4.2 Softening of consonants
In Ukrainian, consonants are ‘hard’ or ‘soft’. ‘Hardness’ or ‘softness’ is determined by the letter which goes after the consonant. Consonants are ‘hard’ before vowels а, о, у, е and и.They become ‘soft’ before vowels і, я, ю, є and before ь (soft sign). Soft sign does not represent any sound, and its function is just to soften of the previous consonant.
Audio 34
Audio 34 transcript: read, listen and repeat.
| На – ня | н– нь | но – ньо | не – нє | ну – ню | ни – ні |
| са – ся | с – сь | со – сьо | се – сє | су – сю | си – сі |
| ра – ря | р – рь | ро – рьо | ре – рє | ру – рю | ри – рі |
| та – тя | т – ть | то – тьо | те – тє | ту – тю | ти – ті |
OpenLearn - Introduction to Ukrainian language and culture
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.