These are learning materials for elementary speaking. Proto Indo European is thought to have developed in the steppe north of the Black Sea about 4,000 years ago. English is is one of its 450 descendants. Read more at Ukrainian heir to PIE hypothesis.
| Romanised Ukrainian | English keyword |
| pryvit vybachte tse dobre, tak, ni? tse pravda, nepravda? (moya prava ruka) koly my yimo? shcho my yimo? de tualet ? khto khoche vyna, pyva? my tut, a vy tam my hovorymo anhliysʹkoyu, vy hovoryte ukrayinsʹkoyu my yimo, vy yiste my p’yemo, vy p’yete my ydemo, vy obydva ydete pid zemlyu, | hello sorry is this good, yes? no? true or not true? my right (true) hand when? [do we eat?] what? [eat] where? [toilet] who? [want beer, wine] we’re here, you’re there speak (Eng) Uk (note <h> sound) eat (we/ you) drink go below ground (shelter) |
The Cyrillic Alphabet.
Ukrainian Cyrillic has 33 letters. Here are the upper-case forms:
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
Here are some “friends”, same as Latin and sound the same: a, к, м т, o. The “false friends” look like Latin but have different sounds: в, c, p, н (CCCP) x y. These are “Greek friends”: д ф л п. The Slavic friends are new: Б Г Ґ Є Ж Ї Й Ц Ч Ш Щ Ь Ю Я.
Declensions
Nouns decline very similarly to Latin, but L. ablative had already collapsed the instrumental and locative cases. There are four noun declensions. The first is mostly feminine, with -a or -я endings. The second is masculine, with soft sign ь, or й, or neuter with -o or -e. The paradigm word for 1 below is голова (‘a head’). For Declension 2 the paradigm is чоловік (‘a man’).
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| Nominative | голова | голови | чоловіки | чоловіки | |
| Vocative | головo | голови | чоловіче | чоловіче | |
| Accusative | головy | голови | чоловіка | чоловікiв | |
| Genitive | голови | головø | чоловіка | чоловікiв | |
| Dative | головi | головaм | чоловік | чоловікaм | |
| Instrumental | головою | головaми | чоловікoм | чоловікaми | |
| Locative | головi | головax | чоловік-ові/у | чоловікax |
Verb conjugations 1- 3 have -e stems, 4 has -u stems, and class 5 are athematic. Aspect (im/perf -ective) may be more strongly marked than tense in Slavic languages. Here are two conjugations in the present tense, taken from wiki/Ukrainian_grammar.
| 1 S | несy | 1 Pl | несемо | 1 S | говорю | 1 Pl | говоримо | |
| 2 S | несеш | 2 Pl | несeтe | 2 S | говориш | 2 Pl | говоритe | |
| 3 S | несе | 3 Pl | несyть | 3 S | говорить | 3 Pl | говорять |
Mnemonic strategies for Slavic words with no English cognates: the folk calendar
The months have no relation to those of Rome and have been use since before Kyyvan Rus, perhaps the 4th century. First strategy: say the eight farming months as a drill:
berezenʹ, kvitenʹ, travenʹ, chervenʹ, lypenʹ, serpenʹ, veresenʹ, zhovtenʹ
Second strategy: each word is also a meaningful common noun, so associate it with a meaning in the English growing season:
birch, flower, grass, red, linden, sickle, violet, yellow
Third strategy: get two for the price of one: consolidate four plants and three colours (plus a sickle)
Later learn the four cold months, named from weather: fall, lump, cut, angry