Read Beginner Ukrainian Stories

Quick facts about Ukrainian

Speakers

About 32 million people speak Ukrainian as a first language and about 7 million as a second language (2023).¹

Did you know?

Unlike Russian, Ukrainian uses a vocative case to address people, as a seventh case: Олена becomes Олено! when you call her.²

The main challenge

Mobile stress: the stress can move between different forms of the same word, so it has to be learned along with the endings.¹

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_grammar

About the Ukrainian language

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_alphabet
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_grammar
4. https://mova.gov.ua/

Ukrainian reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR)

This column uses plain CEFR levels to describe reading difficulty. Ukraine's National Commission on State Language Standards approved its own standard for Ukrainian as a foreign language, with levels A1 to C2, in 2024; the column does not claim equivalence with that standard or with any certificate.

Reference corpora

Ukrainian has both a very large reference corpus and a small balanced one.^1,2

• GRAC: The General Regionally Annotated Corpus of Ukrainian (ГРАК) holds about 2 billion tokens in version 19, with texts up to 2025: more than 150,000 texts by about 35,000 authors, written from 1816 onward, with region tags and morphological annotation.¹
• BRUK: Starko and Rysin's Brown Corpus of Ukrainian (БрУК) is a one-million-word sample of edited written Ukrainian from 2010 to 2020, balanced across nine categories on the model of the original Brown corpus.²
• Standard register: Stichos writes standard literary Ukrainian (літературна мова) at every level and avoids dialect words and mixed Ukrainian–Russian speech (суржик).

1. https://uacorpus.org/
2. https://aclanthology.org/2023.unlp-1.11/

Readability design principles

Ukrainian has no well-established readability formula of its own.¹

• Existing formulas tested: Prykhodchenko and Prykhodchenko (2025) built UkrTB, a corpus of texts sorted by reader age, and tested Flesch, Flesch–Kincaid and Polish and Russian formulas on it. Some correlated partly with the expected levels and others were inconsistent, and they conclude Ukrainian needs its own metric.¹
• Stichos: Stichos sets difficulty with level-by-level grammar rules and sentence-length limits rather than a single readability score.

1. https://aclanthology.org/2025.quasy-1.4/

Script & grammar scaffolding

• Tenses: A0 uses only the present tense. A1 adds the past tense of both aspects and the compound future with буду + infinitive. A2 opens the perfective future, the conditional with б/би and reflexive verbs in -ся. The pluperfect (давноминулий час) waits until C1.
• Participles: Adjectival participles (дієприкметники) arrive at B1, and adverbial participle clauses (дієприслівникові звороти) at B2. Below that, the same ideas are expressed with ordinary clauses.
• Clauses: A0 is a single main clause in subject–verb–object order. A1 links clauses with simple conjunctions, and A2 adds reason and condition clauses and relative clauses with який.
• Address: Strangers, superiors and adult acquaintances are addressed with formal Ви, children and close relations with ти. Early levels keep subject pronouns explicit, although Ukrainian often drops them.

Related academic & framework resources

• National Commission on State Language Standards: The state body that sets standards for Ukrainian and runs state-language proficiency exams for citizenship and public office.
• Ukrainian as a Foreign Language. Levels A1–C2: The commission's standard for Ukrainian as a foreign language, approved by decision No. 279 of 29 August 2024.
• GRAC: General Regionally Annotated Corpus of Ukrainian: The searchable corpus, a volunteer project hosted at the University of Jena.
• Creating a POS Gold Standard Corpus of Modern Ukrainian: The UNLP 2023 paper by Vasyl Starko and Andriy Rysin describing BRUK.
• Application of Existing Readability Methods to the Ukrainian Language: The 2025 study by Serhii and Oksana Prykhodchenko.

Frequently asked questions

What writing system does Ukrainian use?

Cyrillic: the 33-letter Ukrainian alphabet, which includes ґ, є, і and ї, and uses an apostrophe (ім'я) that is not counted as a letter.

Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?

Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.

Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?

Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.

Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?

Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.

Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?

Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.

How does word lookup work while reading?

Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.

Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?

Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.

Do stories include audio or narration?

Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).