Surzhyk (суржик) is a pidgin language spoken in parts of Ukraine. It is a mixture of Ukrainiansubstrate with Russian superstrate. The vocabulary usage of either of the languages varies with location, or sometimes even from person to person. The percentage of Russian words tends to gradually increase in the east and south. It is commonly spoken in most of Ukraine's rural areas, with an exception of the westernmost regions, where the language does not contain elements of Russian, and Crimea, where virtually all of the population uses Russian.
There is a similar phenomenon in Belarus which is called trasianka.
Yet with their coming into being the interaction of kin languages continued and resulted in the emergence of new "mixed" language forms that were called surzhik in Ukraine and trasyanka in Byelorussia.
Formation of independent states and the process of "construction of national self-identity" in the former Soviet republics produced a strong influence over the language situation in them.
Language reflection, prompted by the struggle for the "purity" of the newly-obtained state language, shifted surzhik and trasyanka into the focus of public attention, mass media, discourse of various political parties.
The oblast is the third most populous region of Ukraine, with a population of 2,857,751 (as of 2004), more than half (1.5 million) of whom live in the city of Kharkiv (Kharkov), the oblast's administrative center.
While the Russian language is primarily spoken in the city of Kharkiv, elsewhere in the oblast most inhabitants speak a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian called Surzhik.
The territory of the Kharkiv oblast has been permanently inhabited since at least the late Paleolithic period (10,000–12,000 years ago) but archaeological evidence indicates a human (Neanderthal) presence as early as the Mousterian period some 80,000 years ago.
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