LingoflyЄ є — ye
«ye» is a vowel of the Ukrainian script, read as “ye as in "yet"”. A y and an e in one letter, as in "yet". After a consonant it softens that consonant instead, and you hear only the e. The Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total. Do not mix it up with the plain e: that one is just e, while this one adds a y. On its own, this letter is a word meaning "is" or "there is".
In short
| Character | Є (ye) є (ye) |
| Name | ye |
| Sound | ye as in "yet" |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 8th of 33, its neighbours in the course are е and ж (zh), appears in 67 words of this site.
How to type Є (ye) є (ye)
- On a phone: add the Ukrainian keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+0454 and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0454.
- Unicode code points: є (ye) — U+0454, Є (ye) — U+0404. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
A y and an e in one letter, as in "yet". After a consonant it softens that consonant instead, and you hear only the e
The character in the “five letters to watch” group
і (i) is the ee of "see". и looks like a mirrored N and sounds shorter, close to the i of "sit": дим (dym) is smoke, дім (dim) is a house. ї (yi) is always yee, and є (ye) is ye. ґ is a plain g, found in only a handful of words.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound, see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 33 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Ukrainian character є (ye) read?
As “ye as in "yet"” — it is a vowel of the Ukrainian script. A y and an e in one letter, as in "yet". After a consonant it softens that consonant instead, and you hear only the e.
What is the letter є (ye) called?
Ye. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Ukrainian script: it is called “ye” and reads as “ye as in "yet"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.