April Flowers

This week's featured word is квітень, because I was too impatient to wait until November. Квітень (pronounced kvee-teyn) is the Ukrainian name for the month of April. In Russian, the names of the months sound familiar: January is январь (yan-var), April is апрель (ap-ryel), and October is октябрь (ok-tya-br). But in Ukrainian, the names of the months are totally different.

When I was first learning the months of the year in Ukrainian, this unfamiliarity upset me. "Ukrainian months are so confusing!" I exclaimed in frustration to my partner, a native speaker of both Russian and Ukrainian. "On the contrary," she countered, "Ukrainian months are much easier to remember." What I didn't realize at the time was that the names of the months in Ukrainian are related to the time of year and human interactions with nature.

For example, квітень is derived from квітка, the Ukrainian word for flower. Similarly, травень, the Ukrainian word for May, is derived from трава, the word for grass. Other favorites include лютий (February) meaning harsh, червень (June) which could refer either to scale insects (червець) or the color red (червоний), and жовтень (October) from the color yellow (жовтий). But best of all is листопад (November) meaning the falling of leaves.

Explanations for the names of all twelve months here.