Саджанець має довгий корінь.

A rough pronunciation is:

sa-DZHA-nets MA-ye dov-HYY ko-RINʹ

A few helpful notes:

• є in має sounds like ye
• г in Ukrainian is usually a soft h-like sound, so довгий is closer to dovhyy than dovgiy
• the ь in корінь is a soft sign: it softens the final n sound

The main stresses are roughly:

• саджа́нець
• ма́є
• довги́й
• корі́нь

Має means has.

It comes from the verb мати, which means to have.

So:

• мати = to have
• має = he/she/it has

Here the subject is саджанець (sapling), so має means the sapling has.

Ukrainian does not have articles like English a/an/the.

So Саджанець має довгий корінь could mean:

• A sapling has a long root
• The sapling has a long root

The exact meaning depends on context.

Good question. Корінь is the direct object of має, so grammatically it is in the accusative case.

However, for many masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative singular looks exactly the same as the nominative singular.

So here:

• nominative: корінь
• accusative: корінь

That is why the form does not visibly change.

For comparison, the genitive is different:

• genitive: кореня

Довгий means long, and it describes корінь (root), not саджанець (sapling).

In Ukrainian, adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in:

• gender
• number
• case

Since корінь is:

• masculine
• singular
• accusative (same form here as nominative because it is inanimate)

the adjective is also:

• довгий

So the phrase довгий корінь means a long root.

Because of both meaning and position.

In має довгий корінь, the words довгий корінь form a noun phrase together: long root.

So the structure is:

• Саджанець = the sapling
• має = has
• довгий корінь = a long root

In other words, the sapling is the one that has, and the root is the thing that is long.

Not completely. Ukrainian word order is more flexible than English.

The neutral, straightforward order is:

• Саджанець має довгий корінь.

But other orders are possible for emphasis, for example:

• Довгий корінь має саджанець.
• Саджанець довгий корінь має.

These alternatives are less neutral and may sound more literary, emphatic, or context-dependent.

For learning, the original order is the best one to use first.

Yes. That is also natural Ukrainian.

It literally means something like:

• At the sapling there is a long root

but in normal English, that is just:

• The sapling has a long root

So Ukrainian has more than one way to express possession:

• Саджанець має довгий корінь
• У саджанця є довгий корінь

Both are correct. In a sentence about a characteristic or body part/plant part, мати is very natural.

The ь is called the soft sign. It does not have its own sound, but it makes the preceding consonant softer.

So in корінь, the final н is pronounced softly.

This is important because it is part of the correct spelling and pronunciation of the word.

You will also see that this noun changes in other cases, for example:

• nominative: корінь
• genitive: кореня

So the word is not fully predictable from English; it is worth learning as a full vocabulary item.

Yes, саджанець is singular: a sapling / the sapling.

The plural is:

• саджанці = saplings

So:

• Саджанець має довгий корінь. = The sapling has a long root.
• Саджанці мають довгі корені. = The saplings have long roots.

This also shows how the verb and adjective change in the plural:

• має → мають
• довгий → довгі
• корінь → корені