Beginner sentences

This section gives you Ukrainian sentences for everyday situations: saying hello, introducing yourself, being polite, asking for what you need, finding your way, shopping and talking about time. Each page is built around a few sentence patterns. A pattern is a sentence with a gap that you fill with your own word. Learn one pattern and you can say many sentences, instead of memorising each one separately.

You don’t need to have read all the grammar pages first. Each pattern comes with a short note on the grammar behind it and a link to the grammar page that explains it properly.

How the pages work

Every page in this section follows the same plan:

1. What you will be able to do, in one or two sentences.
2. Patterns. Each pattern is shown with a gap, written as an ellipsis (…), and a note on what goes in the gap.
3. Examples of the pattern with different words in the gap.
4. A short dialogue that puts the patterns together.
5. Common mistakes and limits: what learners often get wrong, and what the page leaves out.

How to use a pattern

Take the question Де …? (Where is …?). Put the name of a place in the gap, in its dictionary form, and you have a new question.

Many gaps need the word in a particular case: a form with a different ending. The pattern note tells you which case, and the examples show the form. For example, after до (to) the noun changes its ending: вокза́л becomes до вокза́лу. If cases are new to you, read Cases, an overview first. You can still use the patterns by copying the forms in the examples.

Labels and marks

• Ти and ви. Ukrainian has two words for you. Ти is informal, for one person you know well. Ви is for several people, or for one person politely. Every example that uses one of them, or a verb form that goes with one of them, has a label: informal, formal or plural, formal (one person) or plural. With strangers, in shops and when asking the way, use ви.
• Stress marks. The stressed vowel of every word of two or more syllables has an accent mark, as in апте́ка. Ukrainian writing normally leaves the mark out; it is here to help you pronounce the word. A few words have two accepted stresses, and those are left unmarked. Stress and transliteration explains this.
• Small spelling changes. Some short words change their form to make a phrase easier to say: у and в, and з, із and зі. The meaning stays the same. Common prepositions gives the rules [src: pravopys-2026, §23, §25].

Reading order

Read the pages in this order. Later pages reuse patterns from earlier ones.

1. Greetings: hello and goodbye, formal and informal.
2. Introductions: your name, where you are from, and asking about the other person.
3. Politeness: please, thank you, sorry, and polite requests.
4. Everyday needs: asking for what you need and saying what you want.
5. Directions: asking where something is and how to get there, left and right, near and far.
6. Shopping: asking prices, saying what you’d like, prices in hryvnias, paying by card or in cash.
7. Time: days of the week, today and tomorrow, telling the time and saying when something happens.