Pronouns

After this page you will know the Ukrainian personal pronouns: the words for I, you, he, she, it, we and they. You will know when to use ти and when to use ви, the two words for you. You will also be able to use the words for my, your, his, her, our and their, and make them agree with the noun.

Personal pronouns

These are the pronouns in their dictionary form, the nominative. This is the form used for the subject of a sentence.

A few points to notice:

• Я has no capital letter inside a sentence, unlike English I.
• Він, вона́ and воно́ follow grammatical gender, not just sex. A table is він and a book is вона́, because стіл is masculine and кни́га is feminine. Nouns and gender explains this.
• Вони́ is used for any group, whatever the gender of the people or things in it.
• The pronoun is often left out when the verb ending already shows the person: Чита́ю. means “I am reading”. Sentence structure has more on this.

Two words for “you”

Ukrainian has two words for you, and the choice says something about your relationship with the person. This is roughly like tu and vous in French or du and Sie in German, though the habits are not exactly the same.

• Ти is for one person you are close to: a friend, a family member, a child. Young people often use it with each other from the start. Said to a stranger or to an older person you don’t know well, it can sound rude or overfamiliar.
• Ви is for two or more people, whoever they are. It is also the polite way to speak to one person: someone you have just met, someone older, someone in a shop or an office.

People who start with ви often move to ти when they get to know each other, usually when one of them suggests it. If you are not sure, use ви.

Ви always takes the plural verb ending, even when it means one person. The verb form is the same as when you speak to a group.

A capital letter in letters and emails

In letters, emails and official documents, Ви and Ваш (your) are written with a capital letter when they are addressed politely to one specific person. The spelling rules ask for the capital only in texts like these, so this site writes ви with a small letter in dialogue and everyday examples.

Possessives: my, your, our, their

The words for my, your (informal), our, your (formal or plural) and their change their ending to agree with the noun that is owned. They agree in gender and number, just like adjectives. (They also change for case, which comes later.)

Choose the column by the gender of the noun that follows, not by the owner. A woman says мій брат (my brother), and a man says моя́ сестра́ (my sister).

As with ти and ви, твій is informal and ваш is formal or plural. Use the one that matches how you address the person.

His and her

The words for his and her work differently. Його́ (his, also its) and її́ (her) never change. They depend only on the owner, as in English.

So in Ukrainian, my, your, our and their agree with the thing owned, while his and her reflect the owner. English his and her also reflect the owner, so these two should feel familiar. (A rough comparison.)

The right word for “their”

For their, use ї́хній, which agrees with the noun: ї́хній брат, ї́хня ма́ма. You will also hear їх used to mean their, as in їх брат. Ukrainian usage guides recommend ї́хній, and some call їх for their an error: їх normally means them.

Other forms of the pronouns, briefly

Like nouns, pronouns have cases. You have already seen тебе́ and вас in Як тебе́ зва́ти? and Як вас зва́ти? Some forms look very different from the dictionary form, so it is worth knowing that they exist.

After a preposition, the forms of він, вона́, воно́ and вони́ begin with н-. For example, one common way to say “I have” is “at me is”: у ме́не є. (Ukrainian also says я ма́ю, from ма́ти, to have, and usage guides recommend it.) “He has” is у ньо́го є: ньо́го is the form of він used here.

The full set of pronoun forms comes on a later page. For now, learn these phrases as wholes.

Common mistakes and limits