Is Pavlovsky’s 1818 Grammar Really “the First Ukrainian Grammar”?

In 1818, in St. Petersburg, a small, 114-page book was printed. Its author, Oleksii Pavlovsky (Олексій Павловський), was born in a village now in Sumy Oblast. The Encyclopedia of the Ukrainian Language calls this book “the first printed grammar of the living, popular Ukrainian language” in Ukrainian linguistics.

This “first,” however, comes with conditions attached. Grammars written and printed in Ukraine existed before it. What has to be counted, and what left out, for 1818 to be “the first”? This article works through the book’s title page and contents, and the wording of the encyclopedias, based on sources readable as of September 2026.

The Title on the Cover

The title page of the scan of the printed book published by the Odesa I. I. Mechnikov National University Scientific Library reads as follows.

ГРАММАТИКА МАЛОРОССІЙСКАГО НАРѢЧІЯ, или Грамматическое показаніе существеннѣйшихъ отличій, отдалившихъ Малороссійское нарѣчіе отъ чистаго Россійскаго языка, сопровождаемое разными по сему предмѣту замѣчаніями и сочиненіями. Сочин. Ал. Павловскій. … Въ Санктпетербургѣ. … 1818 года.

Title page of Грамматика малороссійскаго нарѣчія (1818). Spelling as in the printed book

In English this reads: “Grammar of the Little Russian Dialect, or a Grammatical Presentation of the Most Essential Differences That Have Set the Little Russian Dialect Apart From Pure Russian, Accompanied by Various Remarks and Compositions on This Subject. By Al. Pavlovsky. … In St. Petersburg. … The Year 1818.” It was printed at the press of V. Plavilshchikov, and the back of the title page carries a censor’s approval dated May 14, 1818.

The Old Words in the Title, and What We Call It Today

The title’s “Малороссійское нарѣчіе” (“Little Russian dialect”) is the printed book’s own wording. “Little Russia” was a name the Russian Empire used for what is now Ukraine’s territory. The title frames the subject as a dialect “set apart” from Russian, taking Russian as the standard. The 2004 Encyclopedia of the Ukrainian Language, by contrast, calls this book a grammar of “живої народної української мови” (the living, popular Ukrainian language). Below, this article gives the title as it appears in the printed book, and calls the language itself Ukrainian. How the claim that Ukrainian is “a dialect of Russian” has been used is covered in our article, “Where Ukrainian and Russian Differ.”

Contents: Some 20 Pages of Grammar, and a Small Dictionary

According to the table of contents at the back of the book, it is divided into two parts.

Part	Chapters and sections	Pages
Part 1, “Letters and word formation”	Chapter 1, Letters (number of letters, pronunciation); Chapter 2, Parts of speech (nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, other parts of speech)	1-21
Part 2, “Little Russian sentences and poetic works”	Chapter 1, A small Little Russian dictionary (ordinary words, natural-history words, baptismal names, sayings and proverbs)	24-85
	Chapter 2, Example sentences (simple examples, conversation, songs, an excerpt from a Little Russian’s tale, “Vakula the Blacksmith”)	86-105
	Summary	106-114

The grammar itself runs to a little over 20 pages; most of the book is vocabulary and example sentences. The Encyclopedia’s entry “Граматика малоросійського наріччя” (written by В. Б. Задорожний) states that the book briefly describes the main sounds and forms of Ukrainian in comparison with Russian, while also collecting samples of words and oral literature, mostly in the speech of the northeastern region. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), likewise describes it as based on the dialects of the northern Left Bank of the Dnipro River.

In the preface, Pavlovsky writes that, knowing from experience how odd it sounds to speak without knowing the position of the stress, he added a mark showing where the stress falls in each word.

Does the Dictionary Have 1,130 Words, or 1,131?

Sources give the dictionary’s word count as one apart from each other.

• IEU, “Pavlovsky, Oleksii” (reprinted from the 1993 print edition): a dictionary of 1,130 words and phrases drawn from proverbs, sayings, and poems
• The Encyclopedia’s “Граматика малоросійського наріччя”: a “Краткій малороссійскій словарь” (short Little Russian dictionary) with 1,131 headwords marked for stress

The same Encyclopedia’s entry “Павловський Олексій” attributes the figure 1,130 to a different work — a Ukrainian-Russian dictionary Pavlovsky compiled in 1826 (covering only the letters А through Б, and published only in 1972) — not to this book. The entry’s wording alone does not settle which number belongs to which dictionary.

Using the Letter і, and Writing as It Sounds

This book is often mentioned in the history of orthography, too. The Encyclopedia’s entry “Правопис” (“Orthography”) states that this book was the first attempt to establish a “phonetic orthography,” writing one sound with one letter, and that it introduced writing the sound i with the letter і regardless of a word’s etymology. The same Encyclopedia’s entry “Український алфавіт” (“The Ukrainian alphabet”) lists і (Pavlovsky, 1818), є (1837), and ї (1873) among the letters that have remained in today’s Ukrainian alphabet.

Opening Chapter 1 of the printed book, this is exactly what it says. It states that “О” in one-syllable words is pronounced like і, giving сімъ, піпъ, and бігъ; and that “Ѣ” is pronounced like the soft і of Russian, giving ніжный, літо, слідъ, тінь, and сіно. It also states that, to distinguish the two sounds of г, a word pronounced like the Latin g is written with the two letters “кг,” as in кгуля, кгрона, and кгвалтъ.

Grammars That Came Before It

Grammars written and printed on Ukrainian soil existed as early as the 16th century. Here, in order, are the ones the two encyclopedias list.

Year	Event	Source
1574	Ivan Fedorovych’s Azbuka in Lviv. Part 2 includes grammatical knowledge	Encyclopedia, “Граматики української мови”; IEU, “Grammar”
1586	“Кграматика словеньска язика” in Vilnius. The Encyclopedia calls it the first printed grammatical work in the East Slavic world	Encyclopedia, “Граматики української мови”
1591	Adelfotes, a Greek/Church Slavonic grammar compiled by pupils of the Brotherhood School, in Lviv	Same as above; IEU, “Grammar”
1596	Lavrentii Zizanii’s Church Slavonic grammar, in Vilnius	Same as above
1619	Meletii Smotrytsky’s Church Slavonic grammar, in Yevye near Vilnius	Same as above
1643	Ivan Uzhevych writes a grammar in Latin, in Paris (a manuscript; published only in 1970)	Encyclopedia, “Ужевич Іван” and “Граматики української мови”
1790s	Pavlovsky begins writing an outline of Ukrainian	IEU, “Pavlovsky, Oleksii”
1805	Pavlovsky finishes writing his grammar (IEU says it was completed in 1805; the Encyclopedia says it was written by 1805)	IEU; Encyclopedia
1818	Pavlovsky’s grammar is published in St. Petersburg	The printed book; IEU; Encyclopedia
1822	Pavlovsky publishes Прибавленіе къ грамматикѣ малороссійскаго нарѣчія. According to IEU, a response to a review	Encyclopedia; IEU
1822-24	Ivan Mohylnytsky in Galicia writes a grammar (not published until 1910)	Encyclopedia, “Граматики української мови”
1830	Mykhailo Luchkai’s Latin grammar Grammatica Slavo-Ruthena, in Buda (present-day Budapest)	Encyclopedia; IEU, “Luchkai, Mykhailo”
1834	Yosyp Levytsky’s German-language grammar, in Peremyshl	Encyclopedia; IEU, “Levytsky, Yosyp”
1849	Yakiv Holovatsky’s grammar, in Lviv	Encyclopedia, “Граматики української мови”

The 1574 Azbuka is covered in our article on the Apostol and Azbuka printed in Lviv in 1574; the terminology in Smotrytsky’s 1619 grammar is covered in our article on verbal aspect. Grammatical terminology from the late 19th century onward is in our article on noun cases.

What Exactly Is “the First Ukrainian Grammar” Counting?

The claim that 1818 was “the first,” and its relationship to the books that came before it, is stated differently from one encyclopedia entry to the next.

• Encyclopedia, “Граматика малоросійського наріччя” (Zadorozhny): “the first printed grammar of the living, popular Ukrainian language” in Ukrainian linguistics. Two conditions: “printed,” and “the living, popular language”
• Encyclopedia, “Граматики української мови” (written by М. А. Жовтобрюх): Pavlovsky’s 1818 and 1822 books “first described the sound system and morphological structure of the living Ukrainian language”
• IEU, “Pavlovsky, Oleksii”: the first work to describe the basic sounds and forms of spoken Ukrainian, based on the dialects of the northern Left Bank
• IEU, “Grammar” (written by George Yurii Shevelov, reprinted from the 1989 print edition): the grammars from 1574 to 1619 all dealt only with the language of liturgical and theological texts, not with the spoken language
• Encyclopedia, “Ужевич Іван” (written by В. В. Німчук): Uzhevych’s 1643 grammar mainly describes the system of mid-17th-century Ukrainian, and Uzhevych went down in history as “the first scholar to treat Ukrainian linguistically” — though it was a manuscript written in Latin, not published until 1970

Sorting this out: the 16th- and 17th-century grammars were aimed at Church Slavonic. One encyclopedia entry treats Uzhevych’s 1643 manuscript as the first description of Ukrainian itself. But the same Encyclopedia’s entry “Граматики української мови” states that what Uzhevych’s grammar described was the written language of the time, “проста мова” (the plain language), not the spoken language. That leaves Pavlovsky’s 1818 book as the first “printed book” to describe “spoken Ukrainian.” Which condition one weighs most heavily changes which year counts as “the first.”

“Dialect” or “Language”? Words From the Preface

How did Pavlovsky himself see this language? The Encyclopedia’s entry “Павловський Олексій” states that his view was contradictory: he wavered between “dialect” and “language,” leaning toward the idea of “a dialect that is almost a real language,” and even while thinking this language was destined to disappear, he argued that it needed to be studied. That wavering shows plainly in the preface.

• It is enough to set down on paper “a faint shadow of this disappearing dialect” (одну слабую тѣнь исчезающаго нарѣчія сего)
• There is no harm in working with something that is, so to speak, “neither a dead language nor a living one” (ни мертвымъ ни живымъ языкомъ)
• Is there any reason not to devote at least a little effort to “a dialect that constitutes almost a real language” (нарѣчіемъ, которое составляетъ почти настоящій языкъ)?

At the end of the preface, he writes that if this work, sooner or later, inspires Russia’s devoted sons, and the other peoples and tongues scattered across the vast empire, with a wish to preserve monuments such as this one, it will be a comfort and an honor to him. The Encyclopedia’s entry presents this view and then goes on to give its own assessment: that his work nonetheless began the grammatical study of the Ukrainian popular language, and helped establish norms of sound, grammar, and vocabulary for the written language.

IEU writes that, by depicting the Ukrainian people and their history, language, and literature, this book linked the ideas of the Istoriia Rusov (“History of the Rus’ People”) with the early stage of Ukrainian Romanticism. The Encyclopedia places it at the beginning stage in the development of the new Ukrainian written language. The Ukrainian literature of that period already included Kotliarevsky’s Eneida, published in 1798.

About Oleksii Pavlovsky

Not much is known about his life. Here is how the two encyclopedias describe it, side by side.

	IEU, “Pavlovsky, Oleksii”	Encyclopedia, “Павловський Олексій”
Born	1773, near Hlukhiv, in Shutivka (now Sosnivka), Nizhyn Regiment	1773, the village of Shuhivka (Шугівка; now Sosnivka, Sumy Oblast)
Where he studied	Graduated from the Kyiv Mohyla Academy in 1789, and from the teacher-training school in St. Petersburg in 1793	Studied at the Academy in Kyiv from 1779 to 1789, graduated from the teacher-training school in St. Petersburg in 1793
Work	Involved with the patriotic circle in Novhorod-Siverskyi, probably held an official post under Prince Bezborodko in St. Petersburg	Taught at the lyceum (secondary school) in Nizhyn. Also wrote odes and short stories
Died	After 1826	After 1826

IEU and the Encyclopedia give the name of his native village with a one-letter difference. The Kyiv Mohyla Academy is covered in our article on the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.