It's two distinct languages, not simply accents or dialects so I would say the difference is probably greater than American/Glasgow dialects. I have had the same discussion with my boyfriend because he claimed at first that Ukrainian was just more diverse and had more words so it was easier to understand the Russian roots (which is bs in my opinion). Here is what I think is happening: growing up in Ukraine, you cannot avoid being exposed to the Russian language on TV, around you etc... which you can't say for Ukrainian language in Russia. It just takes a little adaptation period before "getting" it, learning the basic verbs and then understanding is easy. I can say that because I experienced it myself. My first week I was having trouble but very fast something just clicks and it becomes fairly easy to get the jist. It probably helped we started in Kiev where people speak surjik (Russian/Ukrainian mixed dialect) and then moved on to Lviv where our hosts spoke pure Ukrainian. I think native Ukrainian speakers never have that moment so there is this common sentiment Russians are just not trying :(
Ooooh! Thank you! This really helps my understanding of the languages and their relation to each other. I appreciate it. The Slavic languages were too much for me... I was overwhelmed with Hungarian, so taking on another completely differently structured language was not going to fit into my brain. So I let my Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Serbian friends just do whatever their did in their languages, and I focused on my Hungarian.
It's not an opinion - it's a fact... ...and this is the reason. The languages are similar in origin, but one can't say with any sort of integrity that they're similar nowadays. I had a Belarussian friend (her language being one of the three Eastern Slavic languages, the other two being Russian and Ukrainian) speak to me in her native language (despite the fact that we both spoke perfect Russian), and it's indistinguishable to me who's never learned Belarussian. I can discern the written part of both languages, but me being correct on what I think it says is no better than chance. They do have similar roots and one can do fairly good figuring out the written speech, given linguistic intuition and fair knowledge of the roots themselves, but this doesn't make them any closer to each other.(which is bs in my opinion)
growing up in Ukraine, you cannot avoid being exposed to the Russian language on TV, around you etc... which you can't say for Ukrainian language in Russia.