No. 43 in Ukrainian
були
"Були" means "were" in English.
In a sentence
Ми були в парку вчора.
We were in the park yesterday.
The word 'були' here shows the past tense of the verb 'to be' for the plural subject 'we'.
Діти були щасливі гратися разом.
The children were happy to play together.
The word 'були' here indicates the past tense state of 'the children' being happy, used with an adjective.
Якби ми були тут раніше, це б не сталося.
If we had been here earlier, this would not have happened.
The word 'були' is part of a subjunctive mood construction, used to describe a hypothetical past situation.
Hear it in real podcasts
The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “були” in actual Ukrainian podcasts.
Find “були” in podcastsLearn it from shows you like
LangTurbo plays Ukrainian podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Learning English?
LangTurbo plays real English podcasts with every line translated into українська, and tells you what any word means in that sentence. For iPhone, iPad and Android.
Ukrainian books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).