- 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:
“This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.
Look at it talking to you.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“He had not failed to observe how harmoniously gigantic language and a microscopic topic go together.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
—J. David Bolter (b. 1951)