Hello Readers of Learn words, in this article we will get to know the Ukrainian alphabet and its history, if you study or studied Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian or Belarusian, you certainly know that these Slavic languages use Cyrillic writing, let us first know a little about Cyrillic history Ukrainian and learn the alphabet with the pronunciation close to Portuguese.

Content Index Show summary

A brief history of the Ukrainian language

The Ukrainian language is from the Slavic branch of the large Indo-European family, it originated from the ancient Slavonic and bears much resemblance to the Russian language, although it has many words from its vocabulary borrowed from the Polish language, but it phonetically presents features of Serbo-Croat.

The language uses the Cyrillic alphabet since 1905 and has undergone changes until it reaches what we now see as the 33 letters of the Ukrainian alphabet (its last change was in 1990), during the 19th century new letters entered its composition, two of which are known. ours is the "I" and the "i".

Language data

Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine, but it is also spoken in some countries like Poland, Russia, Slovakia and etc.
The alphabet has the Latin “I” in its letters and has a letter with the sound of G (like a drop) and has a soft sign.
the name "Ukrainian" comes from "Ukraina" meaning “border area”

Ukrainian Alphabet

Below is a list with the Ukrainian alphabet:

Ukrainian		Equivalent sound in Portuguese	Next to Portuguese
Uppercase	Lowercase
А	а	а	THE
Б	б	baby	B
В	в	see	V
Г	г	rre	rr in Portuguese pronunciation as in “Cachorro”
Ґ	ґ	gué	g also used for “gui” and “gui”
Д	д	in	D
Е	е	is	IS
Є	є	yé	Light sound like “harvesting”
Ж	ж	jé	J
З	з	zé	Z
И	и	and	AND as in “Ecology”
І	і	i	I
Ї	ї	yi	Yi
Й	й	yot	I sound cut with “Andrey”
К	к	ka	Ç or K
Л	Л or ۸	él	L
М	М	in	M
Н	н	no	N
О	о	The	THE
П	п	foot	FOR
Р	р	er	R (always alveolar, or shaky)
С	с	You are	s
Т	т	you	T (do not vary between i, it is as in the northeast “Ti”)
У	у	u	U
Ф	ф	faith	F
Х	х	kha	As the cat makes a soft sound, it comes out of the tongue, not the throat
Ц	ц	tset	Tse as in the Chinese name “Mao TSÉ tung”
Ч	ч	Tché	Tch as in "bye" or as gaucho "tchê"
Ш	ш	shé	X
Щ	щ	shtché	SHtch, combined sound of the letters Ш and Ч (sh + tch)
Ь	Ь	M´yakey znak	relaxation sign, (similar to H from portuguese, when will come n in nh or the l in lh as in "nest" and "Spoon")
Ю	ю	Yu	Yu (diphthong)
Я	я	ya	Iá (diphthong)

Listen to the pronunciation:

Although this video lesson is in Spanish, listen to the name and sound of the lyrics in Ukrainian.