4 The Ukrainian alphabet

The Ukrainian alphabet consists of 33 letters and uses the Cyrillic script. Cyrillic forms the basis of Slavonic languages, such as Ukrainian, Belarusian and Russian, as well as other languages spoken in Central, North and East Asia.

If you don’t have enough time to learn the alphabet now, don’t worry: we shall provide English transliteration throughout the course. However, it is not that hard to learn this alphabet, and when you learn it, you will be able to read other Cyrillic-based languages like Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Russian and Belarusian.

View from a learner

Figure 6

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Image of a speech bubble with the following text: Hi, my name is Caroline and I am learning Ukrainian. To begin with, I didn’t plan to learn the alphabet, but I have found that it helps me to remember words, if I understand how the language is put together. I enjoy puzzling out what the letters mean. It’s like a game.

Figure 6