Surzhyk

Surzhyk (Cyrillic: су́ржик) refers to a range of mixed (macaronic) sociolects of Ukrainian and Russian languages used in certain regions of Ukraine and adjacent lands. There is no unifying set of characteristics; the term is used for "norm-breaking, non-obedience to or non-awareness of the rules of the Ukrainian and Russian standard languages".

The Ukrainian word "surzhyk" originally meant flour or bread made from mixed grains, e.g. wheat with rye.

The vocabulary mix of each of its constituent languages (Ukrainian and Russian) varies greatly from locality to locality, or sometimes even from person to person, depending on the degree of education, personal experience, rural or urban residence, the geographical origin of the interlocutors, etc. The percentage of Russian words and phonetic influences tends to be greatest in the east and south and in the vicinity of big Russian-speaking cities. It is commonly spoken in most of eastern Ukraine's rural areas, with the exception of the large metropolitan areas of Donetsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, and especially Crimea, where the majority of the population uses standard Russian. In rural areas of western Ukraine, the language spoken contains fewer Russian elements than in central and eastern Ukraine but has nonetheless been influenced by Russian.

The ancient common origin, and relatively recent divergence, of Russian and Ukrainian make it difficult to establish the degree of mixing in a vernacular of this sort.

According to data presented by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2003, 11% to 18% of the people of Ukraine were found to communicate in Surzhyk. Specifically, in western Ukraine, Surzhyk is spoken by 2.5% of the population, while in the south, it is spoken by over 12.4% of the population. In the east, 9.6% of the population speaks Surzhyk. As Western Ukraine has a higher ratio of Ukrainian speakers to Russian speakers than the rest of Ukraine, the lesser proportion of Surzhyk speakers compared with the east and south is understandable.

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