Passive Past Participles (-ний / -тий)

The passive past participle (паси́вний дієприкме́тник мину́лого ча́су) is the most-used and most useful of Ukrainian's participles. It is the word that turns a verb into an adjective meaning "X-ed" — written, read, built, opened, broken, closed. Built almost always from a perfective transitive verb, it describes a noun as having undergone an action and now carrying its result. Unlike the active participles (covered on active participles), this one is fully alive and productive in standard Ukrainian — you should reach for it freely. This page shows how it is formed, how it agrees, and the one distinction that trips up every learner: where Ukrainian uses the participle for a state versus where it switches to the -но/-то impersonal for an action.

What it means: a result carried by a noun

A passive past participle answers "what was done to this noun?" The reading happened to the book; the book is now прочи́тана ("read"). Because the action is complete and its result is stuck to the noun, the participle is almost always built from the perfective member of the aspect pair:

• чита́ти / прочита́ти → прочи́таний "read (through)"
• писа́ти / написа́ти → напи́саний "written"
• роби́ти / зроби́ти → зро́блений "done, made"

Formation: -ний / -ений vs -тий

Two endings cover almost everything. Which one a given verb takes is largely predictable from its infinitive shape.

The -ний / -ений type (the common one)

Verbs whose perfective stem ends in -а- keep the vowel and add -ний: прочита́ти → прочи́таний, написа́ти → напи́саний, показа́ти → пока́заний. Verbs in -и- / -і- drop the vowel and add -ений: зроби́ти → зро́блений, вирі́шити → ви́рішений.

The consonant insertion in зро́блений (б→бл) and ку́плений (п→пл) is the same labial-plus-л change you meet in the present 1sg (роблю́, куплю́): whenever a labial consonant (б, п, в, м, ф) precedes the participle suffix, an л is inserted. Other shifts: т → ч (закрути́ти → закру́чений), с → ш (попроси́ти → попро́шений), д → дж (наро́дити → наро́джений).

The -тий type (a smaller, distinct set)

A smaller group takes -тий instead. These are mostly verbs whose stem ends in a vowel that resists the -ний suffix — monosyllabic roots, verbs in -ну-, and verbs in -и-/-і- of the ми́ти / би́ти type.

It agrees like an adjective — the point English speakers miss

This is the heart of the page. In English, "written" is invariant: a written letter, a written note, written letters — the word never changes. In Ukrainian, the participle is a full adjective and agrees with its noun in gender, number, and case, exactly like вели́кий "big":

And it declines through all the cases just as any hard-stem adjective does (adjective agreement):

Attributive vs predicative use

A passive participle works in both of the slots an adjective can fill.

Attributive — sitting next to its noun like an epithet ("a closed door"):

Predicative — standing after the verb "to be" (often zero in the present) to describe the subject's state ("the door is closed"):

Note that Ukrainian uses the long (full) form predicatively — зачи́нений, not the bare short form. Russian, by contrast, demands a short form there (закрыт, not закрытый). Ukrainian has near-vanished short forms only in a handful of frozen poetic items; in normal speech use the full participle both attributively and predicatively. See short-form adjectives for the rare survivors.

The crucial split: state (-ний) vs action (-но/-то)

Here is the distinction that separates a learner from a fluent writer. Ukrainian uses the participle (-ний/-тий) to describe a resultant state — the door, right now, sits in the condition of being closed. But for the action of closing it — the agentless event "the door has been closed" — idiomatic Ukrainian switches to the invariable -но/-то impersonal:

When in doubt, ask: am I describing how something is (→ participle, agreeing) or reporting that something got done (→ -но/-то, invariant, object in the accusative)? Both are correct Ukrainian; the action reading is the one Russian speakers under-use and English speakers don't know exists.

Source-language comparison

For an English speaker, the form maps onto the English past participle ("written, built, closed") used as an adjective — but with two changes to absorb. First, it agrees (напи́саний / напи́сана / напи́сані), where English "written" never changes. Second, English happily says "the door is closed" with no thought about state vs action; Ukrainian splits that into две́рі зачи́нені (state) vs две́рі зачи́нено (action), and the second has no neat English single-clause equivalent.

For a Russian speaker, the forms rhyme but three things shift. (1) Ukrainian uses the full (long) form predicatively — две́рі зачи́нені, not a short form зачинені/закрыт. (2) Plain participles have a *single н (напи́саний, not напи́санний); double -нн- is reserved for adjectivized intensives. (3) Ukrainian leans far harder on the -но/-то impersonal (Робо́ту зро́блено) for the action-passive, where Russian reaches for an agreeing short participle (работа сделана). Flip that instinct: prefer -но/-то for the event, -ний for the state.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• The passive past participle = Ukrainian's main "X-ed" word (напи́саний, зро́блений, відкри́тий), built from perfective transitive verbs, fully alive and productive.
• Two endings: -ний/-ений (прочи́таний, зро́блений — note labial+л: ку́плений, зро́блений) and -тий (відкри́тий, забу́тий, ми́тий).
• It agrees like an adjective in gender, number, and case (напи́саний лист / напи́сана запи́ска / напи́сані листи́) — unlike invariant English "written".
• Works both attributively (зачи́нені две́рі) and predicatively (Две́рі зачи́нені) — and Ukrainian uses the full form predicatively, not a Russian-style short form.
• Reserve -ний for the resultant state (Две́рі зачи́нені 'the door is closed') and switch to the -но/-то impersonal for the action (Две́рі зачи́нено 'the door has been closed', object in the accusative).
• One н in plain participles; -нн- only in adjectivized intensives (нездола́нний).