It belongs to the Indo-European family, Slavonic group, East Slavonic subgroup, and is spoken by over 50 million people throughout Ukraine, and by various groups in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere. Modern literary Ukrainian developed from the colloquial language of the 17th and 18th centuries and shares some traits with Byelorussian, another East Slavic language. It has also absorbed many words of Polish origin. Dialect differences are slight.
Cyrillic script is used.