Surzhik

Surzhyk (суржик) is currently the pidgin language widely used in significant parts of Ukraine. It is a mixture of Ukrainian substrate with Russian superstrate . Normally Russian vocabularly is combined with Ukrainian grammar and pronunciation.

The vocabulary usage of either of the languages varies greatly with location, or sometimes even from person to person, depending on the level of education, personal experiences, rural or urban setting, origin of his interlocutors, etc. The percentage of Russian words and phonetic influences tends to gradually increase in the east and south and around big Russian-speaking cities. It is commonly spoken in most of Ukraine's rural areas, with an exception of the westernmost regions, where the language does not contain elements of Russian, and Crimea, where virtually all of the population uses standard Russian. The usage of surzhik in large metropolitan areas in the South (Dnipropetrovs'k) In large large metropolitan areas of the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk, and especially Crimea, except of the migrants from rural areas of

In the western Ukraine and especially its westernmost Transcarpathia the spoken language represents a different alteration of standard ...

There is a similar phenomenon in Belarus which is called trasianka.

See also

• Russification