The Ukrainian alphabet (Ukrainian: абе́тка, áзбука, алфа́ві́т, or альфабе́т [1928–1933 spelling and before 1933], romanized: abétka, ázbuka, alfávít, or alʹfabét) is the set of letters used to write Ukrainian, which is the official language of Ukraine. It is one of several national variations of the Cyrillic script. It comes from the Cyrillic script, which was devised in the 9th century for the first Slavic literary language, called Old Slavonic. In the 10th century, Cyrillic script became used in Kievan Rus' to write Old East Slavic, from which the Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, and Ukrainian alphabets later evolved. The modern Ukrainian alphabet has 33 letters in total: 21 consonants, 1 semivowel, 10 vowels and 1 palatalization sign. Sometimes the apostrophe (') is also included, which has a phonetic meaning and is a mandatory sign in writing, but is not considered as a letter and is not included in the alphabet.
In Ukrainian, it is called українська абетка (tr. ukrainska abetka, IPA: [ʊkrɐˈjinʲsʲkɐ ɐˈbɛtkɐ]), from the initial letters а (tr. a) and б (tr. b); алфавіт (tr. alfavit); or, archaically, азбука (tr. azbuka), from the acrophonic early Cyrillic letter names азъ (tr. az) and буки (tr. buki).
