You can helpexpand this article with text translated fromthe corresponding article in Ukrainian. (April 2025)Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Ukrainian article. Machine translation, likeDeepL orGoogle Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consideradding a topic to this template: there are already 309 articles in themain category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. Youmust providecopyright attribution in theedit summary accompanying your translation by providing aninterlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary isContent in this edit is translated from the existing Ukrainian Wikipedia article at [[:uk:Українська латинка]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template{{Translated|uk|Українська латинка}} to thetalk page. For more guidance, seeWikipedia:Translation.

This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ukrainian Latin alphabet" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(September 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Ukrainian Latin alphabet
Examples ofLviv street signs written in Cyrillic and governmental standard oflatinisation (2012).
Script type	Alphabet
Direction	Left-to-right
Languages	Ukrainian
Unicode
Unicode range	Subset ofLatin
This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

TheUkrainian Latin alphabet^[a] is the form of theLatin script used for writing, transliteration, and retransliteration ofUkrainian.

The Latin alphabet has been proposed or imposed several times in the history inUkraine, but it has never replaced the dominant CyrillicUkrainian alphabet.

Standard Ukrainian has been written with theCyrillic script in a tradition going back to the introduction of Christianity andOld Church Slavonic toKievan Rus'. Proposals for Latinization, if not imposed for outright political reasons, have always been politically charged and have never been generally accepted, although some proposals to create an official Latin alphabet for Ukrainian have been expressed lately by nationalintelligentsia.

While superficially similar to a Latin alphabet,transliteration of Ukrainian from Cyrillic into the Latin script (orromanization) is usually not intended for native speakers, and may be designed for certain academic requirements or technical constraints.

In the nineteenth century, there were attempts to introduce the Latin script into Ukrainian writing, byJ. Lozinskiy (Polish:Józef Łoziński), a Ukrainian scholar and priest from Lviv (Josyp Łozyński Ivanovyč,Ruskoje wesile, 1834),^[1]Tomasz Padura.

The use of the Latin script for Ukrainian was promoted by authorities inGalicia under the AustrianHabsburg Empire.Franz Miklosich developed a Latin alphabet for Ukrainian in 1852, based on the Polish and Czech alphabets (adopting Czechč, š, ž, dž, ď, ť, Polishś, ź, ć, ń, andľ following the same pattern). Czech politicianJosef Jireček took an interest in this concept and managed to gain support for the project in the Imperial Ministry of Interior.

As part of aPolonization campaign in Galicia during the period of neo-absolutist rule after 1849, ViceroyAgenor Gołuchowski attempted to impose this Latin alphabet on Ukrainian publications in 1859. This started a fierce publicly debatedAlphabetical War (Ukrainian:Азбучна війна), and in the end the Latin alphabet was rejected.

A Latin alphabet for Ukrainian publications was also imposed in RomanianBessarabia,Bukovina andDobrudja, HungarianZakarpattia.

In Ukraine under theRussian Empire,Mykhailo Drahomanov promoted a purely phonemicCyrillic alphabet (theDrahomanivka) including the Latin letterј in 1876, replacing the digraphsя, є, ю, ї withја, је, јu, јі, similar to the earlierKaradžić reform of theSerbian alphabet.

In 1922 Ukrainianfuturist writerMykhail Semenko published a magazine calledSemafor u Majbutn'e ("Semaphore to the Future"), which included texts in Ukrainian, English, French and German languages, all written in Latin alphabet. One year later, Serhiy Pylypenko published his letter using a version of the Ukrainian Latin alphabet in the magazineChervonyi Shliakh, an official publication of thePeople's Commissariat of Education. According to Pylypenko, the unification of alphabets on the base of the Latin script would solve the problem of "international unity". Another supporter of this idea was Ukrainian author and linguistMaik Yohansen.^[2]

In 1927 an all-Ukrainian orthographic conference was organized inKharkiv, then capital ofSoviet Ukraine. One of the questions discussed at the conference was the adoption of Latin alphabet for Ukrainian language. However the idea was discarded by a majority vote. The main arguments used by opponents of Latinization at the conference, among them educationcommissarMykola Skrypnyk andLviv professorKyrylo Studynsky, were the high financial and material costs, as well as possible opposition to that step byRussians andGalician Ukrainians. Instead of a Ukrainian Latin alphabet, a new Cyrillic-based Ukrainian orthography (Skrypnykivka) was officially adopted in 1928.^[2]

This is the official transliteration system ofUkraine, also employed by theUnited Nations and many countries' foreign services. It is currently widely used to represent Ukrainian geographic names and for personal names in passports. It is based onEnglish orthography, and requires onlyASCII characters with no diacritics. It can be considered a variant of the "modified Library of Congress system" but does not simplify the -ий and -ій endings.

The first version of the system was codified in Decision No. 9 of the Ukrainian Committee on Issues of Legal Terminology on 19 April 1996,^[3][4] stating that the system is binding for the transliteration of Ukrainian names in English in legislative and official acts.

The current 2010 version is used for transliterating all proper names was approved as Resolution 55 of theCabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, on 27 January 2010.^[5][6] This modified earlier laws and brought together a unified system for official documents, publication of cartographic works, signs and indicators of inhabited localities, streets, stops, subway stations, etc.

It has been adopted internationally. The 27th session of the UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), held in New York on 30 July and 10 August 2012, approved the Ukrainian system of romanization.^[7][8] The BGN/PCGN jointly adopted the system in 2020.^[9]

Official geographic names are romanized directly from the original Ukrainian and not translated. For example,Kyivska oblast notKyiv Oblast,Pivnichnokrymskyi kanal notNorth Crimean Canal.^[10]

On 1 April 2022, the "Cyrillic-Latin transliteration and Latin-Cyrillic retransliteration of Ukrainian texts. Writing rules"DSTU 9112:2021 was approved asState Standard of Ukraine. The standard is based on modifiedISO 9:1995 standard and was developed by the Technical Committee 144 "Information and Documentation" of theState Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine. According to theSSTL, it could be used in future cooperation between theEuropean Union andUkraine, in which "Ukrainian will soon, along with other European languages, take its rightful place in multilingual natural language processing scenarios, including machine translation."^[11]

Some letters borrowed fromPolish were used in the Ukrainian Łatynka as stated above, which also has a close resemblance to the BelarusianŁacinka. Although never broadly accepted, it was used mostly by Ukrainians living in territories near Poland (where it was calledAbecadło).^[12]

As example, the Introduction of Josyp Łozynśkyj'sRuskoje Wesile ('Ruthenian Wedding', 1834):

Perédmowa

W tym opysi skazuju, jaksia wesile po sełach meży prostym ruskim ludom widprawlaje. Ne mohu jednako utrymowaty, jakoby toj sposób wesile widprawlaty wsiude newidminni był zachowanym; bo hdenekodyj szczoś dodajut, hdeinde szczoś wypuskajut, a znowu hdeinde szczoś widminiajut. Syła w mojej syli było, starał-jemsia w rozmaitych misciach obradki i pisny ruskoho wesila póznaty i pérekonał-jemsia że prynajmni szczo do hołownych obradkiw i pisnéj wsiude tymże samym sposobom wesilesia widprawlaje. I toj sposób opysałjem w nynijszуj knyżoczci dodajuczy jednako hdenekodyj i miscowyi widminy. Moim najperszym i najbohatszym a nawet́ i nihdy newyczerpanym źridłom, z kotorohom tyi widomosty czerpał, było dopytowanie po sełach tych ludej, kotryi czasto na wesilach bywały i wesilnyi uŕady pistowały. Nykotorych obradkiw był jem sam okozritelnym świdkom.

This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(November 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Josef Jireček proposed an alphabet based more closely onCzech orthography (except some letters like ć, ń, ś, ź).

1. ^ Forє which is used in place of Old Church Slavonicѧ or Polishę (e.g.sěhnuty, děkovaly, ščěstje, devěť).
2. ^ Forл in old Slavicъl + cons. (e.g.vołk). Jireček mistakenly believed there are three types of L in Ukrainian – hard (hart)l, soft (erweicht)ľ and potentiated hard (potenziert hart)ł.
3. ^ Forі, which derives from Old Church Slavonicо (as Jireček distinguished і < о and і < е, ѣ; e.g.кість - küsť, гвіздь - hvüźď).
4. ^ In foreign words only.

In modern Ukraine, use of Latin alphabets for the Ukrainian language is very rare. However, discussions of a united format of Latynka and its status still continue.

Comparison of several romanization systems for Ukrainian and historical versions of Ukrainian Latin alphabet in example of theState Anthem of Ukraine.

• 
  "Kobzar" by Taras Shevchenko, published in 1940 (abecadło)
• 
  "Ruthenian Calendar" for those who did not understand Cyrillic, 1910 (abecadło)
• 
  Authograph of a poem byYuriy Fedkovych (gajica and abecadło)
• 
  A prayer book for children published inCarpathian Ruthenia, 1904 (Hungarian alphabet)
• 
  History of Poland, Lithuania and Ruthenia, 1879 (abecadło)

• Romanization of Ukrainian
• Belarusian Latin alphabet
• Russian Latin alphabet
• Latinisation (USSR)
• Polish orthography
• Czech orthography
• Slovak orthography
• Gaj's Latin alphabet

• Chornovol, Ihor (2001), "Latynka v ukrayins’komu pravopysi: retrospektyva i perspektyva" (The Latin script in Ukrainian orthography: retrospective and perspective), inJi, no 23. (in Ukrainian,PDF)
• Simovyč, V.; Rudnyckyj, J.B. (1982) [1963]. "The History of Ukrainian Orthography". In Kubijovyč, Volodymyr (ed.).Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopædia, Vol. 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 517–18.ISBN 0-8020-3105-6.
• Ruthenian Wedding Sample TextArchived 2009-09-17 at theWayback Machine

Contemporary literature concerning the Alphabet Wars:

• Markijan Szaszkewicz. Azbuka i abecadło (1836).Przemyśl.
• Ivan Franko.Азбучна війна в Галичині 1859 – 'The Alphabet War in Galicia 1859'.
• J. Łewićki (1834).Review of the Introduction of the Polish Alphabet to Ruthenian Writing.
• Josyp Lozynskyj (1834). "On the Introduction of the Polish Alphabet to Ruthenian (Ukrainian) Writing", «О wprowadzeniu abecadła polskiego do pismiennictwa ruskiego».
• M. Šaškevyč.Азбука і abecadło.

• Media related toUkrainian Latin alphabet at Wikimedia Commons
• Latynka's Orthography
• Alphabet War in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine
• Latynka transcriber (scroll to bottom of page) which transcribes Ukrainian into Latynka
• Online romanizer of Ukrainian texts and websites
• Ukraïnśka Latynka Browser Extension — automatic transliteration of web pages, provides several romanization tables and a rule editor

• Ukrainian orthography
• Latin alphabets

• Articles containing Ukrainian-language text
• CS1 errors: periodical ignored
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles needing translation from Ukrainian Wikipedia
• Articles needing additional references from September 2022
• All articles needing additional references
• Pages with plain IPA
• Articles containing Polish-language text
• Articles needing additional references from November 2021
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Commons category link is on Wikidata