Ukrainian phonology


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

Vowels

Ukrainian has six vowel phonemes:.
may be classified as a retracted high-mid front vowel, transcribed in narrow IPA as,, or.
FrontCentralBack
Close
Mid
Open

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 the table above, if there are two consonants in a row, the one to the right is voiced, and the one to the left is voiceless.
Phonetic details:
When two or more consonants occur word-finally, a vowel is epenthesized under the following conditions: Given a consonantal grouping C1C2, C being any consonant. The vowel is inserted between the two consonants and after the ь. A vowel is not inserted unless C2 is either,,,,, or. Then:
  1. If C1 is,,, or, the epenthisized vowel is always
  2. # No vowel is epenthesized if the is derived from a Common Slavic vocalic *l, for example,
  3. If C2 is,,, or, then the vowel is.
  4. The combinations, are not broken up.
  5. If the C1 is , the above rules may apply. However, both forms often exist.

    Alternation of vowels and semivowels

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

Consonant assimilation

There is no word-final or assimilatory devoicing in Ukrainian. There is, however, assimilatory voicing: voiceless obstruents are voiced when preceding voiced obstruents.
The exceptions are легко, вогко, нігті, кігті, дьогтю, дігтяр, and 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.
While the labial consonants 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 with the consonant clusters, a habit also common in nearby Polish. The separation of labial consonant from is already hard-coded in many Ukrainian words, such as in В'ячеслав "Vyacheslav", "name" and "five". The combinations of labials with iotating vowels are written without the apostrophe after consonants in the same morpheme, e. g. свято "holiday", цвях "twig", and in some loanwords, e. g. бюро "bureau".
Dental sibilant consonants become palatalized before any of the labial consonants 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 "holiday" and сват "matchmaker" retain their separate pronunciations.
Sibilant consonants 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 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.

Deviations of spoken language

There are some typical deviations which may appear in spoken language ; usually they are considered as 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:
  1. In a newly closed syllable, that is, a syllable that ends in a consonant, Common Slavic *o and *e mutated into if the following vowel was one of the yers.
  2. Pleophony: The Common Slavic combinations, *CoRC and *CeRC, where R is either *r or *l, become in Ukrainian:
  3. # CorC gives CoroC
  4. # ColC gives ColoC
  5. # CerC gives CereC
  6. # CelC gives ColoC
  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 *pętĭ became Ukrainian ; Common Slavic *telę became Ukrainian ; and Common Slavic *kurĭčę became Ukrainian .
  8. Common Slavic *ě, generally became Ukrainian except:
  9. # word-initially, where it became : Common Slavic *ěsti became Ukrainian
  10. # after the postalveolar 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 -CĭjV, 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 *žitĭje became Ukrainian
  15. # if V is Common Slavic *ĭ, then the combination became, e.g., genitive plural in Common Slavic *myšĭjĭ 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 . 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 *ĭl became. For example, Common Slavic *vĭlkǔ became in Ukrainian.