🗣️ English and Ukrainian: the pair manual

English and Ukrainian are far apart in structure: English is analytic, with fixed order, articles, auxiliaries and almost no endings; Ukrainian is synthetic, with seven cases, aspect on every verb, gender on nouns, adjectives and the past, free word order that carries information, and no articles. They are close in modern vocabulary: Ukrainian has taken many English words since the 1990s, and English has taken a few Ukrainian ones (borscht, hryvnia, vyshyvanka). This manual sets them side by side, both directions, construction by construction. The general rules are in general.md; the one-sided manuals are from-en.md, into-en.md, from-uk.md and into-uk.md.

0. Data

Since 2026-11-06 Mova holds two English–Ukrainian corpora, built with tools/parallel and described in README.md: Tatoeba EN–UK (217 646 sentence pairs, CC BY 2.0 FR, ids tatoeba:<en id>-<uk id>, authors in each row) and the Kulish/Puluj Bible of 1905 (public domain) verse-aligned to the WEB (29 655 verses, bible-web-kulish:<BOOK>_<c>:<v>) and the KJV (29 709, bible-kjv-kulish:…). They are quoted in §14 and §15; the examples in the other sections are constructed unless an id is given. The Ohienko Bible (1962) is not used: its translator died in 1972, so it is protected until 2042. Open English–Ukrainian resources described in the library are the OPUS collections used in machine translation research (for example the cleaned OPUS subsets of (maksymenko-2023-controllability-english-ukrainian-machine-translation)), the 1 000 OPUS sentence pairs with professional ratings of (chaplynskyi-2026-professional-translators-versus-quality-estimation), the idiom pairs of SimIdioms (English side CC BY-SA, Ukrainian side academic use only) (petruniv-2026-simidioms-corpus-benchmark-ukrainian-idiom), and an English–Ukrainian folktale corpus (lassen-2022-ukrainian-english-folktale-corpus-parallel). Their licences decide what can be quoted; none is quoted here.

1. The contrasts at a glance

2. The noun phrase

2.1 Definiteness without articles

English → Ukrainian, the article's information goes into:

1. Word order, the main means: the new last, the given first.
   • A woman entered the shop. → До крамниці зайшла жінка.
   • The woman entered the shop. → Жінка зайшла до крамниці.
2. Demonstratives where English the points back strongly: the book I told you about → та книжка, про яку я тобі казав.
3. «один» for a specific indefinite: A friend of mine called → Мені подзвонив один мій друг / один знайомий.
4. Nothing, most often.

Ukrainian → English, the translator recovers definiteness from the same signals in reverse (into-en.md §6.1). The commonest error of a Ukrainian translator into English is the missing or wrong article; the commonest of an English translator into Ukrainian is over-use of цей and той for every the.

2.2 Possessives and свій

English marks owners everywhere; Ukrainian only where needed, and uses the reflexive свій for the subject's own:

Ukrainian → English: Він узяв свою книжку → He took his book; Він узяв його книжку → He took his (another man's) book; English his is ambiguous where Ukrainian is not, and a translator may need his own or a name.

2.3 Noun chains

English noun stacks become Ukrainian genitive chains, prepositional phrases or relational adjectives: road safety awareness campaign → кампанія з підвищення обізнаності щодо безпеки дорожнього руху; child protection law → закон про охорону дитинства; data protection officer → відповідальний за захист персональних даних. Genitive chains of more than three nouns are heavy (✗ звіт комісії з питань контролю якості освіти регіону); restructure.

2.4 Gender of role nouns

English role nouns are gender-free; Ukrainian ones are masculine or feminine (учитель/учителька, лікар/лікарка, директор/директорка, міністр/міністерка, письменник/письменниця, кравець/кравчиня), formed by the suffixes of § 32.4 of the 2019 orthography (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019). English → Ukrainian: if the text shows the person's gender, use the matching noun (current usage and most house styles use the feminitive); if not, the masculine generic or a doubled form by house style. Ukrainian → English: a feminitive tells that the person is a woman; carry it with she where the role noun is neutral (Директорка сказала → The director said she … or The headmistress said by context).

3. Pronouns and address

3.1 Dropped subjects

Ukrainian drops subject pronouns where the verb ending gives the person: Прийшов, побачив, переміг ("I came, I saw, I conquered"). English → Ukrainian, drop I, we, you in most narrative and dialogue, keep them for contrast or emphasis (Я піду, а ти лишайся). Third-person pronouns are kept more often, especially at a change of subject. Ukrainian → English: supply every subject, with the gender the past verb gives (Прийшла пізно → She came late).

3.2 You: ти or ви

3.3 The vocative and address

English → Ukrainian, use the vocative: John! → Джоне!; Mr Smith → пане Сміте; Professor → пане професоре / пані професорко; Dear friends → Дорогі друзі; Mum! → Мамо!. Ukrainian → English: render the vocative by the name; render пане / пані + first name (a polite and warm Ukrainian form) by Mr / Ms + surname in formal English or by the first name in friendly contexts; keep the name + patronymic (Іване Петровичу) as Mr Petrenko or, in fiction, as it is.

4. The verb

4.1 Tense and aspect map

Ukrainian → English, the general-factual imperfective (Ти читав «Кобзаря»?) is an English present perfect (Have you read the Kobzar?), not a past progressive.

4.2 Reported speech

English back-shifts; Ukrainian does not: She said she was tired → Вона сказала, що втомилася / що вона втомлена; He said he would come → Він сказав, що прийде. Ukrainian → English, back-shift by English rules.

4.3 Modals

4.4 Argument structure: experiencers and possession

4.5 Motion verbs

Ukrainian, like English, puts the manner in the verb and the path in a prefix: He swam across the river → Він переплив річку; She ran out of the room → Вона вибігла з кімнати; They flew in → Вони прилетіли. The French chassé-croisé (pairs/en-fr.md §4.5) is not needed. Ukrainian also distinguishes determinate and indeterminate motion verbs (іти / ходити, їхати / їздити, нести / носити): I'm going to school (now) → Я йду до школи; I go to school (habit) → Я ходжу до школи. And it distinguishes walking from riding: go to Kyiv is поїхати до Києва (by vehicle), never ✗ піти до Києва unless on foot.

5. Voice

English → Ukrainian:

The passive with an agent in the instrumental (✗ Закон був ухвалений парламентом) is grammatical, frequent in official texts and heavy; the purist tradition analysed it as foreign to the language (smerechynskyi-1932). In neutral prose, prefer the active; in official texts, follow the house style. Ukrainian → English: the -но/-то form becomes an English passive (Вікно розбито → The window has been broken) or an active with a vague subject; the third person plural (Кажуть …) becomes They say, People say, It is said.

6. The clause

6.1 Word order and information

6.2 Negation

Ukrainian has negative concord: Nobody said anything → Ніхто нічого не сказав; I never go anywhere → Я ніколи нікуди не ходжу. The genitive of negation (У мене немає часу; Я не бачив жодної машини) is standard.

6.3 Questions and tags

English auxiliary questions become intonation questions with чи in writing or none in speech: Do you speak English? → Ви розмовляєте англійською? / Чи розмовляєте ви англійською? (formal). Tags become так?, правда?, хіба ні?, еге ж?, чи не так? (formal): It's cold, isn't it? → Холодно, правда?

6.4 There is and the copula

There is a problem → Є проблема; There are many reasons → Причин багато; There's no time → Немає часу. The present copula is zero: She is a doctor → Вона лікарка; є is used in definitions and formal style (Київ є столицею України) and overused in translations from English.

6.5 Particles and English intonation

English carries attitude by stress and by a few words (do, really, after all, you know); Ukrainian by particles. English → Ukrainian dialogue: add же, ж, адже, хіба, таки, ну, от where a Ukrainian speaker would (I DID tell you! → Я ж тобі казав!; He came after all → Таки прийшов). Ukrainian → English: render them by English stress words, do-emphasis, tags, or leave them to tone.

7. The lexicon

7.1 False friends

7.2 Anglicisms in Ukrainian: usage, not dogma

English → Ukrainian is where anglicisms enter. Each is judged by register usage and house style (into-uk.md §4):

7.3 English words that look Ukrainian, and Ukrainian words in English

Ukrainian words in English are realia, usually kept with a gloss: borscht (борщ), varenyky, vyshyvanka, hryvnia, hromada, Rada, Maidan, banduras, pysanky. Spell them by the official romanisation or by established English spelling (borscht is established; borshch is the romanisation).

8. Register

Every non-standard voice in this pair is handled as the standard plus a grammar delta and a lexicon delta (general manual §3.7): read the source's deltas and what each is for, translate through the standard, then apply the target's own deltas that serve the same purpose at a similar density. The tables below are examples of deltas with matching functions in English and Ukrainian, not word-for-word dialect equivalents.

8.1 Colloquial

8.2 Slang, generations and the war

Ukrainian slang of the 2020s borrows from English (крінж, краш, вайб, рофл, лол), from gaming and from the army. Army slang has entered general speech since 2022 (арта, бавовна "explosion", двохсотий "killed", трьохсотий "wounded", мавік "drone", ЗСУ, побратим). English → Ukrainian for news and official texts: neutral terms (загиблий, поранений, вибух); for soldiers' dialogue in fiction: the slang. Ukrainian → English: the army slang has English counterparts in military slang (KIA, WIA, arty, drone), and the general reader may need a gloss.

8.3 Surzhyk between English and Ukrainian

Ukrainian → English. A surzhyk-speaking character (from-uk.md §3.5) is rendered in English by non-standard but non-local colloquial English: a few non-standard grammatical forms (we was, I says), colloquial words, dropped -g, at a density that marks without placing the character in a known English dialect. Constructed example:

Ну шо, як діла? Канєшно, приїду, тіки шас не можу, ладно? ✓ “So, how's things? Sure I'll come, just can't right now, all right?” ✗ “So, 'ow's fings? Course I'll come, guv, can't right now, innit?” (Cockney: a London character) ✗ “So, how are things? Of course I will come, but I cannot right now, is that all right?” (normalised: the character's voice is gone)

When the mixing itself is the point (a joke about a character who switches; a comic song persona), the English can keep a few transliterated items whose meaning is clear (“Shcho? Normal'no!”) or add a note; it should not substitute a mixed English of another community.

English → Ukrainian. Surzhyk is a candidate for a character whose English speech is non-standard and socially placed in a comparable way (a small-town character, a comic everyman, a parody of pretension), and for comic or pop songs whose persona fits; not for a narrator, a foreigner whose speech has nothing to do with Ukrainian-Russian contact, or a neutral text (into-uk.md §3.6). Constructed example:

“I ain't never been to no city, and I ain't goin' now.” (a rural character, comic) ✓ — Та я в тому городі зроду не був, і шас не поїду. (colloquial Ukrainian with one surzhyk item, шас; город "city" is also a surzhyk-marked word in this sense) ✓ — Та я в тому місті зроду не був і тепер не поїду. (colloquial standard: right if surzhyk would mislead) ✗ — Я ніколи не був у жодному місті, і я не їду зараз. (normalised and calqued)

8.4 Official style

9. Idioms and proverbs

Literal renderings are the commonest machine failure on idioms in this pair; the meaning often survives, the idiom does not (petruniv-2026-simidioms-corpus-benchmark-ukrainian-idiom). Transparent-looking English idioms are calqued most: went out of his way → ✗ вийшов зі свого шляху (grozea-2025); ✓ доклав зусиль, з шкіри пнувся.

10. Culture-bound items

• School and exams: high school / старша школа; GCSEs, A-levels, SAT / НМТ, ЗНО (older): keep and explain, do not equate.
• Holidays and food: Thanksgiving stays День подяки; Свят-вечір is Holy Supper / Christmas Eve; кутя is kutia (a wheat dish of Christmas Eve).
• Institutions: Verkhovna Rada (the Rada), Cabinet of Ministers, oblast (region), raion (district), hromada (community); English county, borough, state into Ukrainian: графство, район or округ, штат.
• Money and measures: hryvnia (UAH, грн); English imperial units are converted only by the brief.
• History and politics: place names in their Ukrainian forms in English (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, Chornobyl or the established Chernobyl for the 1986 disaster by house style); avoid Russian-based forms in current texts unless quoting.

11. Names, numbers, dates, typography

11.1 Romanisation of Ukrainian (official system)

The Ukrainian official romanisation (Cabinet of Ministers resolution of 27 January 2010), which the EU style guide recommends for Ukrainian names (commission-1982):

Examples: Олена → Olena; Юлія → Yuliia; Ярослава → Yaroslava; Згорани → Zghorany; Знам'янка → Znamianka; Святослав → Sviatoslav. A person's own Latin spelling wins (the EU guide notes Yulia, Yuliya, Yuliia and Iuliia in use for one name) (commission-1982).

11.2 English names in Ukrainian

By the 2019 orthography (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019, §§ 121–135): w → в (Вашингтон, Вільсон), traditional у (Уельс); th [θ] → т (Артур, трилер), [ð] → з (Резерфорд); h → г (Гарвард), traditional х (хобі, хокей); [æ] → а (хакер, Чаплін), traditional е (бізнесмен, менеджер); [ə:] → ер (Черчилль, серфінг); g → г, ґ allowed in personal names. Decline the names (Шекспір → Шекспіра; Джон → Джона); feminine foreign surnames ending in a consonant are not declined (з Мері Сміт).

11.3 Numbers, dates, typography

Note the clock trap: Ukrainian пів на третю is 2.30 (half on the way to three), like German halb drei, not 3.30.

12. Songs

From English to Ukrainian. English song grammar (ain't, double negatives, dropped subjects and auxiliaries, me and him, dialect spellings) is the song register; render it by Ukrainian colloquial song grammar: dropped subjects (natural in Ukrainian), short forms (нема, тра, шо), particles, slang, at times surzhyk for a comic or popular persona (§8.3). Ukrainian negative concord is standard, so the English double negative's non-standard mark goes elsewhere. Constructed:

From Ukrainian to English. Folk songs keep fixed epithets (червона калина → the red guelder rose; ясний місяць → the bright moon), parallelism and vocatives (Ой ти, дівчино → Oh, my girl); keep them fixed. Diminutives become English affectionate words, not -ie forms. A singable English version must place English lexical stress on strong beats.

The Щедрик case. The New Year carol Щедрик (folk text, arranged by Mykola Leontovych; public domain) tells of a swallow promising a rich year. Its English version known worldwide, Carol of the Bells (Peter Wilhousky, 1936; in copyright, not quoted), keeps the tune and the four-note figure and replaces the text entirely with bells: a new lyric (general manual §9.1). A singable English translation that keeps the swallow, the master's flock and the rich year is a separate, still open task; a gloss is: Shchedryk, shchedryk, a little shchedrivka; a swallow flew in, began to twitter, calling the master out.

Surzhyk and pop. A popular Ukrainian song sung in surzhyk is translated by its voice: comic, warm, everyday colloquial English, with no attempt to correct it into standard and no foreign dialect (§8.3).

13. Quality checks for English–Ukrainian

English → Ukrainian

1. Aspect decided on every verb; tense mapped by meaning.
2. Subjects and possessives dropped where Ukrainian does not need them; свій for the subject's own.
3. Word order: new last; no цей/той for every the.
4. ти/ви decided; vocative in address; Ви capitalised in letters.
5. Passives restructured; no instrumental agent in neutral prose.
6. Feminitives by the text's information and the house style.
7. Anglicisms judged by usage; calqued idioms caught.
8. Particles in dialogue where a Ukrainian would use them.
9. Case government and numerals.
10. 2019 orthography, « », dash, apostrophe; romanised and Ukrainianised names consistent.

Ukrainian → English

1. Articles supplied.
2. Subjects supplied with the gender the verb gives.
3. Aspect → English tense and lexis; general-factual imperfective → present perfect.
4. Reported speech back-shifted.
5. Order's information kept (indefinite subject, passive, cleft, stress).
6. Particles and diminutives rendered by attitude.
7. Surzhyk and dialect handled by a stated decision.
8. Romanisation by one system; current place names.

14. Corpus evidence, construction by construction

Tatoeba EN–UK (pairs.tsv, 217 646 pairs, CC BY 2.0 FR; authors in each row) keeps several Ukrainian versions of many English sentences. The English sentences below were written first (lower ids). Each row is a real contributor's choice; ✗ marks a rendering we judge wrong.

14.1 Tense and aspect

14.2 Voice and impersonals

14.3 Possession, copula and existence

14.4 Address, politeness and greetings

14.5 Gender, motion and the speaker

14.6 Body parts, possessives, order

14.7 Idioms

15. The Bible in two traditions

The WEB and KJV against the Kulish/Puluj Bible of 1905 (en-uk/bible/, public domain) are not translations of each other, but they show how English and Ukrainian traditions render the same text, and they give the Ukrainian archaic delta (general manual §13.3):

The verse of the Psalm shows the decision of into-uk.md §2.1 at work in 1905: I walk (English present) → ходив (past imperfective, hypothetical with хоч би), I will fear no evil → не боюся (present), a different time frame chosen for the Ukrainian concessive.

16. Terminology by domain

16.1 IT and software

16.2 Law and administration

16.3 Medicine

16.4 Military and war reporting

18. How Mova handles it

Today. Nothing in this pair is implemented. Mova reads English and has no Ukrainian parser, lexicon, morphology or encoder,; the English–Ukrainian corpora of §0 are its first parallel data. tools/translate translates English editions into each other and Hebrew into English; its Hebrew reader is the closest analogue to what a Ukrainian reader would need, since it reads a morphologically rich, article-less language from treebank features (lemma, part of speech, person, number, gender) into the meta-world and, with its grammar plan, adds the English articles, of and possessives that the source expresses by structure (hebrew::grammar_plan). A Ukrainian reader would add articles from word order and discourse, subjects from verb endings, and English tenses from aspect.

Planned and being built.

• The Ukrainian Nightingale 🐦 (tools/nightingale, being built; one per language, under the Eel, with its own Sol consultant, building a naturalness model from the Ukrainian Wikipedia on the CPU) would measure the Ukrainian target: anglicism against native frequencies (§7.2) by domain and period, pronoun and possessive density, verbal-noun chains, order. The English Nightingale would do the same for English targets (article omissions, Ukrainian order).
• The Eel's rounds tr-en-uk and tr-uk-en (being built) would start from the Tatoeba and Bible pairs of §0; larger corpora (OPUS subsets) need their licences checked one by one.

Where Mova stops. Everything above is guidance for translators and the specification of a future reader and encoder.

Sources

(ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019) (§§ 32.4, 121–146, 164); (smerechynskyi-1932) (the passive and the -но/-то form); (commission-1982) (romanisation of Ukrainian); (maksymenko-2023-controllability-english-ukrainian-machine-translation), (chaplynskyi-2026-professional-translators-versus-quality-estimation), (petruniv-2026-simidioms-corpus-benchmark-ukrainian-idiom), (grozea-2025), (lassen-2022-ukrainian-english-folktale-corpus-parallel) (corpus resources and errors); the surzhyk studies cited in from-uk.md. Щедрик: folk text and Leontovych's arrangement, public domain; Carol of the Bells named, not quoted. The Ukrainian romanisation table: Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine resolution No. 55 of 27 January 2010 (an official document).

The Elamur team

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