Add stress marks to Ukrainian text online

Add stress marks to Ukrainian text in seconds

Paste a paragraph, a poem or a voice-over script into the left box, and the right box shows the same text with stress marks: «Ма́ма принесла́ гаря́чий борщ». A single word works too, when you only need to check where its stress falls.

The stress data comes from the open lang-uk dictionary, built from the Dictionaries of Ukraine by the Ukrainian Lingua-Information Fund of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. It covers over 2.8 million word forms — not just «рука́», but also «руко́ю», «рука́ми» and «рука́х». Your text never leaves the device: the browser downloads only the parts of the dictionary that contain your words.

Where is the stress in Ukrainian words?

There is no simple rule. Ukrainian stress is free — it can fall on any syllable — and mobile: it moves between forms of the same word, as in рука́ (hand) and ру́ки (hands). Learners memorise it word by word, which is why stress marks matter in textbooks and readers. Ukrainian reduces unstressed vowels much less than Russian, so a misplaced stress rarely blocks understanding, but it instantly sounds foreign.

Four formats: print and text-to-speech

Different programs expect the same stress in different forms. Pick the format above the boxes, and the result is rebuilt instantly.

• Acute accent (а́) — the standard combining stress mark, U+0301. For print, textbooks, flashcards and the Piper synthesiser.
• Plus after the vowel (а+) — the format of the Ukrainian StyleTTS2 model: «Му+дрого».
• Plus before the vowel (+а) — how Silero, RHVoice and ukrainian-tts read stress: «к+ішка».
• Capital vowel (мАма) — the stressed vowel in upper case, for tools that do not support stress marks. ElevenLabs does not document stress marks for Ukrainian, so treat this mode as an experiment and listen to the result.

Some engines ignore every kind of mark, so test yours on a few sentences before a long script.

Homographs: за́мок or замо́к?

Some Ukrainian words share a spelling but differ in stress and meaning: за́мок (castle) and замо́к (lock), а́тлас (atlas) and атла́с (satin), ру́ки (hands) and руки́ (of a hand). They make up less than 2% of the word forms in the dictionary, yet they turn up all the time, and without context a dictionary cannot know which one you mean.

So the tool does not guess silently. Every homograph in your text appears in a list below the boxes. The usual variant is already applied and shown with a dashed outline — I counted it by running over a million words of Ukrainian Wikipedia through a morphological analyser. If your context needs the other one, click it, and the choice applies to the whole text.

Words with two accepted stresses

Sometimes both variants are correct: по́милка and поми́лка (mistake). The dictionary marks such words twice — «по́ми́лка». For text-to-speech, where one stress is needed, turn on «One stress in words with two accepted variants» to keep the first.

Words that are not in the dictionary

Names, surnames, new words and typos stay unmarked: a wrong guess is worse than no mark. The tool lists them separately, so you know where to add the stress by hand. For a rare word, check its full paradigm with stress in the Dictionaries of Ukraine online.

How to type a Ukrainian stress mark yourself

The stress mark is a separate character, U+0301 combining acute accent, typed right after the vowel. The quickest way is to copy a ready-made letter from the «Vowels with a stress mark» block under the tool. Otherwise:

• Word — type 0301 right after the vowel and press Alt+X.
• Google Docs — Insert → Special characters, then find the character by its code, 0301.
• Windows — Alt+769 on the numeric keypad (not every app supports it).
• macOS — add the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 0301.
• Linux — press Ctrl+Shift+U, then type 0301 and press Space.
• iPhone — copy a stressed vowel and save it under Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement.

Do Ukrainians write stress marks?

Not in everyday writing. Stress marks appear in primers, readers and dictionaries, in materials for learners of Ukrainian, and where the stress changes the meaning — the Ukrainian orthography (§ 65) recommends them for rare words and for pairs like «схо́дили» and «сходи́ли». For learners, stressed text is the quickest way to read aloud correctly; for voice-over scripts, it is how you tell the synthesiser what you mean.

FAQ

Is it free, and is there a length limit?
Yes, it is free, with no sign-up and no character limit. A long text only takes a little longer the first time, while the dictionary loads.

Does my text leave the browser?
No. The stress is placed on your device. The site serves only the parts of the dictionary your text needs, and nothing you type is sent or stored.

Where does the stress data come from?
From the open lang-uk ukrainian-word-stress package (MIT license), built from the Dictionaries of Ukraine by the Ukrainian Lingua-Information Fund. A few dozen common words missing there, such as «її», «йому» and «нього», I added by hand.

Can I check the stress of a single word?
Yes, type one word and the result appears just as it does for a whole text. If the word has several stress variants, they show up in the homograph list.

Which format should I use for text-to-speech?
Plus before the vowel for Silero, RHVoice and ukrainian-tts, plus after the vowel for StyleTTS2, and the acute accent for print and Piper. For services that do not document stress marks, try the capital vowel mode and listen.

Why does «і» show both a dot and the stress mark?
That is the font, not your text. By the Unicode standard the dot over «і» should disappear under a stress mark, but not every font handles it.

How accurate is the result?
For words in the dictionary, as accurate as the dictionary itself. Review the homographs in their list, and add the stress by hand for words the dictionary does not know.

More text utilities — Ukrainian transliteration, the keyboard layout fixer and the text case converter — are in the KAPLIA.PRO online tools catalog.