Ukrainian (draft)
Cyrillic

Updated 13 November, 2022

This page brings together basic information about the Cyrillic script and its use for the Ukrainian language. It aims to provide a brief, descriptive summary of the modern, printed orthography and typographic features, and to advise how to write Ukrainian using Unicode.

Sample

Select part of this sample text to show a list of characters, with links to more details. Source
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Стаття 1. Всі люди народжуються вільними і рівними у своїй гідності та правах. Вони наділені розумом і совістю і повинні діяти у відношенні один до одного в дусі братерства.

Стаття 2. Кожна людина повинна мати всі права і всі свободи, проголошені цією Декларацією, незалежно від раси, кольору шкіри, статі, мови, релігії, політичних або інших переконань, національного чи соціального походження, майнового, станового або іншого становища. Крім того, не повинно проводитися ніякого розрізнення на основі політичного, правового або міжнародного статусу країни або території, до якої людина належить, незалежно від того, чи є ця територія незалежною, підопічною, несамоврядованою або як‐небудь інакше обмеженою у своєму суверенітеті.

Usage & history

Ukrainian is the native language of around 40 million people and is written using a version of the Cyrillic script. Although Ukraine has many Russian speakers, particularly in the east and south of the country, in 2001 around 88% of Ukrainians were able to communicate in the Ukrainian language, and its use in the population has been increasing for some years.wul

українська абетка ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ ɐˈbɛtkɐ Ukrainian alphabet

The script is named in honor of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the earlier Glagolitic alphabet. Modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius.

Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures. These additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek, and the Cyrillic script was initially used for writing Old Church Slavonic (also called Old Bulgarian), The script has changed over the intervening centuries to the point that Old Church Slavonic is sometimes considered a separate script.

Several orthographic reforms were introduced over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. The latest version of the orthography was defined by the Ukrainian National Commission on Spelling and approved by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on May 22, 2019.

Sources: Scriptsource, Wikipedia.

See the comparison table

Basic features

Cyrillic is an alphabet. Letters typically represent a consonant or vowel sound. See the table to the right for a brief overview of features for the modern Ukrainian language.

Of the 441 characters in the Unicode Cyrillic blocks, 177 are historic (33%) and 2 are for Lithuanian dialectology. The remaining 262 are just letters – no punctuation, digits, or combining characters. These are all bicameral, which brings the number of distinct modern letters to 131. Although modern Cyrillic text tends to use precomposed forms, rather than combining diacritics separately with base letters, many extended characters are formed by slightly tweaking a set of basic shapes.

Ukrainian text runs left-to-right in horizontal lines.

Words are separated by spaces.

The script is bicameral. The shapes of the upper and lowercase forms are typically the same. There can be a significant difference, however, between regular and cursive/italic shapes for the same character.

Modern Ukrainian has 32 consonant letters (64 if you include both upper- and lowercase), plus the hard and soft signs.

There are 10 vowel letters, 4 of which usually indicate palatalisation of the previous consonant. Palatalisation can otherwise be applied or removed using the hard and soft signs.

Numbers use ASCII digits.

The visual forms of letters don't usually interact.

Character index

Letters

Show

Consonants

б␣в␣г␣д␣ж␣з␣й␣к␣л␣м␣н␣п␣р␣с␣т␣ф␣х␣ц␣ч␣ш␣щ␣ґ
Б␣В␣Г␣Д␣Ж␣З␣Й␣К␣Л␣М␣Н␣П␣Р␣С␣Т␣Ф␣Х␣Ц␣Ч␣Ш␣Щ␣Ґ

Vowels

а␣е␣и␣о␣у␣ю␣я␣є␣і␣ї
А␣Е␣И␣О␣У␣Ю␣Я␣Є␣І␣Ї

Other

ʼ␣ь
Ь

Combining marks

Show
̆␣̈␣́

Punctuation

Show
«␣»␣„␣“␣—␣‐␣–␣…

ASCII

(␣)␣,␣.␣:␣;␣?␣!

Possible

§
Items to show in lists

Phonology

These are sounds for the Ukrainian language. For a useful summary of allophonic variants see Wikipedia.

Click on the sounds to reveal locations in this document where they are mentioned.

Phones in a lighter colour are non-native or allophones. Source Wikipedia.

Vowel sounds

i̯ i u u̯ ɪ ʊ e o ɛ ɔ ɐ ɐ a

u̯ and i̯ appear after the syllable nucleus where the orthography has в [U+0432 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER VE] or й [U+0439 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I], respectively.

The other lighter coloured phones are allophones that appear in unstressed vowels, according to the following transformations:wup

Consonant sounds

labial alveolar post-
alveolar		 palatal velar glottal
stops p b t d     k ɡ  
palatalised pʲ tʲ dʲ        
affricates   t͡s d͡z t͡ʃ d͡ʒ      
palatalised   t͡sʲ d͡zʲ t͡ʃʲ d͡ʒʲ      
fricatives f s z ʃ ʒ   x ɣ ɦ
palatalised   sʲ zʲ        
nasals m n        
palatalised mʲ nʲ        
approximants w~ʋ l   j    
palatalised   lʲ        
trills/flaps   r  
palatalised   rʲ  
 

Alphabet

Click on the characters to find where they are mentioned in this page.

The Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters.wua Each has upper and lowercase forms, shown above and below, respectively.

а␣б␣в␣г␣ґ␣д␣е␣є␣ж␣з␣и␣і␣ї␣й␣к␣л␣м␣н␣о␣п␣р␣с␣т␣у␣ф␣х␣ц␣ч␣ш␣щ␣ь␣ю␣я
А␣Б␣В␣Г␣Ґ␣Д␣Е␣Є␣Ж␣З␣И␣І␣Ї␣Й␣К␣Л␣М␣Н␣О␣П␣Р␣С␣Т␣У␣Ф␣Х␣Ц␣Ч␣Ш␣Щ␣Ь␣Ю␣Я

Vowels

Vowel sounds to characters

This section maps Ukrainian vowel sounds to common graphemes in the Cyrillic orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

i
 
i̯
 

й [U+0439 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I] when it occurs after a vowel, or (in some words) before an initial consonant

ji
  
u
 

у [U+0443 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER U] in stressed syllables

ю [U+044E CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU] after palatalised consonant

u̯
 

в [U+0432 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER VE] allophone occurring as a syllable coda 

ju
  

ю [U+044E CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU] as a standalone vowel or after a hard sign.

ɪ
 
ʊ
 

у [U+0443 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER U] in unstressed syllables

ю [U+044E CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU] after a palatalised consonant in unstressed syllables

jʊ
 

ю [U+044E CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU] as a standalone vowel or after a hard sign in unstressed syllables

e
 

е [U+0435 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE] in unstressed syllables

є [U+0454 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE] after a palatalised consonant in unstressed syllables

и [U+0438 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I] in unstressed syllables 

je
 

є [U+0454 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE] in unstressed syllables

ɛ
 
jɛ
 

є [U+0454 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE] as a standalone vowel or after a hard sign.

ɔ
 
a
 

а [U+0430 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A] in stressed syllables

я [U+044F CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA]  after a palatalised consonant in stressed syllables

ɐ
 

а [U+0430 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A] in unstressed syllables

я [U+044F CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA]  after a palatalised consonant in unstressed syllables

ja
 

я [U+044F CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA]  as a standalone vowel or after a hard sign

jɐ
 

я [U+044F CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA]  as a standalone vowel or after a hard sign in unstressed syllables

Vowel letters

Standard Ukrainian uses 10 vowel letters (20 characters).

The following 6 vowels are normally used after a 'hard' consonant (ie. one that isn't palatalised).

ї␣и␣у␣е␣о␣а
Ї␣И␣У␣Е␣О␣А

The other letters usually occur after a 'soft' (palatalized) consonant or as standalone vowels.

і␣ю␣є␣я
І␣Ю␣Є␣Я

When used after a palatalised consonant these vowels don't begin with j-, eg. the following shows letter to sound associations for the word будяк

бb
уʊ
дˈdʲ
яa
кk

On the other hand, these letters may also be used after a hard consonant followed by ʼ [U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE] (the hard sign), in which case the vowel sound is preceded by j-, eg. інтервʼю

The vowels generally have different pronunciations in stressed vs. unstressed syllables, however such allophonic variations are not captured in the orthography. Click on the letters in the tables above for more information on that.

Standalone vowels

і␣ї␣ю␣є␣я
І␣Ї␣Ю␣Є␣Я

At the start of a word, or after another vowel, Ukrainian uses the 'ioticised' letters. Used in these locations, the sound of all the above vowels except і [U+0456 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I] is preceded by j-, eg. юний союз компʼютер імла

Diphthongs

Й␣й␣в␣В

й [U+0439 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I] is occasionally used as a consonant, but is mainly used after a vowel to create diphthongs, eg. буйний

в [U+0432 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER VE] is generally used as a consonant, but when it appears as the coda of a syllable it is pronounced u̯, eg. кров

Diacritics

́␣̈␣̆

  ́ [U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT] is used to indicate where the stress falls in a word for educational materials, dictionaries, and such. The position of the stress is distinctive, and not always predictable, eg. compare за́мок замо́к

The other diacritics shown above are produced only by Unicode decomposition: ◌̆ [U+0306 COMBINING BREVE] from й [U+0439 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I], and   ̈ [U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS] from ї [U+0457 CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YI]. Normally precomposed characters are used.

Consonants

Consonant sounds to characters

This section maps Ukrainian consonant sounds to common graphemes in the Cyrillic orthography. Click on a grapheme to find other mentions on this page (links appear at the bottom of the page). Click on the character name to see examples and for detailed descriptions of the character(s) shown.

Sounds listed as 'infrequent' may be allophones, or sounds used for foreign words, etc.

Stops

Affricates

Fricatives

Nasals

Other

Consonant letters

Ukrainian uses 20 consonants (40 characters, if you include uppercase and lowercase), plus a hard and soft sign. Click on the lowercase letters for detail information about usage.

п␣б␣т␣д␣к␣ґ
П␣Б␣Т␣Д␣К␣Ґ
ц␣ч␣щ
Ц␣Ч␣Щ
ф␣в␣с␣з␣ш␣ж␣х␣г
Ф␣В␣С␣З␣Ш␣Ж␣Х␣Г
м␣н
М␣Н
р␣л␣й
Р␣Л␣Й

Palatalisation

ї␣ю␣є␣я␣ь␣ʼ

Most of the consonants can be pronounced with or without palatisation, ie. 'hard' or 'soft', respectively. During palatalisation the tongue is raised towards the palate while the consonant is pronounced, eg. compare банан баня

Palatalisation is indicated by the letter that follows the consonant. When the vowel letters ї ю є я follow a consonant, the initial j- sound which is associated with those characters in standalone positions is dropped, and the preceding consonant is palatalised.

Consonants can be palatalised when no vowel follows using the soft sign, ь [U+044C CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT SIGN], eg. більшість

The soft sign may also be used when you want the consonant to be palatalised but retain the initial j- of the following vowel, eg. досьє

To write a hard consonant followed by a vowel that retains the initial j-, follow the consonant with the hard sign, ʼ [U+02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE], eg. пʼять

Note that this shows that there is a difference between пʼят and пять.

A few consonant sounds are generally always hard.

Final consonants

Unlike Russian, voiced consonants at the end of a syllable or word remain voiced, eg. шоколад трубкозуб

Text direction

Cyrillic runs left to right in horizontal lines.

Show default bidi_class properties for characters in the Ukrainian orthography described here.

Numbers

Cyrillic uses ASCII digits.

Glyph shaping & positioning

This section brings together information about the following topics: writing styles; cursive text; context-based shaping; context-based positioning; baselines, line height, etc.; font styles; case & other character transforms.

You can experiment with examples using the All Cyrillic character app and the Ukrainian character app.

The Cyrillic script is not cursive, and involves no significant context-based shaping or positioning. Nor are there significant issues around baselines or inline alignment.

Font styling & weight

Cyrillic doesn't normally have any of the changeability of complex scripts. Characters are typically separate and self-contained. However, there can be a significant difference in shape between regular and italic/cursive font shapes for the same character.

вши

вши

Conservative transformations between regular and italic.

гдт

гдт

More radical transformations between regular and italic.

Note in particular the italic form of т in the figure just above, which looks similar to the italic form of м shown in the previous figure.

The shapes of the italic forms can also vary by language.w

The shape of the breve sign in Cyrillic is different from that used for Latin text.s A font such as Brill can detect the appropriate shape from the adjacent characters.

й   ̆ й i   ̆ i

̆ [U+0306 COMBINING BREVE] between cyrillic and latin characters changes shape in the Brill font.

Case & transforms

Ukrainian is bicameral, and applications may need to enable transforms to allow the user to switch between cases.

Graphemes

Grapheme clusters

tbd

Punctuation & inline features

Word boundaries

Words are separated by spaces.

Phrase & section boundaries

,␣;␣:␣.␣?␣!

Cyrillic uses ASCII punctuation.

phrase

, [U+002C COMMA]

; [U+003B SEMICOLON]

: [U+003A COLON]
sentence

. [U+002E FULL STOP]

? [U+003F QUESTION MARK]

! [U+0021 EXCLAMATION MARK]

Bracketed text

(␣)

Ukrainian commonly uses ASCII parentheses to insert parenthetical information into text.

  start end
standard

( [U+0028 LEFT PARENTHESIS]

) [U+0029 RIGHT PARENTHESIS]

Quotations

«␣»␣„␣“

Ukrainian uses angle quotation marks without space, like Russian, or the low and high marks used for Polish and German.wua,#Letterforms_and_typography

  start end
initial

« [U+00AB LEFT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK]

» [U+00BB RIGHT-POINTING DOUBLE ANGLE QUOTATION MARK]
alternative

„ [U+201E DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK]

“ [U+201C LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK]

Emphasis

tbd

Abbreviation, ellipsis & repetition

tbd

Inline notes & annotations

tbd

Other punctuation

CLDR lists the following additional punctuation marks.

§␣‐␣–␣…

Other inline text decoration

tbd

Line & paragraph layout

Line breaking & hyphenation

Spaces between words provide the primary line break opportunities.u

Show (default) line-breaking properties for characters in the modern Ukrainian orthography.

Text alignment & justification

Justification is done, principally, by adjusting the space between words.

Text spacing

tbd

This section looks at ways in which spacing is applied between characters over and above that which is introduced during justification.

Baselines, line height, etc.

tbd

Ukrainian uses the so-called 'alphabetic' baseline, which is the same as for Latin and many other scripts.

Counters, lists, etc.

You can experiment with counter styles using the Counter styles converter. Patterns for using these styles in CSS can be found in Ready-made Counter Styles, and we use the names of those patterns here to refer to the various styles.

The modern Ukrainian orthography uses 4 alphabetic styles, besides the ASCII decimal numeric style.

Alphabetic

The lower-Ukrainian alphabetic style uses these letters.

а␣б␣в␣г␣д␣е␣є␣ж␣з␣и␣і␣к␣л␣м␣н␣о␣п␣р␣с␣т␣у␣ф␣х␣ц␣ч␣ш␣ю␣я

Examples:

а␣б␣в␣г␣і␣ф␣ад␣ао␣вю␣єш␣іч␣нц

The lower-Ukrainian-full alphabetic style uses these letters.

а␣б␣в␣г␣ґ␣д␣е␣є␣ж␣з␣и␣і␣ї␣й␣к␣л␣м␣н␣о␣п␣р␣с␣т␣у␣ф␣х␣ц␣ч␣ш␣щ␣ь␣ю␣я

Examples:

а␣б␣в␣г␣и␣с␣я␣аи␣ві␣ду␣зв␣їк

The upper-Ukrainian alphabetic style uses these letters.

А␣Б␣В␣Г␣Д␣Е␣Є␣Ж␣З␣И␣І␣К␣Л␣М␣Н␣О␣П␣Р␣С␣Т␣У␣Ф␣Х␣Ц␣Ч␣Ш␣Ю␣Я

Examples:

А␣Б␣В␣Г␣І␣Ф␣АД␣АО␣ВЮ␣ЄШ␣ІЧ␣НЦ

The upper-Ukrainian-full alphabetic style uses these letters.

А␣Б␣В␣Г␣Ґ␣Д␣Е␣Є␣Ж␣З␣И␣І␣Ї␣Й␣К␣Л␣М␣Н␣О␣П␣Р␣С␣Т␣У␣Ф␣Х␣Ц␣Ч␣Ш␣Щ␣Ь␣Ю␣Я

Examples:

А␣Б␣В␣Г␣И␣С␣Я␣АИ␣ВІ␣ДУ␣ЗВ␣ЇК

Prefixes and suffixes

The default list style uses a full stop + space as a suffix.

Examples:

а. б. в. г. ґ.
Separator for Ukrainian list counters.

Styling initials

tbd

Page & book layout

This section is for any features that are specific to Cyrillic and that relate to the following topics: general page layout & progression; grids & tables; notes, footnotes, etc; forms & user interaction; page numbering, running headers, etc.

References