LingoflyИ и — y
«y» is a vowel of the Ukrainian script, read as “i as in "sit"”. The short i of "sit": shorter than the ee of "see", with the tongue a little lower. For example, in the word “ти” (ty) — you. The Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total. One half of the pair to tell apart: this letter is the short i of "sit", and the letter with the dot is the ee of "see".
In short
| Character | И и |
| Name | y |
| Sound | i as in "sit" |
| What it is | a vowel |
In our course the character comes 11th of 33, its neighbours in the course are з (z) and і (i), appears in roughly every other word on this site.
How to type И и
- 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+0438 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 0438.
- Unicode code points: и — U+0438, И — U+0418. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
The short i of "sit": shorter than the ee of "see", with the tongue a little lower
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- ти (ty)you
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 (for «y» it is “i as in "sit"”, as in the word “ти” (ty)), 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 и read?
As “i as in "sit"” — it is a vowel of the Ukrainian script. The short i of "sit": shorter than the ee of "see", with the tongue a little lower. For example, in the word “ти” (ty) — you.
What is the letter и called?
Y. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Ukrainian script: it is called “y” and reads as “i as in "sit"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can и be confused with?
One half of the pair to tell apart: this letter is the short i of "sit", and the letter with the dot is the ee of "see". Mixing them up changes the word: "smoke" is said like English "dim", "a house" like "deem". Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.