The Ukrainian Alphabet (Украї́нська абе́тка, Ukrajins′ka abetka, or алфаві́т, alfavit in Ukrainian) is used to write Ukrainian, the official language of Ukraine. It is a version of the Cyrillic writing system, developed from the early Cyrillic alphabet at the end of the first millennium. The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... A writing system, also called a script, is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language. ... The Early Cyrillic alphabet was a writing system developed in Bulgaria during the 10th century A.D. for the writing of Old Church Slavonic. ...

Ukrainian is sometimes Romanized, or written using the Latin alphabet, for non-Cyrillic readers or transcription systems. See romanization of Ukrainian for details of specific romanization systems. There have also been proposals for a Latin Alphabet for Ukrainian. In linguistics, romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian denotes a system for representing the Ukrainian language in Latin letters. ... It has been suggested that Ukrajinśka Łatynka be merged into this article or section. ...

Letter names and pronunciation

Notes The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... А (А, а) is the first letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Be (Б, б) is the second letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Ve (В, в) is the third letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the sound [v]. In Russian, it is pronounced [f] at the end of a word. ... Ge or He (Г, г) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, pronounced differently in different languages. ... Ghe (Ґ, ґ, also called ge with upturn) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet pronounced like the G in go. Originally part of the Ukrainian and Belarusian alphabets, its function was replaced by the letter Ge (Г) in the Soviet Union after 1933. ... De (Д, д) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Ye, or E (Е, е), is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Ye (Є, є) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used in the Ukrainian language to represent the iotated vowel sound /je/. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Writing system stubs ... Zhe (Ж, ж) is the letter of Cyrillic alphabet which represents the voiced postalveolar fricative (sound file), the same sound which is represented by s in the English word treasure. Zhe is the 7th letter of the Bulgarian and Belarusian alphabets, the 8th letter in the Macedonian, Russian and Serbian alphabets, and... Ze (З, з) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /z/. Its easily confusable with the number 3, for example the stages of the N1 rocket. ... I or Y (И, и) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, pronounced in Russian, or in Ukrainian. ... I (І, і) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used in the Belarusian and Ukrainian languages. ... Yi (Ї, ї) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, used in the Ukrainian language. ... Й, й (Short I) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Ka (К, к) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /k/. It corresponds to the Roman K in origin, pronunciation, and appearance. ... El (Л, л) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Em (М, м) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /m/. Code positions Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... En (Н, н) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /n/. It looks exactly like the Latin capital letter H. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... O (О, о) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel /o/. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Pe (П, п) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant /p/. It arose directly from the Greek letter Pi (Π, π). The shape of capital printed Pe can be described as a square with the bottom line missing, not to be confused with El (Cyrillic), which has a curved left. ... Er (Р, р) is the eighteenth letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Es (С, с) is the nineteenth letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Te (Т, т) is the letter representing the consonant /t/ in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... U (У, у) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the vowel /u/. Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Ef (Ф, ф) is the twenty-first letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Kha, or Ha, (Х, х) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (pronounced like the ch in German Bach). It is derived from the Greek letter chi (Χ, χ). Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Tse (Ц, ц) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. ... Che (Ч, ч) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant cluster /tS/ or /tS/ (like the ch in change). Categories: Cyrillic letters | Language stubs ... Sha (Ш, ш) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant sound /ʃ/ or /ʃʲ/. It is equivalent to sh in English, ch in French, sch in German, ş in Turkish, or sz in Polish. ... Shcha or Shta (Щ, щ) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant // or // in Russian, // or // in Ukrainian, and the consonant // in Bulgarian. ... Yu (Ю, ю) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the iotated vowel /ju/. In common with many Cyrillic letters, it was derived from a digraph, being a ligature of Izhe (then І) or Izhei (then Н, both now И) and Uk (Ѹ, no longer in the alphabet). ... Ya (Я, я) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the iotated vowel (IPA). ... Soft Sign (Ь, ь) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian: мягкий знак (mĭahkiy znak) [], Ukrainian: м’який знак (miakyy znak) [], Belarusian: мяккі знак (miakki znak) []). It is named so because it usually indicates softening, or palatalization, of the preceding consonant or of the group of them. ... Quotation marks, also called quotes or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase. ...

1. Ve (в) usually loses its frication when not followed by a vowel, and is pronounced as the approximant /w/. In some regional accents it is virtually always pronounced /w/.
2. Ge (ґ) was not officially used in Soviet Ukraine after 1933; missing from some computer character encodings and fonts.
3. Soft sign (ь):
   • The soft sign is not considered a letter, but an orthographic symbol, modifying the preceding letter. It indicates the softening of a consonant, when the consonant is not followed by a softening vowel.
   • The soft sign was moved to new position before letter ю by academician L. M. Ivanenko from Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics in the last year before Ukraine gained independence (1990-1991), to solve problems with sorting of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian alphabets in MS-DOS.
4. The apostrophe indicates that the consonant preceding a soft vowel is not palatalized, when it otherwise would be.

The Ukrainian alphabet is almost phonetic. Two distinct consonant sounds don't have dedicated letters, and are rendered using two letters: дз /ʣ/, and дж /ʤ/. Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. ... Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. ... State motto: Пролетарі всіх країн, єднайтеся! Official language None. ... A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a set of characters (representations of graphemes or grapheme-like units, such as might appear in an alphabet or syllabary for the communication of a natural language) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses, in order...

Also, certain consonants are softened (palatalized) when followed by certain vowels. Any of д, т, з, с, ц, л, н, or дз is softened when followed by a "soft" vowel: я, є, і, ї, й, or ю. See iotation. Palatalization means pronouncing a sound nearer to the hard palate, making it more like a palatal consonant; this is towards the front of the mouth for a velar or uvular consonant, but towards the back of the mouth for a front (e. ... Iotation is a form of palatalisation which occurs in Slavic languages. ...

Letter forms and typography

As in other Cyrillic alphabets, hand-written or cursive letters vary somewhat in form from their block-letter, or typeset upright, counterparts, particularly the letters г, д, и, й, and т. Cursive is a style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single (complicated) stroke. ...

Comparison of some upright and cursive letters. ...

Typographically, the small (lower-case) letters are very similar to small-caps versions of the capitals, although sophisticated faces may have a small-caps font which is different from the lower-case. Typographic work Typography (from the Greek words typos = form and grapho = write) is the art and technique of selecting and arranging type styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing for typeset applications. ... Minuscule, or lower case, is the smaller form (case) of letters (in the Roman alphabet: a, b, c, ...). Originally alphabets were written entirely in majuscule (capital) letters which were spaced between well-defined upper and lower bounds. ... Majuscules or capital letters (in the Roman alphabet: A, B, C, ...) are one type of case in a writing system. ...

A Cyrillic type face (шрифт, šryft) doesn't technically have "roman" or "italic" fonts, since these terms stem from West European history. It has upright (прямий, prjamyj) and cursive (курсивний, kursyvnyj). Roman type has two separate meanings in typography, both of which refer to the fact that the capital letters of a Roman font have an appearance similar to those used for lettering stone in Ancient Rome. ... Bold Bold, see Bold (disambiguation). ...

Quoted text is surrounded by un-spaced guillemets (angle-quotes), or lower and upper quotation marks. Quotation marks, also called quotes or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase. ...

Reference: Bringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4. Bringhurst lives in Vancouver. ... Robert Bringhurst authored three editions of a book entitled The Elements of Typographic Style. ...

Encoding Ukrainian

There are various character encodings for representing Ukrainian with computers. A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a set of characters (representations of graphemes or grapheme-like units, such as might appear in an alphabet or syllabary for the communication of a natural language) with a set of something else, such as numbers or electrical pulses, in order...

ISO 8859-5

ISO 8859-5 encoding is missing the letter ґ. ISO 8859-5, also known as Cyrillic is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ...

KOI8-U

KOI8-U stands for Код обміну інформації 8 бітний — український, "Code for information interchange 8 bit — Ukrainian", analogous to "ASCII". KOI8-U is a Ukrainianized version of KOI8-R, which is suitable for Russian only. KOI8-U is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Ukrainian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. ... There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... KOI8-R is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. ...

Unicode

Ukrainian falls within the Cyrillic (U+0400 to U+04FF) and Cyrillic Supplementary (U+0500 to U+052F) blocks of Unicode. The characters in the range U+0400–U+045F are basically the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. In computing, Unicode provides an international standard which has the goal of providing the means to encode the text of every document people want to store on computers. ... ISO 8859-5, also known as Cyrillic is an 8-bit character encoding, part of the ISO 8859 standard. ...

In the following table, Ukrainian letters have titles indicating their Unicode information and HTML entity. In a visual browser you can hold the mouse pointer over the letter to see this information.

See also

• Writing system
• Alphabet
• Cyrillic alphabet (Кирилиця, Kyrylycja in Ukrainian)
• Glagolitic alphabet (Глаголиця, Hlaholycja in Ukrainian)
• Łatynka
• Romanization of Ukrainian—methods of representing Ukrainian using the Latin alphabet.
• Reforms of Russian orthography

A writing system, also called a script, is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language. ... An alphabet is a complete standardized set of letters — basic written symbols — each of which roughly represents a phoneme of a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it may have been in the past. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ... It has been suggested that Ukrajinśka Łatynka be merged into this article or section. ... Romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian denotes a system for representing the Ukrainian language in Latin letters. ... The Russian language adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, almost certainly during the tenth century and at about the same time as the introduction of Eastern Christianity into the territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs. ...

External links

• The Cyrillic Charset Soup—Roman Czyborra's site contains an exhaustive history of Cyrillic character set encoding schemes (site currently unavailable—archived copy at archive.org).