Kyiv, not Kiev

If you are my age, you grew up knowing about "Kiev," but now...

Ukrainians call their capital “Kyiv” (kee-yiv), the spelling, a transliteration of the Ukrainian Київ. (Apparently "Keev" is an acceptable pronunciation).  The Russian version is “Kiev” (kee-yev).  

The latter, based on transliteration from the Russian cyrillic Киев, became the internationally accepted name through the Soviet period and into the first years of this century, its recognisability enhanced perhaps by the eponymous chicken dish that became popular in the west in the 1970s.

But it is now associated with the Russification of Ukraine, and in recent years more and more publications, governments, airports and geographical dictionaries have switched the spelling to the Ukrainian variant...

Ukrainian took on some Polish influences during the early modern period. Several Ukrainian vowels ended up being pronounced quite differently from their Russian counterparts – not an unusual thing in languages when you think about how the word “time” is pronounced in Melbourne, Middlesbrough and Mississippi.

There are several letters of the alphabet unique to Ukrainian, for example the ї in Київ, and enough differences in vocabulary to make it hard for Russophones to understand Ukrainians when they speak in their tongue.

Now I need someone from Melbourne or Middlesbrough to tell me how they pronounce "time."  And I'll have a second helping of the chicken keeYIV, thank you...