ukrainian alphabet

The Ukrainian Alphabet (Українська азбука, Ukrains’ka azbuka or абетка, abetka in Ukrainian) is used to write Ukrainian, the official language of Ukraine. It is a version of the Cyrillic writing system, developed from the early Cyrillic alphabet at the end of the first millennium. Ukrainian is sometimes Romanized, or written using the Latin alphabet, for non-Cyrillic readers or transcription systems. See romanization of Ukrainian for details of specific romanization systems.

Letter names and pronunciation

tyle="font-weight:bold;font-size:90%;background:#ccc;" \| Letters and symbols of the Ukrainian alphabet
align="left" width="10%" style="font-weight:normal" \| Capital !! align="left" width="10%" style="font-weight:normal" \| Small !! align="left" width="20%" style="font-weight:normal" \| Name !! align="left" width="10%" style="font-weight:normal" \| IPA !! align="left" width="15%" style="font-weight:normal" \| X-SAMPA !! align="left" width="35%" style="font-weight:normal" \| Notes
А	а	а /ʌ/	/ʌ/	/V/
Б	б	бе /be/	/b/	/b/
В	в	ве /ve/	/v/, /w/	/v/, /w/
Г	г	ге /ɦe/	/ɦ/	/h\/
Ґ	ґ	ґе /ge/	/g/	/g/	not officially used in Soviet Ukraine; missing from some encodings and fonts
Д	д	де /de/	/d/	/d/
Е	е	е /e/	/e/	/e/
Є	є	є /je/	/je/	/je/
Ж	ж	же /ʒe/	/ʒ/	/Z/
З	з	зе /ze/	/z/	/z/
И	и	и /ɪ/	/ɪ/	/I/
І	і	і /i/	/i/	/i/
Ї	ї	ї /ji/	/ji/	/ji/
Й	й	й /ɪj/, йот /jot/	/j/	/j/
К	к	ка /kʌ/	/k/	/k/
Л	л	ел /el/	/l/	/l/
М	м	ем /em/	/m/	/m/
Н	н	ен /en/	/n/	/n/
О	о	о /o/	/o/	/o/
П	п	пе /pe/	/p/	/p/
Р	р	ер /er/	/r/	/r/
С	с	ес /es/	/s/	/s/
Т	т	те /te/	/t/	/t/
У	у	у /u/	/u/	/u/
Ф	ф	еф /ef/	/f/	/f/
Х	х	ха /xʌ/	/x/	/x/
Ц	ц	це /ʦe/	/ʦ/	/ts/
Ч	ч	че /ʧe/	/ʧ/	/tS/
Ш	ш	ша /ʃʌ/	/ʃ/	/S/
Щ	щ	ща /ʃʧʌ/	/ʃʧ/	/StS/
Ю	ю	ю /ju/	/ju/	/ju/
Я	я	я /jʌ/	/jʌ/	/jV/
Ь	ь	м’який знак /mjʌˈkɪj znak/	/◌ʲ/	/◌'/ or /◌_j/	“soft sign”
’	апостроф /ʌˈpos.trof/	–	–	“apostrophe”

The Ukrainian alphabet is almost phonetic. Two distinct consonant sounds don't have dedicated letters, and are rendered using two letters: дз /ʣ/, and дж /ʤ/. Also, certain consonants are softened (palatalized) when followed by certain vowels. Any of д, т, з, с, ц, л, н or дз is softened when followed by a "soft" vowel: я, є, і, ї, й, or ю. See iotation. The soft sign is not considered a letter, but an orthographic symbol, modifying the preceding letter. It indicates the softening of a consonant, when the consonant is not followed by a softening vowel. The apostrophe indicates that the consonant preceding a soft vowel is not palatalized, when it otherwise would be.

Letter forms and typography

As in other Cyrillic alphabets, hand-written or cursive letters vary somewhat in form from their block-letter, or typeset upright, counterparts, particularly the letters г, д, и, й, and т. Comparison of some upright and cursive letters (He, De, Y, Yot, Em, Te, and Tse. Top row in Georgia font, bottom in Kisty CY) Typographically, the small (lower-case) letters are very similar to small-caps versions of the capitals, although sophisticated faces may have a small-caps font which is different from the lower-case. A Cyrillic type face (шрифт, shryft) doesn't technically have "roman" or "italic" fonts, since these terms stem from West European history. It has upright (прямий, priamyi) and cursive (курсивний, kursyvnyi). Quoted text is surrounded by un-spaced guillemets (angle-quotes), or lower and upper quotation marks.

tyle="font-weight:bold;background:#ccc;border:1px solid #ccc;" \| Ukrainian quotation marks in Unicode and HTML entities
colspan=2 \| standard	colspan=2 \| alternative
double	single	double	single
«цитата»	‹цитата›	„цитата‟	‚цитата‛
U+00AB U+00BB	U+2039 U+203A	U+201E U+201F	U+201A U+201B
« »	‹ ›	„ ‟	‚ ‛

Reference: Bringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.

Encoding Ukrainian

There are various character encodings for representing Ukrainian with computers.

ISO 8859-5

ISO 8859-5 encoding is missing the letter ґ.

KOI8-U

KOI8-U stands for Код обміни інформації 8—український, "Code for exchange of information 8—Ukrainian", analogous to "ASCII". KOI8-U is a Ukrainianized version of KOI8-R, which is suitable for Russian only.

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 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.

tyle="background:#fff;font-size:90%;font-weight:bold;" \| Ukrainian letters in the Unicode Cyrillic block
nbsp;	`0`!!`1`!!`2`!!`3`!!`4`!!`5`!!`6`!!`7`!!`8`!!`9`!!`A`!!`B`!!`C`!!`D`!!`E`!!`F`
code>400	Ѐ	Ё	Ђ	Ѓ	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE: Unicode 0404, Entity Є, UTF8 D0 84"\|Є	Ѕ	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I: Unicode 0406, Entity І, UTF8 D0 86"\|І	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YI: Unicode 0407, Entity Ї, UTF8 D0 87"\|Ї	Ј	Љ	Њ	Ћ	Ќ	Ѝ	Ў	Џ
code>410	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER A: Unicode 0410, Entity &#1040 D0 90"\|А	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER BE: Unicode 0411, Entity Б, UTF8 D0 91"\|Б	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER VE: Unicode 0412, Entity В, UTF8 D0 92"\|В	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER GHE: Unicode 0413, Entity Г, UTF8 D0 93"\|Г	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER DE: Unicode 0414, Entity Д, UTF8 D0 94"\|Д	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER IE: Unicode 0415, Entity Е, UTF8 D0 95"\|Е	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE: Unicode 0416, Entity Ж, UTF8 D0 96"\|Ж	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZE: Unicode 0417, Entity З, UTF8 D0 97"\|З	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER I: Unicode 0418, Entity И, UTF8 D0 98"\|И	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHORT I: Unicode 0419, Entity Й, UTF8 D0 99"\|Й	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER KA: Unicode 041A, Entity К, UTF8 D0 9A"\|К	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EL: Unicode 041B, Entity Л, UTF8 D0 9B"\|Л	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EM: Unicode 041C, Entity М, UTF8 D0 9C"\|М	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EN: Unicode 041D, Entity Н, UTF8 D0 9D"\|Н	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER O: Unicode 041E, Entity О, UTF8 D0 9E"\|О	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER PE: Unicode 041F, Entity П, UTF8 D0 9F"\|П
code>420	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ER: Unicode 0420, Entity Р, UTF8 D0 A0"\|Р	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ES: Unicode 0421, Entity С, UTF8 D0 A1"\|С	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER TE: Unicode 0422, Entity Т, UTF8 D0 A2"\|Т	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER U: Unicode 0423, Entity У, UTF8 D0 A3"\|У	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER EF: Unicode 0424, Entity Ф, UTF8 D0 A4"\|Ф	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER HA: Unicode 0425, Entity Х, UTF8 D0 A5"\|Х	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER TSE: Unicode 0426, Entity Ц, UTF8 D0 A6"\|Ц	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER CHE: Unicode 0427, Entity Ч, UTF8 D0 A7"\|Ч	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHA: Unicode 0428, Entity Ш, UTF8 D0 A8"\|Ш	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHCHA: Unicode 0429, Entity Щ, UTF8 D0 A9"\|Щ	Ъ	Ы	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SOFT SIGN: Unicode 042C, Entity Ь, UTF8 D0 AC"\|Ь	Э	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YU: Unicode 042E, Entity Ю, UTF8 D0 AE"\|Ю	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YA: Unicode 042F, Entity Я, UTF8 D0 AF"\|Я
code>430	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER A: Unicode 0430, Entity а, UTF8 D0 B0"\|а	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BE: Unicode 0431, Entity б, UTF8 D0 B1"\|б	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER VE: Unicode 0432, Entity в, UTF8 D0 B2"\|в	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE: Unicode 0433, Entity г, UTF8 D0 B3"\|г	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER DE: Unicode 0434, Entity д, UTF8 D0 B4"\|д	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER IE: Unicode 0435, Entity е, UTF8 D0 B5"\|е	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZHE: Unicode 0436, Entity ж, UTF8 D0 B6"\|ж	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZE: Unicode 0437, Entity з, UTF8 D0 B7"\|з	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER I: Unicode 0438, Entity и, UTF8 D0 B8"\|и	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHORT I: Unicode 0439, Entity й, UTF8 D0 B9"\|й	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER KA: Unicode 043A, Entity к, UTF8 D0 BA"\|к	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EL: Unicode 043B, Entity л, UTF8 D0 BB"\|л	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EM: Unicode 043C, Entity м, UTF8 D0 BC"\|м	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EN: Unicode 043D, Entity н, UTF8 D0 BD"\|н	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER O: Unicode 043E, Entity о, UTF8 D0 BE"\|о	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER PE: Unicode 043F, Entity п, UTF8 D0 BF"\|п
code>440	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ER: Unicode 0440, Entity р, UTF8 D1 80"\|р	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ES: Unicode 0441, Entity с, UTF8 D1 81"\|с	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TE: Unicode 0442, Entity т, UTF8 D1 82"\|т	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER U: Unicode 0443, Entity у, UTF8 D1 83"\|у	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER EF: Unicode 0444, Entity ф, UTF8 D1 84"\|ф	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER HA: Unicode 0445, Entity х, UTF8 D1 85"\|х	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER TSE: Unicode 0446, Entity ц, UTF8 D1 86"\|ц	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER CHE: Unicode 0447, Entity ч, UTF8 D1 87"\|ч	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHA: Unicode 0448, Entity ш, UTF8 D1 88"\|ш	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHCHA: Unicode 0449, Entity щ, UTF8 D1 89"\|щ	ъ	ы	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SOFT SIGN: Unicode 044C, Entity ь, UTF8 D1 8C"\|ь	э	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YU: Unicode 044E, Entity ю, UTF8 D1 8E"\|ю	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YA: Unicode 044F, Entity я, UTF8 D1 8F"\|я
code>450	ѐ	ё	ђ	ѓ	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER UKRAINIAN IE: Unicode 0454, Entity є, UTF8 D1 94"\|є	ѕ	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER BYELORUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN I: Unicode 0456, Entity і, UTF8 D1 96"\|і	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER YI: Unicode 0457, Entity &1111, UTF8 D1 97"\|ї	ј	љ	њ	ћ	ќ	ѝ	ў	џ
code>460	Ѡ	ѡ	Ѣ	ѣ	Ѥ	ѥ	Ѧ	ѧ	Ѩ	ѩ	Ѫ	ѫ	Ѭ	ѭ	Ѯ	ѯ
code>470	Ѱ	ѱ	Ѳ	ѳ	Ѵ	ѵ	Ѷ	ѷ	Ѹ	ѹ	Ѻ	ѻ	Ѽ	ѽ	Ѿ	ѿ
code>480	Ҁ	ҁ	҂	҃	҄	҅	҆	҇	҈	҉	Ҋ	ҋ	Ҍ	ҍ	Ҏ	ҏ
code>490	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN: Unicode 0490, Entity Ґ, UTF8 D2 90"\|Ґ	style="background:#9cc" title="CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER GHE WITH UPTURN: Unicode 0491, Entity ґ, UTF8 D2 91"\|ґ	Ғ	ғ	Ҕ	ҕ	Җ	җ	Ҙ	ҙ	Қ	қ	Ҝ	ҝ	Ҟ	ҟ
code>4A0	Ҡ	ҡ	Ң	ң	Ҥ	ҥ	Ҧ	ҧ	Ҩ	ҩ	Ҫ	ҫ	Ҭ	ҭ	Ү	ү
code>4B0	Ұ	ұ	Ҳ	ҳ	Ҵ	ҵ	Ҷ	ҷ	Ҹ	ҹ	Һ	һ	Ҽ	ҽ	Ҿ	ҿ
code>4C0	Ӏ	Ӂ	ӂ	Ӄ	ӄ	Ӆ	ӆ	Ӈ	ӈ	Ӊ	ӊ	Ӌ	ӌ	Ӎ	ӎ	ӏ
code>4D0	Ӑ	ӑ	Ӓ	ӓ	Ӕ	ӕ	Ӗ	ӗ	Ә	ә	Ӛ	ӛ	Ӝ	ӝ	Ӟ	ӟ
code>4E0	Ӡ	ӡ	Ӣ	ӣ	Ӥ	ӥ	Ӧ	ӧ	Ө	ө	Ӫ	ӫ	Ӭ	ӭ	Ӯ	ӯ
code>4F0	Ӱ	ӱ	Ӳ	ӳ	Ӵ	ӵ	Ӷ	ӷ	Ӹ	ӹ	Ӻ	ӻ	Ӽ	ӽ	Ӿ	ӿ
code>500	Ԁ	ԁ	Ԃ	ԃ	Ԅ	ԅ	Ԇ	ԇ	Ԉ	ԉ	Ԋ	ԋ	Ԍ	ԍ	Ԏ	ԏ
code>510	Ԑ	ԑ	Ԓ	ԓ	Ԕ	ԕ	Ԗ	ԗ	Ԙ	ԙ	Ԛ	ԛ	Ԝ	ԝ	Ԟ	ԟ
code>520	Ԡ	ԡ	Ԣ	ԣ	Ԥ	ԥ	Ԧ	ԧ	Ԩ	ԩ	Ԫ	ԫ	Ԭ	ԭ	Ԯ	ԯ

External links

The Cyrillic Charset Soup—Roman Czyborra's site contains an exhaustive history of Cyrillic character set encoding schemes (site currently unavailable—archived copy at archive.org).

Alphabet

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