The Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters: 10 vowels, 22 consonants, and the soft sign. It shares most of its inventory with other Cyrillic alphabets but adds four letters Russian does not have — Ґ, Є, І, and Ї. The chart below gives every letter in dictionary order with its name, romanization, IPA value, and the closest English sound.
Dictionary order, upper and lower case. Ukrainian has four letters Russian lacks — Ґ, Є, І, Ї — and does not use Russian's Ё, Ъ, Ы, or Э. The apostrophe (’) seen in words like п’ять is part of Ukrainian spelling but is not counted as a letter.
| Letter | Name | Romanization | IPA | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Аа | a | a | /ɑ/ | a in "father" |
| Бб | be | b | /b/ | b in "book" |
| Вв | ve | v | /ʋ/ | v in "vine" — drifts toward w at the end of a syllable |
| Гг | he | h | /ɦ/ | breathy, voiced h — like the h in "behind" |
| Ґґ | ge | g | /ɡ/ | g in "go" — rare, kept for words like ґанок |
| Дд | de | d | /d/ | d in "door" |
| Ее | e | e | /ɛ/ | e in "met" |
| Єє | ye | ye / ie | /jɛ/ | ye in "yes" |
| Жж | zhe | zh | /ʒ/ | s in "pleasure" |
| Зз | ze | z | /z/ | z in "zoo" |
| Ии | y | y | /ɪ/ | i in "bit" |
| Іі | i | i | /i/ | ee in "see" |
| Її | yi | yi / i | /ji/ | yee — as at the heart of Україна (Ukraine) |
| Йй | yot | y / i | /j/ | y in "boy" |
| Кк | ka | k | /k/ | k in "kite" |
| Лл | el | l | /l/ | l in "lamp" |
| Мм | em | m | /m/ | m in "map" |
| Нн | en | n | /n/ | n in "note" |
| Оо | o | o | /ɔ/ | o in "more" — keeps its full sound even unstressed |
| Пп | pe | p | /p/ | p in "pet" |
| Рр | er | r | /r/ | rolled r, as in Spanish "perro" |
| Сс | es | s | /s/ | s in "sun" |
| Тт | te | t | /t/ | t in "top" |
| Уу | u | u | /u/ | oo in "boot" |
| Фф | ef | f | /f/ | f in "fun" — loanwords only |
| Хх | kha | kh | /x/ | ch in Scottish "loch" |
| Цц | tse | ts | /ts/ | ts in "cats" |
| Чч | che | ch | /tʃ/ | ch in "church" |
| Шш | sha | sh | /ʃ/ | sh in "shut" |
| Щщ | shcha | shch | /ʃtʃ/ | sh + ch run together, as in "fresh cheese" |
| Ьь | soft sign | ' | — | silent — softens the preceding consonant |
| Юю | yu | yu / iu | /ju/ | u in "use" |
| Яя | ya | ya / ia | /jɑ/ | ya in "yard" |
The signature Ukrainian sound is г — not the hard g of English "go" but a breathy, voiced h (/ɦ/), as if humming through an English h. Гривня (hryvnia, the currency) starts with it, and so does говорити (to speak). The hard g does exist, but it has its own letter, the rare ґ (/ɡ/), found in a short list of words like ґанок (porch) and ґудзик (button). Reading every г as a hard g is the fastest way to sound like you learned Russian first.
Ukrainian has two i-letters that Russian merges into one: и is the lax /ɪ/ of English "bit", while і is the tense /i/ of "see". The pair кит (whale) and кіт (cat) differs only here. Add ї, which is always /ji/ ("yee") even after a vowel — Україна has it — and є for /jɛ/ ("ye"), and you have the four letters that mark a text as Ukrainian at a glance.
Ukrainian spelling is refreshingly phonetic. Unlike Russian, unstressed о does not collapse into an a-sound — молоко (milk) keeps all three o's — and voiced consonants generally stay voiced at the end of a word: сад (garden) ends in a real d. The apostrophe in words like п'ять (five) and м'ясо (meat) is not a letter; it simply keeps the consonant hard so the following я, ю, є, or ї starts with a clean y-glide.
Cyrillic reached the lands of modern Ukraine with the christianization of Kyivan Rus' in 988, and for centuries East Slavic scribes shared one bookish written tradition. A distinctly Ukrainian alphabet took shape in the 19th century, when writers began spelling the living language as it actually sounded: Panteleimon Kulish's "kulishivka" of the 1850s introduced consistent use of і, and later systems added ї and fixed є in their modern roles.
The 20th century politicized the alphabet. The 1928 Kharkiv orthography (the "skrypnykivka") standardized Ukrainian spelling for the whole country, but in 1933 Soviet authorities revised it to sit closer to Russian and abolished the letter ґ outright — for nearly six decades the hard-g words were simply respelled with г. Independent-minded publishers in the diaspora kept ґ alive, and the 1990 orthography officially restored it to the alphabet's fifth position.
The current reference point is the 2019 orthography reform, which polished spelling rules without touching the 33-letter inventory — stable since ґ's return. The alphabet's four distinctive letters, Ґ, Є, І, and Ї, remain the quickest visual test separating Ukrainian from Russian text; Ukrainians joke that ї, crowned with two dots, is the most Ukrainian letter of all.
33: ten vowels (а, е, є, и, і, ї, о, у, ю, я), twenty-two consonants, and the soft sign ь, which shapes pronunciation without a sound of its own. The apostrophe used in words like п'ять is part of the spelling system but is not counted as a letter.
Both have 33 Cyrillic letters, but four differ in each direction: Ukrainian has Ґ, Є, І, and Ї, which Russian lacks, while Russian has Ё, Ъ, Ы, and Э, which Ukrainian does not use. The shared letter г also sounds different — a breathy /ɦ/ in Ukrainian versus a hard /ɡ/ in Russian.
Because Ukrainian kept two distinct vowel sounds where Russian merged spelling into one letter: и is the lax /ɪ/ of English "bit" and і is the tense /i/ of "see". Minimal pairs like кит (whale) and кіт (cat) depend on the contrast, so the alphabet needs both letters.
It works like Russian's hard sign: placed before я, ю, є, or ї, it keeps the preceding consonant hard and forces a clean y-glide, as in п'ять (five) and м'ясо (meat). It is written with an apostrophe character rather than a letter, and it is never counted in the 33.
In Cyrillic, and there is no official plan to change — unlike Kazakh, which is mid-transition to Latin. Latin transliteration (the romanization column above) is used for passports, street signs, and international documents, following the official 2010 romanization rules.