Ukrainian alphabet

The Ukrainian alphabet ( uk, абе́тка, áзбука алфа́ві́т, abetka, azbuka alfavit) is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the Cyrillic script. It comes from the Cyrillic script, 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, and Ukrainian 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 early Cyrillic letter names (tr. ''az'') and (tr. ''buki'').

Ukrainian text is sometimes romanised (written in the Latin alphabet) 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.

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. 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 sound, whereas in Ukrainian the common Cyrillic represents a glottal fricative, .
* 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 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’ at the end of the first millennium, along with Christianity 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 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's ''Kulishivka'' alphabet used in his 1857 ''Notes on Southern Rus and ''Hramatka'', the '' Drahomanivka'' 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 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 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 created a Commission for the Regulation of Orthography. During the period of Ukrainization in Soviet Ukraine, the 1927 International Orthographic Conference was convened in Kharkiv

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