Ukrainian phonology

This article deals with the phonology of the standard Ukrainian language.

Vowels
Ukrainian has six vowel phonemes:. may be classified as retracted high-mid front vowel, transcribed in narrow IPA as, , or.

Ukrainian has no phonemic distinction between long and short vowels, however unstressed vowels are somewhat reduced in time, and as a result, in quality.
 * In unstressed position has an allophone,  has an allophone.
 * If is followed by a syllable containing  or  it has an allophone.
 * Unstressed and  sometimes are difficult to distinguish.

Consonants
When consonants appear in pairs, the one to the left is voiceless and the one to the right voiced.

Phonetic details:
 * There's no complete agreement about the nature of . According to some linguists it is pharyngeal ( when devoiced). According to others it is glottal . In any case the devoiced variant can be fronted to  in some "weak positions".
 * Word-finally,, , are voiceless , ,  after voiceless consonants. In case of , it only happens after.
 * is velarized to some degree, so it is actually ;
 * The letter "Щ" is not a separate phoneme, but rather a combination of two phonemes. Prototypically it is //, but the actual realization varies: //~//~//;
 * is most commonly bilabial before vowels but can alternate with labio-dental  (most commonly before, also before ). It is also vocalized to  before consonant at start of word, after vowel before consonant and after vowel at end of word.
 * often in spoken language becomes a single tap ;
 * are dental, while are alveolar.
 * Postalveolar sibilants are somewhat rounded;
 * The group of palatalized consonants consists of 10 phonemes: /j, dʲ, zʲ, lʲ, nʲ, rʲ, sʲ, tʲ, ʦʲ, dzʲ/ all of which except /j/ have a soft and a hard variant. There is no complete agreement about the nature of the palatalization of /rʲ/, sometimes it is considered as a semi-palatalized consonant. Labial consonants, , , , have just semi-palatalized phonemes, and  has only hard variant. The palatalization of the consonants /ɦ, ɡ, ʒ, k, x, t͡ʃ, ʃ, d͡ʒ/ is weak; they are usually treated rather as the allophones of the respective ‘hard’ consonants, not as separate phonemes.

Gemination may occur:
 * Between vowels for palatalized alveolar consonants (other than ), and semi-palatalized allophones of postalveolar consonants.
 * Between vowels across prefix-root or root-root boundaries for other coronal consonants as a result of their coincidence. In this case form.
 * At the start of the word for forms of the verb лити (ллю, ллєш , etc.), the verb ссати and derivatives.
 * In other cases for.

When two or more consonants occur word-finally, then a vowel is epenthesized under the following conditions. Given a consonantal grouping C1(ь)C2(ь), where C is any consonant. The vowel is inserted between the two consonants and after the ь. A vowel is only inserted if C2 is either, , , , , or. In this case:


 * 1) If C1 is either, , , or , then the epenthisized vowel is always
 * 2) No vowel is epenthesized if the  is derived from a Common Slavic vocalic *l, for example,  (see below)
 * 3) If C2 is, , , or , then the vowel is.
 * 4) The combinations,    are not broken up
 * 5) If the C1 is  (й), then the above rules can apply. However, both forms (with and without the fill vowel) often exist

Ukrainian has a non-syllabic as an allophone of. It also has a non-syllabic as an allophone of. Moreover, due to their semi-vocalic nature these sounds alternate with the vowel phonemes and  respectively, the latter being used at the absolute beginning of a phrase, after a pause or after a consonant and the former following a vowel and preceding a consonant (cluster), either within a word or at a word boundary:


 * він іде ('he's coming')
 * вона йде ('she's coming')
 * він і вона ('he and she')
 * вона й він ('she and he');


 * Утомився вже ('already gotten tired')
 * Уже втомився ('already gotten tired')
 * Він утомився. ('he's gotten tired')
 * Він у хаті. ('he's inside the house')
 * Вона в хаті. ('she's inside the house')
 * підучити ('to learn')
 * вивчити ('to learn')

This feature distinguishes Ukrainian phonology remarkably from Russian and Polish, two related languages with many cognates.

Consonant assimilation
Voiceless obstruents are voiced when preceding voiced ones, but the reverse is not true.
 * ('our')
 * ('our grandfather')
 * ('birch')
 * ('small birch')

The exceptions are the words легко, вогко, нігті, кігті, дьогтю, дігтяр, and derivatives where may be devoiced to, or even its phonological voiceless counterpart. Prefixes ending in may be devoiced before voiceless obstruents, especially in fast speech.

Affricates are not formed across prefix-root, or root-root boundaries, or across word boundaries, however they are formed across left boundaries of suffixes and.

Sibilant consonants (including affricates) in clusters assimilate place of articulation and palatalization state of the last segment in a cluster. The most common case of such assimilation is verbal ending -шся where || assimilates into. This assimilation is specific to morpheme boundaries because such clusters don't occur within one morpheme.

Deviations of spoken language
There are some typical deviations which may appear in spoken language (often under influence of Russian language), usually they are considered as phonetic errors by linguists.
 * for
 * for
 * for, for ,  for  (e.g. in words Харків, Об, любов'ю)
 * or for  (e.g. in words любов, робив)
 * Final-obstruent devoicing

Historical phonology
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:


 * 1) In a newly closed syllable, that is, a syllable that ends in a consonant, Common Slavic *o and *e mutated into *i if the following vowel was one of the yers (*ĭ/ь or *ŭ/ъ).
 * 2) Pleophony: The Common Slavic combinations, *CoRC and *CeRC, where R is either *r or *l, become in Ukrainian:
 * 3) CorC gives CoroC (Common Slavic *borda gives Ukrainian boroda)
 * 4) ColC gives ColoC (Common Slavic *bolto gives Ukrainian boloto)
 * 5) CerC gives CereC (Common Slavic *berza gives Ukrainian bereza)
 * 6) CelC gives ColoC (Common Slavic *melko gives Ukrainian moloko)
 * 7) The Common Slavic nasal vowel *ę is reflected as ; a preceding labial consonant generally was not palatalized after this, and after a postalveolar it became  Examples: Common Slavic *pętь became Ukrainian  (п’ять); Common Slavic *telę became Ukrainian ; and Common Slavic *kurčę became Ukrainian.
 * 8) Common Slavic *ě (Cyrillic ), generally became Ukrainian  except:
 * 9) word-initially, where it became : Common Slavic *(j)ěsti became Ukrainian
 * 10) after the post-alveolar sibilants where it became : Common Slavic *ležěti became Ukrainian
 * 11) Common Slavic *i and *y are both reflected in Ukrainian as
 * 12) The Common Slavic combination -CьjV, where V is any vowel, became, except:
 * 13) if C is labial or  where it became -CjV
 * 14) if V is the Common Slavic *e, then the vowel in Ukrainian mutated to, e.g., Common Slavic *žitьje became Ukrainian
 * 15) if V is Common Slavic *ь, then the combination became, e.g., genitive plural in Common Slavic *myšьjь became Ukrainian
 * 16) if one or more consonants precede C then there is no doubling of the consonants in Ukrainian
 * 17) Sometime around the early thirteenth century, the voiced velar stop lenited to  (except in the cluster *zg). Within a century,  was reintroduced from Western European loanwords and, around the sixteenth century,  debuccalized to.
 * 18) Common Slavic combinations *dl and *tl were simplified to, for example, Common Slavic *mydlo became Ukrainian
 * 19) Common Slavic *ǔl and *ьl became . For example, Common Slavic *vьlkъ became  in Ukrainian.