Those characters are not completely identical for every language, in fact every language has its own Cyrillic alphabet.

Speaking about Cyrillic, is very popular to hear this word: “transliteration”

In our case, the transliteration is a way for to “convert” the Cyrillic letters in Latin ones.
This procedure is made following a specific transliteration system which vary from language to language.

Now lets see more in detail about our two languages:

Ukrainian and Russian

The Russian and Ukrainian alphabets are very similar but not identical; there are several characters, 5 in Ukrainian and 4 in Russian which are not shared by these two languages:

Ґ, І, Ї, Є, ‘ are Ukrainian and not present in the Russian alphabet.
Ы, Э, Ё, Ъ are Russian and don’t exist in Ukrainian.

And even if many other letters are identical, they may have a different pronunciation:

In both alphabet is present the letter “И” but with a different sound.

the Russian letter “И” is the equivalent of the Ukrainian letter “І”.
the Ukrainian letter “И” is the equivalent of the Russian letter “Ы”.

In fact the letter “И” in Russian is transliterated as the Latin letter “I” and in Ukrainian as “Y”.

One more point is the differences between transliteration systems:

It is possible to see the Russian letter “Я” transliterated as “Ya” or “Ja”, the same happen with many other letters, the reason is the multiplicity of transliteration systems.

With the Ukrainian language can happen the same but there is a difference, exist an Official transliteration system, adopted by the Ukrainian Legal Terminology Commission, which should be the standard for the Ukrainian language.

In the post about the Ukrainian Alphabet, and in general in all posts of our Ukrainian phrasebook, we used exactly that standard.

Notes

For to know more about Russian transliteration systems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian

Parts of the Day

Day in Ukrainian is День Den’, plural Дні Dni.

Days of the week

Week is Тиждень Tyzhden, plural Тижні Tyzhni

Months of the Year

Month in Ukrainian is Місяць Misiats‘, plural Місяці Misiatsi

Years

Year in Ukrainian is Рік Rik, plural Роки Roky

1970 – Одна тисяча дев’ятсот сімедисятий рік
Odna tysiacha deviatsot simedyciatyi rik

1984 – Одна тисяча дев’ятсот вісiмдесят четвертий рік
Odna tysiacha deviatsot visimdesiat chetvertyi rik

2008 – Дві тисячі восьмий рік Dvi tysiachi vos’myi rik.

2009 – Дві тисячі дев’ятий рік Dvi tysiachi deviatyi rik

Seasons

Season in Ukrainian is Пора року Pora roku, plural Пори року Pory roku.

Notes:
m= male, f= female, n= neutral

- Ucrainian
- Russian

Russian is well know almost everywhere (due to the Soviet times) and is the most widely spoken language in the Eastern side of Ukraine and all along the Crimean peninsula.

In the Western part of the country the first language is Ukrainian.

This show quite clearly the political division of the country:
East pro Russia and West pro Europe, USA…

For all this reasons and others, you may look a bit odd to some people if you talk Ukrainian for es. in Donetsk or Luhansk… and the same if you speak Russian in L’viv. Can also happen they will not understand you or just pretend not to hear.

It is also quite common to hear people speak Russian using in the same time different Ukrainian words, or the opposite.

Anyway, until now, in Ukraine there is just ONE official language:

This means every official document or activity is in Ukrainian.

For this reason is important to know at least some word of this language because, even if it is very similar to the Russian language, many things are totally different.

ex.
Cat in Ukrainian is KIT in Russian the same word means Whale.

So we decided to publish several new posts in future about the Ukrainian language; in few words a very short phrasebook:)

If you want us to write about a particular topic, fell free to write us (post a comment), if we can, we will be happy to help you.

10 Vowels:

А, Е, Є, И, І, ї, О, У, Ю, Я.

22 Consonants:

Б, В, Г, Ґ, Д, Ж, З, Й, К, Л, М, Н, П, Р, С, Т, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ.

Soft sign: Ь
Hard sign: ‘

* At the beginning of the word: Ye, Yi, Y, Yu, Ya
in the other situations: ie, i, i, iu, ia.

For the transliteration we used the Official transliteration system adopted by the Ukrainian Legal Terminology Commission. http://www.rada.gov.ua/translit.htm

Transliterators

For to save time, you can use our free transliterators

Russian transliterator with virtual keyboard
UKR:)landia transliterator 4.1 Russian
Ukrainian transliterator with virtual keyboard
UKR:)landia transliterator 4.1 Ukrainian