🗣️ 6. Spelling rules and the 2019 orthography

Ukrainian spelling is codified in one document, Український правопис (Ukrajins'kyj pravopys, 'Ukrainian orthography'). The edition in force was approved by resolution No. 437 of the Cabinet of Ministers of 22 May 2019; it replaced the edition of 1993, itself a corrected reprint of 1990. This chapter describes how that code works: its principles and its "wide" scope (§1), the rules for vowels (§2), consonant alternations and changes (§§3–4), the soft sign, the apostrophe and doubled letters (§5), prefixes and suffixes (§6), words written together, with a hyphen or apart (§7), loanwords and foreign names (§8), the spelling of endings (§9), the earlier orthographies (§10), and what changed in 2019, with the variants the code allows and how usage has followed (§§11–12). §13 says how Mova handles spelling. The letters themselves are in 5. The writing system; punctuation and capitals in 7. Punctuation, capitals, abbreviations and numbers; the euphonic alternations у/в, і/й, з/із/зі in 4. Connected speech.

The Pravopys is cited by paragraph (Pravopys 2019 §n) from the library text (uk-gram-pravopys-2019), which carries the official paragraph numbers and stress marks. Usage figures come from three Leipzig Corpora Collection samples of one million sentences each, ukr_newscrawl_2018, ukr_news_2024 and ukr_wikipedia_2021 (Goldhahn, Eckart & Quasthoff 2012; CC BY), and from UD Ukrainian IU (CC BY-NC-SA, counts only) and ParlaMint 2.18 (CC BY-SA). All counts are of lowercased word tokens, all inflected forms of the stem unless a form is named, made on 2026-11-06. The 2018 news sample predates the 2019 code and the 2024 one follows it by five years, so the pair shows how far a change has been taken up; the samples are drawn from different source mixes, and small numbers (under about 50) show a direction, not a rate.

1. What the Pravopys is and how it decides

1.1 Principles

The code is described by its authors and its critics as mixed. The leading principle is phonemic (often called "phonetic" in Ukrainian tradition): one letter for one phoneme in all its positional variants. Second comes the morphological principle: a morpheme keeps its spelling whatever happens to it in speech (село 'village' with е because of села; зшити 'sew together' with з although pronounced [ʃː]). At the edges stand historical spellings (the щ for /ʃt͡ʃ/, the и/і distinction in loans by tradition) and differentiating ones (мати 'mother' and мати 'have' are not differentiated, but capitals and the stress mark are used to separate meanings, Pravopys §65). Shevelov described the code as combining a phonemic with a morphophonemic principle; Vykhovanets as a phonemic core with phonetic, traditional and differentiating spellings at the periphery (both as summarised by Horodenska 2023). In Ukrainian the phonemic and the morphological principles mostly agree, because the language writes its voiced consonants voiced and does not reduce its vowels as strongly as Russian does.

1.2 The "wide" format

The Pravopys is more than an orthography. Since the draft of 1926 it has included the spelling of endings and therefore much of the inflection, the spelling of proper names and loanwords, punctuation and, in 2019, even rules of word formation such as the feminine suffixes (§6.3). Horodenska 2023 traces this "wide" format to the State Commission of 1925, which set itself the task of normalising the literary language in general; she argues for keeping it, because users look up every question of correctness in the Pravopys, but for removing the word-formation rules. The 2019 text has four parts: the spelling of parts of the word stem (§§1–65), the spelling of endings (§§66–120), the spelling of loanwords and proper names (§§121–154), and punctuation (§§155–168), followed by an index of words with paragraph references.

1.3 How the 2019 code sees the norm

The preface of the 2019 edition, written by the National Commission on Orthography (Українська національна комісія з питань правопису), sets out a view of the norm that is close to the description in this manual's introduction: the language changes, and the orthography "must reflect above all its present state"; the writing practice of educated Ukrainians "makes this or that spelling customary", so that they are co-authors of the code; the practice of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is itself part of the tradition, alongside the 1928 norms that the revision restored; and variation is an organic part of a code — "which of the variants will remain in the past, only the future can tell." The Commission was formed in 2015 from the linguistic institutes of the National Academy of Sciences and from universities in different regions; its draft went to public discussion, was approved by the Presidium of the Academy and the Collegium of the Ministry of Education on 24 October 2018, and was approved by the government on 22 May 2019. A first-instance administrative court in Kyiv annulled the resolution in 2020 and the court of appeal reversed that decision; the 2019 text is in force (the court history is from the library card and has not been checked against the judgments).

Not every linguist shares the Commission's balance. A series of articles from the Institute of the Ukrainian Language in 2023 (Horodenska, Kotsa, Kolibaba, Puriaieva, Sokolova, Yefymenko) reviews the 2019 code section by section, asks for some of its variants to be removed or unified, and in several places argues for restoring more of the 1928 norms ("re-norming", in Horodenska's term, of norms imposed in the Soviet period); others ask for usage to settle first before a form is codified (Puriaieva 2023, on new suffixes). The two currents agree on the method of measuring the tradition and disagree on how much of it to restore. The disagreement is less sharp than it looks, because the state's language policy is itself permissive and descriptive rather than prescriptive: the code admits variants side by side (проєкт / проект in transition, the 1928-style -ости next to -ості, Харкову next to Харкова), proposals to restore older norms enter as further variants, and which form stays is left to writers' practice. A proposal from the Institute and the Commission's preface therefore describe two moves within the same open, usage-led process, not two rival codes. This chapter describes the code as it stands and measures how writers use it.

2. Vowels

2.1 Unstressed е and и

Stressed е and и are clear; unstressed, they are close to each other (02). They are written as under stress in the same morpheme (Pravopys 2019 §1): великий 'big' (велич), клекотіти 'clatter' (клекіт), несу 'I carry' (принесений), шепотіти 'whisper' (шепіт), широкий 'wide' (широко). Where there is no stressed check, the dictionary decides: левада 'meadow', кишеня 'pocket', минулий 'past'.

2.2 Initial і and и

Words begin with і (§2): Іван, іграшка 'toy', ікона 'icon', ім'я 'name', інколи 'sometimes', іржа 'rust', існувати 'exist', іти 'go'. Two words have a variant in и: ірій and ирій 'warm lands where birds fly', ірод and ирод 'cruel person'. И is written at the start of the interjection and particle ич! 'look at that!', of the verb икати 'say и for і' and its noun икання, and of names from Turkic and other languages pronounced so (Кім Чен Ин). This is the trace of a longer debate: the rules of 1921 allowed инший, иноді, иней; the drafts of 1926 and 1928 banned initial и outright; the 1999 draft proposed it before н and р (инший, иноді, иржа, индик); the 2019 code took only the two variants and the interjection (Kotsa 2023). UD IU marks инший as Orth=Alt (6 tokens).

2.3 Alternations of о, е with і

In native roots an о or е in an open syllable alternates with і when the syllable closes (Pravopys 2019 §9): кінь — коня 'horse', ніс — носа 'nose', осінь — осені 'autumn', піч — печі 'stove', віл — вола 'ox', шість — шести 'six'. The alternation is a fact of history (the "new і" of 09) and is lexicalised, with many exceptions: кров 'blood', лоб 'forehead' do not alternate; and some nouns keep о in the closed syllable (рот 'mouth', мох 'moss'). The Pravopys states it for the spelling of each form because the speaker cannot predict it. The genitive plurals воріт 'gates', доріг 'roads', сторін 'sides' show the same alternation.

2.4 е and о after sibilants and й

After ж, ч, ш, щ, дж and й, an old е alternates with о (§10): it is о before a hard consonant and stays е before a soft one or when the syllable has a later е: жовтий 'yellow' (but жевріти 'glow faintly'), чорний 'black' (чернетка 'draft'), шостий 'sixth' (шести), пшоно 'millet', бджола 'bee' (бджілка), вечеря 'supper', щока 'cheek'. In the endings of the instrumental (душею 'soul', ножем 'knife') е stays.

2.5 о and а

Verb pairs of the type гонити — ганяти 'chase', ломити — ламати 'break', допомогти — допомагати 'help', скочити — скакати 'jump' show an old о : а alternation in imperfectives (§11). It is not productive.

3. Consonant alternations

The Pravopys records the consonant alternations because they decide the spelling of inflected and derived forms (§§12–18):

The alternations are of Common Slavic age (the "palatalisations" and the effects of j, see 09); none is productive in new words except, in part, the dative/locative one, which spreads to loans (Африка — в Африці, Мекка — у Мецці). In the third column the alternation is obligatory: forms without it (*ходю for ходжу, *любю for люблю, *ногі for нозі) are errors, not variants.

4. Consonants in contact

4.1 Before -ськ- and -ств-

Before the suffixes -ськ-(ий) and -ств-(о) the final consonant of the base merges with the suffix (§19):

Other consonants simply take the suffix: волинський, селянський. Adjectives from place names have their own list in §153; Yefymenko 2023 points to inconsistencies in that list and proposes a rewording.

4.2 Simplification of clusters

In -ждн-, -здн-, -стн-, -стл- the д or т is dropped in writing as in speech (§28): тиждень — тижня 'week', проїзд — проїзний 'travel (adj.)', честь — чесний, якість — якісний, щастя — щасливий. Kept by tradition: зап'ястний, кістлявий, пестливий, хвастливий, шістнадцять, and in adjectives from foreign nouns in -ст: контрастний, компостний (т written, not pronounced). Likewise к drops in -зкн-, -скн- before -ну- (брязк — брязнути, тріск — тріснути) and л in -слн- (масло — масний 'oily', ремесло — ремісник).

4.3 Doubled letters

A doubled consonant letter has two sources (§§29–30):

1. two morphemes meet: віддати 'give back', беззвучний 'soundless', роззброїти 'disarm' (prefix + root); кінний 'of horses', законний 'lawful', годинник 'clock' (root in н + suffix -н-/-ник); розрісся 'grew' (reflexive -ся after с); письменник 'writer';
2. a long consonant from an old soft consonant + j: in nouns of the neuter type знання 'knowledge', життя 'life', волосся 'hair', гілля 'branches', обличчя 'face', Поділля, and in the instrumental singular of 3rd-declension nouns after a vowel, ніччю 'by night', сіллю 'with salt', розкішшю 'with luxury' (not after a consonant cluster: радістю 'with joy', and not after labials or р: кров'ю, матір'ю); also in a few adjectives with emphatic -енн- (здоровенний 'huge', страшенний 'terrible') and in бездонний, невблаганний, нескінченний.

The genitive plural of the знання nouns loses the doubling where the ending is zero: знань, питань, but обличь 'faces', узбіч 'roadsides' (§89). In loanwords the general rule is no doubling in common nouns (група, клас, комісія, сума, колектив, інтермецо), with a closed traditional list that doubles (ванна, вілла, тонна, мадонна, нетто, брутто, манна, панно, мулла, Аллах) and doubling kept at a prefix boundary when the unprefixed word exists (іммігрант — мігрант, ірраціональний, контрреволюція), and in proper names (Голландія, Міссурі, Мюллер) (§128). A common noun from a proper name drops it: ват (from Ватт), гаус (Гаусс).

5. The soft sign and the apostrophe

The rules are in 05 §§3.2 and 4. Two spelling consequences matter here. First, the soft sign of the nominative stays in all forms, and its absence too: кулька — кульці 'ball', письмо — у письмі; галка — галці, сторінка — сторінці (Pravopys 2019 §27, note to point 3); this is how -льц- (from -льк-) and -лц- (from -лк-) are kept apart. Second, the prefix decides the apostrophe: a prefix ending in a consonant is followed by an apostrophe before я, ю, є, ї (з'явитися 'appear', під'їхати 'drive up', без'ядерний 'nuclear-free'), and by nothing before other vowels (зорієнтувати, зекономити). For a learner from Russian this is the place of ъ.

6. Prefixes and suffixes

6.1 Prefixes

The prefixes з- (with its variants с-, із-, зі-) and the other consonant-final prefixes are written as described in 05 §2: с- only before к, п, т, ф, х (сказати, спитати, стерти, сфотографувати, схопити), з- elsewhere (зшити, зцідити, зробити); із- and зі- where the sound context calls for them (ізнову 'again', зігнути 'bend', зіпсувати 'spoil', зібрати 'gather') (§31). Пре- and при- are distinct: пре- is intensive in adjectives and adverbs (предобрий 'very kind', премудрий) and appears in a few nouns and verbs (презирство, пренатальний), при- means approach or attachment (прибігти 'run up', приморський 'seaside'). For the foreign intensifier архі- 'arch-' the 2019 text allows архі- and, in church terms, архи- (архієпископ and архиєпископ, архімандрит and архимандрит); Puriaieva 2023 argues for архи- throughout as the older form. In the 2024 news sample the church terms are written with архі- 62 times and архи- 5 times; in Wikipedia 733 : 76.

6.2 Suffixes with и and і

Native suffixes are written with и: -ик, -ник, -івник, -льник (братик, лірник, працівник, уболівальник), -ив-(о) for materials and products (вариво 'brew', печиво 'biscuits', паливо 'fuel', морозиво 'ice cream'). Foreign -ик, -ік follow the loanword rule of §8.1: історик, фізик, but академік, механік, хімік (§32). The suffixes -аль, -ень, -ець, -ість, -тель always have the soft sign (коваль, учень, борець, свіжість, вихователь). The 2019 edition no longer lists the agent suffixes -чик, -щик in its rule (Puriaieva 2023 notes that the diminutive -чик — диванчик, майданчик — is unaffected, and that agent nouns in -чик such as підрядчик 'contractor' are long attested and avoid homonymy with підрядник 'subordinate clause').

The adjectival suffixes -н-(ий), -ан-(ий), -ен-(ий) are written with one н when they form plain relational adjectives (вітряний 'windy', дерев'яний 'wooden', шкіряний 'leather'), with two in the emphatic -енн- forms and where the base ends in н (законний, туманний) (§33). Verbs have -ува-, -юва- (будувати 'build', малювати — малюю 'draw'); in verbal nouns and participles the suffix stays -ува- when its first vowel is unstressed (очікування, очікуваний) and becomes -ова- when it is stressed, in participles and a few nouns (друкувати — друкований 'printed', малювати — мальований); foreign verbs lose the source suffix -ір- (зареєструвати, поінформувати) except where it keeps homonyms apart (полірувати, because полювати 'hunt' exists) (§34).

6.3 Feminine personal nouns

The 2019 code includes, for the first time, a rule for feminine nouns of persons (§32, point 4): from masculine nouns, the most usual suffix is -к- (авторка 'author (f.)', дизайнерка, директорка, редакторка, співачка, студентка); -иц-(я) goes mainly with bases in -ник (верстальниця, порадниця) and -ень (учениця); -ин-(я) with bases in -ець (кравчиня, плавчиня); -ес- in a few (патронеса, поетеса). Horodenska 2023 counts this among the rules a spelling code should not contain; usage has moved fast, in the direction the rule records:

The rise of міністерка (×21) and президентка (×66) between the two news samples is far larger than any change in sample size (2018: 14.8 M words, 2024: 14.2 M). Word formation itself is in 17. Derivation: suffixes.

7. Together, with a hyphen, or apart

The section on writing words together, with a hyphen or separately (§§35–44) has grown from a short part of the 1928 code to a full section (Sokolova 2023, who also lists its overlaps with other sections). The main rules:

Compound nouns (§36) are written together when they are made with a linking vowel (водогін 'water main', лісоруб 'woodcutter') or with a first part that is a clipped word or a foreign combining form (автозавод, агроклуб, біохімія, відеозапис, гідроелектростанція, медіапростір, мікроавтобус, нанотехнологія, фотоальбом, кіберзлочин, мінімаркет); with a hyphen when they join two nouns of which the first names a property of the second and both inflect or the first does not (бізнес-план, блок-система, дизель-мотор, інтернет-видання, піар-акція, фан-клуб), with Greek letter names (альфа-промені), in titles of rank (генерал-майор, прем'єр-міністр), and in the reduplicated and synonymous pairs (батько-мати, хліб-сіль). The 2019 text writes together words with the foreign first parts анти-, віце-, екс-, контр-, лейб-, обер-, штабс-, унтер-: віцепрем'єр, віцеконсул, ексміністр, експрезидент, ексчемпіонка, лейбгвардієць, оберлейтенант, унтерофіцер; with a proper name they take a hyphen (екс-Югославія, «Анти-Дюринг») (§35, point 4.4). The 1993 code hyphenated віце- and екс-.

пів 'half' (§36, note to point 2.6): the indeclinable numeral пів followed by a noun in the genitive singular is written separately: пів аркуша, пів години 'half an hour', пів літра, пів яблука; пів Європи, пів Києва, пів України. When пів + nominative forms one concept that is not "half of", it is written together: південь 'south', півколо 'semicircle', півострів 'peninsula', північ, півфінал. The 1993 code wrote пів together with the genitive (півгодини, піваркуша) and with a hyphen before a vowel, an apostrophe-letter or a capital (пів-Європи, пів-яблука). Usage has moved only partly:

In 2024 the old spelling still dominates in the commonest words: півроку 247, півмільйона 87, півгодини 60 against пів року, пів мільйона, пів години written apart in the rest. UD IU (annotated before the change) marks a separate пів as Orth=Alt (24 tokens).

Adverbs (§41) are written together when they arose from a preposition + noun (вгорі 'above', додому 'home', назавжди, спочатку, щодня), with a hyphen in the type по-українськи, по-нашому, по-перше, in repetitions (ледве-ледве, будь-коли) and in де-не-де, хоч-не-хоч; apart when the noun keeps its meaning and can take a modifier (до речі 'by the way', на жаль 'unfortunately', з дому). Particles (§44) are mostly separate (би, же, ж, ну); the intensifiers -бо, -но, -то, -таки are hyphenated after the word they follow (іди-бо, давай-но, так-то, все-таки, знову-таки), except when another particle stands between (все ж таки). Не is written apart from verbs (не знаю) except where the verb does not exist without it (ненавидіти 'hate', нехтувати), and together with nouns, adjectives and adverbs that do not exist without it or that form one concept (неправда 'untruth', невеликий 'not big') (§§42–44). Prepositions of the type з-під, з-за, з-поміж, з-понад are hyphenated (§42).

8. Loanwords and foreign names

Loanwords and foreign names (§§121–154) are where the 2019 code made most of its changes and where it allows most variants. The approach is stated in the preface: transcription (by sound), transliteration (by letters), a mix of the two, and full adaptation are all legitimate, and many loans become indeclinable (кафе, радіо, таксі, какао).

8.1 и or і: the "rule of nine"

In common nouns of foreign origin, after the nine consonants д, т, з (дз), с, ц, ж (дж), ч, ш, р before a consonant (other than й), и is written: диплом, директор, інститут, система, позиція, цистерна, режим, джинси, шифр, риф, фабрика (§129 III.1). This is the "rule of nine" (правило дев'ятки) of school grammar. Elsewhere і: at the start of a word (ідея), before a vowel or й (матеріал, соціалізм, партійний), at the end of a word (журі, таксі, шасі), and after the other consonants before a consonant (бізнес, вібрація, графік, кіно, література, фінанси) (§129 I). Personal names take і after a consonant before a consonant (Річард, Дідро, Дізель), but in geographical names in -ида, -ика (Флорида, Америка, Африка) and after дж, ж, ч, ш, щ, ц, р (Алжир, Вашингтон, Чикаго, Мадрид) и is written (§129 III.2–4). A traditional list keeps и after other consonants: вимпел, кипарис, лиман, миля, спирт, Єгипет, Китай, Пакистан, Сирія (§129 I.6, III.6).

The rule is old and stable, but new English loans test it, and usage often goes the other way (Hordiienko 2024):

(For стрим only the noun forms and the derivatives стример-, стримінг- are counted, so that стримувати 'restrain' and стрімкий 'swift' are excluded.) VESUM, the large morphological dictionary, records скріншот as bad and стрім as slang.

8.2 л hard or soft

Foreign [l] is rendered hard or soft "as is customary in each word" (§121): hard in бал, клас, план, формула, блок, Лондон, Осло, and in new English loans (ланч, файл, сейл); soft in автомобіль, асфальт, гольф, пляж, полярний, блюмінг, Фінляндія, Вільсон, Золя. Before е it is written ле. The 1928 code made [l] soft in many Greek and Latin words (кляса, плян, лябораторія, баляда); these forms survive in diaspora usage, and UD IU marks матеріял, роля, Плянк, Колюмб and similar spellings as Orth=Alt (129 tokens in IU, 2 in ParlaMint).

8.3 g and h

Foreign [g] is г in common words (агресор, бло́гер, маркетинг, лінгвістика) and geographical names (Гвінея, Люксембург); ґ only in the old assimilated words of §6 (ґанок, ґрунт); in personal names either (Гегель / Геґель, Гете / Ґете, Вергілій / Верґілій, Гулліве́р / Ґулліве́р) (§122). Foreign [h] is г (гандбол, гіпотеза, Гарвард, Гельсінкі), with a traditional list in х (хобі, хокей, хол, холдинг, Аллах, Мухаммед, хіджаб). By this rule гакер 'hacker' and лайфгак 'life hack' are the normative spellings of new English loans; usage keeps х:

VESUM has хакер as the plain entry and гакер tagged alt. Hordiienko 2024 documents the same split in the media (хакер and гакер, хакатон and гакатон, стейкхолдер and стейкголдер) and reads it as the norm not yet reaching practice.

8.4 Greek θ, au; the variants of 2019

Greek th (θ) is normally т (бібліотека, театр, теорія, ортодокс, Теодор), and in words customary with ф the 2019 code allows both (§123): анафема / анатема, дифірамб / дитирамб, ефір / етер, кафедра / катедра, логарифм / логаритм, міф, міфологія / міт, мітологія, Афіни / Атени, Марфа / Марта, Агафангел / Агатангел. Greek and Latin au is ав in old words (автор, автомобіль, лавра, Павло) and ау in more recent ones, with variants in a list (§131): аудиторія / авдиторія, лауреат / лавреат, пауза / павза, фауна / фавна, аудієнція / авдієнція. The second member of each pair is the spelling of 1928.

Usage of these variants:

Only етер has a visible share, and almost entirely in one phrase, в етері / на етері 'on air' (230 of the 250 tokens are the locative етері). The rest are a few per cent, about the same before and after 2019 (Атени had 5.7% in 2018 and 4.9% in 2024). The variants are allowed; writers, so far, mostly keep the forms they knew. UD IU marks лавреат as Orth=Alt.

8.5 j: проєкт and its family

Foreign [j] after a vowel or in a prefix is written with є, ї, ю, я (§126): конвеєр, плеєр, лояльний, фаянс, ін'єкція, суб'єкт, and, new in 2019, проєкт, проєкція, траєкторія, фоє (1993: проект, проекція, траекторія, фойє). This is the change that writers adopted fastest:

(Траєкторія was already the norm in 1993; the 2019 change was проєкт.) Five years on, four of five news tokens of the word follow the new spelling. The Wikipedia sample (2021) is in the middle; UD ParlaMint, whose transcripts span 2003–2022, has only проект (законопроект 'bill' is among its most frequent words), and UD IU has проект only.

8.6 The rest

Further rules: English w is в (вікенд, Вашингтон) with a few у (Уельс) (§124); English th [θ] is т (трилер, Артур) and [ð] з (Резерфорд) (§124); French ll, ill after vowels is й (макіяж, Війон), by tradition -аль, -іль (ваніль, Версаль) (§125); final -tr, -dr is -тр, -др (театр, центр) (§127); German ö, ü, eu, ei are е, ю, ой, ай (Гете, Кельн, Нойбауер, Айзенах) with old exceptions in ей (крейда, Гейне, Лейпциг, Рейн) (§§132, 136); English diphthongs are ау, ей, оу (браузер, гейм, шоу) with a list adapted to е, о (леді, гол, готель) (§133); English [æ] is а (хакер, чат, спам) with a traditional е (бізнесмен, менеджер) (§134); [ɜː] is ер (серфінг, Черчилль) (§135). Slavic names are transferred from their own spelling with their own rules (§144 for persons, §151 for places); Yefymenko 2023 lists gaps in this part, such as adjectives from foreign place names and Russian surnames that the code treats by exception.

9. The spelling of endings

Most of the second part of the Pravopys describes inflection and is used in chapters 11–15. The points that the 2019 edition changed (Kolibaba 2023 lists them, distinguishing new rules from corrections):

1. Genitive singular of 3rd-declension nouns. Nouns in -ть after a consonant (радість 'joy', гідність 'dignity', незалежність 'independence', смерть 'death', честь 'honour') and the nouns кров 'blood', любов 'love', осінь 'autumn', сіль 'salt', Русь, Білорусь may take -и besides -і: радости, незалежности, смерти, крови, осени, соли, Руси (§95). The -и forms are those of 1928 (від радости, до смерти, без соли). Kolibaba 2023 notes that the IV declension (імени, племени), which 1928 also had in -и, was not given the variant, against the internal logic of the rule.
2. Genitive singular of foreign town names of the type Амстердам, Лондон, Мадрид, Париж, Чорнобиль: the code gives -у (Лондону, Парижу) and allows -а (Лондона, Парижа) (§82, 2.1.2(6) and note). In 1993 these names had -а.
3. Vocative. With the address words друже, пане, колего a surname may stay in the nominative: друже Максименко, пане Коваль (§87); feminine surnames in -а take the vocative (пані Гаркуше), without the variants of 1993.
4. Dative -ові extended to surnames in -ин: Василишинові, Волошинові (§83 note); Kolibaba 2023 asks why Батуринові is then not allowed.
5. Accusative of inanimate nouns in -а (узяти ножа, написати листа), a form of the living language that the Soviet codes limited, is mentioned but not given a full rule (Kolibaba 2023 describes it as a form suppressed by the earlier codes).
6. Names of websites and e-mail services take -а in the genitive: фейсбука, ютуба, імейла (§82).

The first two show the code and usage moving at different speeds in opposite directions:

(-і forms also include the dative and locative, which never had -и, so the genitive share of -и is somewhat higher than the raw ratio; it is still below 1% in the news. Лондону, Парижу include the dative and locative too, so the genitive -у is a fraction of them.) The 1928 genitive in -и, allowed since 2019, is practically absent from the news of 2024. The genitive in -у for foreign towns, the main form since 2019, has not displaced -а. Here the code is ahead of usage, and it is the variant that usage keeps.

10. The earlier orthographies

Outside the Ukrainian SSR the 1928 orthography, with some changes, stayed in use in Western Ukraine until 1939 and in most of the diaspora after the war (2019 preface). Diaspora publishing is one reason why the 1928 forms have never quite disappeared from print; the Orth=Alt tokens of UD IU (§8.2) are the trace of them in a modern corpus.

11. What changed in 2019

Collected from the paragraphs above, the changes against 1993 that a reader of modern text meets most often:

For the compounds with віце- and екс-: in the 2018 news віце- + word occurs 912 times and joined віцепрем'єр-, віцепрезидент-, віцеспікер-, віцемер- 0 times; in 2024, 230 and 440. For екс-: 2 830 hyphenated and 1 joined (ексміністр-, експрезидент-, ексчемпіон-, ексдружин-, ексдепутат-, ексголов-, експрем'єр-) in 2018; 487 and 657 in 2024 (the hyphenated count includes the forms with proper names, екс-Югославія, that keep the hyphen). VESUM marks entries by orthography: 1 906 lemmas tagged up19 (spellings of 2019, e.g. проєкт, етер, катедра, фоє, ирій, Геґель, ексдружина, віцепрем'єр) and 1 682 tagged up92 (the spellings they replace, e.g. проект, фойє), with ірій now tagged arch (count of lemma lines in dict_corp_vis.txt.bz2, VESUM v6.8.6 asset, 2026-11-06; NC, counts only).

12. Where usage stands against the code

The measurements of §§6–11 sort the 2019 changes into four kinds:

1. Adopted quickly, within five years: проєкт (0.03% → 83% in the news), the feminine nouns (міністерка, президентка), the joined віце-, екс- (0% → about 60%). These are changes that the press and official usage took up at once.
2. Adopted slowly: separate пів (1% → 24%), with the frequent words (півроку, півгодини) holding out longest; ґ in native words (ґрунт 75% → 92%), which had been the norm since 1990.
3. Allowed and hardly used: the 1928 variants with т for θ, ав for au, -и in the genitive; етер in в етері is the only one above a few per cent. For these the 2019 code records a tradition that a part of the literary community (diaspora, some publishers, some Wikipedia editors) keeps, without asking the rest to change.
4. Norm ahead of usage, usage not following: the genitive -у of foreign towns, and the "rule of nine" and the г for [h] in new English loans (скриншот, стрим, гакер, лайфгак), where writers keep скріншот, стрім, хакер or split evenly. Here usage is ahead of the code in the sense the code itself anticipates: if it persists, the next edition will have to record it.

None of these rates says which spelling is "right". They say what writers of the 2018 and 2024 news and of the 2021 Wikipedia actually did, which is what the 2019 preface asks the codifiers to watch.

13. How Mova handles spelling

Mova has no Ukrainian spelling checker, normaliser or variant mapper. What exists and what follows from it:

• VESUM is the spelling authority of kg. The kg crate (kg/src/morph.rs) loads the VESUM forms (dict_corp_vis.txt.bz2, CC BY-NC-SA, research and tests only) and looks up a word after norm has lowercased it and unified the apostrophe. VESUM contains both orthographies, tagged up19 and up92, and non-standard forms tagged bad, alt, slang, arch. kg reads the grammatical tags it needs into its 4-byte code (kg/src/gram.rs) and ignores the orthography and register tags: проект and проєкт, радості and радости, скриншот and скріншот are all accepted alike, and none is flagged. The generator (kg/src/textgen.rs) picks among synthesised forms by the frequency of (lemma, grammar) → form in the parsed Tatoeba sentences, so the variant it writes is the one its training sentences used most, not a chosen norm.
• The English parser path (en xpos-fill, then the English tagger and parser trained on UD Ukrainian) learns spellings from the treebank. UD IU and ParlaMint were written and annotated mostly before or across the 2019 change: neither contains проєкт; ParlaMint has законопроект. A model trained on them meets the 2019 spellings as unknown words. The IU Orth=Alt feature, which marks the 1928-style spellings, survives in the FEATS column but is not used by the tag set (xpos_of in en/src/main.rs reads only UPOS and a few features).
• No measurement of spelling error. UA-GEC (Syvokon et al. 2023, CC BY), a corpus of Ukrainian texts with spelling, grammar and fluency corrections, is held as a paper card; Mova has not been run on it.

What would be needed: a spelling layer that keeps, for each word form, its lemma, its VESUM orthography tag and a mapping to the 2019 main form, so that Mova can read any of the variants and, when it writes, choose the main form or follow the user's; the variant table of §11 as a seed with its measured rates; and a test over UA-GEC. None of this is built.

Sources for this chapter

• Український правопис (2019). Approved by Cabinet of Ministers resolution No. 437 of 22 May 2019. Official document, not protected by copyright. Preface; §§1–44, 82–95, 121–139, 144, 151–153. Library books/u/uk/ukrainskyi-pravopys-2019 (uk-gram-pravopys-2019); archive.org/details/6032727-Ukr-Pravopys-2019
• Український правопис (1928) and the 1926 draft. Official documents. Sections on foreign words (θ, l, g) and on the genitive in -и. Library books/u/uk/ukrainskyi-pravopys-1928-r-1928 (uk-gram-pravopys-1928), books/u/uk/ukrainskyi-pravopys-1926 (uk-gram-pravopys-1926-proiekt).
• Український правопис (1945). Official document. Preface. Library books/u/uk/ukrainskyi-pravopys-1945 (uk-gram-pravopys-1945).
• Український правопис 1933, 1960, 1990, 1993: cards only (uk-gram-pravopys-1933, -1960, -1990, -1993); no claim here rests on their text.
• Simovych, Vasyl'. 1919. Hramatyka ukrajins'koji movy. Kyiv–Leipzig. Public domain. §§29–33. Library books/s/si/simovych-1919-hramatyka-ukrainskoi-movy-dlia (uk-gram-simovych-1919).
• Horodenska, K. H. 2023. Pryncypy i metodolohija «Ukrajins'koho pravopysu». Ukrajins'ka mova 1(85): 32–49. doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2023.01.032 (horodenska-2023-pryntsypy-pravopysu).
• Kotsa, R. O. 2023. Pro zminy i dopovnennja do pravopysu častyn osnovy slova. Ukrajins'ka mova 1(85): 50–61. doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2023.01.050 (kotsa-2023-chastyny-osnovy).
• Kolibaba, L. M. 2023. Zminy v unormuvanni zakinčen' vidminjuvanyx sliv v «Ukrajins'komu pravopysi» 2019 r. Ukrajins'ka mova 1(85): 68 ff. doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2023.01.068 (kolibaba-2023-zakinchennia-pravopys).
• Puriaieva, N. V. 2023. Problemy pravopysu prefiksiv i sufiksiv. Ukrajins'ka mova 2(86): 101 ff. doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2023.02.101 (puriaieva-2023-prefiksy-sufiksy).
• Sokolova, S. O. 2023. Pravopys sliv razom, iz defisom, okremo. Ukrajins'ka mova 3(87): 102 ff. doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2023.03.102 (sokolova-2023-razom-defis-okremo).
• Yefymenko, I. V. 2023. Dejaki zauvahy do peredavannja vlasnyx nazv. Ukrajins'ka mova 3(87): 68 ff. doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2023.03.068 (yefymenko-2023-vlasni-nazvy).
• Hordiienko, O. Je. 2024. Fonetyko-hrafične osvojennja novitnix zapozyčen'. Ukrajins'ka mova 4(92): 97 ff. doi.org/10.15407/ukrmova2024.04.097 (hordiienko-2024-novitni-zapozychennia).
• The seven Ukrajins'ka mova articles print CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 in their own text, while the library cards give CC BY 4.0; they are paraphrased here, not quoted.
• Syvokon, Oleksiy, Olena Nahorna, Pavlo Kuchmiichuk & Nastasiia Osidach. 2023. UA-GEC: Grammatical Error Correction and Fluency Corpus for the Ukrainian Language. UNLP 2023. CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology) (syvokon-2023-ua-gec-grammatical-error-correction). Cited for its existence only.
• Goldhahn, Dirk, Thomas Eckart & Uwe Quasthoff. 2012. Building Large Monolingual Dictionaries at the Leipzig Corpora Collection. LREC 2012. Samples ukr_newscrawl_2018, ukr_news_2024, ukr_wikipedia_2021 (CC BY); counts of 2026-11-06.
• VESUM (uk-vesum-dict-uk, BrUK: A. Rysin, V. Starko), dict_corp_vis.txt.bz2 of release v6.8.6. Data CC BY-NC-SA 4.0: counts and tags only.
• UD Ukrainian IU 2.18 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, counts only) and ParlaMint 2.18 (CC BY-SA 4.0), counts of 2026-11-06.
• Mova: kg/src/morph.rs, kg/src/gram.rs, kg/src/textgen.rs, kg — the Mova knowledge graph; en/src/main.rs (xpos_fill, xpos_of).

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