Ukrainian Greetings and Thank-Yous — How to Look Up 20 Words, and the Distinctions Kana Erases

The Ukrainian word for “thank you” is дякую. The dictionary adds the kana ジャークユ (ja-ku-yu) to it, but the дя sound is not the same sound as Japanese “ja.” The 20 words of greeting and thanks each have their own entry in this outlet’s Ukrainian dictionary, where you’ll find the definitions, examples, and sources. Here, we cover the order in which to look up those 20 words, and what kana and Latin transliteration each leave out. But first, there are three things we can’t offer yet.

1. What We Can’t Offer Yet

• There is no audio. A native speaker has not yet recorded these words. We are not substituting synthetic speech. Neither this article nor the dictionary can give you the sound.
• Kana is only a rough guide. Each dictionary entry has kana attached, but it is not a description of pronunciation. This article does not invent new kana; it only quotes the dictionary’s spelling where needed.
• None of the 20 words has been checked by a native speaker yet. The definitions and examples are taken from the text of the Словник української мови (the 11-volume and 20-volume editions), but whether they sound natural to speakers today has not been confirmed. As of September 23, 2026, no word has been confirmed.

The third point matters most. What a dictionary says and what people actually say today are not the same thing. Wherever this article writes “the dictionary says,” it refers only to the fact that the dictionary says so.

2. Look Up the 20 Words in Situational Groups

Because the dictionary has one entry per word, the 20 words look scattered. In fact they form groups by situation. Below, they are grouped using the same “situation/field” tags as the dictionary. Clicking a word takes you to its entry.

Situation	Word	What the dictionary says about it
First greeting (formal)	добрий день/доброго дня/добридень	A daytime greeting. The dictionary treats all three as the same greeting
First greeting (casual)	привіт	Labeled colloquial, and limited to “with friends or acquaintances”
Changes with time of day	добрий ранок/добрий вечір/добривечір	A morning greeting, an evening greeting. The dictionary does not state when to switch between them
Returning a greeting	доброго здоров’я	A greeting used on meeting someone, and the form used to reply to it
Giving thanks	дякую/спасибі	The entry for спасибі lists дякую as a synonym at the end of its definition
Asking, offering, replying to thanks	будь ласка/прошу	Both are forms of request, and both also serve as replies to thanks
Apologizing	вибачте/перепрошую	The underlying verbs mean “to forgive” and “to ask forgiveness”
Answering	так/ні/добре	A particle of affirmation, a particle of negation, a particle expressing agreement
Parting	до побачення/бувайте здорові/на добраніч	Set phrases for parting. The last one is for nighttime, or before sleep

3. A Suggested Order — Four Words First, Then Three

You don’t need to learn all 20 words at once. Here is one suggested order, based on how many situations each word covers according to the dictionary. There is no study measuring learning effectiveness behind this; it is this article’s own suggestion.

The first four words are будь ласка, дякую, добрий день, and вибачте. Here is why.

• будь ласка: СУМ-20 treats it as the polite form for requests, invitations, and offers, and also as a form expressing agreement and a polite reply to thanks. One word does three jobs.
• дякую: the dictionary’s headword line marks the case as “кому, чому” — the person you thank takes the dative. It’s a verb, so at the same time you see this is a language where word forms change.
• добрий день: СУМ-20 defines it as “a greeting on meeting someone, and in correspondence.” It works both spoken aloud and at the opening of an email.
• вибачте: the underlying verb вибачити means “to overlook, to forgive,” so вибачте literally means “please forgive me.” Whether it can also be used to stop someone on the street, the way “excuse me” works in Japanese, could not be confirmed from the dictionary.

The next three words are так, ні, and добре. They let you respond to what someone says. But being short, they also come with traps. In the dictionary, так splits into an adverb, an affirmative particle, an interrogative particle, an intensifying particle, a conjunction, and more — more than a dozen senses in all. так in a sentence is not always “yes.” добре, too, has a sense as the reply “okay” that is separate from the adverb meaning “well, properly.”

Add добрий ранок, добрий вечір, до побачення, and на добраніч after that, and you can cover a full day, back and forth.

The remaining nine words — привіт, доброго дня, добридень, добривечір, доброго здоров’я, бувайте здорові, спасибі, прошу, and перепрошую — can, for now, stay as “words you look up when you hear them” rather than “words you say yourself.” That’s this article’s position. The reason is in the next section.

4. Some Things the Dictionary Doesn’t Settle

Should you say добрий день or доброго дня? The dictionary doesn’t decide this. СУМ-11’s entry for добрий, under set phrases, gives «Добрий ранок (день, вечір); Доброго ранку (дня, вечора) – традиційне взаємне дружнє вітання при зустрічі вранці (удень, увечері)» (“Good morning [day, evening]; Good morning [of the day, of the evening] — a traditional mutual, friendly greeting on meeting in the morning [during the day, in the evening]”), grouping the three times of day and the six forms — nominative and genitive — under one definition. Since the dictionary does not write down a difference, no difference can come from the dictionary.

The same thing happens with at least these pairs: добрий день and добридень (the dictionary says only “same as добрий день”), добрий вечір and добривечір, дякую and спасибі, будь ласка and прошу, вибачте and перепрошую, до побачення and бувайте здорові. This is why the previous section put nine words off until later: for most of them, the dictionary offers no way to confirm a difference from the word learned earlier.

This article will not say here that “A is actually more natural.” There is no basis on which to write that. If you see an explanation elsewhere saying “A is natural, B is old-fashioned,” check where it comes from. It is not written in the dictionary.

There is one thing you can do: echo back whichever form the other person used. The example СУМ-11 gives under добрий ранок is «– Доброго ранку, Ївго Борисівно! – Доброго ранку!» (“Good morning, Yivha Borysivna! — Good morning!”), which returns the same form. In the example for добрий вечір, a greeting given in the nominative is answered in the genitive.

5. Distinctions That Kana Collapses

Written in kana, separate Ukrainian sounds turn into the same character. The dictionary notes this, word by word, in its “what we haven’t confirmed” field, but summarized, there are four such collapses.

The original distinction	In kana	In Latin transliteration
и and і	Both come out as “i”	Written distinctly: и=y, і=i
г and х	Both come out as an “h” sound	Written distinctly: г=h, х=kh
л and р	Both come out as an “r” sound	Written distinctly as l and r
Soft consonants (дя, дь, нь)	Approximated to “ja,” “ji,” “ni”	The soft sign ь is not rendered

привіт contains both и and і. So does спасибі. In kana, both become “i,” and the distinction disappears.

Latin transliteration preserves more information. But the transliteration table is not a set of phonetic symbols. Resolution No. 55 sets out the procedure for rendering the Cyrillic alphabet in Latin letters, used for things like the spelling of names in passports. And even transliteration drops something. The same table’s note states, “М’який знак і апостроф латиницею не відтворюються” — the soft sign and the apostrophe are not rendered in Latin letters. So будь ласка becomes bud laska, and the softness of дь disappears; доброго здоров’я becomes dobroho zdorovia, and the break the apostrophe marked disappears.

What that apostrophe marks is written in the orthography. §7 of the Український правопис (2019 edition) states, “Роздільність вимови я, ю, є, ї та попереднього твердого приголосного на письмі позначаємо апострофом” — we mark with an apostrophe that я, ю, є, ї and the preceding hard consonant are pronounced separately. §4 of the same book states the opposite case: that я, ю, є after a consonant letter show that the consonant is soft, giving дя́дько and лю́ди as examples. дя in дякую is this case. The dictionary writes the kana ジャークユ for it, while noting in the same entry that this is “not accurate.”

Kana and transliteration each drop something different. Even layering both together does not reconstruct the sound. In the end, you have to hear it. And this outlet has not yet been able to provide that sound.

6. Stress Is Not Length

The dictionary’s kana includes a long-vowel mark ー (добре is written “ドーブレ,” do-o-bu-re). This is not a long vowel; it is written that way to mark the position of stress. Ukrainian stress does not lengthen a vowel. Read it as a Japanese long vowel, and it sounds like a different word.

How much stress matters shows up in the very first article of the orthography. §1 of the 2019 edition of the Український правопис, titled “Правопис наголошених і ненаголошених Е, И” (“Spelling of stressed and unstressed E, Y”), opens: “Наголошені голосні е та и у вимові виразні, тому їх передаємо тими самими буквами: дале́ко, ви́соко. Ненаголошені е та и невиразні у вимові.” — Stressed e and y are pronounced distinctly, so we write them with the same letters: дале́ко, ви́соко. Unstressed e and y are pronounced indistinctly. The same article goes on to say: check unstressed e/y against a related form where the stress falls on it (вели́кий from ве́лич), and for words whose stress position does not move, consult the dictionary.

Even for people who write Ukrainian, unstressed e and y are hard to tell apart by ear. That is why this is the orthography’s very first article. There is no way a Japanese speaker could determine the vowel just by looking at kana.

For прошу, the dictionary’s entry notes that СУМ-20 distinguishes by stress between the verb form прошу́ and the etiquette set phrase про́шу. But the dictionary itself notes that this could be confirmed in only one dictionary. In writing this article, all that could be confirmed on the same dictionary site’s прошу page was the headword for the verb просити; a listing as a set phrase could not be confirmed.

7. What Not to Do

• Don’t decide the sound from kana alone. The dictionary’s kana is a memory aid for the word, not an instruction for pronunciation.
• Don’t learn from synthetic speech. This outlet does not publish audio, because it has none to offer.
• Don’t read the Latin transliteration as phonetic symbols. Resolution No. 55 is a table for document spelling.
• Don’t read a dictionary’s listing of two words as synonyms to mean “either is fine.” It doesn’t mean there is no difference — it means whether there is a difference is not known.
• Don’t infer anything about people from a word. What the dictionary describes is the word, not the people who use it.

8. To Keep Going

This article does not recommend teaching materials or services. We have no basis for evaluating them. The realistic starting point is to open, yourself, the sources listed at the end of this article. All of them are free to read. The dictionary text cited in this article is, in every case, hosted on a secondary republishing site.

At the end of each dictionary entry is a note of what the editorial team wants to ask a native speaker: whether добрий день or доброго дня sounds more natural, whether привіт can be used with someone senior to you, how дякую’s kana should be written. If you already know the answer, please tell us. As each word is confirmed by a native speaker, we will add that to its dictionary entry.

Once you can look up all 20 words yourself, you’ll be ready to come back here and check them by ear when the audio is ready.