🗣️ French and Ukrainian: the pair manual

French and Ukrainian are an unusual pair to translate between directly: most translations between them have long gone through English or Russian, and both relays leave marks. Yet the two languages are closer to each other in several ways than either is to English. Both have grammatical gender, tu/vous and ти/ви, reflexive verbs, a perfective/imperfective opposition in the past (French by tense, Ukrainian by aspect), a subjunctive-like clause after verbs of wish and purpose (French que + subjunctive, Ukrainian щоб + past form), negative concord, and a "genitive of negation" in Ukrainian that matches the French de after negation. They differ in articles (French has them, Ukrainian none), in case (Ukrainian has seven), in word order (fixed with dislocation in French, free in Ukrainian), in pronoun placement (French clitics before the verb), and in the gender of most nouns. This manual sets them side by side, both directions. The general rules are in general.md; the one-sided manuals are from-fr.md, into-fr.md, from-uk.md, into-uk.md.

0. Data and the relay problem

Since 2026-11-06 Mova holds two French–Ukrainian corpora, built with tools/parallel and described in README.md: Tatoeba FR–UK (34 310 sentence pairs, CC BY 2.0 FR, ids tatoeba:<fr id>-<uk id>) and Louis Segond 1910 against the Kulish/Puluj Bible of 1905 (28 433 verses, public domain, bible-lsg-kulish:<BOOK>_<c>:<v>). They are quoted in §14 and §15; the examples elsewhere are constructed unless an id is given.

Translate directly, not through English. A relay through English loses exactly what the two languages share: tu/vous ↔ ти/ви (English has one you), the gender of people (English role nouns are neutral), the perfective/imperfective split (English simple past has neither), the subjunctive's purpose clause. A French Je suis contente qu'elle soit venue goes into Ukrainian directly as Я рада, що вона прийшла, with the speaker's and the visitor's gender intact; through English (I'm glad she came) the speaker's gender is lost and must be guessed back. When a relay is unavoidable, the relay translator should annotate gender, formality and aspect.

Mind the Russian relay too. Much French–Ukrainian vocabulary and many constructions came into Ukrainian through Russian, and some are criticised calques of French via Russian: мати місце (avoir lieu, through Russian иметь место; native відбуватися, траплятися), приймати участь (prendre part, through Russian; native брати участь). In current neutral Ukrainian prefer the native forms, which also lead in the historical counts (into-uk.md §4.3).

1. The contrasts at a glance

2. The noun phrase

2.1 Articles and the partitive genitive

French → Ukrainian: the definite and indefinite article's information goes into word order (the new last), demonstratives (ce, cette → цей, ця) or nothing:

• Une femme est entrée dans la boutique. → До крамниці зайшла жінка.
• La femme est entrée dans la boutique. → Жінка зайшла до крамниці.

The partitive has a Ukrainian counterpart in the partitive genitive with perfective verbs and in requests: Donne-moi du pain → Дай хліба (genitive: "some bread") against Дай хліб ("the bread", accusative); Il a bu de l'eau → Він напився води; J'ai acheté du lait → Я купив молока. Where Ukrainian uses the accusative, the meaning is the whole or a specific quantity.

The generic definite (J'aime le café; Les enfants aiment jouer) is Ukrainian zero: Я люблю каву; Діти люблять гратися.

Ukrainian → French: every noun phrase needs a determiner, chosen by given/new, specific/generic, count/mass (into-fr.md §6.1).

2.2 Gender of things

The two languages assign gender to things independently, and Ukrainian has a neuter:

Gender matters to the translator when it carries an image: personifications, allegories, folk songs (la Mort is a woman in French iconography; смерть is too; le Soleil is a king; сонце is neuter, often сонечко). A personified noun whose gender changes may need another noun (a French poem's masculine le vent lover may stay вітер m.; a French feminine la nuit lover may become ніч f.).

2.3 Gender of people

Both languages show the gender of people in nouns and agreement: Je suis contente ↔ Я рада (both feminine); une étudiante ↔ студентка; la directrice ↔ директорка; la ministre ↔ міністерка or міністр with a feminine verb (conservative). French institutional feminitives and Ukrainian feminitives both spread strongly in recent decades (la rapporteure; доповідачка), and a direct translation keeps the person's gender without guessing. The French generic masculine (les étudiants) maps onto the Ukrainian one (студенти); French inclusive forms (les étudiant·es, celles et ceux) onto Ukrainian doubled forms (студенти й студентки) where the house style uses them.

2.4 Possessives

French possessives agree with the thing (sa mère: his or her mother); Ukrainian його/її name the owner's gender, and свій refers to the subject. So French → Ukrainian must decide what French left open: Marie a appelé sa mère → Марія подзвонила своїй мамі (her own); Paul a vu Marie avec sa sœur → Павло бачив Марію з її сестрою or зі своєю сестрою (his own): the context decides, and the Ukrainian is explicit where the French was not. Ukrainian → French: його, її, свій all become son/sa/ses; the owner may need a name or à lui / à elle where ambiguity matters.

2.5 Adjectives

French adjectives mostly follow the noun; Ukrainian ones precede it (un livre rouge → червона книжка), except in poetic and folk inversion (калина червона). French position-dependent meanings (un grand homme / un homme grand; ancien, propre, pauvre) become different Ukrainian words (велика людина / висока людина; колишній / старовинний; власний / чистий; бідолашний / бідний).

3. Pronouns and address

3.1 Tu/vous and ти/ви

The two systems match closely: tu ↔ ти, vous ↔ ви, both for the plural and the polite singular. Differences of use:

• Ukrainian traditionally addresses parents, grandparents and elders in the family with ви; French uses tu. A French child's Maman, tu viens ? is Мамо, ти прийдеш? in current urban Ukrainian and Мамо, ви прийдете? in traditional rural speech: the choice places the family.
• Ukrainian capitalises the polite Ви to one addressee in letters; French does not capitalise vous.
• Both languages have speakers who switch from vous/ви to tu/ти as an event (On peut se tutoyer ? → Може, перейдемо на «ти»?): translate the switch directly.

3.2 Clitics, y and en

French clitics precede the verb (Je le lui ai donné); Ukrainian pronouns are free and tend to stand early but not necessarily before the verb (Я дав його йому / Я йому його дав). Y and en must be resolved: J'y pense → Я про це думаю; J'en ai deux → У мене їх два (two, masculine antecedent) / дві (feminine) — the antecedent's gender and the numeral's case now matter. Ukrainian → French: insert y and en where French needs them (Про це я думаю → J'y pense; Яблук? У мене три → Des pommes ? J'en ai trois).

3.3 Dropped subjects

French subjects are obligatory; Ukrainian ones are often dropped. French → Ukrainian: drop je, tu, nous, vous in most narrative and dialogue (Je pense que je viendrai → Думаю, що прийду). Ukrainian → French: supply every subject; the Ukrainian past ending gives the gender for the French participle (Прийшла пізно → Elle est arrivée tard).

3.4 On

Ukrainian → French, the subjectless forms (Кажуть, Встановлено, generic знаєш) become on.

3.5 The vocative

French has no vocative; Ukrainian uses it in every address: Pierre ! → П'єре!; Monsieur le professeur → Пане професоре; Madame → Пані; Mes amis → Друзі мої; Maman ! → Мамо!. Foreign names take the vocative where their form allows (Жане!, П'єре!, Маріє!); not otherwise (Жан-Люк!).

4. The verb

4.1 Past tenses and aspect: a close mapping

French splits the past by tense into perfective (passé composé, passé simple) and imperfective (imparfait); Ukrainian by aspect. The mapping is closer than either to English:

The French passé simple's written character has no Ukrainian tense of its own; it is kept by the literary style of the Ukrainian narrative. Ukrainian → French: perfective past → passé composé (speech, letters, journalism) or passé simple (written narrative); imperfective past → imparfait, or passé composé for a general-factual statement (Ти читав цю книжку? → Tu as lu ce livre ?).

4.2 The subjunctive and щоб

French que + subjunctive after wish, purpose, necessity and some conjunctions maps onto Ukrainian щоб + past form (the old conditional):

Note the last line: Ukrainian поки не ("until") contains a не that is not a negation, like the French expletive ne. Translators who negate either reverse the sense.

4.3 Conditionals

Ukrainian has one conditional (би + past form) for present and past counterfactuals; French distinguishes them. Ukrainian → French, choose by context.

4.4 Reflexive verbs

Both languages have reflexive verbs, often the same ones: se laver ↔ митися, se lever ↔ вставати (not reflexive in Ukrainian!), se souvenir ↔ пам'ятати (not reflexive), s'asseoir ↔ сідати (not reflexive), se moquer de ↔ глузувати з; and the other way: сміятися ↔ rire (not reflexive), боятися ↔ avoir peur, вчитися ↔ apprendre. French pronominal passive (Ce vin se boit frais) ↔ Ukrainian -ся passive (Це вино п'ється охолодженим, possible, or Це вино п'ють охолодженим).

4.5 Verbs of motion

Ukrainian distinguishes determinate and indeterminate motion (іти/ходити, їхати/їздити, летіти/літати) and walking from riding (іти / їхати); French aller covers all. Je vais à Lyon demain → Завтра я їду до Ліона (by vehicle); Je vais à l'école (habit) → Я ходжу до школи; (now) → Я йду до школи. French chassé-croisé constructions (traverser à la nage) become Ukrainian prefixed manner verbs (перепливти): Il traversa la rivière à la nage → Він переплив річку; Elle est sortie en courant → Вона вибігла.

4.6 Experiencers and possession

French avoir constructions and Ukrainian dative constructions:

5. Negation

The two systems match closely:

6. Word order and information structure

French clefts and dislocations correspond to Ukrainian order and particles:

Ukrainian → French: a Ukrainian sentence with the new subject last often becomes a French impersonal (il y a, il est arrivé) or a sentence with an indefinite article (Une lettre est arrivée); object-first order becomes dislocation (Ce livre, je l'ai lu) or a passive.

7. The lexicon

7.1 French words in Ukrainian

Ukrainian has many French borrowings, most of them through Russian or Polish in the 18th–19th centuries: пляж (plage), шофер (chauffeur), бюро (bureau), фойє (foyer), жалюзі (jalousie), тротуар (trottoir), пальто (paletot), манто, кашне (cache-nez), кафе, ресторан, меню, бульйон, десерт, майонез, парфуми (parfum), макіяж, шарм, етикет, кар'єра, режисер (régisseur), афіша (affiche), гараж, шасі, дебют, партнер. Most are true friends in their core sense; some have shifted.

7.2 False friends

7.3 Anglicisms in both, and their Ukrainian–French equivalents

French and Ukrainian borrow many of the same English words, and translation between them should not route a borrowing through English blindly: French le week-end ↔ Ukrainian вихідні (neutral) or вікенд (colloquial); French le défi ↔ виклик; French le marketing ↔ маркетинг; French courriel/e-mail ↔ електронна пошта, імейл (colloquial). Each is judged in the target by its own usage (into-fr.md §4.2, into-uk.md §4).

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 French and Ukrainian, not word-for-word dialect equivalents.

Surzhyk ↔ French. Ukrainian → French: a surzhyk-speaking character is rendered in a non-local colloquial French (dropped ne, ça, popular vocabulary, a few forms readers hear as popular, such as si j'aurais su or malgré que), without a regional accent (no Marseille, no Québec), unless the mixing itself is the point (from-uk.md §3.5). French → Ukrainian: a character speaking français populaire (Si j'aurais su, j'aurais pas venu) may become colloquial Ukrainian with a few surzhyk items if the social signal matches, or colloquial standard Ukrainian with non-standard grammar of its own if surzhyk would import a Ukrainian–Russian history the character does not have (into-uk.md §3.6). Constructed:

J'sais pas, moi, c'est pas mes oignons. ✓ Та я хтозна, то не моє діло. (colloquial standard, діло colloquial) ✓ Та я шо, знаю? То не моє дєло. (with surzhyk дєло: a comic small-town voice) ✗ Я не знаю, це не мої цибулі. (literal idiom, normalised register)

9. Idioms and proverbs

10. Culture-bound items

• Religion: l'Éternel (Louis Segond's divine name) and le Seigneur ↔ Господь; la Toussaint ↔ День усіх святих; Noël ↔ Різдво; the Ukrainian Свят-вечір, кутя, коляда, щедрівка → French la veillée de Noël, la koutia (gloss), le chant de Noël, le chant du Nouvel An (Щедрик is a chant de Nouvel An, not a chant de Noël).
• School: le collège, le lycée, le bac ↔ середня школа, старша школа, НМТ (a different system: keep and explain).
• Administration: la mairie ↔ мерія, міська рада; le préfet ↔ префект (keep, explain); l'oblast ↔ область (French texts use l'oblast or la région).
• Food: borchtch (French spelling of борщ), varenyky; le croissant, la baguette, le pot-au-feu ↔ круасан, багет, потофе (gloss).

11. Names, numbers, dates, typography

11.1 French names in Ukrainian

By the 2019 orthography (ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019): final silent letters are not written (Дюма, Гюго, Рено); stress is final; ll, ill after vowels and at the end → й (макіяж, Війон, Шантії), traditionally -аль, -іль in some names (Версаль, Марсель) (§ 125); eu, œ → е, after [j] → є (Пастер, Рішельє) (§ 132); ou → у (Лувр, Тулуза); u [y] → ю (Гюго, Мюссе); gn → нь (Коньяк, Шампань); nasal vowels → vowel + н (Ліон = Lyon, Дантон, Сен-Жермен). The apostrophe separates j-sounds: П'єр, Мольєр (after л no apostrophe). Decline names that fit Ukrainian declension (Жан → Жана, Гюго not declined).

11.2 Ukrainian names in French

French has two traditions: the official romanisation of Ukraine (Volodymyr Zelensky, Kharkiv, Odesa) and the older French transcription (Chevtchenko for Шевченко, Khmelnytsky, Tchernihiv, Jytomyr, with ch for ш, tch for ч, j for ж, ou for у). Current French media use the official forms for places (Kyiv increasingly alongside Kiev; Kharkiv; Odessa still common) and mixed forms for persons. Follow the house style; for living persons, their own Latin spelling.

11.3 Numbers, dates, typography

The commonest typographic error between the two: carrying the French spaces before ? ! : ; and inside « » into Ukrainian, or leaving them out of French.

12. Songs

French and Ukrainian song share a fondness for diminutives (ma p'tite, la maisonnette ↔ хатинка, серденько), apostrophes in address (Ô ma belle ↔ Ой ти, дівчино) and inverted epithets. They differ in prosody: French counts the sung mute e and stresses the group's end; Ukrainian has free lexical stress and no mute e. A singable translation recounts syllables and moves stresses.

Constructed examples (folk-style lines, not from any song):

Folk songs with each other's motifs. Both traditions have the guelder rose and the nightingale (la viorne, l'obier ↔ калина; le rossignol ↔ соловей), the well, the young soldier leaving: keep the epithets fixed (червона калина → l'obier rouge), and keep the nature–human parallelism that opens a Ukrainian folk stanza, even where French song would not use it. Au clair de la lune (public domain) shows French song's feminine moon; a Ukrainian singable version must make the moon masculine (місяць) or replace it (при місячнім світлі).

Surzhyk and popular song. A Ukrainian pop song in surzhyk goes into French as popular, comic, colloquial French with elisions and slang, not as standard French and not as a regional dialect; a French chanson réaliste in Parisian popular speech goes into Ukrainian as colloquial urban Ukrainian, with surzhyk only if the persona's social signal matches (§8).

13. Quality checks for French–Ukrainian

French → Ukrainian

1. Determiners' information moved into order, demonstratives or the partitive genitive.
2. Gender of things re-assigned; personifications checked.
3. Possessives: the owner decided (його, її, свій).
4. Tu/vous → ти/ви, with the family usage decided.
5. Tense → aspect; subjunctive → щоб + past or indicative after що.
6. On, y, en resolved; subjects dropped where Ukrainian drops them.
7. Vocative in address.
8. Russian-relay calques avoided in neutral prose (мати місце, приймати участь).
9. False friends (journal, figure, régime, serviette, cadre).
10. French spaces removed; « » without spaces; orthography 2019 for French names.

Ukrainian → French

1. Determiners supplied; partitive for partitive genitives.
2. Subjects supplied with the gender the verb gives; participles agree.
3. Aspect → tense; general-factual imperfective → passé composé.
4. щоб + past → subjunctive; якби → si + imparfait / plus-que-parfait by context.
5. y and en inserted where French needs them.
6. Order's information → clefts, dislocation, impersonals.
7. Particles and diminutives rendered by attitude.
8. Surzhyk and dialect handled by a stated decision.
9. French typography: spaces, « », lowercase.

14. Corpus evidence: French–Ukrainian Tatoeba

Tatoeba FR–UK (pairs.tsv, 34 310 pairs, CC BY 2.0 FR, authors in each row) is small, but it is a direct pair: no English in between. The French sentences below have the lower ids and were written first, unless noted. Many Ukrainian versions were made by a few contributors, so the evidence shows their choices, not the whole language's.

14.1 Shared categories that map directly

14.2 Where the two differ

15. The Bible: Louis Segond and Kulish/Puluj

Two translations of the same Hebrew and Greek, both public domain (pairs-lsg-kulish.tsv, 28 433 verses), give the archaic deltas of both languages side by side:

A translator of a French religious text into Ukrainian (or the reverse) uses the target tradition's fixed forms: l'Éternel / le Seigneur ↔ Господь; Notre Père ↔ Отче наш; la charité ↔ любов; Heureux ↔ Блаженні.

16. Terminology by domain

17. How Mova handles it

Today. Nothing in this pair is implemented. Mova reads French through its English parser after tag mapping (LAS 87.00 own tags on UD French GSD dev, 2026-10-22) and does not read Ukrainian; the French–Ukrainian corpora of §0 are its first data for this pair. tools/translate links languages through a language-free meta-world, and its design is what a direct French–Ukrainian link would use: each language read into the meta-world by its own reader, written out by the other's standard encoder and an author delta. Translating through the meta-world rather than through English is Mova's form of §0's advice: the meta-world would need to keep gender, formality and aspect as features (--feats on already carries pronoun person and number as an option), or they would be lost as in an English relay.

Planned and being built. The French and Ukrainian Nightingales 🐦 (tools/nightingale, being built; one per language, under the Eel, each with its own Sol consultant, building naturalness models from that language's Wikipedia on the CPU) would judge each target side. The Eel's rounds tr-fr-uk and tr-uk-fr (being built) would start from the Tatoeba FR–UK pairs and the Segond–Kulish verses of §0.

Where Mova stops. No French–Ukrainian translation or measurement of translation quality; the corpora are small (Tatoeba) or of one genre and period (the Bibles), and their direction of translation is unknown.

Sources

(ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019) (§§ 125, 132, 164 and feminitives § 32.4); (smerechynskyi-1932); the French manual; the one-sided manuals and their sources. Au clair de la lune: traditional, public domain.

The Elamur team

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/translation/pairs/fr-uk/