text:
Ukrainian language

The Ukrainian language (українська мова, ) is an East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family spoken primarily in Ukraine. It is the native language of a majority of Ukrainians.

Written Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet, a variant of the Cyrillic script. The standard language is studied by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and Potebnia Institute of Linguistics. Comparisons are often made between Ukrainian and Russian, another East Slavic language, yet there is more mutual intelligibility with Belarusian, and a closer lexical distance to West Slavic Polish and South Slavic Bulgarian.

Ukrainian is a descendant of Old East Slavic, a language spoken in the medieval state of Kievan Rus'. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the language developed into Ruthenian, where it became an official language, before a process of Polonization began in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. By the 18th century, Ruthenian diverged into regional variants, and the modern Ukrainian language developed in the territory of present-day Ukraine. Russification saw the Ukrainian language banned as a subject from schools and as a language of instruction in the Russian Empire, and continued in various ways in the Soviet Union. Even so, the language continued to see use throughout the country, and remained particularly strong in Western Ukraine.

Theories
Specific developments that led to a gradual change of the Old East Slavic vowel system into the system found in modern Ukrainian began approximately in the 12th/13th century (that is, still at the time of the Kievan Rus') with a lengthening and raising of the Old East Slavic mid vowels e and o when followed by a consonant and a weak yer vowel that would eventually disappear completely, for example Old East Slavic котъ /kɔtə/ > Ukrainian кіт /kit/ 'cat' (via transitional stages such as /koˑtə̆/, /kuˑt(ə̆)/, /kyˑt/ or similar) or Old East Slavic печь /pʲɛtʃʲə/ > Ukrainian піч /pitʃ/ 'oven' (via transitional stages such as /pʲeˑtʃʲə̆/, /pʲiˑtʃʲ/ or similar). This raising and other phonological developments of the time, such as the merger of the Old East Slavic vowel phonemes и /i/ and ы /ɨ/ into the specifically Ukrainian phoneme /ɪ ~ e/, spelled with и (in the 13th/14th centuries), and the fricativisation of the Old East Slavic consonant г /g/, probably first to /ɣ/ (in the 13th century), with /ɦ/ as a reflex in Modern Ukrainian, did not happen in Russian. Only the fricativisation of Old East Slavic г /g/ occurred in Belarusian, where the present-day reflex is /ɣ/.

Ahatanhel Krymsky and Aleksey Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the common spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century.

Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak stated that the Old Novgorod dialect differed significantly from that of other dialects of Kievan Rus' during the 11th–12th century, but started becoming more similar to them around the 13th–15th centuries. The modern Russian language hence developed from the fusion of this Novgorod dialect and the common dialect spoken by the other Kievan Rus', whereas the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed from dialects which did not differ from each other in a significant way.

Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky denies the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko and others. According to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to an intensive migration of the population within the territory of today's Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was also supported by George Shevelov's phonological studies, which argue that specific features were already recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic (seen as ancestors to Ukrainian) as far back as these varieties can be documented.

Origins and developments during medieval times
As a result of close Slavic contacts with the remnants of the Scythian and Sarmatian population north of the Black Sea, lasting into the early Middle Ages, the appearance of the voiced fricative γ/г (romanized "h"), in modern Ukrainian and some southern Russian dialects is explained by the assumption that it initially emerged in Scythian and related eastern Iranian dialects, from earlier common Proto-Indo-European *g and *gʰ.

During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of the Kingdom of Ruthenia, German words began to appear in the language spoken in Ukraine. Their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts. Examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh ("roof"), rura ("pipe"), rynok ("market"), kushnir ("furrier"), and majster ("master" or "craftsman").

Developments under Poland and Lithuania
In the 13th century, eastern parts of Rus (including Moscow) came under Tatar rule until their unification under the Tsardom of Muscovy, whereas the south-western areas (including Kyiv) were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. For the following four centuries, the languages of the two regions evolved in relative isolation from each other. Direct written evidence of the existence of the Ukrainian language dates to the late 16th century. By the 16th century, a peculiar official language formed: a mixture of the liturgical standardised language of Old Church Slavonic, Ruthenian and Polish. The influence of the latter gradually increased relative to the former two, as the nobility and rural large-landowning class, known as the szlachta, was largely Polish-speaking. Documents soon took on many Polish characteristics superimposed on Ruthenian phonetics.

Polish–Lithuanian rule and education also involved significant exposure to the Latin language. Much of the influence of Poland on the development of the Ukrainian language has been attributed to this period and is reflected in multiple words and constructions used in everyday Ukrainian speech that were taken from Polish or Latin. Examples of Polish words adopted from this period include zavzhdy (always; taken from old Polish word zawżdy) and obitsiaty (to promise; taken from Polish obiecać) and from Latin (via Polish) raptom (suddenly) and meta (aim or goal).

Significant contact with Tatars and Turks resulted in many Turkic words, particularly those involving military matters and steppe industry, being adopted into the Ukrainian language. Examples include torba (bag) and tyutyun (tobacco).

Because of the substantial number of loanwords from Polish, German, Czech and Latin, early modern vernacular Ukrainian (prosta mova, "simple speech") had more lexical similarity with West Slavic languages than with Russian or Church Slavonic. By the mid-17th century, the linguistic divergence between the Ukrainian and Russian languages had become so significant that there was a need for translators during negotiations for the Treaty of Pereyaslav, between Bohdan Khmelnytsky, head of the Zaporozhian Host, and the Russian state.

By the 18th century, Ruthenian had diverged into regional variants, developing into the modern Belarusian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian languages.

Chronology
The accepted chronology of Ukrainian divides the language into Old Ukrainian, Middle Ukrainian, and Modern Ukrainian. Shevelov explains that much of this is based on the character of contemporary written sources, ultimately reflecting socio-historical developments, and he further subdivides the Middle period into three phases:

 * Proto-Ukrainian (abbreviated PU, Ukrainian: protoukrajinsʼkyj period, until the mid-11th century), with no extant written sources by speakers in Ukraine. Corresponding to aspects of Old East Slavic.
 * Old Ukrainian (OU, davnʼoukrajinsʼkyj period or davnʼoukrajinsʼka mova, mid-11th to 14th c., conventional end date 1387), elements of phonology are deduced from written texts mainly in Church Slavic. Part of broader Old East Slavic.
 * Middle Ukrainian (serednʼoukrajinsʼkyj period or staroukrajinsʼka mova, 15th to 18th c.), historically called Ruthenian.
 * Early Middle Ukrainian (EMU, rannʼoserednʼoukrajinsʼkyj period, 15th to mid-16th c., 1387–1575), analysis focuses on distinguishing Ukrainian and Belarusian texts.
 * Middle Ukrainian (MU, serednʼoukrajinsʼkyj period, mid-16th to early 18th c., 1575–1720), represented by several vernacular language varieties as well as a version of Church Slavonic.
 * Late Middle Ukrainian (LMU, piznoserednʼoukrajinsʼkyj period, rest of the 18th c., 1720–1818), found in many mixed Ukrainian–Russian and Russian–Ukrainian texts.
 * Modern Ukrainian (MoU, from the very end of the 18th c., sučasnyj period or sučasna ukrajinsʼka mova, from 1818), the vernacular recognized first in literature, and subsequently all other written genres.

Ukraine annually marks the Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language on 9 November, the Eastern Orthodox feast day of Nestor the Chronicler.

Rus' and Kingdom of Ruthenia
The era of Kievan Rus' (c. 880–1240) is the subject of some linguistic controversy, as the language of much of the literature was purely or heavily Old Church Slavonic. Some theorists see an early Ukrainian stage in language development here, calling it Old Ruthenian; others term this era Old East Slavic. Russian theorists tend to amalgamate Rus' to the modern nation of Russia, and call this linguistic era Old Russian. However, according to Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak (2012), people from the Novgorod Republic did not call themselves Rus until the 14th century; earlier Novgorodians reserved the term Rus for the Kyiv, Pereiaslav and Chernihiv principalities. At the same time as evidenced by contemporary chronicles, the ruling princes and kings of Galicia–Volhynia and Kiev called themselves "people of Rus'" (in foreign sources called "Ruthenians"), and Galicia–Volhynia has alternately been called the Principality or Kingdom of Ruthenia.

Also according to Andrey Zaliznyak, the Novgorodian dialect differed significantly from that of other dialects of Kievan Rus during the 11th–12th century, but started becoming more similar to them around 13th–15th centuries. The modern Russian language hence developed from the fusion of this Novgorodian dialect and the common dialect spoken by the other Kievan Rus, whereas the modern Ukrainian and Belarusian languages developed from the dialects which did not differ from each other in a significant way.

Under Lithuania/Poland, Muscovy/Russia and Austria-Hungary

After the fall of the Kingdom of Ruthenia, Ukrainians mainly fell under the rule of Lithuania and then Poland. Local autonomy of both rule and language was a marked feature of Lithuanian rule. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Old East Slavic became the language of the chancellery and gradually evolved into the Ruthenian language. Polish rule, which came later, was accompanied by a more assimilationist policy. By the 1569 Union of Lublin that formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, a significant part of Ukrainian territory was moved from Lithuanian rule to Polish administration, resulting in cultural Polonization and visible attempts to colonize Ukraine by the Polish nobility.

Many Ukrainian nobles learned the Polish language and converted to Catholicism during that period in order to maintain their lofty aristocratic position. Lower classes were less affected because literacy was common only in the upper class and clergy. The latter were also under significant Polish pressure after the Union with the Catholic Church. Most of the educational system was gradually Polonized. In Ruthenia, the language of administrative documents gradually shifted towards Polish.

Polish has had heavy influences on Ukrainian (particularly in Western Ukraine). The southwestern Ukrainian dialects are transitional to Polish. As the Ukrainian language developed further, some borrowings from Tatar and Turkish occurred. Ukrainian culture and language flourished in the sixteenth and first half of the 17th century, when Ukraine was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, albeit in spite of being part of the PLC, not as a result. Among many schools established in that time, the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium (the predecessor of the modern Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), founded by the Orthodox Metropolitan Peter Mogila, was the most important. At that time languages were associated more with religions: Catholics spoke Polish, and members of the Orthodox church spoke Ruthenian.

The 1654 Pereiaslav Agreement between Cossack Hetmanate and Alexis of Russia divided Ukraine between the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia. During the following century, both monarchies became increasingly intolerant of Ukrainian own cultural and political aspirations. Ukrainians found themselves in a colonial situation. The Russian centre adopted the name Little Russia for Ukraine and Little Russian for the language, an expression that originated in Byzantine Greek and may originally have meant "old, original, fundamental Russia", and had been in use since the 14th century. Ukrainian high culture went into a long period of steady decline. The Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was taken over by the Russian Empire. Most of the remaining Ukrainian schools also switched to Polish or Russian in the territories controlled by these respective countries, which was followed by a new wave of Polonization and Russification of the native nobility. Gradually the official language of Ukrainian provinces under Poland was changed to Polish, while the upper classes in the Russian part of Ukraine used Russian.

During the 19th century, a revival of Ukrainian self-identification manifested in the literary classes of both Russian-Empire Dnieper Ukraine and Austrian Galicia. The Brotherhood of Sts Cyril and Methodius in Kyiv applied an old word for the Cossack motherland, Ukrajina, as a self-appellation for the nation of Ukrainians, and Ukrajins'ka mova for the language. Many writers published works in the Romantic tradition of Europe demonstrating that Ukrainian was not merely a language of the village but suitable for literary pursuits.

However, in the Russian Empire expressions of Ukrainian culture and especially language were repeatedly persecuted for fear that a self-aware Ukrainian nation would threaten the unity of the empire. In 1804 Ukrainian as a subject and language of instruction was banned from schools. In 1811, by order of the Russian government, the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy was closed.

In 1847 the Brotherhood of St Cyril and Methodius was terminated. The same year Taras Shevchenko was arrested, exiled for ten years, and banned for political reasons from writing and painting. In 1862 Pavlo Chubynsky was exiled for seven years to Arkhangelsk. The Ukrainian magazine Osnova was discontinued. In 1863, the tsarist interior minister Pyotr Valuyev proclaimed in his decree that "there never has been, is not, and never can be a separate Little Russian language".

Although the name of Ukraine is known since 1187, it was not applied to the language until the mid-19th century. The linguonym Ukrainian language appears in Yakub Holovatsky's book from 1849, listed there as a variant name of the Little Russian language. In a private letter from 1854, Taras Shevchenko lauds "our splendid Ukrainian language". Valuyev's decree from 1863 derides the "Little Russian" language throughout, but also mentions "the so-called Ukrainian language" once. In Galicia, the earliest applications of the term Ukrainian to the language were in the hyphenated names Ukrainian-Ruthenian (1866, by Paulin Święcicki) or Ruthenian-Ukrainian (1871, by Panteleimon Kulish and Ivan Puluj), with non-hyphenated Ukrainian language appearing shortly thereafter (in 1878, by Mykhailo Drahomanov).

A following ban on Ukrainian books led to Alexander II's secret Ems Ukaz, which prohibited publication and importation of most Ukrainian-language books, public performances and lectures, and even banned the printing of Ukrainian texts accompanying musical scores. A period of leniency after 1905 was followed by another strict ban in 1914, which also affected Russian-occupied Galicia.

For much of the 19th century the Austrian authorities demonstrated some preference for Polish culture, but the Ukrainians were relatively free to partake in their own cultural pursuits in Halychyna and Bukovina, where Ukrainian was widely used in education and official documents. The suppression by Russia hampered the literary development of the Ukrainian language in Dnipro Ukraine, but there was a constant exchange with Halychyna, and many works were published under Austria and smuggled to the east.

By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of Austro-Hungary in 1918, Ukrainians were ready to openly develop a body of national literature, institute a Ukrainian-language educational system, and form an independent state (the Ukrainian People's Republic, shortly joined by the West Ukrainian People's Republic). During this brief independent statehood the stature and use of Ukrainian greatly improved.

Speakers in the Russian Empire
In the Russian Empire Census of 1897 the following picture emerged, with Ukrainian being the second most spoken language of the Russian Empire. According to the Imperial census's terminology, the Russian language (Русскій) was subdivided into Ukrainian (Малорусскій, 'Little Russian'), what is known as Russian today (Великорусскій, 'Great Russian'), and Belarusian (Бѣлорусскій, 'White Russian').

The following table shows the distribution of settlement by native language ("по родному языку") in 1897 in Russian Empire governorates (guberniyas) that had more than 100,000 Ukrainian speakers.

Although in the rural regions of the Ukrainian provinces, 80% of the inhabitants said that Ukrainian was their native language in the Census of 1897 (for which the results are given above), in the urban regions only 32.5% of the population claimed Ukrainian as their native language. For example, in Odesa (then part of the Russian Empire), at the time the largest city in the territory of current Ukraine, only 5.6% of the population said Ukrainian was their native language.

Until the 1920s the urban population in Ukraine grew faster than the number of Ukrainian speakers. This implies that there was a (relative) decline in the use of Ukrainian language. For example, in Kyiv, the number of people stating that Ukrainian was their native language declined from 30.3% in 1874 to 16.6% in 1917.

Soviet era

During the seven-decade-long Soviet era, the Ukrainian language held the formal position of the principal local language in the Ukrainian SSR. However, practice was often a different story: Ukrainian always had to compete with Russian, and the attitudes of the Soviet leadership towards Ukrainian varied from encouragement and tolerance to de facto banishment.

Officially, there was no state language in the Soviet Union until the very end when it was proclaimed in 1990 that Russian language was the all-Union state language and that the constituent republics had rights to declare additional state languages within their jurisdictions. Still it was implicitly understood in the hopes of minority nations that Ukrainian would be used in the Ukrainian SSR, Uzbek would be used in the Uzbek SSR, and so on. However, Russian was used as the lingua franca in all parts of the Soviet Union and a special term, "a language of inter-ethnic communication", was coined to denote its status.

Khrushchev thaw

After the death of Stalin (1953), a general policy of relaxing the language policies of the past was implemented (1958 to 1963). The Khrushchev era which followed saw a policy of relatively lenient concessions to development of the languages at the local and republic level, though its results in Ukraine did not go nearly as far as those of the Soviet policy of Ukrainianization in the 1920s. Journals and encyclopedic publications advanced in the Ukrainian language during the Khrushchev era, as well as transfer of Crimea under Ukrainian SSR jurisdiction.

Yet, the 1958 school reform that allowed parents to choose the language of primary instruction for their children, unpopular among the circles of the national intelligentsia in parts of the USSR, meant that non-Russian languages would slowly give way to Russian in light of the pressures of survival and advancement. The gains of the past, already largely reversed by the Stalin era, were offset by the liberal attitude towards the requirement to study the local languages (the requirement to study Russian remained).

Parents were usually free to choose the language of study of their children (except in few areas where attending the Ukrainian school might have required a long daily commute) and they often chose Russian, which reinforced the resulting Russification. In this sense, some analysts argue that it was not the "oppression" or "persecution", but rather the lack of protection against the expansion of Russian language that contributed to the relative decline of Ukrainian in the 1970s and 1980s. According to this view, it was inevitable that successful careers required a good command of Russian, while knowledge of Ukrainian was not vital, so it was common for Ukrainian parents to send their children to Russian-language schools, even though Ukrainian-language schools were usually available.

The number of students in Russian-language in Ukraine schools was constantly increasing, from 14 percent in 1939 to more than 30 percent in 1962.

Shelest period
The Communist Party leader from 1963 to 1972, Petro Shelest, pursued a policy of defending Ukraine's interests within the Soviet Union. He proudly promoted the beauty of the Ukrainian language and developed plans to expand the role of Ukrainian in higher education. He was removed, however, after only a brief tenure, for being too lenient on Ukrainian nationalism.

Shcherbytsky period
The new party boss from 1972 to 1989, Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, purged the local party, was fierce in suppressing dissent, and insisted Russian be spoken at all official functions, even at local levels. His policy of Russification was lessened only slightly after 1985.

Gorbachev and perebudova
The management of dissent by the local Ukrainian Communist Party was more fierce and thorough than in other parts of the Soviet Union. As a result, at the start of the Mikhail Gorbachev reforms perebudova and hlasnist’ (Ukrainian for perestroika and glasnost), Ukraine under Shcherbytsky was slower to liberalize than Russia itself.

Although Ukrainian still remained the native language for the majority in the nation on the eve of Ukrainian independence, a significant share of ethnic Ukrainians were russified. In Donetsk there were no Ukrainian language schools and in Kyiv only a quarter of children went to Ukrainian language schools.

The Russian language was the dominant vehicle, not just of government function, but of the media, commerce, and modernity itself. This was substantially less the case for western Ukraine, which escaped the artificial famine, Great Purge, and most of Stalinism. And this region became the center of a hearty, if only partial, renaissance of the Ukrainian language during independence.

Independence in the modern era

Since 1991, Ukrainian has been the official state language in Ukraine, and the state administration implemented government policies to broaden the use of Ukrainian. The educational system in Ukraine has been transformed over the first decade of independence from a system that is partly Ukrainian to one that is overwhelmingly so. The government has also mandated a progressively increased role for Ukrainian in the media and commerce.

In the 2001 census, 67.5% of the country's population named Ukrainian as their native language (a 2.8% increase from 1989), while 29.6% named Russian (a 3.2% decrease). For many Ukrainians (of various ethnic origins), the term native language may not necessarily associate with the language they use more frequently. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Ukrainians consider the Ukrainian language native, including those who often speak Russian.

According to the official 2001 census data, 92.3% of Kyiv region population responded "Ukrainian" to the native language (ridna mova) census question, compared with 88.4% in 1989, and 7.2% responded "Russian".

In 2019, the law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" was approved by the parliament, formalizing rules governing the usage of the language and introducing penalties for violations.

Literature and literary language
The literary Ukrainian language, which was preceded by Old East Slavic literature, may be subdivided into two stages: during the 12th to 18th centuries what in Ukraine is referred to as "Old Ukrainian", but elsewhere, and in contemporary sources, is known as the Ruthenian language, and from the end of the 18th century to the present what in Ukraine is known as "Modern Ukrainian", but elsewhere is known as just Ukrainian.

Influential literary figures in the development of modern Ukrainian literature include the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Mykola Kostomarov, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Lesia Ukrainka. The earliest literary work in the Ukrainian language was recorded in 1798 when Kotlyarevsky, a playwright from Poltava in southeastern Ukraine, published his epic poem, Eneyida, a burlesque in Ukrainian, based on Virgil's Aeneid. His book was published in vernacular Ukrainian in a satirical way to avoid being censored, and is the earliest known Ukrainian published book to survive through Imperial and, later, Soviet policies on the Ukrainian language.

Kotlyarevsky's work and that of another early writer using the Ukrainian vernacular language, Petro Artemovsky, used the southeastern dialect spoken in the Poltava, Kharkiv and southern Kyiven regions of the Russian Empire. This dialect would serve as the basis of the Ukrainian literary language when it was developed by Shevchenko and Kulish in the mid 19th century. In order to raise its status from that of a dialect to that of a language, various elements from folklore and traditional styles were added to it.

The Ukrainian literary language developed further when the Russian state banned the use of the Ukrainian language, prompting many of its writers to move to the western Ukrainian region of Galicia which was under more liberal Austrian rule; after the 1860s the majority of Ukrainian literary works were published in Austrian Galicia. During this period Galician influences were adopted in the Ukrainian literary language, particularly with respect to vocabulary involving law, government, technology, science, and administration.

Current usage
The use of the Ukrainian language is increasing after a long period of decline. Although there are almost fifty million ethnic Ukrainians worldwide, including 37.5 million in Ukraine in 2001 (77.8% of the total population at the time), the Ukrainian language is prevalent mainly in western and central Ukraine. In Kyiv, both Ukrainian and Russian are spoken, a notable shift from the recent past when the city was primarily Russian-speaking.

The shift is believed to be caused mainly by an influx of migrants from western regions of Ukraine but also by some Kyivans opting to use the language they speak at home more widely in public settings. Public signs and announcements in Kyiv are displayed in Ukrainian. In southern and eastern Ukraine, Russian is the prevalent language in most large and some small cities. According to the Ukrainian Census of 2001, 87.8% of people living in Ukraine were fluent in Ukrainian.

In August 2022, a survey in Ukraine by Rating Group found that 85% said they speak Ukrainian or Ukrainian and Russian at home, 51% only Ukrainian, an increase from 61% and 44% in February 2014. In the same survey, 76% considered Ukrainian their native language, up from 57% in July 2012, including 30% of Russian speakers.

Music
Ukrainian has become popular in other countries through movies and songs performed in the Ukrainian language. The most popular Ukrainian rock bands, such as Okean Elzy, Vopli Vidopliassova, and BoomBox perform regularly in tours across Europe, Israel, North America and especially Russia. In countries with significant Ukrainian populations, bands singing in the Ukrainian language sometimes reach top places on the charts, such as Enej (a band from Poland). Other notable Ukrainian-language bands are The Ukrainians from the United Kingdom, Klooch from Canada, Ukrainian Village Band from the United States, and the Kuban Cossack Choir from the Kuban region in Russia.

Cinema
The 2010s saw a revival of Ukrainian cinema. The top Ukrainian-language films (by IMDb rating) are:

Argots
Oleksa Horbach's 1951 study of argots analyzed historical primary sources (argots of professionals, thugs, prisoners, homeless, school children, etc.) paying special attention to etymological features of argots, word formation and borrowing patterns depending on the source-language (Church Slavonic, Russian, Czech, Polish, Romani, Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, German).

Dialects

Several modern dialects of Ukrainian exist.
 * dialects:
 * is spoken in Chernihiv (excluding the southeastern districts), in the northern part of Sumy, and in the southeastern portion of the Kyiv Oblast as well as in the adjacent areas of Russia, which include the southwestern part of the Bryansk Oblast (the area around Starodub), as well as in some places in the Kursk, Voronezh and Belgorod Oblasts. No linguistic border can be defined. The vocabulary approaches Russian as the language approaches the Russian Federation. Both Ukrainian and Russian grammar sets can be applied to this dialect.
 * is spoken in the northwestern part of the Kyiv Oblast, in the northern part of Zhytomyr and the northeastern part of the Rivne Oblast.
 * is spoken in the northern part of the Volyn Oblast, the northwestern part of the Rivne Oblast, and in the adjacent districts of the Brest Region in Belarus. The dialect spoken in Belarus uses Belarusian grammar and thus is considered by some to be a dialect of Belarusian.
 * dialects:
 * is the basis of the Standard Literary Ukrainian. It is spoken in the central part of Ukraine, primarily in the southern and eastern part of the Kyiv Oblast. In addition, the dialects spoken in Cherkasy, Poltava, and Kyiv regions are considered to be close to "standard" Ukrainian.
 * is spoken in Kharkiv, Sumy, Luhansk, and the northern part of Donetsk, as well as in the Voronezh and Belgorod regions of Russia. This dialect is formed from a gradual mixture of Russian and Ukrainian, with progressively more Russian in the northern and eastern parts of the region. Thus, there is no linguistic border between Russian and Ukrainian, and, thus, both grammar sets can be applied.
 * A dialect is spoken in southern and southeastern Ukraine. This dialect was originally the main language of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.
 * A dialect related to or based on the Steppe dialect is often referred to as Balachka and is spoken by the Kuban Cossacks in the Kuban region in Russia by the descendants of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who settled in that area in the late 18th century. It was formed from a gradual mixture of Russian into Ukrainian. This dialect features the use of some Russian vocabulary along with some Russian grammar. There are three main variants, which have been grouped together according to location.
 * dialects:
 * is spoken by the Boyko people on the northern side of the Carpathian Mountains in the Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts. It can also be heard across the border in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship of Poland.
 * is spoken by the Hutsul people on the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, in the extreme southern parts of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, and in parts of the Chernivtsi and Transcarpathian Oblasts.
 * is spoken by the Lemko people, whose homeland rests outside the borders of Ukraine in the Prešov Region of Slovakia along the southern side of the Carpathian Mountains, and in the southeast of modern Poland, along the northern sides of the Carpathians.
 * is spoken in the southern parts of the Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi Oblasts, in the northern part of the Odesa Oblast, and in the adjacent districts of the Cherkasy Oblast, the Kirovohrad Oblast, and the Mykolaiv Oblast.
 * is spoken in Rivne and Volyn, as well as in parts of Zhytomyr and Ternopil. It is also used in Chełm, Poland.
 * is spoken in the Chernivtsi Oblast of Ukraine. This dialect has some distinct vocabulary borrowed from Romanian.
 * (Kresy) is considered to be the main Galician dialect, spoken in the Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblasts. Its distinguishing characteristics are the influence of Polish and the German vocabulary, which is reminiscent of the Austro-Hungarian rule. Some of the distinct words used in this dialect can be found here.
 * is spoken in the border area between Ukraine and Poland in the San river valley.
 * The is considered by Ukrainian linguists to be a dialect of Ukrainian as well:
 * is spoken in the Transcarpathian Oblast.
 * is spoken in northwestern Serbia and eastern Croatia. Rusin language of the Bačka dialect is one of the official languages of the Serbian Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.
 * is the Rusyn spoken in the Prešov (in Ukrainian: Pryashiv) region of Slovakia, as well as by some émigré communities, primarily in the United States of America.

Neighbouring countries

All the countries neighbouring Ukraine (except for Hungary) historically have regions with a sizable Ukrainian population and therefore Ukrainian language speakers. Ukrainian is an official minority language in Belarus, Romania, and Moldova.

Ukrainian diaspora
Ukrainian is also spoken by a large émigrée population, particularly in Canada, the United States, and several countries of South America like Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. The founders of this population primarily emigrated from Galicia, which used to be part of Austro-Hungary before World War I, and belonged to Poland between the World Wars. The language spoken by most of them is the Galician dialect of Ukrainian from the first half of the 20th century. Compared with modern Ukrainian, the vocabulary of Ukrainians outside Ukraine reflects less influence of Russian, but often contains many loanwords from the local language.

Most of the countries where it is spoken are ex-USSR, where many Ukrainians have migrated. Canada and the United States are also home to a large Ukrainian population. Broken up by country (to the nearest thousand):

 * 1) Russia 1,129,838 (according to the 2010 census);
 * 2) Canada 200,525 (67,665 spoken at home in 2001, 148,000 spoken as "mother tongue" in 2001)

Ukrainian is declaratively proclaimed as one of three official languages of the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria.

Ukrainian is widely spoken within the 400,000-strong (in 1994) Ukrainian community in Brazil. It is the official language in Prudentópolis alongside Portuguese.

Language structure

 * Cyrillic letters in this article are romanized using scientific transliteration.

Grammar
Ukrainian is a fusional, nominative–accusative, satellite-framed language. It exhibits T–V distinction, and is null-subject. The canonical word order of Ukrainian is SVO. Other word orders are common due to the free word order enabled by Ukrainian's inflectional system.

Nouns have one of 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; nouns decline for:
 * 7 cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, locative, vocative;
 * 2 numbers: singular, plural.

Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, case, and number.

Verbs conjugate for:
 * 4 tenses: past, pluperfect, present, future;
 * 2 voices: active, mediopassive;
 * 3 persons: first, second, third;
 * 2 numbers: singular, plural.

Ukrainian verbs come in aspect pairs: perfective, and imperfective. Pairs are usually formed by a prepositional prefix and occasionally a root change. The past tense agrees with its subject in number and gender (but not person), having developed from the perfect participle.

The Old East Slavic and Russian o in syllables ending in a consonant, often correspond to a Ukrainian i, as in pod → pid (під, 'under'). Thus, in the declension of nouns, the o can re-appear when it is no longer located in a closed syllable, such as rik (рік, 'year') (nom): rotsi (loc) (році). Similarly, some words can have і in some cases when most of the cases have o, for example слово (nominative singular), слова (nominative plural) but слiв (genitive plural).

Ukrainian case endings are somewhat different from Old East Slavic, and the vocabulary includes a large overlay of Polish terminology. Russian na pervom etaže 'on the first floor' is in the locative (prepositional) case. The Ukrainian corresponding expression is na peršomu poversi (на першому поверсі). -omu is the standard locative (prepositional) ending, but variants in -im are common in dialect and poetry, and allowed by the standards bodies. The kh of Ukrainian poverkh (поверх) has mutated into s under the influence of the soft vowel i (k is similarly mutable into c in final positions).

Phonology

The Ukrainian language has six vowels,, , , , ,.

A number of the consonants come in three forms: hard, soft (palatalized) and long, for example,, , and or , , and.

The letter $\langleг\rangle$ represents the voiced glottal fricative, often transliterated as Latin h. It is the voiced equivalent of English. Russian speakers from Ukraine often use the soft Ukrainian in place of Russian, which comes from northern dialects of Old East Slavic. The Ukrainian alphabet has the additional letter $\langleґ\rangle$ for, which appears in a few native words such as ґринджоли gryndžoly 'sleigh' and ґудзик gudzyk 'button'. However, appears almost exclusively in loan words, and is usually simply written $\langleг\rangle$. For example, loanwords from English on public signs usually use $\langleг\rangle$ for both English g and h.

Another phonetic divergence between the Ukrainian and Russian languages is the pronunciation of Cyrillic $\langleв\rangle$ v/w. While in standard Russian it represents, in many Ukrainian dialects it denotes (following a vowel and preceding a consonant (cluster), either within a word or at a word boundary, it denotes the allophone , and like the off-glide in the English words "flow" and "cow", it forms a diphthong with the preceding vowel). Native Russian speakers will pronounce the Ukrainian $\langleв\rangle$ as, which is one way to tell the two groups apart. As with $\langleг\rangle$ above, Ukrainians use $\langleв\rangle$ to render both English v and w; Russians occasionally use $\langleу\rangle$ for w instead.

Unlike Russian and most other modern Slavic languages, Ukrainian does not have final devoicing.

Alphabet
Ukrainian is written in a version of Cyrillic, consisting of 33 letters, representing 38 phonemes; an apostrophe is also used. Ukrainian orthography is based on the phonemic principle, with one letter generally corresponding to one phoneme, although there are a number of exceptions. The orthography also has cases where the semantic, historical, and morphological principles are applied.

The modern Ukrainian alphabet is the result of a number of proposed alphabetic reforms from the 19th and early 20th centuries, in Ukraine under the Russian Empire, in Austrian Galicia, and later in Soviet Ukraine. A unified Ukrainian alphabet (the Skrypnykivka, after Mykola Skrypnyk) was officially established at a 1927 international Orthographic Conference in Kharkiv, during the period of Ukrainization in Soviet Ukraine. But the policy was reversed in the 1930s, and the Soviet Ukrainian orthography diverged from that used by the diaspora. The Ukrainian letter ge ґ was banned in the Soviet Union from 1933 until the period of Glasnost in 1990.

The letter щ represents two consonants. The combination of with some of the vowels is also represented by a single letter ( = я,  = є,  or  = ї,  = ю), while  = йо and the rare regional  = йи are written using two letters. These iotated vowel letters and a special soft sign change a preceding consonant from hard to soft. An apostrophe is used to indicate the hardness of the sound in the cases when normally the vowel would change the consonant to soft; in other words, it functions like the yer in the Russian alphabet.

A consonant letter is doubled to indicate that the sound is doubled, or long.

The phonemes and  do not have dedicated letters in the alphabet and are rendered with the digraphs дз and дж, respectively. is equivalent to English ds in pods, is equivalent to j in jump.

As in Russian, the acute accent may be used to denote vowel stress.

Orthography
Spelling search, which began in the late 18th century with the emergence of modern literary language, led to the emergence of several spelling options. In particular, there was the spelling system of Oleksii Pavlovskyi, the spelling version of "Mermaid of the Dniester" (1837), Kulishivka (P. Kulish's spelling system), Drahomanivka (produced in Kyiv in the 1870s by a group of cultural figures led by linguist P. Zhytetskyi, which included and M. Drahomanov), Zhelekhivka (system of Yevhen Zhelekhovskyi (1886), enshrined in the Russian Grammar by Smal-Stotskyi and Theodore Gartner 1893).

Borys Hrinchenko used some corrections in the fundamental four-volume Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language (1907–1909). Most of the spelling rules (practically based on phonetics – "write as you hear") used in Hrinchenko's dictionary are still valid. Hrinchenko's work became an informal spelling and model for Ukrainian writers and publications from 1907 until the creation of the first official Ukrainian spelling in 1918.

On 17 January 1918, the Central Rada of Ukraine issued the "Main Rules of Ukrainian orthography", which, however, did not cover the entire scope of the language. On 17 May 1919, the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences approved the "Main Rules of Ukrainian Orthography", which became the basis for all subsequent revisions and amendments.

On 23 July 1925, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR decided to organize a State Commission for the Organization of Ukrainian Spelling (State Spelling Commission). It included more than 20 academics from the USSR, who also expressed a desire to invite representatives of Western Ukraine: Smal-Stotskyi, Volodymyr Hnatiuk and Vasyl Simovych.

After almost a year of work in April 1926, the "Project of Ukrainian Spelling" was published to acquaint the general public with the new system. After several months of discussion and consideration of the project at the All-Ukrainian Spelling Conference (26 May – 6 June 1927), the Ukrainian orthography of 1928 was adopted in accordance with the RNC resolution of 6 September 1928. It went down in history as "Kharkiv" or "Skrypnik orthography" – from the place of creation, or from the surname of Skrypnyk.

In 1929, Hryhorii Holoskevych published the Ukrainian Spelling Dictionary (about 40,000 words), agreed with the full spelling produced by the State Spelling Commission and approved by the People's Commissar for Education (6 September 1928).

In 1933, a spelling commission headed by Andrii Khvylia branded the Ukrainian orthography of 1928 as "nationalist", immediately stopped publishing any dictionaries, and without any discussion, in a very short time (five months), created a new spelling that unified as never before the Ukrainian and Russian languages. The letter ґ was removed from the alphabet, and Ukrainian scientific terminology was revised and harmonized with Russian-Ukrainian dictionaries (the Institute of Ukrainian Scientific Language was abolished in 1930). This version of the spelling was approved by the resolution of the People's Commissar of Education of the USSR of 5 September 1933.

Some minor changes were made in the spelling of 1946 and 1959 (published the following year). It was connected with the document "The rules of Russian spelling and punctuation", published in 1956. From 1960 until 1990, the 1960 edition was the official standard.

After the beginning of "perestroika", the issue of improving Ukrainian spelling became relevant again: the editing of the spelling code was started by the Orthographic Commission at the LMM of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The project was also discussed in the newly established Ukrainian Language Society. T. Shevchenko (headed by Dmytro Pavlychko). The new version was approved on 14 November 1989, and published in 1990. The main achievements were the restoration of the letter ґ and the accusative case (in Soviet times it was optional and was called the accusative form).

Today, despite the existence of the official spelling of the Ukrainian language, it is not the only spelling standard in use. Even in Ukraine itself, many publishers and publications use other versions of the spelling, which either tend to "skrypnykivka", or else differ from the official rules of transmission of words of foreign origin.

On 22 May 2019, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a new version of the orthography prepared by the Ukrainian National Commission on Spelling. The new edition brought to life some features of orthography in 1928, which were part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition. At the same time, the commission was guided by the understanding that the language practice of Ukrainians in the second half of the 20th to the beginning of the 21st century has already become part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition.

Vocabulary
The Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, in 11 volumes, contains 253,000 entries. Lexical card catalog of the Ukrainian Institute of Language Studies has six million cards. As mentioned at the top of the article, Ukrainian is most closely related lexically to Belarusian, and is also closer to Polish than to Russian (for example, можливість, mozhlyvist', "possibility", and Polish możliwość, but Russian возможность, vozmozhnost).

False cognates with Russian
The standard Ukrainian language which is based on the Kyiv–Poltava dialect has a plethora of false friends with the standard Russian language which is based on the dialect of Moscow. Many people intentionally do or do not use them, causing their language shift into what is known as Surzhyk, where the meaning of some words mimicking Russian could be understood out of context rather than their literal meaning in Ukrainian.

Classification
Ukrainian has varying degrees of mutual intelligibility with other Slavic languages. It is closely related to other East Slavic languages with high levels of mutual intelligibility. Ukrainian is considered to be most closely related to Belarusian.

The separation of the East Slavic languages is considered to be relatively recent. In the 19th century, the question of whether the Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian languages are dialects of a single language or three separate languages was actively discussed, with the debate affected by linguistic and political factors. The political situation (Ukraine and Belarus being mainly part of the Russian Empire at the time) and the historical existence of the medieval state of Kievan Rus', which occupied large parts of these three nations, led to the creation of the common classification known later as the East Slavic languages. The underlying theory of the grouping is their descent from a common ancestor. In modern times, Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian are usually listed by linguists as separate languages.

The Ukrainians were predominantly peasants and petits bourgeois. In 1897, 93% of Ukrainians were classified as peasants. As a result, the Ukrainian language was mostly vernacular and few earlier literary works from the period can be found. In the cities, Ukrainian coexisted with Church Slavonic—a literary language of religion that evolved from Old Church Slavonic—and later Polish and Russian, both languages which were more often used in formal writing and communication during that time.

Differences with other Slavic languages
The Ukrainian language has the following similarities and differences with other Slavic languages:

 * Like all Slavic languages with the exception of Russian, Belarusian, standard written Slovak and Slovene, the Ukrainian language has preserved the Common Slavic vocative case. When addressing one's sister (sestra) she is referred to as sestro. In the Russian language the vocative case has been almost entirely replaced by the nominative (except for a handful of vestigial forms, e.g. Bozhe "God!" and Gospodi "Lord!").
 * The Ukrainian language, in common with all Slavic languages other than Russian, Slovak and Slovene, has retained the Common Slavic second palatalization of the velars *k, *g and *x in front of the secondary vowel *ě of the dative and locative ending in the female declension, resulting in the final sequences -cě, -zě, and -sě. For example, ruka (hand) becomes ruci in Ukrainian. In Russian, the dative and locative of ruka is ruke.
 * The Ukrainian language, in common with Serbo-Croatian and Slovene, has developed the ending -mo for first-person plurals in verbs (khodymo for "we walk"). In all cases, it resulted from lengthening of the Common Slavic -mŭ.
 * The Ukrainian language, along with Russian and Belarusian, has changed the Common Slavic word-initial ye- into o, such as in the words ozero (lake) and odyn (one).
 * The Ukrainian language, in common with Czech, Slovak, Upper Sorbian, Belarusian and southern Russian dialects, has changed the Common Slavic "g" into an "h" sound (for example, noha – leg).
 * The Ukrainian language, in common with some northern Russian and Croatian dialects, has transformed the Common Slavic yě into i (for example, lis – forest).
 * The Ukrainian language, in common with Russian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Slovene, has simplified the Common Slavic tl and dl into l (for example, mela – she swept").
 * The Ukrainian language, in common with the most of Slavic ones, is a stress-timed language, in which syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time (on average) between consecutive stressed syllables.
 * The Ukrainian language, in common with all modern Slavic languages other than Bulgarian and Macedonian, does not use articles.
 * Other Slavic o in closed syllables, i.e., syllables ending in a consonant, in many cases corresponds to a Ukrainian i, as in pod → pid (під, 'under'). This also includes place names such as Lviv (Львів in Ukrainian), Lwów in Polish, and Львов (Lvov) in Russian.

Unlike all other Slavic languages, Ukrainian has a synthetic future (also termed inflectional future) tense which developed through the erosion and cliticization of the verb "to have" (or possibly "to take"): pysat-ymu (infinitive-future-1st sg.) I will write. Although the inflectional future (based on the verb 'to have') is characteristic of Romance languages, Ukrainian linguist A. Danylenko argues that Ukrainian differs from Romance in the choice of auxiliary, which should be interpreted as 'to take' and not 'to have.' He states that Late Common Slavic (LCS) had three verbs with the same Proto-Indo-European root : The three verbs became conflated in East Slavic due to morphological overlap, in particular of *iměti "to have" and *jati "to take" as exemplified in the Middle Ukrainian homonymic imut’ from both iměti (< *jĭměti) and jati (< *jęti). Analogous grammaticalization of the type take ("to take", "to seize") > future is found in Chinese and Hungarian.
 * a determined imperfective LCS *jęti: *jĭmǫ 'to take' (later superseded by numerous prefixed perfectives)
 * an indetermined imperfective LCS *jĭmati: jemljǫ 'to take' (which would not take any prefixes)
 * an imperfective LCS *jĭměti: *jĭmamĭ 'to hold, own, have'

Sample text
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Ukrainian:"Всі люди нарождуються вільними і рівними у своїй гідності та правах. Вони наділені розумом і совістю і повинні діяти у відношенні один до одного в дусі братерства."The romanization of the text into Latin alphabet:"Vsi lyudy narozhduyut'sya vil'nymy i rivnymy u svoyiy hidnosti ta pravakh. Vony nadileni rozumom i sovistyu i povynni diyaty u vidnoshenni odyn do odnoho v dusi braterstva."Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

title: Ukrainian language


text:
Father's Day

Father's Day is a holiday honoring one's father, as well as fatherhood, paternal bonds, and the influence of fathers in society. The holiday complements similar celebrations honoring family members, such as Mother's Day and, in some countries, Siblings Day, and Grandparents' Day. The day is held on various dates across the world, and different regions maintain their own traditions of honoring fatherhood.

In Catholic countries of Europe, it has been celebrated on 19 March as Saint Joseph's Day since the Middle Ages. In the United States, Father's Day was founded in the state of Washington by Sonora Smart Dodd in 1910. Father's Day is a recognized public holiday in Lithuania and some parts of Spain and was regarded as such in Italy until 1977. It is a national holiday in Estonia, Samoa, and equivalently in South Korea, where it is celebrated as Parents' Day. Sikhs celebrate Father's Day (ਪਿਤਾ ਦਿਵਸ) on 29 December, birthday of Guru Gobind Singh.

History
For centuries, the Eastern Orthodox Church has appointed the second Sunday before Nativity as the Sunday of the Forefathers to commemorate the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh, starting with Adam and emphasizing the patriarch Abraham, to whom God said, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed"

This feast can fall between 11 and 17 December. This feast includes the ancestors of Mary, mother of Jesus and various prophets.

A customary day for the celebration of fatherhood in Catholic Europe is known to date back to at least 1508. It is usually celebrated on 19 March, as the feast day of Saint Joseph, who is referred to as the fatherly Nutritor Domini ("Nourisher of the Lord") in Catholicism and "the putative father of Jesus" in southern European tradition. This celebration was brought to the Americas by the Spanish and Portuguese. The Catholic Church actively supported the custom of a celebration of fatherhood on St. Joseph's Day from either the last years of the 14th century or from the early 15th century, apparently on the initiative of the Franciscans.

In the Coptic Orthodox Church, the celebration of fatherhood is also observed on St Joseph's Day, but the Copts observe this on 20 July. The Coptic celebration may date back to the fifth century.

In the United States, whether to celebrate this day nationwide or not is a matter for debate. In 1908, Grace Golden Clayton proposed the day to honor those men who had died in a mining accident in the US. Though it was not accepted then, in 1909 Sonora Smart Dodd, who along with her five brothers was raised by her father alone, after attending Mother's Day in a church, convinced the Spokane Ministerial Association to celebrate Father's Day nationwide.

In addition to Father's Day, International Men's Day is celebrated in many countries on 19 November in honor of both men and boys.

Spelling
"Father's Day" is spelled as a singular possessive following the precedent established by its predecessor, Mother's Day. In 1912, Anna Jarvis trademarked the phrase "Second Sunday in May, Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis, Founder."Compare footnote 51 in LaRossa, Ralph (1997). The Modernization of Fatherhood: A Social and Political History. University of Chicago Press. p. 272. ISBN 978-0226469041. Retrieved 28 April 2016. Technically, at least, Mother's Day was 'owned' by Jarvis. She managed not only to incorporate the Mother's Day International Association but also to register 'Second Sunday in May, Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis, Founder,' as the organization's trademark. Jarvis specifically noted that "Mother's" should "be a singular possessive, for each family to honor its own mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world."

Dates
The following is a list of when Father's Day is celebrated, in order of date of observance.

Algeria
In Algeria, the third Sunday in June is the dedicated day to celebrate the Father's Day.

Egypt
In Egypt, Father's Day is celebrated on 21 June of every year.

Kenya
In Kenya, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday.

Morocco
In Morocco, the third Sunday in June is the dedicated day to celebrate the Father's Day.

Mozambique
In Mozambique, Father's Day is observed on 19 March every year.

Nigeria
In Nigeria, the third Sunday in June is the dedicated day to celebrate Father's Day.

Seychelles
In Seychelles, Father's Day is celebrated on 16 June and is not a public holiday.

South Africa
In South Africa, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. It is not a public holiday.

South Sudan
In South Sudan, Father's Day is celebrated on the last Monday of August. President Salva Kiir Mayardit proclaimed it before 27 August 2012. First celebrated on 27 August 2012, Father's Day was not celebrated in South Sudan in 2011 (due to the country's independence).

Sudan
In Sudan, Father's Day (عيد الأب), is celebrated on 21 June.

Bangladesh
In Bangladesh there is no historical tradition of celebrating Father's Day (Bengali/Bangla: বাবা/আব্বু দিবস, Baba/abbu dibosh) and has been popularized by Western influences in the country. It is celebrated on the third Sunday of June, and is not a public holiday. Father's Day was not very popular and had been made more widespread by the Millennial and Generation Z communities all over the country through social media in recent times. Even though many religious families do not celebrate it, it is more widespread than ever. There is a popular phrase used by many parents: "Every day is father's/mother's day, so you shall love your parents everyday." Most people just wish their father a happy father's day, but many people from big cities go to a restaurant to celebrate, and many even have cake. Many others cut the cake at home or order food online. Some children may give small gifts to their father.

China
In the People's Republic of China, there is no official Father's Day. Some people celebrate on the third Sunday of June, according to the tradition of the United States. Father's Day is also celebrated in the special administrative regions. In Hong Kong, it is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday. In Macau, Father's Day (Dia do Pai) is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday.

India
Father's Day is not an original custom of India but is rather followed by the influence of the western world. It is observed on the third Sunday of June. This event is not a public holiday. The day is usually celebrated only in larger cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, Jaipur, Lucknow and others. It is a huge holiday in the North Eastern state of Nagaland and Kerala where prayers are held in church on Sunday Services. After this day was first observed in the United States in 1908 and gradually gained popularity, Indian metropolitan cities, much later, followed suit by recognising this event. In India, the day is usually celebrated with children giving gifts such as greeting cards, electronic gadgets, shirts, gold necklaces, coffee mugs or books to their fathers.

Indonesia
In Indonesia, Father's Day is celebrated on 12 November and is not a public holiday. Father's Day in Indonesia was first declared in 2006 in Surakarta City Hall attended by hundreds of people from various community groups, including people from community of inter-religion communication. Because of its recent declaration, there is not much hype about the celebration, compared to the celebration of Mother's Day on 22 December. Google also created its doodle for Indonesia in 2019 and 2020.

Iran
In Iran before the revolution, the 24th of Esfand, Reza Shah's birthday, was called Father's Day based on the Iranian calendar. After the revolution of 1979, this day was changed to the 13th of Rajab, the birthday of Ali bin Abi Talib, the first imam of Shiis. Zoroastrians also celebrate Shahrivargan as Father's Day.

Israel
In Israel, Father's Day is usually celebrated as part of Family Day on 30 Shevat, though some celebrate on 1 May together with Workers' Day or Labor Day.

Japan
In Japan, Father's Day (父の日) is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday. Common presents are sake, shochu, fashion items, some kinds of gourmet food, sports equipment and various sweets.

Kazakhstan
Since 2012, Kazakhstan celebrates Defender of the Fatherland Day (Отан Қорғаушы күні) to commemorate the foundation of the armed forces. It is also called Army Day and it is celebrated on 7 May. Kazakh society perceives it as 'a men's day' and honoring men so it is vaguely a celebration of fathers.

Malaysia
In Malaysia, Father's Day falls on the third Sunday of June.

Mongolia
The Mongolian Men's Association began the celebration of Father's Day on 8 August 2005.

Nepal
The Nepalese Hindus as well as the Newars in Nepal honors fathers on the day of Kushe aunsi (कुशे औंसी), which occurs in late August or early September, depending on the year, since it depends on the lunar calendar. According to Hindu calendar, the festival falls on the new moon day of Bhadra month. It is also known as Gokarna Aunsi or Pitri Tirpani Aunsi.

In recent years, Nepalese non–Hindus have also adopted the Kushe Aunsi day. It is commonly known as Buwaako mukh herne din (बुवाको मुख हेर्ने दिन) or Abu ya Khwa Swoyegu in Nepal Bhasa. The celebration of the festival has been modernized in some ways in recent years. Children worship their father on this day, put tika on his forehead and give him sweets, delicacies and gifts as a part of celebration. In return, the father bless good fortune to his children.

On the new moon day (Amavasya), it is traditional to pay respect to one's deceased father; Hindus go to the Shiva temple of Gokarneswor Mahadev, in Gokarna, a suburb of Kathmandu while Buddhists go to Jana Bahal (Seto Machhendranath or white Tara) temple in Kathmandu.

Traditionally, in the Kathmandu Valley, the south-western corner is reserved for women and women-related rituals, and the north-eastern is for men and men-related rituals. The worship place for Mata Tirtha Aunsi ('Mother Pilgrimage New Moon') is located in Mata Tirtha in the south-western half of the valley, while the worship place for Gokarna Aunsi is located in the north-eastern half. This division is reflected in many aspects of the life in the Kathmandu Valley.

Pakistan
Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. The Rutgers WPF launched a campaign titled 'Greening Pakistan – Promoting Responsible Fatherhood' on Father's Day (Sunday, 18 June 2017) across Pakistan to promote active fatherhood and responsibility for the care and upbringing of children. Father's Day is not a public holiday in Pakistan.

Philippines
In the Philippines, Father's Day is officially celebrated every third Sunday of June according to a recent presidential proclamation, but it is not a public holiday. It is more widely observed by the public on the third Sunday of June perhaps due to American influence and as proclaimed in 1988 by Philippine President Corazon Aquino.

Under Proclamation No. 58, series of 1998, issued by then Philippine President Joseph Ejercito Estrada, the first Monday of December of every year was designated as Mother's Day and Father's Day, expressly repealing the third Sunday of June observance.

Singapore
In Singapore, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June but is not a public holiday.

South Korea
In South Korea, Parents' Day (어버이날) is celebrated on 8 May and is not a public holiday. Setting Parents' Day as a national holiday and holding a pan-national event is intended to inherit and develop traditional ethical standards such as filial piety and senior citizens' ideology. Regardless of age or gender, this day is also an opportunity to reaffirm that traditional filial piety is a crucial norm and cultural value in modern society. The ceremony to mark Parents' Day as an anniversary and put on carnations stems from a Christian culture. As Western religions and cultures entered, this holiday, which was introduced together, became the most traditional holiday combined with Confucian filial piety in the process of establishing itself.

Sri Lanka
Father's Day (Sinhala: පියවරුන්ගේ දිනය; Tamil: தந்தையர் தினம்) is observed on the third Sunday of June. It is not a public holiday. Many schools hold special events to honor fathers.

Taiwan
In Taiwan, Father's Day is not an official holiday, but is widely observed on 8 August, the eighth day of the eighth month of the year. In Mandarin Chinese, the pronunciation of the number eight is bā, and the pronunciation is very similar to the character (bà), which means "pa" or "dad". The eighth day of the eighth month is a pun for dad. Taiwan, therefore, sometimes refer to 8 August as "Bābā Holiday" as a pun for "Dad's Holiday" or the more formal "Father's Day".

Thailand
In Thailand, Father's Day is observed on 5 December, the birthday of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX). In Thailand, Father's Day, as well as Mother's Day, are national public holidays. Traditionally, Thais celebrate by giving their father or grandfather a canna flower (ดอกพุทธรักษา), which is considered a masculine flower; however, this is not as commonly practiced today. Thai people will wear yellow on this day to show respect for the late king, because yellow is the color of the day for Monday, the day King Bhumibol Adulyadej was born. Thais flood the Sanam Luang, a massive park in front of the palace, to watch the king give his annual speech, and often stay until the evening when there is a national ceremony. Thais will light candles and show respect to the king by declaring their faith. This ceremony happens in almost every village in Thailand, and even overseas at Thai organizations.

It first gained nationwide popularity in the 1980s as part of a campaign by Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda to promote Thailand's royal family. Mother's Day is celebrated on the birthday of Queen Sirikit, 12 August.

United Arab Emirates
In the United Arab Emirates, Father's Day is celebrated on 21 June.

Roman Catholicism
In the Roman Catholic tradition, fathers are celebrated on Saint Joseph's Day (commonly called the Feast of Saint Joseph), 19 March, though in certain countries Father's Day has become a secular celebration. It is also common for Catholics to honor their "spiritual father", their parish priest, on Father's Day.

Austria
In Austria, Father's Day (Vatertag) is celebrated on the second Sunday of June and it is not a public holiday.

Belarus
In Belarus Father's Day is celebrated on 21 October.

Belgium
In Belgium, Father's Day (Vaderdag/Fête des Pères) is celebrated on the second Sunday of June or 14 June, and it is not a public holiday, except for Antwerp where it is celebrated on 19 March.

Bulgaria
In Bulgaria, Father's Day is celebrated on 26 December and it is not a public holiday. According to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, fathers are celebrated on Saint Joseph's Day - one day after Christmas.

Croatia
In Croatia, according to the Roman Catholic tradition, fathers are celebrated on Saint Joseph's Day (Dan svetog Josipa), 19 March. It is not a public holiday.

Denmark
In Denmark, Father's Day (Fars dag) is celebrated on 5 June. It coincides with Constitution Day.

Estonia
In Estonia, Father's Day (Isadepäev) is celebrated on the second Sunday of November. It is an established flag flying day and a national holiday.

Finland
In Finland, Father's Day (Isänpäivä; Fars dag) is celebrated on the second Sunday of November. It is an established flag flying day.

France
In France lighter manufacturer Flaminaire introduced the idea of Father's Day first in 1949 for commercial reasons. Director Marcel Quercia wanted to sell their lighter in France. In 1950, they introduced "la Fête des Pères", which would take place every third Sunday of June (following the American example). Their slogan is "Nos papas nous l'ont dit, pour la fête des pères, ils désirent tous un Flaminaire" (Our daddies told us, for Father's Day, they all want a Flaminaire). In 1952, the holiday was officially decreed. A national Father's Day committee was set up to give a prize for fathers who deserved it most (originally, candidates were nominated by the social services of each town hall's/mayor's office); This complements la Fête des Mères (Mother's Day) which was made official in France in 1928 and added to the calendar in Vichy in 1941.

Germany

In Germany, Father's Day (Vatertag) is celebrated differently from other parts of the world, as it is celebrated on Ascension Day (the Thursday forty days after Easter), which is a federal holiday. Regionally, it is also called gentlemen's day, Herrentag or Männertag (men's day). It is a tradition for groups of males (young and old but usually excluding pre-teenage boys) to do a hiking tour with one or more smaller wagons, Bollerwagen, pulled by manpower. In the wagons are wine or beer bottles (according to the region) and traditional regional food, Hausmannskost. Many men use this holiday as an opportunity to get drunk. According to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, alcohol-related traffic accidents triple on this day. The tradition of Father's Day is especially prevalent in Eastern Germany.

These traditions are probably rooted in Christian Ascension Day's processions to the farmlands, which has been celebrated since the 18th century. Men would be seated in a wooden cart and carried to the village's plaza, and the mayor would award a prize to the father who had the most children, usually with a big piece of ham. In the late 19th century the religious component was progressively lost, especially in urban areas such as Berlin, and groups of men organized walking excursions with beer and ham. By the 20th century, alcohol consumption had become a major part of the tradition. Many people will take the following Friday off work, and some schools are closed on that Friday as well; many people then use the resulting four-day-long weekend for a short vacation.

Greece

In Greece, Father's Day (η γιορτή του πατέρα) is officially celebrated on the third Sunday of June. The SYGAPA association, which supports the needs of divorced fathers, raises awareness and advocates for the father's role in society, also organizes various events on the day across the country.

Hungary
In Hungary, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday.

Iceland
In Iceland, Father's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of November.

Italy
In Italy, according to the Roman Catholic tradition, Father's Day is celebrated on Saint Joseph's Day, commonly called the Feast of Saint Joseph (Festa di San Giuseppe), 19 March. It was a public holiday until 1977.

Latvia
In Latvia, Father's Day (Tēvu diena) is celebrated on the second Sunday of September and is not a public holiday. In Latvia people did not always celebrate this day because of the USSR's influence with its own holidays. This day in Latvia was officially born in 2008 when it was celebrated and marked in the calendar for the first time on 14 September (second Sunday of September) to promote the idea that man as the father must be satisfied and proud of his family and children, also, the father is important to gratitude and loving words from his family for devoted to continuous altruistic concerns. Because this day is new to the country it does not have established unique traditions, but people borrow ideas from other countries' Father's Day traditions to congratulate fathers in Latvia.

Lithuania
In Lithuania, Father's Day (Tėvo diena) is celebrated on the first Sunday of June and is a public holiday.

Malta
Malta has followed the international trend and celebrates Father's Day on the third Sunday in June. As in the case of Mother's Day, the introduction of Father's Day celebrations in Malta was encouraged by Frans H Said (Uncle Frans of the children's radio programs). The first mention of Father's Day was in June 1977, and the day is now part of the local events calendar.

Netherlands
In the Netherlands (including its constituent countries in the Caribbean), Father's Day (Vaderdag) is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday. Traditionally, as on Mother's Day, fathers get breakfast in bed made by their children and families gather together and have dinner, usually at the grandparents' house. In recent years, families also started having dinner out, and as on Mother's Day, it is one of the busiest days for restaurants. At school, children handcraft presents for their fathers. Consumer goods companies have all sorts of special offers for fathers: socks, ties, electronics, suits, and men's healthcare products.

Norway
In Norway, Father's Day (Farsdag), is celebrated on the second Sunday of November. It is not a public holiday.

Poland
In Poland, Father's Day (Dzień Ojca) is celebrated on 23 June and is not a public holiday. Google recognized Poland in its Father's Day 2019 Doodle.

Portugal
Father's Day (Dia do Pai) is celebrated on 19 March (see Roman Catholic tradition below) in Portugal. It is not a bank and public holiday.

Romania
The law instituting the celebration of Father's Day in Romania passed on 29 September 2009, and stated that Father's Day will be celebrated annually on the second Sunday of May. The first time it was celebrated was on 9 May 2010.

Russia
Russia continues the Soviet Union's tradition of celebrating Defender of the Fatherland Day on 23 February. It is usually called "Man's Day" and it is considered the Russian equivalent of Father's Day. In 2021, President Vladimir Putin established the Father's Day as falling on the third Sunday of October.

Slovakia
In Slovakia, Father's Day (deň otcov) is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. It is not a public holiday.

Spain
Father's Day (El Día del Padre) is observed on the feast day of Saint Joseph, which is 19 March. It is celebrated as a public holiday in some regions of Spain.

Sweden
In Sweden, Father's Day (Fars dag), is celebrated on the second Sunday of November but is not a public holiday.

Switzerland
In most of Switzerland the holiday is celebrated on the first Sunday of June; in Ticino, the Italian speaking canton, it is an official public holiday, celebrated on 19 March.

Turkey
In Turkey, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday in June and is not a public holiday.

Ukraine
In Ukraine, Father's Day (День батька) is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. It is not a public holiday.

United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. The day does not have a long tradition; Steve Roud, in The English Year (2006), states that it entered British popular culture "sometime after the Second World War, not without opposition".

Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cuba and Puerto Rico
Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday.

Canada
In Canada, Father's Day (Fête des Pères) is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday. Father's Day typically involves spending time with one's father or the father figures in one's life. Small family gatherings and the giving of gifts may be part of the festivities organized for Father's Day.

Costa Rica
In Costa Rica, the Social Christian Unity Party presented a bill to change the celebration of Father's Day from the third Sunday of June to 19 March, the day of Saint Joseph. That was to give tribute to this saint, who gave his name to the capital of the country San José, Costa Rica, so family heads will be able to celebrate Father's Day at the same time as the Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker. The official date is still the third Sunday of June.

Haiti
In Haiti, Father's Day (Fête des pères) is celebrated on the last Sunday of June and is not a public holiday. Fathers are recognized and celebrated on this day with cards, gifts, breakfast, lunch, brunch or early Sunday dinner; whether enjoying the day at the beach or mountains, spending family time or doing favorite activities.

Children exclaim "bonne fête papa", while everyone wishes all fathers "bonne Fête des Pères" (Happy Father's Day).

Mexico
In Mexico, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday. Father's Day typically involves spending time with one's father or the father figures in one's life. Small family gatherings and the giving of gifts may be part of the festivities organized for Father's Day.

Trinidad and Tobago
In Trinidad and Tobago, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday.

United States
In the US, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. Typically, families gather to celebrate the father figures in their lives. Schools (if in session) and other children's programs commonly have activities to make Father's Day gifts.

Australia
In Australia, Father's Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September, which is the first Sunday of spring in Australia. Most families present fathers with gifts and cards, and share a meal. It is not a public holiday.

The idea of Father's Day wasn't initially well received in Australia in the 1910s and 1920s. Many thought it was either unnecessary or undermined a father's assumed “supremacy” as head of the household. Newspapers at the time printed satirical poems and critical editorials of the new tradition. Father's Day was originally observed in June, matching the USA date, with church services and the wearing of a red flower. In June 1925, Janet Heyden of Sydney (who also advocated for Mother's Day celebrations in Australia) began collecting donations to bring cheer to elderly men in nursing homes. While Mother's Day became instantly popular, it wasn't until the 1930s that Father's Day came to be popularly celebrated in Australia on the first Sunday in September. The Father's Day Council of Australia was established in 1957 and continues to honor distinguished fathers with an annual Australian Father of the Year award. Father's Day traditions in Australia include school crafts with handmade gifts and cards from younger children, taking dad out for lunch, BBQs, and outdoor family activities. Public schools often hold a Father's Day gift stall with inexpensive presents for fathers, grandfathers, carers, or other role-models.

YMCA Victoria continues the tradition of honoring the role fathers and father figures play in parenting through the annual awarding of Local Community Father of the Year in 32 municipalities in Victoria. The Father's Day Council of Victoria also annually recognizes fathers in the Victorian Father of the Year Award.

New Zealand
In New Zealand, Father's Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September and it is not a public holiday. Father's Day was first observed at St Matthew's Church, Auckland on 14 July 1929 and first appeared in commercial advertising the following year. By 1931 other churches had adopted the day and in 1935 much of Australia moved to mark the day at the beginning of September. New Zealand followed this, with a Wellington advert in 1937 and a Christchurch Salvation Army service in 1938.

Samoa
In Samoa, Father's Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in August, and is a recognized national holiday on the Monday following.

Fiji
In Fiji, Father's Day is celebrated in September. Commercial fathers Sunday is usually on the first Sunday and then the Methodist Father's Day is usually celebrated on the second Sunday.

Argentina
Father's Day in Argentina is celebrated on the third Sunday of June.

Attempts have been made to change the date to 24 August, to commemorate the day on which the "Father of the Nation", José de San Martín, became a father. In 1953, the proposal to celebrate Father's Day in all educational establishments on 24 August, in honor of José de San Martín, was raised to the General Direction of Schools of Mendoza Province. The day was celebrated for the first time in 1958, on the third Sunday of June, but it was not included in the school calendars due to pressure from several groups.

Schools in the Mendoza Province continued to celebrate Father's Day on 24 August, and in 1982 the provincial governor passed a law declaring Father's Day in the province to be celebrated on that day.

In 2004, a proposal to change the date to 24 August was presented to the Argentine Chamber of Deputies as a single, unified project.

Bolivia
In Bolivia Father's Day (Día del padre, in Spanish) is celebrated on 19 March (Saint Joseph Day). People usually give a present to their fathers and spend time with them.

Brazil
In Brazil Father's Day (Dia dos Pais, in Portuguese) is celebrated three months after Mother's Day, on the second Sunday of August. Publicist Sylvio Bhering picked the day in honor of Saint Joachim, patron of fathers. While it is not an official holiday (see Public holidays in Brazil), it is widely observed and typically involves spending time with and giving gifts to one's father or father figure.

Chile
In Chile Father's Day (Día del padre, in Spanish) is officially celebrated on 19 June.

Colombia
In Colombia, Father's Day (Día del padre, in Spanish) is celebrated on the third Sunday of June. In 2022, it was officially celebrated on 26 June to avoid coinciding with the second round of the presidential elections.

Paraguay
In Paraguay, Father's Day is typically celebrated with a traditional banquet of Paraguayan food like chipa, mbeju, bori, soyo and sopa paraguaya. In Paraguay Father's Day is a very important day, and is celebrated with much fervor.

Peru
In Peru, Father's Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June and is not a public holiday. People usually give a present to their fathers and spend time with them mostly during a family meal.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Father's Day


text:
Talk:Unexpected hanging paradox

Simple refutation

 * Shouldn't this one read ".., but you will not know that"? --User:unmanaged — Preceding undated comment added 10:36, 19 November 2014
 * Shouldn't this one read ".., but you will not know that"? --User:unmanaged — Preceding undated comment added 10:36, 19 November 2014

On the nature of this "paradox"
An event is a surprise if it cannot be guessed. In this case any day chosen would be a surprise, including Friday because although he will have known for certain by Tuesday, he will also have spent the entirety of Thursday thinking his time has come, so in a sense he will indeed be surprised that his execution is on Friday. But that is besides the point, a surprise refers to the incapability of guessing the outcome of an event at a given time, what matters here is that, at the time when the judge is talking to him, the prisoner is unable to know when he will die no matter how hard he thinks about it, because he simply does not have any "truths" to leverage into making a deduction.

This is not to mention the fact that the feeling of being surprised is something that depends entirely on the prisonner's psychology, which is not necessarily logical. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 135.0.217.3 (talk) 20:22, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Nature of information required to not be surprised
The prisoner can only be unsurprised if he knows which day he'll be hanged, but his process of elimination doesn't give him that information. Because all days are eliminated, he's still mystified, and therefore surprised.

The "paradox" arises from not understanding what information the prisoner requires to not be surprised. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.236.116 (talk) 01:59, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Game Theoric Model
We can model the scenario as a zero sum game where the hangman decides the date of he hanging and the convict tries to guess it. The hangman can make the guess once, and if he guesses the day before he is hung he wins. The equilibrium solution shows that neither the hangman nor the convict has a guaranteed victory. That translates in logic to the fact the hangman cannot guarantee that he will surprise the convict, but the convict also cannot guarantee that he won’t be surprised. If we got back to the original problem, the convict’s reasoning is valid as a proof by contradiction to prove that he cannot be guaranteed to be surprised. His error is in assuming it means he can’t be hanged. The way it ends up unfolding the convict was surprised, but there is no guarantee this would happen as a real scenario, it was just forced by framing the paradox as something that happened after the fact. Ganondox (talk) 23:21, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

?
If you reduce the parodox to one day, you get the following:

A judge tells a prisoner that he will be hanged today, but only if he does not know he will be executed.

The prisoner deduces that since he is aware of his sentence he can not be executed. So when he is executed it is a complete surprise to him.

The iteration to other days in this paradox is just smoke and mirrors.

More formal;

if A is his 'surprise', true when he is not certain he will be hanged, false when he is certain.

and B wether he is hanged.

then if A is false then B must be true (if being hanged is a certainty, then you will be hanged)

however according to the judge if A is false then B must be false, wich is saying if B is true then B is false.

And B can not be both true and false.

109.135.19.79 (talk) 14:52, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

belief is not knowledge
Here is another explanation as to why this is not actually a paradox. I find it the easiest to understand, but obviously I can’t speak for everyone, so I am just passing it along.

You cannot believe something and at the same time know the opposite. If you believe something, then either that thing is true and you know something, or that thing is false and you do not know something.

On the final day, the prisoner believes he will not be hanged, based on the given reasoning. But does he know that he will not be hanged? No, because he is hanged.

Thus he is hanged on a day when he does not know he would be hanged, which is just what the judge said would happen. There is no contradiction, and no paradox. 2600:4040:5D30:4800:697B:8A71:5EC4:66EF (talk) 22:07, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

 * This is not a valid explanation because your definitions are not in agreement with the general philosophical consensus. The relation between "knowing" and "believing" has been a widely discussed topic for millennia.  You should educate yourself on it before contributing to the discourse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_knowledge#Justified_true_belief 2601:2C6:4A7F:8D40:E123:2C41:3D9:4149 (talk) 02:05, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Unexpected hanging paradox