The Ukrainian language (Ukrainian: українська (мова), transliteration: ukrajins'ka mova) is an Eastern Slavic language. This language is a part of the Indo-European language family . Ukrainian is the second most spoken Slavic language. It is the official language of Ukraine. There are 37 million speakers in Ukraine. For those asking, @npr goes with Ukrainian spelling & pronunciation (not Russian) wherever possible when reporting on Ukraine. Kyiv not Kiev. KEE-eve not KEE-yev. "Kiev" comes from Russian, and As Russian forces menace the Ukrainian capital and thousands flee, the very least onlookers around the world can do is learn how to say the name of the city under siege. The short answer is simple Ukrainian has a Cyrillic alphabet almost identical to some other Slavonic languages (Russian, Bulgarian). Some of its letters look exactly like those of the Latin alphabet used in English; however, most of these are pronounced differently than in English and may in fact resemble other English sounds. As a result, at the next London mayoral election in 2024 the system will be switched to what's known as the First Past The Post voting system (FPTP) which is the same as the method used in general If they speak Ukrainian or Belarusian they will for sure understand Russian. There are some simple tricks how to distinguish the other Slavic languages from Russian. For instance, in Ukrainian we don't have 'g' sound (in fact we have it, but there are only a few words with this sound), instead we use a sound which is more close to 'h'. The Ukrainian language, even for those who can't understand it, sounds like a song. Part of this has to do with the fact that our language is rich in vowels. This makes Ukrainian a very melodious language. Ukrainians pronounce their capital city, Kyiv, using sounds that don't quite exist in English. But it's closer to "Keev" than to "Key-ev ," which is more of a Russian pronunciation. FDe1.