Name of Ukraine - Phonetics and Orthography

Phonetics and Orthography

Among the western European languages, there is inter-language variation (and even sometimes intra-language variation) in the phonetic vowel quality of the ai of Ukraine, and its written expression. It is variously:

• Treated as a diphthong (for example, English Ukraine /juːˈkreɪn/) or /ˈjuːkreɪn/)
• Treated as a pure vowel (for example, French Ukraine )
• Transformed in other ways (for example, Spanish Ucrania )
• Treated as two juxtaposed vowel sounds, with some phonetic degree of an approximant between that may or may not be recognized phonemically: German Ukraine (although the realisation with the diphthong is also possible: ). This version of pronunciation is represented orthographically with a dieresis, or tréma, in Dutch Oekraïne or Ukraïne, an often-seen Latin-alphabet transliteration of Україна that is an alternative to Ukrayina). This version most closely resembles the vowel quality of the Ukrainian version of the word.