A familiar-looking beginning
Meet a, o, em, te, ka and practise telling them apart.
One letter, two cases
Ukrainian uses 33 Cyrillic letters, read from left to right. Capitals start sentences and names. These lessons use upright print: handwriting and italics can look different. A letter name is a label; the sound cue tells you how to read it. The soft sign is a letter but has no sound of its own.
a
А а makes a, approximately the vowel in father. The capital resembles Latin A.
а
a
o
О о makes a single rounded o. Avoid adding the glide at the end of English go.
о
o
em
М м makes m. Both cases have a central dip; lowercase м is not written like printed Latin m.
м
em
te
Т т makes t. These lessons use upright print; cursive and italic т can resemble Latin m.
т
te
ka
К к makes k. It looks familiar, but remember that Cyrillic С с is s, not k.
к
ka