Pronunciation basics

What you will learn

This page explains the sound patterns behind the letters: how the six vowels behave with and without stress, what “soft” consonants are, and how Г, Ґ, В, Й, Щ and the apostrophe are pronounced. It ends with the mistakes English speakers most often make.

All comparisons with English are approximate. The descriptions of Ukrainian sounds follow two English-language references: a peer-reviewed phonetic description of Ukrainian from the Journal of the International Phonetic Association (2017) and George Shevelov’s entry on the Ukrainian language in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine. They describe standard Ukrainian. Regional pronunciation varies.

Before you start

Read The Ukrainian alphabet first. This page assumes you can recognise the letters.

Vowels

Ukrainian has six vowel sounds, written а, о, у, е, и, і. Vowel length does not change meaning: there are no pairs of long and short vowels.

The letters я, ю, є, ї do not add new vowels. They combine one of these vowels with a й sound or with a soft consonant (see the alphabet page).

И and І

И is pronounced further back in the mouth and a little lower than і. The 2017 study describes it as close to the IPA vowel [ɪ], with the tongue further back and lower than for і. As a rough English comparison (ours, not the study’s), it is closer to the vowel of “sit” than to a true ee. Mixing them up changes words:

Vowels without stress

In Ukrainian every vowel can appear in a stressed or an unstressed syllable. Shevelov’s encyclopedia entry says that in normal speech Ukrainian vowels are not reduced. The one exception is е and и: without stress the two come close to each other, and the neighbouring sounds decide which one they sound more like. The official orthography says the same: unstressed е and и are indistinct, and spelling keeps the letter of the stressed form (§1).

So an unstressed о is still an o and an unstressed а is still an a:

Hard and soft consonants

Many Ukrainian consonants come in two versions, hard and soft. A soft (palatalised) consonant is said with the middle of the tongue raised towards the roof of the mouth, as if a hint of y were blended into it. Both references agree that real hard/soft pairs exist only for the consonants made with the tongue tip just behind the teeth: д, т, з, с, ц, дз, л, н, р. Other consonants are only slightly softened before і.

Softness is shown in spelling, not by a separate letter for each soft consonant:

• by ь at the end of a syllable and before о;
• by я, ю, є after a consonant;
• by і after a consonant.

A hard л is “dark”: the back of the tongue is raised, as in the l at the end of English “full”. A soft ль sounds lighter.

Г and Ґ

Г is a voiced fricative made in the throat (official orthography, §5). It sounds like an h with the voice switched on. It is not the g of “go”. The letter for that sound is Ґ, a stop made with the back of the tongue (official orthography, §6), which is much less common.

Before к, the г sound becomes voiceless, like х, as in легки́й:

В at the end of a syllable

Before a vowel, в is close to English v. Before rounded vowels it can sound closer to w. At the end of a syllable or a word it is pronounced as a short w-like sound, never as a hard v or f. Both references agree on this.

Й

Й is a y sound as in “yes”. At the end of a syllable it is a short glide, so ай is roughly like the vowel in English “high”, and ій roughly like “ee” with a y-glide after it.

Щ

Щ is two sounds, ш followed by ч, roughly the “sh-ch” in “fresh cheese”. In fast speech it may be shortened.

The apostrophe

The apostrophe shows that a hard consonant is pronounced separately from a following я, ю, є or ї. The vowel letter then has its full й sound (official orthography, §7). Without the apostrophe, the same letters would mean a soft consonant plus a vowel.

Voicing: what changes and what does not

No devoicing at the end of a word. In Ukrainian, voiced consonants stay voiced at the end of a word: дуб ends in a real б, and ніж in a real ж. The 2017 study points out that this makes Ukrainian different from Russian and most other modern Slavic languages. In fast speech a final voiced consonant may become partly voiceless.

Voicing before a voiced consonant. A voiceless consonant becomes voiced when a voiced consonant follows it. Both references describe this, and Shevelov’s entry stresses that it does not work in the opposite direction as a general rule. The main exception is г before к, as in легки́й above. The spelling does not change.

П, т, к are unaspirated. Ukrainian п, т, к are said without a puff of breath after them, and б, д, ґ are fully voiced. Hold your hand in front of your mouth while you say та́то (dad): you should feel very little air.

Common mistakes for English speakers

Limitations of this page

• The English comparisons are rough guides, not exact equivalents. Listening to native speakers is the only reliable way to learn the sounds. The listen buttons on this page play recordings by native speakers where free ones cover a whole list, and a computer-generated voice elsewhere (see Audio and Recordings at the end of the page).
• Regional pronunciation varies. The references describe the standard language, which is based mainly on the south-eastern (Poltava–Kyiv) dialects.
• Some details are debated by phoneticians, for example the exact quality of и and how soft consonants are before і. The 2017 study says so explicitly.