Geographical distribution of Ukrainian speakers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Ukrainophone (Ukrainian: українськомовний, ukrainskomovnyi) is a person who speaks the Ukrainian language either natively or by preference. At the same time the term is used in a more specialized meaning to describe the category of people whose cultural background is associated with the Ukrainian language regardless of territorial distinctions.
There are an estimated 41 million native speakers of Ukrainian worldwide (of whom 37.5 million or 91% live in Ukraine).[1]
There are many Ukrainophone communities in neighbouring countries with Ukraine, due to the historical spread of ethnic Ukrainian populations in areas that later became a part of those states, including Belarus, Moldova (especially Transnistria), Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, as well as in continental nations and areas where Ukrainians had moved to in recent centuries or were deported to during the Soviet regime, such as Kazakhstan, the Far East, Sakhalin, Kuril Islands, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Portugal, the U.K., etc. Additionally, there are large Ukrainophone immigrant communities in various parts of Canada, the United States (especially New York City, Baltimore) and Australia, and somewhat smaller communities in various nations of Latin America, such as Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Venezuela.