HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

The Ukrainian alphabet ( uk, абе́тка, áзбука алфа́ві́т, abetka, azbuka alfavit) is the set of letters used to write
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
. It comes from the
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
, which was devised in the 9th century for the first Slavic literary language, called Old Slavonic. Since the 10th century, it became used in the Kyivan Rus' for Old East Slavic, from which the Belarusian, Russian,
Rusyn Rusyn may refer to: * Rusyn people, an East Slavic people ** Pannonian Rusyn people, a branch of Rusyn people ** Lemkos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people ** Boykos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people * Rusyn language, an East Slavic l ...
, and
Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...
alphabets later evolved. The modern Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total: 20 consonants, 2 semivowels, 10 vowels and 1 palatalization sign. Sometimes the apostrophe (') is also included, which has a phonetic meaning and is a mandatory sign in writing, but is not considered as a letter and is not included in the alphabet. In Ukrainian, it is called (; tr. ''ukrayins'ka abetka''), from the initial letters '' а'' (tr. ''a'') and '' б'' (tr. ''b''); (tr. ''alfavit''); or, archaically, (tr. ''azbuka''), from the
acrophonic Acrophony (; Greek: ἄκρος ''akros'' uppermost + φωνή ''phone'' sound) is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the name ...
early Cyrillic letter names (tr. ''az'') and (tr. ''buki''). Ukrainian text is sometimes
romanised Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
(written in the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
) for non-Cyrillic readers or transcription systems. There are several common methods for romanizing Ukrainian including the international Cyrillic-to-Latin transcription standard ISO 9. There have also been several historical proposals for a native Ukrainian Latin alphabet, but none have caught on.


Alphabet

The alphabet comprises 34 letters, representing 40 phonemes including the apostrophe. Ukrainian orthography is based on the phonemic principle, with one letter generally corresponding to one phoneme. The orthography also has cases in which semantic, historical, and morphological principles are applied. In the Ukrainian alphabet the “Ь” could also be the last letter in the alphabet (this was its official position from 1932 to 1991). Twenty letters represent consonants (,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ), ten vowels (, , , , , , , , , ), and one semivowel (й/ yot). The soft sign , which appears only after consonants, indicates that the preceding consonant is soft ( palatalized). Also, alveolar consonants are palatalized when followed by certain vowels: , , , , , , , and are softened when they are followed by a “soft” vowel: , , , . See
iotation In Slavic languages, iotation (, ) is a form of palatalization that occurs when a consonant comes into contact with a palatal approximant from the succeeding phoneme. The is represented by iota (ι) in the Cyrillic alphabet and the Greek al ...
. The apostrophe negates palatalization in places that it would be applied by normal orthographic rules. It also appears after labial consonants in some words, such as “name.” And it is retained in transliterations from the Latin alphabet: ( Côte d'Ivoire) and ( O'Toole). There are other exceptions to the phonemic principle in the alphabet. Some letters represent two phonemes: , or , and , , when they do not palatalize a preceding consonant. The digraphs and are normally used to represent single affricates and . Palatalization of consonants before , , is indicated by writing the corresponding letter , , instead (theoretical palatalization before is not indicated as already corresponds to the palatized or “soft” counterpart of ). Compared to other Cyrillic alphabets, the modern Ukrainian alphabet is most similar to those of the other East Slavic languages: Belarusian, Russian, and
Rusyn Rusyn may refer to: * Rusyn people, an East Slavic people ** Pannonian Rusyn people, a branch of Rusyn people ** Lemkos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people ** Boykos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people * Rusyn language, an East Slavic l ...
. It has retained the two early Cyrillic letters і (i) and izhe () to represent related sounds and as well as the two historical forms e () and ye (). Its unique letters are the following: * ge (), used for the less-common
velar plosive In phonetics and phonology, a velar stop is a type of consonantal sound, made with the back of the tongue in contact with the soft palate (also known as the velum, hence velar), held tightly enough to block the passage of air (hence a stop conso ...
sound, whereas in Ukrainian the common Cyrillic represents a
glottal fricative Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the glottal fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonant ...
, . * yi () or . The apostrophe is used similarly in Belarusian orthography, while the same function is served in Russian by the hard sign (): compare Ukrainian and Belarusian vs. Russian (“object”).


History


Early Cyrillic alphabet

The
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
was a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century, to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language. It was named after Saint Cyril, who with his brother Methodius had created the earlier Glagolitic Slavonic script. Cyrillic was based on Greek uncial script, and adopted Glagolitic letters for some sounds which were absent in Greek – it also had some letters which were only used almost exclusively for Greek words or for their numeric value: Ѳ, Ѡ, Ѱ, Ѯ, Ѵ. The early Cyrillic alphabet was brought to
Kyivan Rus’ Kievan Rusʹ, also known as Kyivan Rusʹ ( orv, , Rusĭ, or , , ; Old Norse: ''Garðaríki''), was a state in Eastern and Northern Europe from the late 9th to the mid-13th century.John Channon & Robert Hudson, ''Penguin Historical Atlas o ...
at the end of the first millennium, along with
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global popula ...
and the Old Church Slavonic language. The alphabet was adapted to the local spoken Old East Slavic language, leading to the development of indigenous East Slavic literary language alongside the liturgical use of Church Slavonic. The alphabet changed to keep pace with changes in language, as regional dialects developed into the modern Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian languages. Spoken Ukrainian has an unbroken history, but the literary language has suffered from two major historical fractures. Various reforms of the alphabet by scholars of Church Slavonic, Ruthenian, and Russian languages caused the written and spoken word to diverge by varying amounts. Etymological rules from Greek and South Slavic languages made the orthography imprecise and difficult to master. Meletii Smotrytskyi's Slavonic Grammar of 1619 was very influential on the use of Church Slavonic, and codified the use of the letters Я (''ya''), Е (''e''), and Ґ (''g''). Various
Russian alphabet reforms The Russian orthography has been reformed officially and unofficially by changing the Russian alphabet over the course of the history of the Russian language. Several important reforms happened in the 18th–20th centuries. Early changes Ol ...
were influential as well, especially Peter the Great's Civil Script of 1708 (the ''Grazhdanka''). It created a new alphabet specifically for non-religious use, and adopted Latin-influenced letterforms for type. The Civil Script eliminated some archaic letters ( Ѯ, Ѱ, Ѡ, Ѧ), but reinforced an etymological basis for the alphabet, influencing Mykhaylo Maksymovych's nineteenth-century Galician ''Maksymovychivka'' script for Ukrainian, and its descendant, the ''Pankevychivka'', which is still in use, in a slightly modified form, for the Rusyn language in Carpathian Ruthenia.


Nineteenth-century reforms

In reaction to the hard-to-learn etymological alphabets, several reforms attempted to introduce a phonemic Ukrainian orthography during the nineteenth century, based on the example of Vuk Karadžić's Serbian Cyrillic. These included
Panteleimon Kulish Panteleimon Oleksandrovych Kulish (also spelled ''Panteleymon'' or ''Pantelejmon Kuliš'', uk, Пантелеймон Олександрович Куліш, August 7, 1819 – February 14, 1897) was a Ukrainian writer, critic, poet, folkloris ...
's ''Kulishivka'' alphabet used in his 1857 ''Notes on Southern Rus and ''Hramatka'', the ''
Drahomanivka Drahomanivka ( uk, драгоманівка, ) was a proposed reform of the Ukrainian alphabet and orthography, promoted by Mykhailo Drahomanov. This orthography was used in a few publications and in Drahomanov's correspondence, but due to cult ...
'' alphabet promoted in the 1870s by Mykhailo Drahomanov, and Yevhen Zhelekhivskyi's ''Zhelekhivka'' alphabet from 1886, which standardized the letters ї (''yi'') and ґ (''g''). A Ukrainian cultural revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stimulated literary and academic activity in both Dnieper Ukraine and western Ukraine (Austrian-controlled Galicia). In Galicia, the Polish-dominated local government tried to introduce a Latin alphabet for Ukrainian, which backfired by prompting a heated “War of the Alphabets”, bringing the issue of orthography into the public eye. The Cyrillic script was favoured, but conservative Ukrainian cultural factions (the Old Ruthenians and Russophiles) opposed publications which promoted a pure Ukrainian orthography. In Dnieper Ukraine, proposed reforms suffered from periodic bans of publication and performance in the Ukrainian language. One such decree was the notorious 1876 Ems Ukaz, which banned the Kulishivka and imposed a Russian orthography until 1905 (called the ''Yaryzhka'', after the Russian letter
yery Yeru or Eru (Ы ы; italics: ), usually called Y in modern Russian or Yery or Ery historically and in modern Church Slavonic, is a letter in the Cyrillic script. It represents the close central unrounded vowel (more rear or upper than i) ...
ы). The Kulishivka was adopted by Ukrainian publications, only to be banned again from 1914 until after the February Revolution of 1917. The Zhelekhivka became official in Galicia in 1893, and was adopted by many eastern Ukrainian publications after the Revolution. The
People's Republic of Ukraine The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), or Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was a country in Eastern Europe that existed between 1917 and 1920. It was declared following the February Revolution in Russia by the First Universal. In March 19 ...
adopted official Ukrainian orthographies in 1918 and 1919, and Ukrainian publication increased, and then flourished under Skoropadsky's Hetmanate. Under the Bolshevik government of Ukraine, Ukrainian orthographies were confirmed in 1920 and 1921.


Unified orthography

In 1925, the
Ukrainian SSR The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic ( uk, Украї́нська Радя́нська Соціалісти́чна Респу́бліка, ; russian: Украи́нская Сове́тская Социалисти́ческая Респ ...
created a Commission for the Regulation of Orthography. During the period of Ukrainization in
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
Ukraine, the 1927 International Orthographic Conference was convened in Kharkiv, from May 26 to June 6. At the conference, a standardized Ukrainian orthography and method for transliterating foreign words were established, a compromise between Galician and Soviet proposals, called the
Ukrainian orthography of 1928 The Ukrainian orthography of 1928 ( uk, Український правопис 1928 року, translit=Ukrainskyi pravopys 1928 roku), also Orthography of Kharkiv ( uk, Ха́рківський право́пис, translit=Kharkivskyi pravopys) is ...
, or ''Skrypnykivka'', after Ukrainian Commissar of Education Mykola Skrypnyk. It was officially recognized by the Council of People's Commissars in 1928, and by the Lviv Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1929, and adopted by the
Ukrainian diaspora The Ukrainian diaspora comprises Ukrainians and their descendants who live outside Ukraine around the world, especially those who maintain some kind of connection, even if ephemeral, to the land of their ancestors and maintain their feeling of Uk ...
. The Skrypnykivka was the first universally adopted native Ukrainian orthography. However, by 1930 Stalin's government started to reverse the Ukrainization policy as part of an effort to centralize power in Moscow. In 1933, the orthographic reforms were abolished, decrees were passed to bring the orthography steadily closer to Russian. His reforms discredited and labelled “nationalist deviation”, Skrypnyk committed suicide rather than face a show trial and execution or deportation. The Ukrainian letter ge ґ, and the phonetic combinations ль, льо, ля were eliminated, and Russian etymological forms were reintroduced (for example, the use of -іа- in place of -я-). An official orthography was published in Kyiv in 1936, with revisions in 1945 and 1960. This orthography is sometimes called ''Postyshivka'', after Pavel Postyshev, Stalin's official who oversaw the dismantling of Ukrainisation. In the meantime, the Skrypnykivka continued to be used by Ukrainians in Galicia and the worldwide diaspora. During the period of Perestroika in the USSR, a new Ukrainian Orthographic Commission was created in 1986. A revised orthography was published in 1991, reintroducing the letter ge ''ґ''. It also revised the alphabetical order, moving the soft sign ''ь'' from the end of the alphabet, to a position before the letter ''ю'', which helps sort Ukrainian text together with Belarusian (following a proposal by L. M. Ivanenko of the Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics). On May 21, 2019, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved a new version of the orthography prepared by the Ukrainian National Commission on Spelling. The new edition brought to life some features of orthography in 1928, which were part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition. At the same time, the commission was guided by the understanding that the language practice of Ukrainians in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century has already become part of the Ukrainian orthographic tradition.


Letter names and pronunciation

For other transliteration systems, see romanisation of Ukrainian. Notes: There are also digraphs which are pronounced as a single sound: , which is pronounced , like ''dg'' in ''knowledge'', and , which is realized as . Examples: (, "a bumble bee"), (, "a bee"), (, "a bell").


Historic letters


Letterforms and typography

In print, several lowercase Cyrillic letters resemble smaller versions of their corresponding uppercase forms. Handwritten Cyrillic cursive letterforms vary somewhat from their corresponding printed (typeset) counterparts, particularly for the letters г, д, и, й, and т. Unlike Latin script, in lieu of separate
roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
and italic fonts, a Cyrillic type face (, ) has upright (, ) and cursive (курсивний, ) font forms, the latter of which later came to be called (, ). Several lowercase letters in the cursive printed form bear little resemblance to the corresponding lowercase letters in the upright printed form, more closely resembling the corresponding handwritten lowercase cursive forms instead, particularly for the letters г, д, и, й, п, and т. Quoted text is typically enclosed in unspaced French guillemets («angle-quotes»), or in lower and upper quotation marks as in German. ''Reference:''
Bringhurst, Robert Robert Bringhurst Appointments to the Order of Canada (2013). (born 16 October 1946) is a Canadian poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo and from classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote '' The Ele ...
(2002). ''
The Elements of Typographic Style ''The Elements of Typographic Style'' is a book on typography and style by Canadian typographer, poet and translator Robert Bringhurst. Originally published in 1992 by Hartley & Marks Publishers, it was revised in 1996, 2001 (v2.4), 2002 (v2.5 ...
'' (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. .


Encoding Ukrainian

There are various character encodings for representing Ukrainian with computers.


ISO 8859-5

ISO 8859-5 ISO/IEC 8859-5:1999, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 5: Latin/Cyrillic alphabet'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1 ...
encoding is missing the letter ''ґ''.


KOI8-U

KOI8-U KOI8-U (RFC 2319) is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Ukrainian, which uses a Cyrillic alphabet. It is based on KOI8-R, which covers Russian and Bulgarian, but replaces eight box drawing characters with four Ukrainian letters Ґ ...
stands for ''Код обміну інформації 8 бітний — український'', "Code for information interchange 8 bit — Ukrainian", analogous to " ASCII". KOI8-U is a Ukrainianized version of
KOI8-R KOI8-R (RFC 1489) is an 8-bit character encoding, derived from the KOI-8 encoding by the programmer Andrei Chernov in 1993 and designed to cover Russian, which uses a Cyrillic alphabet. KOI8-R was based on Russian Morse code, which was creat ...
.


Windows-1251

Windows-1251 Windows-1251 is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover languages that use the Cyrillic script such as Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian Cyrillic, Macedonian and other languages. On the web, it is the second most-used ...
works for the Ukrainian alphabet, as well as for other Cyrillic alphabets.


Unicode

Ukrainian falls within the Cyrillic (U+0400 to U+04FF) and Cyrillic Supplementary (U+0500 to U+052F) blocks of Unicode. The characters in the range U+0400–U+045F are basically the characters from
ISO 8859-5 ISO/IEC 8859-5:1999, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 5: Latin/Cyrillic alphabet'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1 ...
moved upward by 864 positions. In the following table, Ukrainian letters have titles indicating their Unicode information and HTML entity. In a visual browser you can hold the mouse pointer over the letter to see this information.


Web pages and XML

Elements in HTML and
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
would normally have the Ukrainian language indicated using the IETF language tag uk (lang="uk" in HTML and xml:lang="uk" in XML). Although indicating the writing system is normally not necessary, this can be accomplished by adding a script subtag, for example to distinguish Cyrillic Ukrainian text (uk-Cyrl) from romanized Ukrainian (uk-Latn).


Keyboard layout

The standard Ukrainian keyboard layout for personal computers is as follows: :


See also

* Bulgarian alphabet *
Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
*
Cyrillic alphabets Numerous Cyrillic alphabets are based on the Cyrillic script. The early Cyrillic alphabet was developed in the 9th century AD and replaced the earlier Glagolitic script developed by the Byzantine theologians Cyril and Methodius. It is the b ...
* Euro-Ukrainian alphabet * Greek alphabet * Macedonian alphabet * The hryvnia sign (₴) derives from the cursive minuscule letter He (''г'') * Montenegrin alphabet * Romanization of Belarusian * Romanization of Bulgarian * Romanization of Greek * Romanization of Macedonian * Romanization of Russian * Romanization of Ukrainian * Russian alphabet * Scientific transliteration of Cyrillic * Serbian Cyrillic alphabet


Notes


References

* Peter T. Daniels and William Bright, eds. (1996). ''
The World's Writing Systems ''The World's Writing Systems'' is a reference book about the world's writing systems. The book is edited by Peter T. Daniels and William Bright and was first published by Oxford University Press in 1996. ''The World's Writing Systems'' systema ...
'', pp 700, 702. Oxford University Press. . *
Volodymyr Kubijovyč Volodymyr Kubijovyč, also spelled Kubiiovych or Kubiyovych ( uk, Володи́мир Миха́йлович Кубійо́вич, translit=Volodymyr Mykhailovych Kubiiovych; 23 September 1900, Nowy Sącz, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria – 2 ...
ed. (1963). "Ukrainian Writing and Orthography" in ''Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopædia'', vol 1, pp 511–520. Toronto, University of Toronto Press. .


Further reading

*
Meletius Smotrytsky Meletius Smotrytsky ( uk, Мелетій Смотрицький, translit=Meletii Smotrytskyi; be, Мялецій Сматрыцкі, translit=Mialiecij Smatrycki; russian: Мелетий Смотрицкий, translit=Meletiy Smotritsky; pl, M ...
(1619). ''Slavonic Grammar''.
Reprint edition
with Ukrainian interface.) *
Ivan Ohienko Metropolitan Ilarion (secular name Ivan Ivanovitch Ohienko; uk, Іван Іванович Огієнко; 2 January (14 January), 1882 in Brusilov, Kiev Governorate – 29 March 1972 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada) was a Ukrainian Orthodox cle ...
(1918). ''Naiholovnishi pravyla ukrainskoho pravopysu''. Kyiv, UNR Ministry of Education. * Ivan Ohienko (1919). ''Holovnishi pravyla ukrainskoho pravopysu''. Kyiv, UNR Ministry of Education. * All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN, 1920). * People's Commissariat of Education (1921). * (1928) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kharkiv, Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. * (1936) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kyiv, Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. * L. Bulakhovsky, ed. (1946). ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kyiv, May 8, 1945: Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. * (1960) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kyiv, Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. * (1990) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kyiv, Academy of Science of the Ukrainian SSR. * (2007) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kyiv, Naukova Dumka
Online version
* (2012) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kyiv, Naukova Dumka

* (2015) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Kyiv, Naukova Dumka

*(2019) ''Ukrainskyi pravopys''. Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine
Home page
* Elias Shklanka, ''Ukrainian Primer''. New York: Knyho-Spilka. * Orest Dubas, ed., ''Mii naikrashchyi Slovnyk''. (Мій найкращий Словник), 2nd edition. Ukrainian adaptation of Richard Scarry's '' Best Word Book Ever''.


External links


The Cyrillic Charset Soup
— Roman Czyborra's site contains an exhaustive history of Cyrillic character set encoding schemes.
Проєкт нового “Українського правопису”
— Proposal for a new Ukrainian orthography (in Ukrainian). * At the Encyclopedia of Ukraine


Ukrajinśka Latynka
is the online project that promotes
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...
for the Ukrainian language. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ukrainian alphabet Cyrillic alphabets ca:Ucraïnès:L'alfabet ucraïnès de:Ukrainische Sprache#Alphabet