OT: Russian and Ukrainian was Re: semi-OT: bilingual communication

On Saturday 25 January 2003 12:37 pm, Isaac A. Penzev wrote:
> I was interested in this question for a long time.
> Here are some observations based on what I heard from many people:
> - Ukrainians have no problem with understanding both Russian and
> Belarussian; - most Belarussians are bilingual, so Russian is no problem
> for them, but I have no data about their understanding of Ukrainian;
        Is this because Russian was/is the dominant language, or because of their
similarity? You said below that "Russians who live in Russia, don't
understand Ukrainian at all," which makes me think that Ukrainians understand
Russian more from long exposure to it, likewise with Russians in Ukraine.
        My one experience with Ukrainian was when I went to a Ukrainian Baptist
Church here in Minnesota. The preaching was in Ukrainian, but the hymns were
in Russian. I understood the Russian well enough, but got a splitting
headache listening to the Ukrainian--it sounds close enough to Russian that
my brain was certain that it should be able to understand something, but
couldn't! :)

> Ru. has 3 noun declensions and 16 verb types;
        Masculine, feminine, neuter.

        Verb types:
        Imperfective    Perfective
        -----                   ----
        Infinitive              Infinitive
        Present
        Past                    Past
        Future          Future
        Conditional     Conditional
        Imperative      Imperative

        Present active
        Present passive
        Past Active     Past Active
                                Past Passive

        That's not counting the verbal adverbs, I suppose.

> Uk. has 4 noun declensions and 11 verb types.
        Masculine, feminine, neuter, ?
        What are the verb types?

        :Peter