Talk:Ukrainian alphabet

message: Are there are any examples of Ukrainian alphabet not being phonetic other than the absence of letters for ʥ/ʤ? I can understand how pidžaryty and bdžola are pronounced differently due to one being the combination of two phonemes and one being one phoneme with a different pronunciation. But does every declination and conjugation remain pronounced as written in "standard" Ukrainian?
--iopq
: There are definitely a number of phonetic variations in speech.  The [x] is sometimes de-voiced towards [ç], and [v] is usually de-voiced to [w] at the end of a word (and in some regional accents is virtually always pronounced [w]).  Some vowels tend to become reduced towards a schwa in normal speech, but not nearly to the extent of Russian akanye (see Russian phonology#Unstressed vowels).  I'm no expert; these are just some random observations.
: But I think phonemically, spelling in Ukrainian is consistent and intuitive.  If you can read a word, you can pronounce it—Ukrainian dictionaries have no pronunciation guide.
: Interesting example of піджарити and бджола.  It seems to me that the placement of the syllable break affects the difference, but I don't know if that is intuitive or memorized.  "Pid" is obviously a prefix, but when the word is spoken quickly I think the d-ᴣ almost merges into ʤ.  Perhaps the b-ʤ combination forces that to be a single sound.  —Michael Z. 2005-09-29 05:09 Z
I am aware of the phonetic differences, but I was trying to see if there were any problems with phonemic differences like there are in Russian. In піджарити and бджола the prefix with д adds to the root beginning with ж and is therefore pronounced as two sounds (of course they start to run over each other but you can time a place when д starts but ж hasn't started yet) in бджола you have a root with the original phoneme intact spelled by using two letters because there is no letter that corresponds to that phoneme that actually exists in the language.
There's also o pronounced as u when unstressed. If I heard it I must have forgotten it, but I've read about it.--iopq
Ukranian Orphoepic Dictionary is a dictionary that has transctiption to all the words. As for піджарити - it's absent there since normally смажити/підсмажити is more common expression. But as similar cases you can find there підживляти, підживлення, where під- is prefix, so the transcription is [п’ід͡жжиўл'ати], the ʤ is followed by ʒ.
Other general observations: e and и - when unstressed are very difficult to be distiguished in some positions.
The letter o is almost clear o (unlike one of the comments above states), it can be a bit close to u, but those case are rare and not many.
Another example of a non-phonetic spelling is the 2nd person, singular, for revlective verbs in present...вмиваєшся...-шс- is pronounced as - [sʲ:] - long palat. s.
The list is huge, but it is easy to observe that all non-phonetic cases are mostly in position prefix-root or root-suffix. The principle of spelling here is usually morphological.
The use of letters є, ї, ю, and я - is traditional, also non-phonetic, because normally they stand for combinations of: й+е, й+і, й+у, й+а or ь+е, ь+у, ь+а meanwhile the same combinations for 'o' do not have a special letter and we write йо and ьо.
As you can see Ukrainian orthography is not that phonetic.
Romari81 (talk) 14:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Non-phonetic spellings

message: Someone edited the page replacing azbuka with abetka. It's fine, but azbuka is a word from like the twelfth century... coming from the names of the letters - az, buka (А, Б)
When this term got invented there was no Russian or Ukrainian yet!
-Iopq 07:36, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is the  word "азбука" in modern Ukrainian, but it sounds a bit as archaism. "Абетка" is more common. It is more a matter of taste, after all.--AndriyK 11:39, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Azbuka is a Russian word? 

message: Is it just me, or is there a problem with the table? If so, you can find a good one at Cyrillic alphabet. FilipeS 00:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed it some time ago. FilipeS 17:14, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: The last table

message: In both the detailed table in Wikipedia under "Letter names and pronunciation", and in Omniglot, Soft Sign is shown last, after Ju and Ja.  However, in the first presentation of the alphabet, under "Alphabet", Soft Sign is shown before Ju and Ja.  I'm guessing Omniglot is right -- they're pretty reliable.  If any Ukrainian speaker wants to comment on this and/or correct whichever portion of the article is wrong (since they conflict, it's likely that one or the other is wrong), that'd be great.  Auros 18:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In that case, you should also update the full detailed table, lower in the article, to reflect this order.  I really don't care which order is used, as long as they're consistent. Auros 17:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

text: Probably, Ivanenko only PROPOSED to move it. --D.M. from Ukraine (talk) 19:41, 30 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Position of Soft Sign relative to Ju and Ja 

message: I am certainly no expert on the matter, but I suspect it should be /ɦ/.  The /ʕ/ is relatively rare and is often mistakenly put for /ɦ/. example
203.114.176.86 (talk) 22:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the issue comes about from either a mistranslation or variance in usage.  The term in Ukrainiak that's cognate with "pharyngeal" is semantically closer to the term "guttural" in English. — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 22:33, 1 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Both pronunciations are common among native Ukrainian speakers.  —PowerPCG5 (talk) 01:38, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of Г 

message: * https://bitter-onion.livejournal.com/3171617.html
* https://ueartemis.livejournal.com/25847.html
* https://lingvoforum.net/index.php?topic=260.msg3497279#msg3497279
* https://lingvoforum.net/index.php?topic=101757.0  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.114.147.23 (talk) 06:40, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contemporary alternative orthography 

message: Zelenskyy's beautiful letter to the family of Brent Renaud is written on the official letterhead of the Ukrainian President. I have no access to Cyrillic on my keyboard, but the letterhead, here copying characters mostly from Ukranian_alphabet and Russian alphabet, reads "Презuденм Українu". But neither alphabet lists a letter that closely resembles a Roman "u", so I have substituted the similar-appearing Roman character. Google Translate accepts this Roman "u", but asks whether, in both instances, I meant the letter "и", which is the character I probably would have expected, knowing no Russian nor Ukrainian, but able to decipher somewhat. No official letterhead is going to use a nonexistent character - so what is this "u"-appearing character, and why is it absent from both WP alphabet articles? Milkunderwood (talk) 11:24, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: When Cyrilic is italicized, the letter и looks like и. You can't find a letter for it because it's just an italic и. There is no need for it to appear in the alphabet. Lkb335 (talk) 15:58, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: In addition, when written in cursive, и looks a lot like u. Ukrainian (and Russian for that matter) is generally written in cursive when written by hand. Lkb335 (talk) 16:04, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Also: it's not Президенм, but rather Президент; the letter т in italics (or cursive) looks like a lowercase m: т. The letter м in italics (or cursive) looks like м. Put it all together, it looks like Президент України (Президент України). Lkb335 (talk) 18:02, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

text: Interesting, that might be a quirk of that particular font; I'm not sure. Lkb335 (talk) 21:14, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cyrillic letter that resembles Roman "u" 

message: Might I suggest adding a column to the letter table which includes the cursive versions of each letter? I suppose that may require two additional columns to include both the upper case cursive and lower case cursive. With the War in Ukraine spawning countless protests, I find some handwritten signs difficult to decipher, as they are written in cursive, with which I am unfamiliar. Wikipedia is my go-to source for this kind of thing, but I have not found a good cursive chart on Wikipedia or elsewhere for that matter, at least not one with the print versions aligned side-by-side with the cursive versions. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 07:38, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: That is what I was attempting to say in the previous item. The column headed "Italic" is probably intended to be cursive (which is not the same as italic, yet is the obvious equivalent). There was a problem at some point because WP double-quotes (i.e. "italic") produced Cyrillic cursive, but this is not immediately readable by the naive reader, and I think WP behaviour was changed so that double-quotes have no effect, or just slope regular Cyrillic. So in this case there should probably be a font specification or similar to get the right effect, and "Italic" should be changed to "Cursive". Sorry, I don't know how to do this. Imaginatorium (talk) 08:42, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Double-quotes (italic) never produced Cyrillic cursive; they produce Cyrillic italics. I will note that the article Russian cursive, for example, says "In order, modern Cyrillic italic typefaces are based (in their lowercase part) mostly on the cursive shape of the letters." Lkb335 (talk) 13:47, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: They largely resemble cursive, with some letterforms having very little to do with the upright forms; still, they are distinct from cursive. Lkb335 (talk) 13:48, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Just to be totally clear: here is an image displaying how this works in Russian. I couldn't find an equivalent image for Ukrainian text, but the principle is the same. The description of the image notes that "In many cases, the browser does not render italic cyrillic characters correctly as "real" italics, but simply uses slanted non-italic characters. This is why this table is presented as a graphic." Pay particular attention to the letters г, т, and и; see how the italic versions of each letters resemble cursive rather than the upright letter? And yet, most of the letters more resemble the upright versions. This is how italic Cyrillic is supposed to look; it's a mixture of letterforms based on print and based on cursive. I would absolutely support an additional column on this page with the actual cursive letters; however, that does not mean we should get rid of the italic letters. For an example of what that looks like, see the page for Russian. Lkb335 (talk) 14:01, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cursive 

message: Sash 121.200.5.199 (talk) 19:24, 30 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sash 

message: Here is a modified Ukrainian alphabet:
Аа Бб Вв Гг Дд Ее Жж Зз Ии Йй Кк Лл Мм Нн Оо Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Фф Хх Цц Чч Шш Щщ Ьь Юю Яя Ґґ Єє Іі Її
These four letters, Ґ, Є, І and Ї are distinct and sorted alphabetically after Я. Beebeenewan (talk) 02:07, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: @Beebeenewan, so you moved the letters, why? 178.120.56.181 (talk) 20:11, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modification