Собака має довгий хвіст.

Має is the 3rd-person singular present form of мати, which means to have.

A few present-tense forms are:

• я маю = I have
• ти маєш = you have
• він / вона / воно має = he / she / it has
• вони мають = they have

So here собака має means the dog has.

Ukrainian does not have articles.

So собака can mean a dog, the dog, or just dog, depending on context. The same is true for довгий хвіст: it can mean a long tail or the long tail, depending on the situation.

Собака is the subject of the sentence, so it is in the nominative singular.

The nominative is the basic dictionary form used for the doer or topic of the sentence.

Compare:

• Собака має довгий хвіст. = собака is the subject
• Я бачу собаку. = собаку is the object

So the form собака tells you this is the thing that has something.

Because довгий хвіст is the direct object of має, so it is in the accusative.

However, хвіст is a masculine inanimate noun. In Ukrainian, for many masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative singular looks the same as the nominative singular.

So:

• nominative: довгий хвіст
• accusative: довгий хвіст

They look identical here.

This is different from masculine animate nouns. For example:

• nominative: кіт
• accusative: кота

So the object form is there grammatically, but with хвіст you do not see a spelling change.

Because adjectives in Ukrainian must agree with the noun they describe in gender, number, and case.

Here хвіст is:

• masculine
• singular
• accusative (but same-looking as nominative because it is inanimate)

So the adjective also takes the matching form: довгий.

If the noun changed, the adjective would change too:

• довга книга = long book
• довге слово = long word
• довгі вуха = long ears

Yes. Мати is a completely normal and standard Ukrainian verb meaning to have.

So Собака має довгий хвіст is a natural sentence.

Ukrainian can also express possession with у + genitive + є:

• У собаки є довгий хвіст.

That is also correct and common. It is another way to say that the dog possesses a long tail.

The most neutral word order is:

Собака має довгий хвіст.

That is basically subject + verb + object.

But Ukrainian word order is fairly flexible because case endings help show what each word is doing. So other orders are possible, but they usually change the emphasis rather than the core meaning.

For a learner, this sentence is the best neutral pattern to remember.

A helpful stressed version is:

соба́ка ма́є довги́й хвіст

A rough pronunciation guide:

• соба́ка ≈ so-BA-ka
• ма́є ≈ MA-ye
• довги́й ≈ dov-HYY
• хвіст ≈ khveest

A few pronunciation notes:

• є sounds like ye
• х is like the ch in Scottish loch
• г in Ukrainian is usually a soft voiced h-like sound, not a hard English g

Not automatically.

Many Ukrainian nouns ending in -а / -я are feminine, but some nouns for people or animals can be more flexible in real usage. Собака is one of those words that can cause questions for learners.

In this sentence, you do not actually need to solve that issue, because має does not change for gender in the present tense. So for understanding this sentence, the important point is simply that собака is the subject in the nominative form.