жити

In short

Why it looks that way

Present tense: zhyvu, zhyvesh, zhyve. "I live in Kyiv" works with or without a preposition — both ways of saying it are correct.

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

• Ми живемо в місті

  We live in the city

Nearby words: verbs

I want, I can, I am going, I know. Twenty verbs cover more everyday sentences than two hundred nouns.

• хочу

  I want

  From khotity. The thing wanted follows directly — no "to", no preposition: khochu kavyu, "I want coffee".
• пити

  to drink

  The present tense wears an apostrophe at every step: piyu, piyesh, piye. Vypity is "to drink up, finish" — the completed counterpart.
• їсти

  to eat

  The letter yi is a two-sound "yee": "yees-ty". Present: yim, yisy, yist. And "there is" in the sense of existing is a different word entirely — ye.
• люблю

  I love

  From lyubity. Works for food and for people equally: lyublyu kavu, lyublyu Kyiv — one verb, all kinds of love.
• іти

  to go (on foot)

  One syllable, no vowel in front: ytu is wrong, yty is right. Present: ydu, ydesh, yde — the y leads every step.
• їхати

  to go (by vehicle)

  For anything on wheels or rails. The present tense opens with the special ii-letter: iidu, iidesh, iide. Walking gets a different verb entirely.
• бути

  to be

  In the present it shrinks to one frozen word, ye — and even that gets dropped, so "I am a student" needs no "am". The future behaves: budu, budesh, bude.
• мати

  to have

  Where English says "I have", Ukrainian says "I have": ya maiu chas, maiu brata. In old texts maty also means "mother" — do not be startled in songs.
• працювати

  to work

  Present: pratsiuiu, pratsiuesh, pratsiuite. Do not reach for robyty — that one means "to do, to make", a different verb with a different job.
• вчити

  to study, to teach

  One verb for both studying a subject and teaching it: vchu ukrainsku — "I study Ukrainian". Context and endings tell who is doing it.

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “verbs”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• Verbs11 words on the topic
• працювати — to workverb
• вчити — to study, to teachverb
• українська — Ukrainianadjective
• і — andconjunction
• All Ukrainian wordsIndex by topic
• Why a word list doesn't sticka note