Proverb: «Не кажи́ «гоп», до́ки не переско́чиш»

This is the Ukrainian equivalent of "don't count your chickens before they hatch," and it is built on two of the trickiest aspect rules in the language. To tell someone not to do something, Ukrainian flips to the imperfective imperative; and to say "until," it pairs до́ки не with a perfective future. Both feel backwards to English speakers, and this proverb pins them down in a single, vivid image.

You say this to someone who is already boasting about a success that has not happened yet — counting prize money before the race, planning the housewarming before the contract is signed. The interjection «гоп» is the little grunt a Ukrainian gives at the moment of jumping (like English hup! or whee!); saying it before you land is the very image of premature triumph.

Word by word

There is no spoken pronoun «ти» ('you') anywhere — the verb endings -и and -иш already carry the second person. The "you" is generalized: it means anyone, the listener and people in general alike. (See why Ukrainian drops subject pronouns.)

The grammar

Prohibitions take the imperfective imperative

Here is a rule with no English parallel. A positive command can be either aspect, but a negative command — a prohibition — overwhelmingly takes the imperfective verb. The verb here is каза́ти (imperfective 'to say'), not its perfective partner сказа́ти. To forbid an action, Ukrainian uses the aspect that views the action as a general activity, not a single completed event — you are banning the whole idea of saying it, at any moment.

Watch how every everyday prohibition follows the same pattern — imperfective verb after не:

Using the perfective here — Не скажи, Не напиши — sounds either ungrammatical or shifts the meaning to a warning about a single accidental slip ("mind you don't blurt it out"). For the general "don't do this," stay imperfective. This is covered in depth in aspect in the imperative.

до́ки не + perfective future = "until"

The second half is a temporal clause. До́ки means 'until / as long as', and in the 'until X happens' sense it is followed by an expletive не that is not a real negation — it does not mean the jumping won't happen. English drops this word; Ukrainian (like French ne explétif) keeps it. The verb is the perfective future переско́чиш, because you are waiting for one specific completed event: the moment the jump is finished.

This is a living, productive pattern — listen for до́ки / по́ки не + perfective future everywhere:

In all of these the future verb is perfective (зателефоную, допишу, перестане) — you are pointing at the single moment of completion you are waiting for. On forming that tense, see the synthetic future; on choosing aspect, see imperfective vs perfective.

The interjection «гоп»

Гоп belongs to a small class of Ukrainian interjections that imitate or accompany a sharp physical movement — the sound you make leaping a ditch. Because it is quoted as the thing being said, it acts as the direct object of кажи́ and keeps its quotation marks. It also survives as a verb, гопа́ти / гопну́ти ('to thump down'), and in the noun гопа́к, the famous leaping Cossack dance.

Glossary

There are no archaic words here, but two items need a note:

• гоп — an interjection (the grunt of jumping); has no single English word, closest to hup! or whee!
• до́ки — 'until / as long as'. Its near-synonym по́ки is equally correct and slightly more colloquial; the proverb also circulates as Не кажи́ «гоп», по́ки не переско́чиш. Both are standard Ukrainian.

Common Mistakes

Defaulting to the perfective in a prohibition is the classic aspect error. After не, command verbs are imperfective.

English has no word here, so learners drop the не. In Ukrainian the 'until' clause requires it.

You are waiting for one finished event, so the future verb must be perfective.

The ending -и in кажи́ already means 'you (sg.)'; the bare proverb is generalized to everyone.