Basic Ukrainian Grammar

STEP BY STEP

How do people usually start learning Ukrainian? Playing with Duolingo or Memrise, watching random YouTube videos like «Fruits in Ukrainian», «10 Phrases to Start Talking», etc. And certainly, learning «that weird alphabet». If to compare this to cooking, such a start is similar to smelling various spice jars, touching exotic fruits and twisting a ladle. And then a moment comes, when you ask yourself, «And what’s next? How to cook with all that?»

You need a recipe. That’s when students find a teacher.

If you still think, «Well, I don’t particularly like all those grammar rules and traditional learning. I just want to speak Ukrainian…», here’s a classroom «case study». (And after that, we’ll head to the language kitchen.)

In the first lesson, I give my students the words about family and two structures:

Це … . Його звати … . Йому … . (This is … . His name’s … . He’s … (age).)
Це … . Її звати … . Їй … . (This is … . Her name’s … . She’s … (age).)

I ask students to insert in the gaps the information about their relatives and to tell about their family. Their homework is to write this story down.

In the next class, 90% of students read out the wrong sentences, e.g.:

Мій тато звати Том. Мій тато 54. Моя мама звати Кетрін. Моя мама 51.

(The correct version is: "Мого тата звати Том. Моєму тату (or татові) 54. Мою маму звати Кетрін. Моїй мамі 51".)

Why is that?

Because in the first lesson, I just want my students to imitate the ready-made structures that I give them, with zero creativity. I don’t mention that «його/її звати…» is the phrase in the accusative case, and «йому/їй…» is in the dative case. So, if we want to use noun phrases (мій тато, моя мама) instead of pronouns (його/йому/її/їй), we should put them in these case forms (which we don’t know at this stage).

Hence, the students get a valuable experience from this incident – in Ukrainian, just as in cooking, there are ~~recipes~~ (rules) for ~~tasty dishes~~ (correct texts). And they have to be trained. Of course, if don’t want to treat your listeners or readers to something like that:

a cooking pot with awfully burned dinner

(Image: https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/funny-kitchen-cooking-fails-145-58984ebd92f65__605.jpg)

So, why this Ukrainian grammar course?

❌ No grammar «page after page», e.g. everything about nouns → everything about verbs → everything about numerals, etc.; no random YouTube videos «Ukrainian grammar for beginners».

✅ Grammar topics are in the order you need them for communication.

❌ No «Everything you need to know about…», «All possible endings of…».

✅ Information comes in portions, the unnecessary is omitted, so you don’t feel overwhelmed and lost.

❌ No long theoretical texts about grammar followed by a whopping amount of …two real-life sentences to practice it.

✅ You have lots of interactive exercises (with auto-correction).

❌ No more looking for a teacher in your time zone.

✅ 24/7 access to learning materials.

❌ No more searching through internet forums for an answer to your question.

✅ You can ask a teacher and get a professional answer for free.

🌟 One step in this course costs less than an online 1-hour lesson with a teacher but you get even more – play teacher explanations on repeat and do exercises as many times as you want.

"Basic Ukrainian Grammar" is for you:

if you can read Ukrainian letters;
if you know some basic words and now you need ideas on how to use them;
if you want to order the Ukrainian chaos in your mind;
if you want to study Ukrainian consistently but you don’t know where to start;
if you’re looking for a guide in the world of Ukrainian.

What is the course like?

➤ The course consists of 16 steps (i.e. grammar lessons). Every next step is based on the previous ones.

➤ You can buy individual lessons, and then purchase additional ones if you find out gaps in your knowledge and need to relearn particular topics.

➤ Each lesson consists of:

- videos with teacher explanations;

- interactive exercises with auto-correction;

- a downloadable PDF with the rules.

⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️ Take the first step now! ⬇️ ⬇️ ⬇️