So I've been looking for info on differences between Russian dialects and found very little... Is Russian relatively uniform (compared to other language groups often considered one language)? If not, what's the dialect spoken in Ukraine? Thanks!
Russian dialects (specifically in Ukraine)
Russian is very uniform. I don't really understand why, but it is. It has layers and layers of slang, though.
Yeah, I've heard at least about mat'. I get the impression (and this is just off the top of my head) that the Slavic languages split from one another slightly later than the Germanic or Romance languages. I get the impression that the differences between Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian are much more slight than those between even Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, for example.
unlike variants of english, there's no such thing as ukrainian russian. all local differences, though there are only few, are considered incorrect, never used in writing, and most russian speakers avoid them. the most common of them are: 1)word "chto" is pronounced "sho" (correct russian - "shto") 2) sound "g" is pronounced by some people softly, something in between english sounds "h" and "g" 3) some people use preposition "s" instead of "iz" (e. g. "ia s (correct rus.- iz) ukrainy" - i'm from ukraine) 4) some people say "u menia nema" instead of correct "u menia net" - "i have no...", "u hate" instead of correct "v dome" - "in the house" etc. 5) some native speakers of ukrainian pronounce letter o always like sound o, do not palatalise consonants, use slightly different intonation. pronunciation helps to tell a native russian speaker from a native ukrainian speaker. there is also a mixture of russian and ukrainian called surzhyk, but, as well as ukrainian itself, it is not uniform. however, very many people in ukraine speak correct russian. for centuries russian has been the language of cities, education, science, administration, and ukrainian symbolised everything peasant and backward.