One challenge when learning Ukrainian was of course getting used to a new alphabet. This makes it a bit trickier to learn how to spell words correctly, especially since my impression is that Ukrainian words overall are longer, uses more characters, than Swedish or English equivalents. Not all words, of course, but a fair amount of them. Another challenge is that I still have trouble differentiating some sounds. For instance, it’s easy to mix up the letters і and и (as a foreign speaker), or to remember where to put the soft sign (ь). I also tend to get х, ж and г wrong.
That’s the bad news. Now for the good news. First of all, many Ukrainian words I have encountered are built from patterns. For a simple example, the word працювати (to work, praziovaty) gets a bit easier when you know that the ending -вати is used to make verbs of nouns or adjectives, in this case праця, meaning work.
I will get back to that aspect in a later post, because it is quite interesting. But, the main point of this post, and my own reflection and goal, is that I need to be more careful on how I pronounce words, either out loud or just in my head. Thing is, Ukrainian letters almost never change how they sound (from what I’ve learned). And when they do change how they sound, it follows quite simple rules. This is, for instance, not the case in Swedish. Take a word like “banan”. It can be pronounced in two different ways, one way meaning “banana”, and one way meaning “the track”.
So, that leads me to my own challenge and tip to myself (and others): When learning to spell Ukrainian words, be careful to sound out all the letters correctly. Because, if you remember how the word is pronounced, you will remember how it is spelled. For the most part.