Ukraine

[Dr. Goodword]

• Ukraine •

Pronunciation: yu-krayn • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, proper

Meaning: The name of the Slavic nation between Poland and Russia.

Notes: In the late 1990s the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign affairs initiated a campaign called "Correct UA", a branch of which, called KyivNotKiev, set out to identify Ukraine to the world as a sovereign nation after achieving its independence in 1991. The "the" in front of Ukraine implied to the Ukrainian ministry that it was still a territory, so should be removed. The adjective is Ukrainian and it may be used as a noun referring to the indigenous population of Ukraine.



In Play: English had relied on the transliterations of the Russian words, like Kiev, Lvov and Kharkov. KyivNotKiev also attempted to change these spellings in the lingua franca to the Ukrainian correlates, Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv. By 2019 the campaign had succeeded in most if not all its objectives.

Word History: Defiant serfs fleeing the Russian feudal system in the 16th century headed to the outer limits of Muscovy to escape the reach of the grand prince of Moscow. Ukraine came from the Old Russian phrase u kraju "at the border, edge". The Muscovite grand prince at that time had little influence in those sparsely populated distant lands. As the number of Cossack bands increased the region assumed the name Ukraina "land at the edge". Kraj probably came from a PIE word krei-/kroi- "to cut (off), end", the progeny of which we see in Lithuanian krastas and Latvian krasts "edge, bank, shore", Greek krino "I separate, distinguish", Russian kroit' "to cut (out, off)", Irish and Scottish crioch "end(ing), finale".

[Philip Hudson]

I remember when Ukraine was The Ukraine. Canadian Labrador was once The Labrador. I have Ukrainian friends and am praying for those who are suffering in that lovely land.

[bnjtokyo]

Why "The Netherlands," "The Vatican," "The Philippines" and of course "The United States"?

[bbeeton]

What we really need is a pronunciation guide for "Kyiv".

Does it have one or two syllables? (I suspect two.) Seeing the spelling in Cyrillic, I can get closer, but I know Ukrainian phonology is different from Russian, and apparently not completely covered by IPA. In any event, not an easy pronunciation for a native English speaker of any variety. A conundrum.

[Debbymoge]

Barbara, judging only by the "new" pronunciation I hear from both BBC and NPR, it seems to be one syllable.

[Slava]

Why "The Netherlands," "The Vatican," "The Philippines" and of course "The United States"?

There is also The Gambia, as the country most often prints on its stamps. It is named after the Gambia river, so The could refer to the region, but as I say, they call the country The Gambia.

[tkowal]

You can listen to the Ukrainian pronunciation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uk-% ... %D0%B2.ogg.

Most Ukrainian towns have names in several languages. A nice example is the city of Lviv which throughout its history belonged to many different political entities: Lviv in Ukrainian, Lvov in Russian, Lwów in Polish, Lemberg in German, Leopolis in Latin, and more!

[Slava]

Thanks for this. I wish news sites did this on their own pages. What good does it do me to read about someone whose name is a mystery to me? Some sites have started using native diacritical marks, but without knowing what they mean in that particular language, it's not helpful, at all, at all. Take a gander at Turkish, for one example.

[bbeeton]

Thanks, tkowal, for the pronunciation link. It sounds like a diphthong, not separate syllables. But the vowels on which the diphthong is based are very non-English. Not Russian either. Very difficult for me, at least, to pronounce correctly (although I can recognize the vocal positioning), so I understand why most news correspondents reduce it to something that rhymes with "heave". Maybe someday I can get a lesson from a native of Kyiv.

[George Kovac]

I lived and worked in Ukraine in 1992, as the Soviet Union was expiring. The Ukrainians I met were optimistic and eager to become ordinary Europeans. They were adamant to free themselves from Russia’s domination. I will add a subsequent post here about those issues and how language plays into that, which I hope will add an important gloss to Dr Goodword’s word history.

For now, I will limit myself to the more mundane pronunciation issues, as I was taught by the Kievians I met. Yes, Kyiv does not rhyme with heave or leave. It is only one syllable. Instead of a simple long e pronunciation, you have to enunciate a y sound (akin to, but not exactly like the “soft sound” symbol in Russian and Ukrainian that adjusts the sound of the preceding consonant). With practice, I mastered it. Ukrainians were keen to have foreigners learn the proper pronunciation of Kyiv and to drop the definite article before Ukraine to signal to the world that they were not Russians.

I found some Ukrainian words difficult to master, and endured good natured teasing from my local friends. I accused them of cheating by not using a sufficient number of vowels. They explained that the real problem was that Westerners did not have a sufficient number of consonants. I failed to master the proper pronunciation of “Dneiper”, the river which flows through Kyiv. I insisted the word was three or at least two and a half syllables. Yet the local pronunciation is one smooth syllable.

[misterdoe]

Thanks for this. I wish news sites did this on their own pages. What good does it do me to read about someone whose name is a mystery to me? Some sites have started using native diacritical marks, but without knowing what they mean in that particular language, it's not helpful, at all, at all. Take a gander at Turkish, for one example.

Take a ğander at Türkish? I'd rather nöt. Like you said, it's triçky.

[Debbymoge]

Barbara, I did another search for pronunciations on Duckduckgo.
I still can't pronounce it, but there is one of the group that came up that is a native of Ukraine who is a language teacher.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+to+pronou ... &ia=videos

Hope you can get there from this.
Debby

[Slava]

I find it intriguing that there are many videos of how to pronounce Kyiv, but nowhere near them does one find any links to how to pronounce the name of the country itself. You have to look it up separately. Odd, to me.

[bbeeton]

Slava, For one who can read the Cyrillic alphabet, the pronunciation of Україна is pretty straightforward. (I strongly suspect that you can, but many readers of this forum probably can't.) The first letter is pronounced "oo", not "you".

I've studied only Russian, and the various Ukrainian "i"s are very different from the Russian ones. Київ (Kyiv) is a phonological trap. Ukrainian и is similar to Russian ы although pronounced with the tongue a bit lower. The Russian и is more closely matched by the Ukrainian ї. All very "foreign" to a native U.S. English speaker.

[Slava]

I was correct in my assumption that it is 4 syllables. I wasn't quite sure what to do with the double-dotted i, as it's not standard Cyrillic.