhynia, the Polissye along the Pripet, and the northern part of the Pidlassye. Its idioms are the Chernihov, the North Ukrainian proper, the Polissian, and the Black Ruthenian. The Galician or Ruthenian dialect takes in: Galicia (outside of the mountains), the Kholm region, Southern Volhynia and Western Podolia, and possesses two idioms, — the Podolian-Volhynian and the Galician (Dniester) idiom. The Carpathian Mountain dialect includes the entire Ukrainian Carpathian country and has four idioms, — the Hutzulian, the Boikish, the Lemko idiom, and the Slovak-Ruthenian border-idiom.
The Ukrainian dialects and idioms differ very little from one another, as indeed is the case with all the dialects and idioms of all the Slavic languages. A comparison of the Ukrainian dialects and idioms with the German, for instance, is entirely impossible. The Kuban Cossack or the Boiko, an Ukrainian inhabitant of Polissye or of Bessarabia, understand one another without the slightest difficulty. Only the Lemko idiom and Ruthenian-Slbyak^rtieW idiom show greater differences than other Ukrainian idioms. Beyond that, a great uniformity of language prevails thruout the wide areas of the Ukraine. A popular tale taken on a phonograph in the Kuban sub-Caucasus country is heard with the same understanding in a peasants' reading society in the neighborhood of Peremishl, as if it came from a neighboring village, instead of a border country of the Ukraine thousands of kilometers distant. The same folk-songs, proverbs and fairy tales are found in Pidlassye and along the Manich, at Chernihiv and Odessa, on the Don and on the Dniester.
The Ukrainian language is distinguished by advantages which insure it a high place among Slavic languages. The great wealth of vowels, the full tone, the softness and flexibility, the transition of many vowels to the i-sound, the absence of the massing of several consonants in one syllable, make Ukrainian the most melodious Slavic language. After the Italian language the Ukrainian is best adapted for singing. Most important, however, is the great richness of the Ukrainian language. This richness is all the more remarkable in that it did not come about thru centuries of development of the language in literature and science.