If you've just started learning Ukrainian, you might have heard that "Ukrainian grammar is complicated" but "you can't do away without it". Sounds pretty hopeless and confusing.

Here are lists of words and picture dictionaries in front of you, but how to combine all these words to make a story if "words change a lot"?

Keep calm, don't get discouraged because we can do it together 💪

All journeys start with the first step. Our first step is getting our hands dirty with Ukrainian nouns.

What is a noun?

It's a word used to name things: an apple, a desk, a window, etc. "1000 Most Useful Words" and "A Picture Dictionary" mostly consist of nouns.

What is gender?

Any Ukrainian noun has gender. Let see how it works.

If you take an English word "apple", you can use the word "it" instead of it. The same is with "telephone" (it) or "pen" (it). But if it's "woman", you use "she" instead of it. Or if it's "man", we use "he".

apple → it

telephone → it

pen → it

woman → she

man → he

However, in Ukrainian, we use "воно" (it) instead of "яблуко" (an apple), "він" (he) instead of "телефон" (a telephone), "вона" (she) instead of "ручка" (a pen). As for "жінка" (woman), we use "вона" (she) and "він"(he) instead of "чоловік" (man).

яблуко → воно (it)

телефон → він (he)

ручка → вона (she)

жінка → вона (she)

чоловік → він (he)

As you can see, unlike English, in Ukrainian, we use different words for objects (inanimate things): він (he), вона (she), воно (it). How do we know which word to use? Open the next lesson.