Languages of Ukraine

Languages of Ukraine
Fluency in Ukrainian by region 1998–2001
Official languages	Ukrainian
Significant unofficial languages	Russian
Indigenous languages	Crimean Tatar Krymchak Karaim Urum
Regional languages	Russian in 7 oblasts and Crimean Tatar in Crimea Hungarian in 7 villages of Zakarpattia Oblast Romanian in Tarasivtsi village
Minority languages	13 recognised Belarusian Bulgarian Crimean Gagauz German Greek Hungarian Yiddish Polish Romanian Russian Slovak
Main foreign languages	Russian English German French Spanish Chinese / Italian / Arabic
Sign languages	Ukrainian Sign Language
Common keyboard layouts	Cyrillic layout in Windows Vista
Source	Census-2001

The official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, an East Slavic language which is the native language of 67.5% of Ukraine's population. Russian is the native language of 29.6% of Ukraine's population and the rest (2.9%) are native speakers of other languages.Ethnologue lists 40 minority languages and dialects; nearly all are native to the former Soviet Union.

According to Article 10 of the Constitution of Ukraine the state has an obligation to ensure the comprehensive development and functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life throughout Ukraine while guaranteeing the free development, use and protection of the Russian language and other languages of national minorities of Ukraine.

In an 11–23 December 2015 study by the Razumkov Centre taken in all regions of Ukraine other than Russian-annexed Crimea, and separatist controlled Donetsk, and Luhansk, a majority considered Ukrainian their native language (60%), followed by Russian (15%), while 22% used both languages equally. Two percent held an other native language. For the preferred language of work, an equal amount chose either Ukrainian or Russian (37%) and 21% communicated bilingually. The study polled 10,071 individuals and held a 1% margin of error.

In an October 2009 poll by FOM-Ukraine of 1,000 respondents, 52% stated they use Russian as their "Language of communication"; while 41% of the respondents state they use Ukrainian and 8% stated they use a mixture of both.

A March 2010 poll by Research & Branding Group showed that 65% considered Ukrainian as their native language and 33% Russian. This poll also showed the standard of knowledge of the Russian language (free conversational language, writing and reading) in current Ukraine is higher (76%) than the standard of knowledge of the Ukrainian language (69%). More respondents preferred to speak Ukrainian (46%) than Russian (38%) with 16% preferring to speak both in equal manner.

A poll held November 2009 revealed that 54.7% of the population of Ukraine believed the language issue in Ukraine is irrelevant, that each person can speak the language he or she prefers and that a lot more important problems exist in the country; 14.7% of those polled stated that the language issue was an urgent problem that cannot be postponed and that calls for immediate resolution; another 28.3% believed that, while the language issue needs to be resolved, this could be postponed.