- By the Imperial census of 1897. In bold are languages spoken by more people than the state language.
| Language | Number | percentage (%) | males | females |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ukrainian | 2 009 411 | 80.62 | 1 004 372 | 1 005 039 |
| Russian | 440 936 | 17.69 | 225 803 | 215 133 |
| Yiddish | 12 650 | 0.5 | 7 007 | 5 643 |
| Belarusian | 10 258 | 0.41 | 4 936 | 5 322 |
| German | 9 080 | 0.36 | 4 504 | 4 576 |
| Polish | 5 910 | 0.23 | 4 056 | 1 854 |
| Tatar | 1 358 | >0.1 | 1 221 | 137 |
| Persons that didn't name their native language |
44 | >0.01 | 23 | 21 |
| Other | 2 669 | 0.1 | 1 700 | 969 |
| Total | 2 492 316 | 100 | 1 253 759 | 1 238 557 |
Read more about this topic: Kharkov Governorate
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
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“He never doubts his genius; it is only he and his God in all the world. He uses language sometimes as greatly as Shakespeare; and though there is not much straight grain in him, there is plenty of tough, crooked timber.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)