This article talks about the phonology of the standard Ukrainian language. Ukrainian can be analyzed as having 6 phonemic vowels and 33 phonemic consonants as well as 5 marginal consonants, those being palatalized labials: . Ukrainian does not have phonemic vowel length, however consonants are distinguished based on gemination: ÿðÃÂýð "sir (genitive)" vs ÿðÃÂýýð "lady".
Ukrainian has the six monophthong phonemes shown below. is a retracted close-mid front vowel .
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:
Ukrainian can be analyzed as having 12 diphthongs with each vowel + closing /iï/ or /uï/:
The following table shows the consonant phonemes found in the modern Ukrainian language.
Unlike Russian and several other Slavic languages, Ukrainian does not have final devoicing for most obstruents, as can be seen, for example, in "cart", which is pronounced , not .
Ukrainian however 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 , , , , , , and their derivatives: may then be devoiced to or even merge with .
Unpalatalized dental consonants become palatalized if they are followed by other palatalized dental consonants . They are also typically palatalized before the vowel . Historically, contrasting unpalatalized and palatalized articulations of consonants before were possible and more common, with the absence of palatalization usually reflecting that regular sound changes in the language made an vowel actually evolve from an older, non-palatalizing vowel. Ukrainian grammar still allows for to alternate with either or in the regular inflection of certain words. The absence of consonant palatalization before has become rare, however, but is still allowed when the àsucceeding a consonant originated from older þ, evidenced by þ preserved in some word forms such as ÃÂÃÂÃÂû / ÃÂÃÂþûð ("table", N sg./G sg.).
While the labial consonants cannot be fully phonemically palatalized, they can still precede one of the iotating vowels , and are realized as semi-palatalized, with many speakers replacing the would-be sequences with the consonant clusters , a habit also common in nearby Polish. The separation of labial consonants from is already hard-coded in many Ukrainian words (and written as such with an apostrophe), such as in "Vyacheslav", "name" and "five". The combinations of labials with iotating vowels most commonly occur in loan words, e. g. "bureau", as well as in certain native words when following consonants and followed by or , e.g. "aromatic", "monkey (adj.)", and "to clang". Such combinations are written without the apostrophe after consonants (except ) in the same morpheme, e.g. "holiday" (but "worm" and "union", where is a prefix). Unlike other semi-palatalized labial consonants, can have a distinguishing role in words, e.g. "holiday, G pl." and "matchmaker".
Dental sibilant consonants become palatalized before any of the labial consonants followed by one of the iotating vowels , but the labial consonants themselves cannot retain full phonemic palatalization.
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 in which assimilates into .
Dental plosives assimilate to affricate articulations before coronal affricates or fricatives and assume the latter consonant's place of articulation and palatalization. If the sequences regressively assimilate to , they gain geminate articulations .
Ukrainian exhibits a system of vowel alternations, where the open-mid vowels and get raised to in closed syllables:
In turn, vowels and in closed syllables drop in open syllables:
Some rarer vowel alternations include:
The semivowels and alternate with the vowels and respectively. The semivowels are used in syllable codas: after a vowel and before a consonant, either within a word or between words:
When two or more consonants occur word-finally, a vowel is epenthesized under the following conditions: Given a consonantal grouping <sub>1</sub>()C<sub>2</sub>(), âÂÂâ being any consonant, the vowel is inserted between the two consonants and after the . A vowel is not inserted unless is , , , , , or . Then:
Stress is phonemic in Ukrainian, therefore is not predictable. Some words or inflections are distinguished only via the stress placement, for example: ÿûðÃÂÃÂà"I pay" vs ÿûðÃÂÃÂà"I cry" or óþûþòøà"head (genitive)" vs óþÃÂûþòø "heads".
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. ÃÂõðÃÂÃÂà'theater' ~ ÃÂõðÃÂÃÂÃÂø 'theaters'; stem stress in the singular and inflection stress in the plural, e.g. öÃÂÃÂýúð 'woman' ~ öÃÂýúøà'women'; 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 õ 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 ( ýõÃÂÃÂøÃÂ, .. ýõÃÂÃÂøÃÂüõ 'carry').
With numerals, stress placement may differ between ordinal and cardinal forms.
For names, stress may shift between given names (ÃÂþóôðÃÂý, àþüðÃÂý) and family names (ÃÂþÃÂóôðý, àþÃÂüðý), and between patronymics (ÃÂòðÃÂýþòøÃÂ, ÃÂþóôðÃÂýþòøÃÂ) and family names (ÃÂòðýþÃÂòøÃÂ, ÃÂþóôðýþÃÂòøÃÂ).
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: