Ukrainian phonology

This article deals with the phonology of the standard Ukrainian language.
Stress is phonemic in Ukrainian. With most Ukrainian nouns, the stress falls on either the final vowel of the stem or the initial vowel of the inflection. In a few nouns the stress may be further forward. The position is generally fixed for the various cases of the noun (though inflection stress shifts to the last vowel of the stem if the inflection is a zero suffix), but may change with number (stem stress in both singular and plural, e.g. теа́тр ~ теа́три 'theater'; stem stress in the singular and inflection stress in the plural, e.g. жі́нка ~ жінки́ 'woman'; and so on for all permutations.)
The pattern with adjectives is similar to that of nouns, but does not differ between singular and plural (all stem stress or all inflection stress). In some inflection-stressed adjectives, stress shifts to the stem in the comparative.
With most verbs, stress falls on a syllable in the stem. That syllable may differ between the perfective and imperfective aspects (verbs with 'shifting stress'), but otherwise the stress remains on the same syllable for all inflections. A small group of verbs which do not shift for aspect and have е in their stems bear stress on the inflection. That stress is always on the last syllable of the word apart from in the future imperfective, where it is on the same syllable as in the infinitive (INF нести́, FUT.NPFV.3SG нести́ме 'carry').
With numerals, stress placement may differ between ordinal and cardinal forms.
For names, stress may shift between given names (Богда́н, Рома́н) and family names (Бо́гдан, Ро́ман), and between patronymics (Іва́нович, Богда́нович) and family names (Івано́вич, Богдано́вич).
Ukrainian has the six monophthong phonemes shown below. /ɪ/ is a retracted close-mid front vowel [ɪ̞].
Ukrainian has no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels; however, unstressed vowels are shorter and tend to be more centralized. The unstressed vowel allophones are as follows:
In the table above, whenever two consonants share a cell, the one to the left is voiceless, while the one to the right is voiced.
Phonetic details:
When two or more consonants occur word-finally, a vowel is epenthesized under the following conditions: Given a consonantal grouping C1(ь)C2(ь), ‘C’ being any consonant, the vowel is inserted between the two consonants and after the ь. A vowel is not inserted unless C2 is /k/, /w/, /l/, /m/, /r/, or /t͡s/. Then:
The semivowels /j/ and /w/ alternate with the vowels /i/ and /u/ respectively. The semivowels are used in syllable codas: after a vowel and before a consonant, either within a word or between words:
This feature distinguishes Ukrainian phonology from Russian and Polish, two related languages with many cognates.
Ukrainian has assimilatory voicing: voiceless obstruents are voiced when preceding voiced obstruents. (Voiced sonorants do not trigger voicing.)
There is no such assimilation in the reverse direction (voicing of voiceless obstruents following voiced obstruents).
With a few exceptions, there is no word-final or assimilatory devoicing in Ukrainian. The exceptions are легко, вогко, нігті, кігті, дьогтю, дігтяр, and their derivatives: /ɦ/ may then be devoiced to [h] or even merge with /x/.
Unpalatalized dental consonants /n, t, d, t͡s, d͡z, s, z, r, l/ become palatalized if they are followed by other palatalized dental consonants /nʲ, tʲ, dʲ, t͡sʲ, d͡zʲ, sʲ, zʲ, rʲ, lʲ/. They are also typically palatalized before the vowel /i/. Historically, contrasting unpalatalized and palatalized articulations of consonants before /i/ were possible and more common, with the absence of palatalization usually reflecting that regular sound changes in the language made an /i/ vowel actually evolve from an older, non-palatalizing /ɔ/ vowel. Ukrainian grammar still allows for /i/ to alternate with either /ɛ/ or /ɔ/ in the regular inflection of certain words. The absence of consonant palatalization before /i/ has become rare, however, but is still allowed when the і succeeding a consonant originated from older о, evidenced by о preserved in some word forms such as стіл / стола ("table", N sg./G sg.).
While the labial consonants /m, p, b, f, w/ cannot be phonemically palatalized, they can still precede one of the iotating vowels є і ьо ю я, when many speakers replace the would-be sequences *|mʲ, pʲ, bʲ, fʲ, wʲ| with the consonant clusters /mj, pj, bj, fj, wj/, a habit also common in nearby Polish. The separation of labial consonants from /j/ is already hard-coded in many Ukrainian words (and written as such with an apostrophe), such as in В'ячеслав /wjat͡ʃɛˈslaw/ "Vyacheslav", ім'я /iˈmja/ "name" and п'ять /pjatʲ/ "five". The combinations of labials with iotating vowels are written without the apostrophe after consonants in the same morpheme, e.g. свято /ˈsʲw(j)atɔ/ "holiday", цвях "nail" (but зв'язок "union", where з- is a prefix), and in some loanwords, e. g. бюро "bureau".
Dental sibilant consonants /t͡s, d͡z, s, z/ become palatalized before any of the labial consonants /m, p, b, f, w/ followed by one of the iotating vowels є і ьо ю я, but the labial consonants themselves cannot retain phonemic palatalization. Thus, words like свято /ˈsʲw(j)atɔ/ "holiday" and сват /swat/ "matchmaker" retain their separate pronunciations (whether or not an actual /j/ is articulated).
Sibilant consonants (including affricates) in clusters assimilate with the place of articulation and palatalization state of the last segment in a cluster. The most common case of such assimilation is the verbal ending -шся in which |ʃsʲa| assimilates into /sʲːa/.
Dental plosives /t, tʲ, d, dʲ/ assimilate to affricate articulations before coronal affricates or fricatives /t͡s, d͡z, s, z, t͡sʲ, d͡zʲ, sʲ, zʲ, t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ, ʃ, ʒ/ and assume the latter consonant's place of articulation and palatalization. If the sequences |t.t͡s, d.d͡z, t.t͡sʲ, d.d͡zʲ, t.t͡ʃ, d.d͡ʒ| regressively assimilate to */t͡s.t͡s, d͡z.d͡z, t͡sʲ.t͡sʲ, d͡zʲ.d͡zʲ, t͡ʃ.t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ.d͡ʒ/, they gain geminate articulations /t͡sː, d͡zː, t͡sʲː, d͡zʲː, t͡ʃː, d͡ʒː/.
There are some typical deviations which may appear in spoken language (often under the influence of Russian). They are usually considered phonetic errors by pedagogists.
Modern standard Ukrainian descends from Common Slavic and is characterized by a number of sound changes and morphological developments, many of which are shared with other East Slavic languages. These include: