How to pronounce Ukrainian cities in English 🇺🇦

How should we pronounce Ukrainian place names in English? How do you pronounce Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson in Ukrainian, and how do we render these into normal English phonetics? This video will teach you the Ukrainian and English pronunciations of several Ukrainian regions and cities, and also train you to figure out the pronunciation of any other Ukrainian name.
Мої українські друзі, якщо я зробив помилку у вимові чи написанні, залиште коментар нижче! Велике спасибі. Слава Україні. 🔱
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Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart
Other music: Five Ukrainian Folk Songs arranged for piano by Rafał Bienias - Ой у лузі червона калина (Oy u luzi chervona kalyna), Червона рута (Chervona Ruta), Ой ти місяцю (Oy Ty Misyatsyu) Oh You Dear Moon, Ой, ти Галю (Woe to You, Halya), Чорнії брови, карії очі Dark Brows, Brown Eyes.
00:00 Intro
00:17 Crimea
01:27 Sevastopol, Melitopol, Mariupol
02:52 Kherson
05:14 oblast
06:01 Dnipro
06:41 Kakhovka
07:35 Zaporizhzhia
08:36 Donetsk
08:47 Luhansk
09:03 Donbas
09:24 Bakhmut
09:55 Lyman
10:09 Berdyansk
10:33 Sumy
10:52 Rivne
11:26 Kharkiv
11:38 Izyum
11:55 Lviv
12:04 Mykolaiv
12:22 Odesa
12:34 Odessa & Kiev or Odesa & Kyiv?
15:47 How to figure out any Ukrainian pronunciation
17:57 Lviv Opera House

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

CORRECTIONS In Ukrainian Дніпро [dn⁽ʲ⁾iˈprɔ] has the stress accent on the FINAL syllable, not the first. If we follow the same principle I applied to Sevastopol, Kherson, and Bakhmut, where we maintain the same accented syllable as in Ukrainian we should say "nee-PRO" in English.

[@servantofaeie1569]

I say the D. /dni.ˈpɹʌw/. A lot of other English speakers probably want to add a schwa but for me its not that hard cause you just nasalize the /d/ midway before you release.

[@beepboop204]

fun stuff!

[@TonyVarious]

Absolutely nailing it! Very good pronuciation even in difficult cases, like Запоріжжя (with double "ж" and release to "я"), Львів (with "ь" between consonants) and Миколаїв. Also Київ is pretty close, but "-їв" part should be closer to how you pronounced Миколаїв. And huge thanks for the video!

[@shwabb1]

Also you pronounced Рівне as Ривне, and didn't palatalize the zhzh in Zaporizhzhia. Besides that, the pronunciations where perfect. Great job!

[@deemuss]

Yup. Dnee-Pro, like Mac Pro

[@user-pq3pv4hp2e]

Amazing pronunciation in ukrainian, even sometimes sounds as native

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s very nice of you to say. I have a lot to learn, but hopefully I’ll keep improving.

[@PC_Simo]

Unlike certain other ”polyglot, pronunciation teacher”, who should have remained as a wine expert 😅.

[@OlehKushnjr]

Being Ukrainian myself, I tip the hat for the correctness and pronunciation 🎩 And yes, please, Kyiv and Odesa! 🫶🏻 We’ll greatly appreciate 🤝🏻

[@The0Stroy]

Zaporizhzhia means "Land/Place/Island Beyond Rapids" - in reference to rapids on the Dnipro River. It was the capital of the Ukrainian Cossacks Host - thus they were called "Zaporizhzhian Cossacks".

[@papapeethehunks]

I thought Cossacks are exclusively Russian?

[@annafirnen4815]

Now I finally know why Milan is "Mediolan" in Polish, should have figured we took those names from Latin. Although Venice we call "Wenecja", which is closer to "Venezia" in Italian I reckon. And Florence became "Florencja".

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Both of those are also from the Mediaeval Latin.

[@ArturoSubutex]

Medieval Latin pronounced -tia essentially as Italian -zia and Polish -cja so Wenecja could just as well come directly from Latin Venetia

[@herman-mossur]

As for me, Włochy is more interesting word to define Italy)))

[@erichamilton3373]

Włochy comes from the same root as "Wales"...Germanic name for Romance or Celtic areas.

[@rdrrr]

@@erichamilton3373 This is the source of "Wallachia" and "Vlach" as well, right?

[@MelnFamily]

As a Ukrainian, I didn’t knew even a half of this information 😅 thanks for amazing video! Watching your videos starting from speaking Latin in Rome

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for watching! Duzhe dyakuyu.

[@malter87]

your pronunciations are incredibly good... of all kinds of languages! I'm really jealous of how well you pronounce words in both english as well as other languages! it's super impressive!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind! I have lots to improve upon.

[@Delibro]

Yea and on top of that he sounds so nicely, especially in Latin.

[@Hadrianus01]

Interesting video! I noticed that the media and people in general started saying "Kyiv" instead of "Kiev" when the Ukraine War broke out in 2022 (growing up in the 90s, the Ukrainian capital was always "Kiev" to me). I don't recall any explanation for this shift being explicitly provided. I assumed it was an sign of solidarity and support for Ukraine.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! You have it right; that’s exactly what it is. Like I said in the video, it’s an optional change that I happen to support.

[@johnridout6540]

@@polyMATHY_Luke The problem is that when English speakers see "Kyiv" they often say something more like "Keef"

[@johnridout6540]

@@servantofaeie1569 I say /'ki:ev/ in English, but I think /'ki:f/ is taking over, because people are trying to pronounce "Kyiv". I say [ˈkɪjiu̯] in Ukrainian. That last sound is much closer to a "w" in English than a "v" or an "f".

[@phil3924]

They were priming the pump for war and trying to get people to buy in. This propaganda machine pushing the war is next level.

[@pirukiddingme1908]

I grew up with “Kiev” too, I think the best way to say its true Ukrainian name in my accent would be /kjiːv/, not sure if removing the second s in Odes(s)a is going to catch on so easily though

[@alexkent998]

I'm from Ukraine and haven't yet learned all the names of the cities of my own country in English) So, I'm very grateful! 🔥 And by the way, your pronunciation is awesome 👍🏻 maybe even better than ours sometimes 😂

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind of you to say, Alex!

[@deemuss]

OMG. I am Ukrainian, and I think this guide is perfect. Speaking about the 'historic' vs. 'modern' city names, I always try to learn the way the locals call them: this both shows respect and makes it easier to read departure boards in the airports or at the stations. That is why I was happy to visit Köln (while some may say it is Cologne), Antwerpen (I did not know it is Antwerp) and İzmir (not Smyrna). Thank you for the video!

[@askarufus7939]

In polish Köln is Kolonia which is funny because in Poland Kolonia is a popular name of village "suburbs", near the border of a village, so called middle of nowhere. If a village is named Wólka then it's sort of a "center", but Wólka-Kolonia is a victim of jokes.

[@user-cr3pj2nr4e]

There is another city with a "polis" part Nikopol. Enki Bilal named his comic book character after him. Thank you for your work.

[@kirillkrasnobayev8681]

Fun fact, most western Ukrainian oblast capitals have their separate names in German and/or Polish/Hungarian/Romainan. For example Lviv is also Lemberg and Lwów, while Chernivtsi is also Czernowitz or Cernăuți. And those toponyms are often used within those countries instead of universally accepted versions.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very cool

[@spooderman9122]

​​@@polyMATHY_Luke Actually there are even more names in yiddish slovakian latin and in almost every language in Europe. The yiddish is לעמבעריק (Lèmberik), slovakian Ľvov and latin Leopolis.

[@robinrehlinghaus1944]

I'm a bit disappointed that German has stopped using many of them.

[@adrianokury]

Exonyms.

[@francisdec1615]

It used to be Lemberg in Swedish too. Swedes used to use the same names for cities and regions in central and eastern Europe as the Germans did, at least until the end of WWI. In some cases we still use those names. The region where Lviv/Lwow/Lemberg is situated is still Galizien in Swedish. Moldova is Moldavien (Moldawien in German). Bratislava used to be Pressburg. Warsaw Warschau. Poznan Posen. Etc etc etc.

[@user-um7cf8nt1q]

Дуже цікаве та актуальне відео, дякую!

[@martinbenca9863]

As a linguistics student, enthusiast of phonetics and native speaker of Slovak, I'm very happy to see this profound and awesome phonetic adaptation of the names. This video just soothes my heart 😂 Thank you! 😁

[@Tentacius]

I think it often boils down to this: spelling vs pronunciation. Either you keep the ‘proper’ spelling (the endonym) and absolutely butcher the pronunciation (because your own language operates on a different phonological rulebook) or you butcher the spelling in order to most closely approximate the ‘proper’ pronunciation. Some languages are more phonetically analogous and thus require less tweaking, some require great compromise by disregarding either spelling or pronunciation (or by giving up on both and savouring creative ignorance) And then, as you’ve shown, there’s etymology. Very often, foreign versions of a name retain some older spelling feature that was present in the original spelling but was lost in the language of the home country. ‘Florence’ retains the and of Latin ‘Florentia‘ that Italian has lost, ‘Odessa’ keeps the of the Greek root. It’s not all too different for Kiev/Kyiv and its old Ruthenian ancestor. I, for one, admit to having somewhat of a soft spot for maintaining an older and etymologically more faithful orthography whenever possible. But, of course, language adapts to new realities and it serves the people speaking it, not vice versa. In the end, it’s all merely a balancing act between written language, spoken language, history, culture, politics and - most important of all - the great duality of fervour and laziness present in every single one of us.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for the comment. Those are important points to consider.

[@jsaysyay]

love to see you do a video on this, i've spent a bit now trying to learn how to say places and words in Ukrainian since it's what my not-too-distant ancestors spoke, also so i can say their names correctly. Ideally i can actually speak it when i visit one day. one thing that ends up being a convenience for me is that due to me becoming aware of the outer world in the 2010s is that i didn't have to learn any new names/switch any

[@MenelionFR]

Luke, I… lack for words. That's just incredible, your pronunciation is extremely good, and I'm super grateful for your effort! It's always great to know that a person whose videos I appreciate so much is a true human with a big heart. Thank you so much, hugs to you and greetings to your dearest ones, be blessed and happy! Дуже дякую за це відео!

[@alexeyleontyev1249]

Thank you for the great video Luke! And I really appreciate your choice for the soundtrack!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks, Alexey! I’m not familiar with many Ukrainian folk songs, but I was hopeful that they would sound familiar and appropriate to my Ukrainian audience, while simultaneously acquainting non-Ukrainians with your musical tradition.

[@CreidaChalk]

Wow, a huge and amazing work was done in this video. And your Ukrainian prononciation is wonderful. Thank you!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Слава Україні 🔱

[@ingvarjensen1088]

I could listen to your soothing voice for hours. Besides that, you're such a pronunciation genius 🤗

[@mollof7893]

Most news I hear is in Swedish, so it sounds so unusual when /x/ is pronounced /k/. When romanising Cyrilic, we typicaly write /x/ as .

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Sounds good to me, if that works in Swedish

[@TarikBest10]

Amazing job you did! Thanks for this video!

[@TheOlgaSasha]

Thanks a lot for my native city Cernihiv - one of the oldest cities of ancient Rus and modern Ukraine (we will celebrate 1320 y.o. in 2024). Only Kyiv is older (celebrated 1541 y.o. this year) if not to mention the former Greek polices in the south). We pronounce the name of city in Ukrainian more like: Cher'nihif. And even in Russian we say Chyer'nihaf, because Ukrainians do not say hard "g" like Russians (as well as southern Russians also say "h" instead of "g"). Also Chernihiv is near Belarus border so here you can hear some mix of Ukrainian and Belarusian language, which is close to Polessian dialects of Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. That is why Chernihiv is also often pronounced as Cher'nihaw ("w" is pronounced close to English "w"), especially in northern parts of the oblast (close to Belarusian pronunciation "Tshar'nihau"). Belaruses pronounce "Ch" as hard sound like CZ in Polish, while in standard Ukrainian "Ch" is much more milder, and in Russian "ch" is always mild (like ć in Polish).

[@liudmylab2328]

Ghernihiv is not only one of the oldest cities but also one of the most beautiful🥰

[@TheOlgaSasha]

@@liudmylab2328 1320%😉

[@diarmaiddillon1568]

As usual a superbly conceived and delivered lesson from Polymathy. I love this channel

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s very kind! I’m glad and I hope you like the future videos too

[@dymytryruban4324]

The largest Ukrainian port city has a Greek name: Οδησσός. It is Odessos in Ancient Greek and Odissos in Modern.

[@xshwei]

I am very unsure about using voiced palatal plosive for in Ukrainian. This much palatalisation is a characteristic of Czech and Slovak languages for sure. Pointing the nasal release may be your preference, I don't mind that. But palatalised palatal consonant (as you have shown on 6:39) makes zero sense to me

[@PCH12r]

This is great video thanks. Lukius!

[@BogdanYNews]

Thx Luke, all your pronunciation is perfect! with the only minor error in Berdyansk, Y in this case makes previous D softer like Dʲ.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks, Bogdan! Hopefully I’ll learn Ukrainian fluently one day.

[@gwawd]

Thank you for your work!

[@nonameuserua]

As a proud Zaporižžian, I thank you, polýMathy, for your excellent work and hope it’ll help many stop mispronouncing my city & region’s names 😅 Slava Ukrajini 💙💛 vse bude dobre

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Героям слава! 🔱 Yes, haha, I got really tired of hearing people pronounce it zapper-neetsa. 😆 As English speakers we’re normally quite confused by something like zhzh in writing, but it’s not that hard to deal with once you get past the orthography. Дякую!

[@nonameuserua]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Нема за що, це Вам подяка! Was incredibly pleasant to hear you speaking this Ukrainianly! As for the zh and other such digraphs (sometimes tetragraphs, like shch), hope it would be slightly easier if some new official “desovietised” romanisation was introduced, with diacritics instead of letter combinations

[@nonameuserua]

@Работаем, брат! source: trust me bro this bot graduated from the finest shawarma stand in all of St Petersburg

[@STikER326]

​@Работаем, брат! You have no saying in the matter while your country is killing our people. Crawl back to your swamp.

[@phil3924]

What is the nickname of the car the Soviets made there?

[@ninokarazovic9131]

There's also a thing that used to happen in (some) South Slavic languages. In historical sources you can find -pol replaced with -polje (in many cases but not all). Polje literally means a field if translated to English. So you can find Galipolje (Gelibolu, Gallipoli, a city in Turkey today), Sebastopolje (Sevastopol), Melitopolje (Melitopol), Nikopolje (Nikopol, a town in Bulgaria, also a town in Ukraine) and so on. Not sure if it happened purely out of similarity between -pol and -polje or why it did at all, but ye, it happened. In recent times and in modern speech i haven't heard anyone using -polje versions (apart from Galipolje but rarely). Great video as allways, Cheers! P.s. Constantinople (Konstantinopol, Istanbul) was weirdly enough never called Konstantinopolje but there is another (South) Slavic name for it, Carigrad (Car/Tzar - Emperor, Grad - City).

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very cool!

[@nenben8759]

Dont forget about how in some dialects has that [x] like [lɔx] And this is the first time ive ever heard pronounced with a [ʒ]

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Indeed! I certainly didn’t forget, as I adore Scots and Scottish English.

[@user-xo1hl9oj4m]

Beautiful video!!! Thank you!

[@Djadja_Valera]

A nice and interesting video,it is going to be helpful to English speaking people! And by the way my place of birth is Lugans’k, I lived there until 2014.

[@victorvictor369]

Awesome! Top notch Pronunciation👍👍

[@alicehu0]

The latter half of "Singapore" also happens to be related to the "-pol" suffix!

[@ArturoSubutex]

Oh, wow, indeed. Sanskrit पुर् "pur", Greek "polis", through Indo-European. This blew my mind. Thanks!

[@ignotumperignotius630]

This is really cool

[@troelspeterroland6998]

And Lithuanian "pilis", Latvian "pils".

[@The0Stroy]

Isn't it "Lion City" thus the namesake of Lviv?

[@nonameuserua]

@@The0Stroyexactly!

[@OBIDU13]

Thank you very much for the very interesting video ! It seems that final v in Ukrainian words has a [u] realisation instead of a [v] one correct ?

[@janlatos2]

The letter "в" can represent 2 sounds: /ŭ/ and /v/ "ŭ" = /w/ "ŭ" isn't /u/ It is interesting that in the Belarusian alphabet there are letters v(в) and ŭ(ў) Why Ukrainian don't has it? In Polish it is the letter "ł"

[@mektheblack]

I didn't quite get why English speakers say "k" for "х". I may be butchering, Russian/Ukrainian but I just say it as I'd pronounce "ch/h" in Polish and it seems far from "k". That combined with "zh" transliteration makes my head explode when I see transliterated Ukrainian/Russian cities or names haha

[@bakerzermatt]

Great video! Well explained about Kiev/Kyiv! The one sound that people can't seem to get right is 'zh', despite it being an English sound (treaSure).

[@DmytroNikolenko]

Thanks for this video! Дуже велика робота! Дякую!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Слава Україні! 🔱

[@DmytroNikolenko]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Героям Слава!

[@stevenwillard8436]

Good video. Enlightening, for sure.

[@mykytafil7160]

I'd also add that you can often see + shchyna as a name of region instead of oblast

[@tariver1693]

9:58 I'm surprised that you didn't mention that Lyman also comes from Greek. λιμένας - port, dock, harbor.

[@dymytryruban4324]

From Greek through Turkic languages. In Turkish "havalimanı" is an airport.

[@zc32-official]

In my native language (Greek for anyone wondering) we use the names derived from Russian, via other European languages. (Κίεβο for Kyiv, Δνείπερος for Dnipro). We never really changed it to support Ukraine, it’s just that the names have been used for a long time that we never really decided to change it, I guess.

[@dymytryruban4324]

In Croatia there is a region Kninska Krajina where a village Kijevo is located.

[@Zaporizhzhian]

It's sad, bc 1000 years ago, here were: Kyiv Chernihiv, Dnipro, and Pereiaslav. Old "Russian" is a rightfully old version of Ukrainian.

[@Luredreier]

"Crimea" in Norwegian is just "Krimhalvøya". "Krim" is the name, "halv" means half, "øy" means "island" and the "a" at the end means "the", so "The Krim halfisland" "Halvøya" (half-island) is our word for "peninsula". The word "krim" is also a word we use for crime, as in doing something illegal, although I've honestly only seen it in the context of police investigations and crime stories etc. 11:18 English speakers insistence on treating the "e" at the end of words as silent really is a pet peeve of mine...

[@Kitulous]

Ukrainian and Russian also say "half-island" pivostriv (piv - half, ostriv - island) and poluostrov (polu - half, ostrov - island) respectively

[@Delibro]

I hate the English insisting of silent "e" at the end of words too, especially if they do it on foreign words!!

[@Luredreier]

@@Kitulous Thank you for telling me that.

[@Luredreier]

@@Delibro May I ask what your native language is?

[@Delibro]

@@Luredreier My native language is German. The American pronunciation of "Porsche" ...

[@JacobOvergaardMadsen]

Extremely useful for a Ukrainian learner. Thanks!

[@yaroslavbabych5427]

Дуже дякую! Amazing video

[@armstrongmelm]

Odessa is from Greek Odessos with double 's'. Catherine the Great gave quite a few new-founded cities Greek names through her 'Greek project' on the newly conquered land from the Turks.

[@user-es4iw7bx8i]

We in Ukraine often get confused whether Bakhmut should be stressed on the first or on the second syllable in Ukrainian. Actually, it is a historical name of the city which was renamed back not so long ago. Previously, it was called Artyomovsk after soviet tradition. Nice to see our cities in modern Ukrainianized spelling in English.

[@MrMaxlines]

Thank you Luke! Great content as always. Greetings from Ukraine!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Слава Україні! 🔱

[@MrMaxlines]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Героям слава!

[@hiberniancaveman8970]

One thing about being a Celt, I do not have a problem with the Cyrillic letter ‘х’, either in hearing or speaking. One interesting thing though, in the orthography of the Ewe language of West Africa, the letters h and x correspond to the same symbols in IPA. However, at least one second generation descendant brought up in the USA has grown up with “Anglo Ears” and wonders why her parents’ languages has to use the two different letters.

[@oleksandrlevchuk]

I see what you did there with the order of cities. Appreciated

[@BUSHCRAPPING]

what?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I’m glad you liked it. 🔱

[@TheEnderknight]

I tend to prefer to use an h like sound for X, instead of a k like sound. Probably from growing up with relatives from Ukraine who use the original local pronunciations. Note: that place name pronunciations can vary regionally in Ukraine and official spellings are based on pronunciation in Kyiv.

[@Max-UA]

Найкраща вимова з усіх англомовних, кого я чув.

[@arekusei2]

Thank you for the video

[@reve_ta_stogne]

Very interesting, thanks.

[@jonathanthegreat2008]

What did you said at the outro?

[@Istoria-Movy]

Perfect pronunciation! Bravissimo! As a translator in Ukraine, I always struggle with how to render our Ukrainian place names in English. Especially small localities, villages etc. I also hate the official Ukrainian latinization bringing us the monstrous Zaprorizhzhia or Chernivtsi, which look intimidating, so I usually write Zaporizhia, although I don't like rendering Ж as ZH altogether. Latinization of Ukrainian is another hot topic in Ukrainian, and I personally favor the Central European approach, that is Zaporižžia, Čerkasy and Černiwci.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind of you to say so! Indeed, I hope there will be some sort of reform to these spellings as well. I don’t favor the Ukrainians switching to the Latin alphabet, as the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet is very efficient and clear, in my opinion. But I heard some Ukrainians mention this idea in order to become more Westernized. What do you think?

[@Istoria-Movy]

@@polyMATHY_Luke I þanke þe for þyne answere, my lefe freend! The Cyrillic alphabet definitely should be preserved for the Ukrainian language. Truth be told, all those discussions about Ukrainians switching to the Latin alphabet don't hold water. Moreover, most Ukrainian will never agree to that. However, the transliteration of Ukrainian for the outside world should be improved bc things like ZH, SHCH, DZH or YY (for Ж, Щ, ДЖ, ИЙ) are too clumsy. In fact, they are just remnants of the awkward Soviet quick fix.

[@Ktos-uo8kk]

Cool video! But I would like to ask you about one important topic for me. How to say the "would + verb" in Latin as "I would do it" in English, "я зробив би це" in Ukrainian or "zrobiłbym to" in Polish? Just I use the form often, but I can't find how to use it correctly

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Hi there! In Latin it’s the subjunctive mood, usually the imperfect tense subjunctive: facerem

[@Ktos-uo8kk]

@@polyMATHY_Luke So, "I would hear you"="(Ego) tē audirēm"?

[@Pryvyd9]

There's a nice town of Rzhyshchiv in Kyiv oblast which is good for pronunciation training.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Beautiful!

[@raxit1337]

A point about the names. The existance of different names in different languages shows that that place has existed in the minds and mouths of people who speak that language. For example, most large FInnish cities have a Finnish and a Swedish name. The Swedish names are testament to the closeness of the two cultures and the presence of these cities in the mind of Swedish-speakers (and it goes both ways, many cities in Sweden have a different name in Finnish). Finland and Sweden were united in the past. Similarly, Ukrainian cities have their own names in FInnish, Kiev is Kiova, Kharkov is Harkova. Finland and Ukraine both belonged to the Russian empire at the same time.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Indeed.

[@igorvoloshin3406]

At that some names in Ukraine are really ancient. For example, a small town in Kharkiv region bears name Meréfa, which is Scythian for "Dead Snake"; also name of a village in Cherkasy region - Irklíyiv comes from Scythian "Curvy Stream". The name of my native city Chilia in Odesa region comes from the Greek name Achillea. That's right, this is the native land of the Troyan War hero Achilles, and the remains of his tomb and sanctuary still are at the Snakes Island in the Black Sea nearby the city, where fierce fights against Russian occupants were fought last spring, and we won! 🇺🇦

[@Jugulator31]

Thank you Igor Voloshin; this is fantastic info. Really appreciate sharing. Wikipedia awaits me.

[@jabrilbalakrishna]

@@igorvoloshin3406 I'm just curious what goes through the mind of someone like you. You do use the word "occupiers" with a pejorative connotation, right? And you are obviously cheering as an expression of the nationalistic/patriotic feelings you have. But it seems like you glorify or at least are proud of the fact that your place of birth was also a Greek colony. Were they occupiers too, and were they "good" occupiers in that case? And since we are at that, how did that part of the country become Ukraine in the first place and since when? What's the history behind it exactly? All these questions might be hard and even triggering I realize that.

[@igorvoloshin3406]

@@jabrilbalakrishna err... it seems you're not very much acquainted in ancient history of Ukraine. In fact, the lands of Southern Ukraine were part of the cradle of the Greek nation, including those vast territories which are under waves now - Ghilea, the green and plentiful land to the south of Odesa and Meothia Swamps which are now at the bottom of Azov sea. It was in Ghilea where hunter Acteon angered goddes Arthemida, and was turned by her into deer to be hunted by his own dogs. And in the middle of Meothian Swamps there was the cave entrance to the realm of Aid, where poet Orpheus descended trying to bring his beloved Euridica back to the realm of alive. Greeks were not colonists here, they were local natives, and our land is the land where legendary heroes walked and myths were born. The Greeks lived here in Southern Ukraine for millenia... and were oppressed by Russian Empire / Soviet Russia just the same as Ukrainians and other nations of these lands. So may it seem, Greeks lived in Ukraine long before Ukrainians or any other Slavic tribes even formed? Not so simple. As recent paleogenetic studies prove, modern Ukrainians still bear the genes of the ancient local peoples beginning from the very first Indo-Europeans of the Yamna culture, which inhabited South-East of Ukraine as long ago as in 4th millenium BC. So we Ukrainians also have the firm right to live at our ancient lands. But current invaders are definitely out of any right to raid our lands. They'we unlawfully broken treaties and borders signed and approved by them. How can you or anyone even try to excuse them?

[@axisboss1654]

You can also use accent marks to romanize it like š, ž, like how Slavic languages that use the Latin Alphabet do

[@magnekalinsen1185]

Thank you so much for covering this topic ✨ It is extremely important for us to teach the world to recognise our Ukrainian ways to pronounce those names. Your pronunciation is amazingly accurate, which is not a surprise for me since I hear how flawlessly you pronounce Latin words (always a pleasure for any ear). Just a little correction: your [l] sound is a little bit off in Ukrainian. Through some experimentation I can draw a conclusion that you articulate it a bit too far from the teeth. In Ukrainian, as in other Slavic languages, it's a bit closer to the upper teeth, both the regular and the palatalised one. Hope it helps :) Thank you again for the video!

[@xshwei]

9:53 regarding Bakhmut, there indeed are two ways of pronouncing the city name, the stress alters. Ultimately in comes from the river of Bakhmutka, which for sure has an accent on U, but it is not that clear for the city itself. Chances are it has always been BAkhmut, and BakhmUt is a hypercorrection which was promoted by journalists back in 2016, based on the river name

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very interesting! I wasn’t aware.

[@bhami]

Thanks for this detailed video! The only thing I might take issue with is that at some point, for maximum comprehensibility you just need to "go with the flow", and I think "seVAStopol" is much more common in American English than is "sevasTOpol".

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s fair. Eventually as the Ukrainian names become part of English for some generations, new traditional pronunciations will arise, and what you suggest may indeed be what comes about.

[@tompeled6193]

​@@polyMATHY_Luke The stress is on the penultimate syllable in Russian too.

[@iopqu]

As a Ukrainian speaker, I would pronounce Sumy the same as summa con laude, with an unstressed schwa at the end

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks for the suggestion! What about for Rivne etc?

[@iopqu]

@@polyMATHY_Luke reeve-nay since we want to distinguish final -y and final -e

[@artemnovytskyi4253]

Good video, Luke, as always! There are some things that came to my mind as to a Ukrainian speaker. 1. I didn't really catch on what you meant by mentioning a pitch component to stress accent when you explained about Bakhmut. I could be wrong, but I've been quite sure there were no such thing in Ukrainian, and honestly the variants you pronounced sound kind of the same to me or like just some regular "syntactic" intonation. Maybe while researching you have payed much attention to a thing that is so subtle that I'm not sure it's really there. It might be the samples you've listened to, which often have some over-emphasised pronounciation, not in a very natural way, so to say. Although indeed the primary version and more correct stress here would be on the second syllable, an initial-stressed pronunciation is also common. I think that is due to the fact that the current "new-old" name of the city was reintroduced just seven years ago, being Artemivsk for almost a century prior to that, and the correct pronunciation was not so obvious for everyone for a while. It also might be due to resemblance to the last name Pákhmutov(a), which was on hearing and is initial-stressed, and may also even share the etymology. 2. Speaking of double purpose of the letter Y in transcribing into Roman alphabet, notice how inconsistently it is usually applied. Although there is an offical transliteration system which is used by government for names in passports (and it's in not nearly perfect), the overall usage of romanization is a mess honestly. Look how ZaporizhzhIA and BerdYAnsk are transcribed differently for literally no reason (ironically being in the same region). The usage of Y for palatalization and [j] is similar to what happens in a system for Russian language. For me, the issue here is that in Ukrainian Y=И is far more frequent than Y=Ы is in Russian, and if we apply the same rule in Ukrainian, it would be overloaded with those Ys, and in addition leaving some ambiguity (like in "Pryazovya"). Therefore I prefer the "Polish style" for after palatalized consonants, which are used offically, but these are also ambivalently used for /ja, jo, ju, je/ which leads to such ridiculous (as for me) spellings like Iuliia. Ideally, I would introduce the J for that purpose, which is completely absent from any system for some reason and unfortunately it's not in common practice using it. So it would be Pryazovja, Berdiansk, Zaporizhzhia, Julija and so on, much better I think. :)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I agree with your recommendation of the j! That would be a much better convention. As for the pitch component of stress accent, I didn’t mean something phonemic like phonemic pitch. What was trying to say you actually wrote more elegantly here: pitch variations are a normal part of speech. In stressed syllables in Ukrainian, the pitch tends to be lower when the word is in isolation or in other situations, whereas we don’t often do that in English, so we get super confused haha, also because Ukrainian is syllable-timed while English and Russian are stress-timed; when the syllables are roughly the same duration, this causes us confusion because we except unstressed syllables to be shorter. Something like this happens in Italian too: in isolation words like amare importante often have a higher pitch on the syllable before the stressed one. Thanks for the comment!

[@farynnyk]

As a native Ukrainian speaker, I can say - your pronunciation is almost perfect :)

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very kind! Слава Україні

[@farynnyk]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Героям слава! Your channel is extremely interesting, I subscribed with great pleasure :)

[@catboy721]

Luke.. fascinating video. Do foreigners really understand anglicization and roots or do people just resort to what they feel they can pronounce? Shouldn’t there always be an attempt to call these regions what native speakers do, give or take the transliterations? And with names, is it that difficult to say Vuh-lo-DEE-m’r? Not sure it works the other way around, though. I struggle all the time trying to put words like Indianapolis or Shakespeare into Japanese or Russian, particularly with Russian cases. Clearly, SOME kind of pronunciation shift is needed to make these transitions. Thanks.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Yeah, it’s mostly lack of exposure. I think my example with Sevastopol is instructive; the correct stress accent is easy, so why is this not the norm?

[@stsglnt]

It is always so confusing for me to hear "X" sound as "Kh". I mean I get it but it takes me a moment to understand which city foreigner is referring to

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

That’s an interesting point. Since an /h/ sound already exists as г, should we nevertheless make both г and х /h/ in English? My feeling is that was the more confusing, but I’m eager to hear from Ukrainians on this issue.

[@andreitopala8502]

@@polyMATHY_Luke for me as a speaker of Ukrainian (not native), the Ukrainian г sounds closer to the modern Greek gamma, but not so hard. I mean, like a voiced English h, if my explanation makes any sense.

[@stsglnt]

​@@polyMATHY_Luke If it were up to me I'd keep /h/ sound for both г and х. But yeah I can see possible confusion here

[@stsglnt]

I'd say that in 'Aha' /h/ sounds almost like (if not identical) Ukrainian г

[@volkhen0]

@@stsglntin Polish it used to be “Ch” and “H” which were voiced and unvoiced versions of this sound (or the other way around). Today they have exactly the same sound. It’s confusing when spelling because you have to remember which one to use. That’s why Polish name for Kherson is Chersoń.

[@MuscovitesNightmare]

Heroyam Slava! Thank you so much for caring! While it`s ultimately the business of the native speaker of how to pronounce/write names of our cities, i sometimes can`t help myself but to correct someone on the internet, especially when the name of our capital, Kyiv, is miswritten. But to always be mutually respectful in the matters like this is definitely the key.

[@peter_oso]

Excellent, especially pronunciation. I hope that TV journalists will see that video - they confuse Kh- with X- sometimes (temptation to read familiar character despite different alphabets).

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Thanks! How do you recommend we say Ukrainian letter х, г, к?

[@baumstamp5989]

i am not familiar with phonetic script. but i would pronounce don-etsk more like a sloppily pronounced english "done"etsk or the german "dann"etsk. like simulating to say an "o" but keeping the mouth open as if saying an "a" and also keeping it short. ... an example came to mind: like dunn in ryan dunn.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very useful suggestion, thank you.

[@kelwwi]

Duzhe tobi dyakuyu druzhe. Thanks you so much. Video is made well

[@user-cg1is8jr8g]

There were some old names of cities Херсон - Белиховичі Kherson - Belykhovychi Нікополь - Микитин ріг Nikopol - Mykytyn rih Одеса - Хаджибей - Коцюбіїв Odesa - Khadzhybei - Kotsiubiiv Маріуполь - Домаха Mariupol - Domakha

[@alexhousakos]

Excellent video! I should add: for historical purposes, pre-2022 battles, events, names, etc. will still retain their pre-Ukrainian spelling (for example Battle(s) of Kharkov). Historiography for events after the Invasion will have Ukrainianized names (Battle of Kharkiv). This will be to reduce confusion, not to demote the language.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Sounds like a reasonable convention

[@alexhousakos]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Yeah because it will be extremely confusing (and wrong) to suddenly change historiography. In my above example (as a historian), the Battle of Kharkov refers to 4 Battles in WW2 whereas the Battle of Kharkiv refers to an operation in WW1 and the modern battles.

[@gpodkolzin]

Thank you very much for the video! As a Ukrainian from Crimea, I was incredibly moved when I saw my tiny hometown Partenit (which is an Ancient Greek toponym) at 0:44!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Very glad Partenit was represented! May Crimea safely return to Ukrainian control as swiftly as possible.

[@gpodkolzin]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Thank you!

[@user-fu3pp8ol7i]

​@@polyMATHY_Lukeit's absolutely impossible process, because most of people here are 70% ethnic Russian and about 15% crimean tatars. Most of them are support or neutral for Russian Federation. Also, all business are very integrated to Russian economy. And you are welcome to Crimea.

[@ArtemDowgaluk-Kowalski]

Thanks for the video. I just want to point out one thing: in Ukrainian е and и get heavily reduced in unstressed positions and, because of that, the better (just in my opinion) way to pronounce Суми is to end it with a schwa sound (or with a closed e if English phonotactics allow it). You can at least consider it to be a plausible alternative to your suggestion. We just don't distinguish between е and и in unstressed positions and children constantly mix them up in writing

[@elenna_alexia]

Ever since I learned how to say it, Zaporizhzhia has been one of my favorite words.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Mine too

[@medeology4660]

It is a great word. It's smooth, pops in your mouth like filled candy and slips away with a delicious hint of a diphtong.

[@a.n.6374]

This gets even more confusing for other cyrillic users. In Bulgarian, historically we've taken mostly the russian names and for most of them, their spelling in russian as well, because our alphabet fits closer to the russian version of cyrillic. Pronounciation is balkanized a lot, as we lack many of the vowels and palatalizations they both have. We don't have i and ї for example and ь is extremly rare. We are writing Киев, but pronouncing it is closer to what an english speaker would say as Kiev. If i get the orthography correct - we say it as Кiев in urkainian/Киэв in russian. But same as in english, we are lately aiming at adopting more ukraninan names so we have things like Харкив, Днипро, Чернихив comming through which don't look either ukranian nor russian, but that's just our best approximation of spelling to pronounce it more as ukranian rather then russian.

[@andrew07865]

Thank you for this video from a viewer from Zaporizhzhia ❤

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Слава Україні 🔱

[@andrew07865]

@@polyMATHY_Luke Героям Слава!

[@servantofaeie1569]

Its a fun word to say. Zaporizhzhia

[@CrazyChickenFarmer]

@@polyMATHY_Luke L taking a side in this conflict will not do you any good

[@mootagen1]

Absolutely astonishing! You've aced the pronunciation of most cities so that it's hard to discern whether Ukrainian is your first language or not. That's the power of linguistics, I guess. One thing I would point out, as a native Ukrainian speaker, is that somehow "proper English" pronunciation of Kyiv in the video sounded more natural than "your" variant (13:38). I would assess that it sounded more like "Кив" than "Київ". In fact, simply saying "Kiiv" would be perceived better by an Ukrainian eye. No offense meant by that, it's just an observation.

[@erichamilton3373]

I like your explanation of exonyms such as Odessa, Kiev or Milan. For that matter English Paris is in the same category as it's not the same as French Paris...nor should it be. Use of exonyms grounds us in historicity and helps guard against linguistic/geography chaos, which is caused by constant attempts at name changing. Use of exonyms has nothing to do with political leanings (it certainly shouldn't), and is the way to go for all languages. I'd expect Ukrainians to use their own names for London, New York or Rome.

[@lifigrugru6396]

Speaking a languige like english (before greek, latin, french, spain, russian in europe, hindi, han, or mandarin) made not excuse to being lazy or sniffy to try to learn other's tone's and culture. Just like you teach it. I woulde give the benefit of good will. :)

[@richardwaring8613]

English has many flavours but locally to me the word coat is not a good example in the North of England as it has a hint of two vowel sounds eg co-at, with two syllables and the road is pronounced ro-ad quite similar to OP Shakespeare. The accents of the Midlands and the North is sometimes like archaeology (Brit here)with hints of Old English, Norse,Cumbric and Gaelic.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Good note

[@alekseyd2900]

With letter В you overdone your investigation. All the variants are ok for every word. It depends on personal pronunciation, you can always pronounce it as W, or as V or anyhow, it will be ok to understand. In Zaporizhzha firstly you doubled ZH correctly, but then repeated the word several times without those double ZH, that was incorrectly. Rivne you pronounced perfectly 😊 Thanks for this video.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Hi there, as for ZH not being doubled the other times, that’s because I then gave the English version, which doesn’t have doubling

[@funki4896]

It's simple! Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Yuzhnoukrayinsk and Novhorod-Siverskyi:

[@oleksandrlevchuk]

You forgot Khmelnytskiy!

[@vaniayura]

and Kryvyi Rih😅

[@funki4896]

@@user-re8rm6ys5j лишнехросомньıй тебя никто не спрашивал...

[@Misanthrope-]

Duzhe dyakuyu for video. Nineteen minutes of the pleasure.

[@asuasu999]

Ukrainian native speaker here. The reason why Ukraine writes "Х" as "KH" is because we have letter "Г" and it's hard version "Ґ"(which occures rarely and not exist in russian). So we should mark "Г" and "Ґ" as "H" and "G" in latin. But "H" was used a long time to mark English "H" sound. So we made English "H" sound as "KH". But it was misunderstood by many as "K" sound

[@alanjmcc]

That was well done. Love the respect you show for the Ukrainian language. You do us all a service when you explain how European (and other) cities' names arrived in English via French and that no insult is intended when people pronounce foreign words using their own phonological rules.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I’m very glad you liked my presentation.

[@xshwei]

Regarding how Ukrainian is pronounced today overall, the literary language is based on the Upper-Dnipro dialect, some of its features are lack of palatalisation in front of etymological i sounds (that's where Wiktionary got it wrong), for example the word "кіт", where i is formed from o in a closed syllable (кôт), formerly in such words the i would not soften the preceding consonant and it would be pronounced just ['kit]. But the word віра, where i comes from an etymologican yat sound (вѣра), the consonant would soften anyways, [ʋʲirɐ]. This was reflected in Kulishivka orthography which was widely used from 1850s all the way to 1920s by writing the palatalising /i/ as , and the for non-palatalising i. Today's tendency is to palatalise all consonants. Russian language also made changes to some people's speech, this regards devoicing consonants, word-finally and before unvoiced consonants, the most notable example is в, which should become [u̯] at the syllable coda, and not [f]. Other minor things as using [ɨ] for the /ɪ/ phoneme, geminated [ɕː] for expected [ʃʧ], soft [tɕ] instead of [ʧ] and so on.

[@stlouisramsfan03]

Navajo has the [x] sound also.

[@natmaren989]

I appreciate this video because in the last year a lot of military bloggers started talking about Ukraine. But their pronunciation often distorts the names of cities. If they at least looked at the transcription on the wiki it would be much better.

[@darkdevil905]

Ukrainian г is somewhere in between a g and an h, like gh, where g is weaker and the h is stronger

[@axisboss1654]

I have Ukrainian heritage and I still call it Kiev in English even though I know it is Kiiv in actual Ukrainian. Both are technically correct.

[@taimunozhan]

Not Ukrainian, but I just wanted to point out that "Kiev" is not really a historical English toponym like Milan and Naples but rather a direct Russian loanword. There is, in fact, a historical English name for Kyiv which is Kyow (borrowed through Polish and German) but, of course, no one has used that one for over a century and there's nothing to be gained by reinstating it. Lviv (often referred to by its Russian name Lvov in the past) also had a couple of interesting historical toponyms that are no longer in use including the German-based Lemberg (which was probably the name an English-speaker would have used in the 19th century) and, more interestingly enough, the Latin-based name Leopolis. While neither of those names are in use (in English at least), people from Lviv are still known as "Leapolitans" in English, much in the same way English keeps the more conservative and Latinate adjectival forms for Venetians and Neapolitans.

[@janlatos2]

Львов це польська назва, тому що Львів контролювався Польщею доволі багато років. the pronunciation is written in parentheses. pl - Lwów (Lwuw) ua - Львів (Lviw) rus - Львов (Lvof) 😊

[@WolfgangSourdeau]

Interestingly, the "H" in ukrainian alphabet is the "G" in the russian alphabet, which tends to make me believe there was a pronunciation shift from "g" to "h". The same can be found in czech and slovak where, for example, the "-grad" (or "-gorod") suffix found in certain slavic languages became "-hrad".

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

There was, absolutely. I don’t recall the history of the development in East Slavic, but the interesting thing with that letter may also explain /yivo/ in Russian for “of him”

[@bartumjejwanot3910]

Exactly, it happened not only in Ukrainian, but also in Belarusian, Slovak, Czech, Upper Sorbian and southern dialects of Silesian and Russian. You can compare, how Proto-Slavic *sněgъ (snow) gives Polish śnieg, Russian снег (snyeg) or Croatian snijeg, but Ukrainian сніг (snih), Slovak sneh, Upper Sorbian sněh and so on. The same shift g>h happened regularly in all roots with *g in them. Ukrainian “reintroduced” the /g/ sound, though, and it is written with the letter ґ, but it is very rare in nowadays Ukrainian. When you play Scrabble and you get the ґ, you are in trouble 😅

[@janlatos2]

​@@bartumjejwanot3910 The letter "g" on the contrary has now become popular, due to borrowed and international words, if you pronounce /h/ instead of /g/ where it shouldn't be, it sounds funny Instahram? Hoohle?

[@mertonnephake]

@@janlatos2 I was quite suprised that Ukrainians say ‹hamburher›.

[@pooroldnostradamus]

7:17 I feel like "в" in Каховка sounds mostly like an "ф" (f). I believe voiced consonants often become unvoiced

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Absolutely. But when it’s the semivowel u̯ it doesn’t technically change, so it depends how it’s realized - an f for many speakers is likely.

[@amirsur1596]

This is the case in russian, but *not* in literary ukrainian. Ideally you should pronounce ‹в› in coda as a /w/, so it'd be /ka'kʰowka/; same goes for, say, Kyjiw and Kharkiw - i'd recommend to pronounce them as if it's spelled Kiyew and Kharkew, /kɪjuːw, xɑrkʉːw/.

[@pooroldnostradamus]

@@amirsur1596 Ah, I see. It can be a little confusing, because so many people are bilingual to a degree, so not every speaker would stick to formal Ukrainian pronunciation. Thanks!

[@benw9949]

It helps tremendously if people learn that [x] kh sound like in German Bach, Spanish reloj, jefe, jalapeño, Scottish Loch, and yes, Greek Chi. It's very strong H-like sound, a velar fricative, unvoiced. It was also present in Old and Middle English words like knight, laugh, thought, plough, neighbor. Saying it as a K sound in English is likely to confuse native speakers, and so many world languages have the sound that it's useful to use it. -- Being able to learn and imitate an accent helps a great deal -- And by the way, "Odessa" is also the name of a town in western Texas, Midland and Odessa have grown closer so that they are almost merged, much like Dallas and Fort Worth. So Odessa has a history in Texas too. -- And we hope for a peaceful future. Once thing the war has done is to point out that Ukraine and Russia are two neighboring cousins, but very much not the same. Viva Ukraine.

[@egbront1506]

I thought the letter yogh covered what is а more voiced velar fricative ɣ , which is closer to the current Ukrainian Г than X.

[@staskos25]

Nice pronunciation