Language Policy and Minority Rights in Ukraine (original) (raw)

Ukraine de jure is a monolingual state, but de facto it is bi-or multilingual. Due to the high ratio of the Russian-speaking people, it is not surprising that the main problem of the ethnic and language policy in Ukraine is the status of the Russian minority and language. On August 8, 2012, the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, signed the Law 5029-VI entitled "Th e Fundamentals of the State Language Policy", which off ers the opportunity of using the national minority languages in administrative units (counties, districts, etc.) where the number of their speakers reaches or exceeds 10%. Th e power of the law would comprise the languages of 18 national minorities. Th ough, in the present political situation, the change of legal language status in the country seems to be impossible. Ethnic and Linguistic Otherness in Ukraine Some experts consider that Ukraine's population is made up of 3 linguaethnic groups: 1-Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians (about 40-45% of the country's population);-Russian speaking Ukrainians (about 30-34% of the country's population);-Russian speaking Russians (about 20%). 2 However, according to the 2001 national census (which focused not only on Ukrainian and Russian speakers, but also on other small linguistic groups), the population of Ukraine can be divided into the following groups on the basis 1

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