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

Isaac wrote:

> It's pretty common here in Ukraine to here two people conversating, one in
> Russian, and the other in Ukrainian. I even have such an exapmle in my
> family, when my Mom talks in Russian to my wife, and she replies her in
> Ukrainian, and they seem having no trouble to communicate.
>
> And since both my wife and I are linguists, we sometimes find ourselves
> spontaeneously talking one to the other either in a foreign language both
> (mostly English), or (less often) in language pairs like Ru-Uk, En-Uk,
> He-Ru, Es-En etc. but just exchanging a couple of replics as in the
> situation you described (because she doesn't know much Hebrew, and I'm not
> fluent in Spanish).
>
I wonder how much Russian and Ukrainian differ. I'm taking my first year of
Russian language (ja uc^u inostrannye jazyki i literatury v milanskom
universitete, v severnoj Italii;-), and I've come across an interesting
passage in Lermontov's "Geroj nas^ego vremeni" where the dialogue is held
half in Russian, and half in a language I can't recognize. Here's the
passage (from Z^urnal Pec^orina, c^ast' pervaja):

Pec^orin: Gde, chozjain?
Ukrainian boy: Nema.
P.: Kak? sovsem netu?
U.b.: *Sovsim*
[...]
P.: Ty chozjaskij syn?
U.b.: *Ni*
P.: Kto z^e ty?
U.b.: Sirota, ubogoj.
P.: A u chozjajki est' deti?
U.b.: *Ni*; byla doc^'
[...]
P.: S kakim tatarinom?
U.b.: A *bis* ego znaet!

I really can't figure out wether this is Ukrainian or simply a Southern
Russian dialect. The passage is set in Taman', which I suppose to be a
Russian speaking region of Ukraina (not far from Kerc^, IIRC), but I'm not
sure. I knew Ukrainian shifts Russian /O/ to /i/ (or /M/, perhaps) under
certain conditions I fail to remember: Ru.: nos, Uk.: nis, whereas the text
above shows lots of /E/ > /i/ going on (_sovsem_ vs. _sovsim_, _net_ vs.
_ni_, _bes_ vs. _bis_).

Where exactly do you live and study, Isaac?

Luca