Which Ukrainian phonemes are most difficult for beginners

The Ukrainian phonemes most difficult for beginners often include sounds that do not exist in their native languages or are articulated differently in Ukrainian. Common challenging phonemes for learners are:

• The voiced and voiceless palatalized consonants (soft sounds), such as [т’], [д’], [н’], which require palatalization (raising the middle of the tongue toward the hard palate while pronouncing).
• The Ukrainian voiced velar fricative [ɦ] (similar to an English “h” but voiced) and its contrast with the voiceless [x] (similar to the “ch” in German “Bach”) can be difficult.
• The distinction between the Ukrainian [r] (a trilled or rolled “r”) and other languages’ r-sounds is often tricky.
• The vowel system with its specific reductions and unstressed vowel pronunciations may also pose problems.

These phonemes require focused practice because they often don’t have direct equivalents in many learners’ native phonetic systems, making their production and perception challenging at the beginning stage. ^{1, 2}

References

• Some properties of the Ukrainian writing system

• Difficulties in Learning Ukrainian as Foreign Language by the Korean Students on the Intermediate Level

• IMPLEMENTING AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD TO TEACHING UKRAINIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AT THE INITIAL STAGE

• Regional Variants Of The Russian Literary Language: Situation In Sevastopol

• “PYSMONAVTYKA” BY TETIANA STUS AS A COURSE OF LITERARY CREATIVITY FOR CHILDREN

• Gender Assignment in Ukrainian: Language Specific Rules and Universal Principles

• Between Three Languages, Dialects and Forms of Mixed Speech: Dialect and Language Contacts in Ukrainian-Belarusian Transitional Area

• SPECIFIC FEATURES OF STUDYING CROSS-CULTURAL TEXTS IN CLASSES OF UKRAINIAN AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

• Representation of the formal structure of the adverbial equivalents of the word with prepositional-case forms