I. Закладини
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Oil pits, a strike and a secret, at B1
Boryslav Laughs Борислав сміється
Ivan Franko
This is a retelling of Ivan Franko’s novel in simple modern Ukrainian, not the original: a MovaReader adaptation for readers who handle everyday Ukrainian and want a story of hard labour, money and one of the first strikes in Ukrainian fiction. In the catalogue it is B1: about 6,700 words in 14 chapters, with 12 words per sentence on average and almost two fifths of the text in dialogue. Franko wrote Boryslav Laughs in 1881-1882 about the oil and earth-wax fields of Boryslav, near Drohobych, the town where he went to school; he never finished it, and the complete unfinished text is also in the catalogue, at C1.
- B1
- 6 722 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
A2
Earlier
At A2 you will tap often: the story is clear, but it runs on words of the oil fields and of money (ріпник, кошара, ринський, каса), and many sentences join two or three clauses with і, а or бо.
A2B1
This text
At B1 it reads well if you are at home with the past tense: each chapter is one or two scenes, almost two fifths is dialogue, and the few oil-field words come back so often that you learn them as you go.
Check this passageB2
With room to spare
At B2 it is a quick read and a bridge to the complete unfinished novel in the catalogue (C1, about 79,800 words), with Franko’s Galician spelling, long sentences and the full story of the strike.
Start readingThe average sentence has 12 words, the same as the catalogue’s B1 adaptation of Franko’s Crossed Paths and one more than Panas Myrnyi’s Do the Oxen Low When the Mangers Are Full? retold at B1 (11). The difference from the complete Boryslav Laughs (14 words per sentence, 9.8% long words) is in the words: here 6.0% have 9 letters or more, close to Crossed Paths at B1 (5.6%). The Galician forms of the 1950s edition and Franko’s long passages on the Vienna stock exchange and the wax trade are gone. What stays is a short list of oil-field words that return often enough to learn on the way: ріпник (a worker in the oil pits) about 30 times, яма (here an oil pit, not just a hole) over 20, каса (the workers’ fund) almost 20, with кошара (the wooden shed over a pit), ринський (the Austrian gulden), шістка (a small coin) and толока (the common pasture where the workers meet). Sentences stay at about 10-13 words in every chapter; chapter V, on the secret of the new wax, is the densest, with about 8.6% long words. Hence B1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 6 722
- words
- 12
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
In Drohobych the rich Leon Hammerschlag lays the first stone of his new house and walls up a live goldfinch for luck, while the young bricklayer Benedio Synytsia is badly hurt by the falling stone. Leon hopes to marry his daughter Fanni to Gottlieb, the only son of Herman Goldkremer, the richest owner in Boryslav; but Gottlieb has run away from Lviv and hides in Drohobych dressed as a coal boy. Dismissed by the cruel builder, Benedio goes to Boryslav to build what Leon calls a steam mill, in fact a secret factory for a stolen invention, ceresin wax. He lodges with the old oil worker Matii and joins a brotherhood led by the brothers Andrus and Sen Basarab, who carve every wrong done to the workers on hazel sticks and wait for revenge. Benedio offers them another way: a common fund and a strike. Thousands gather on the common, the money grows, and both sides prepare for a struggle. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Борислав сміється
VIII. Рада на толоці
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Choose an underlined word.
Ten men, one moment
Count the people: Десять мулярів, then Дев’ятеро встигли, then десятий. Ukrainian uses collective numerals like дев’ятеро for a group of people and the ordinal десятий for the one who failed. Notice also the future крикне inside a past story: коли будівничий крикне means “when the builder would shout”.
A speech in plain words
Benedio talks the way workers talk: short clauses joined by а and тож, and a proverb at the end. Бога клич, а рук прикладай has two imperatives; the second comes from прикладати руки, “to put one’s hands to something”, so the saying means “call on God, but work yourself”.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
Reader
€1 a month
With the Reader plan, MovaReader translates the whole sentence where single words mislead, as in the workers’ saying Громада плюне по разу, то й одного втопить, “If the whole community spits once, it drowns a man”: a proverb about the strength of numbers, not about manners.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling in simple modern Ukrainian of Ivan Franko’s novel Борислав сміється (Boryslav Laughs), first published in parts in the Lviv journal Світ in 1881-1882. The plot follows the text of Franko’s collected works of 1956-1962 (volume 10) on Wikisource, the same text as the complete novel in this catalogue at C1. What changed: about 79,800 words in 20 chapters shrink to about 6,700 in 14; the Galician forms of that edition and Franko’s long passages on the Vienna stock exchange, the wax trade and the past of Rifka and Gottlieb are replaced by standard modern Ukrainian or told in a few lines, and the scenes of Gottlieb and Fanni are brought together. The main characters and events keep their order. Franko never finished the novel: his text breaks off as the Basarab brothers win the brotherhood over to a plan to set Boryslav on fire, and this adaptation ends at the same point without inventing an ending. The ethnic slurs of the source, and its sweeping remarks about the Jewish owners, are left out.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of this book on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will often be words of the oil fields, such as ріпник (a worker who digs oil and earth wax in the pits) or кошара (not a sheepfold, as a dictionary may say, but the wooden shed over an oil pit), and tools like дрюк (a heavy wooden pole).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Most sentences can be read word by word, so you will want it mostly for sayings, such as Herman’s Воли не ревуть, коли ясла повні, “Oxen do not low when the mangers are full”, his way of admitting to the other owners that the workers are paid too little. Without the plan you can still tap single words.
How many hours does it take?
One to two hours for the whole book, at a learner’s pace with translation of new words, not a native speaker’s. The 14 chapters run from about 320 words (chapter XIII, «Вогонь у думках») to about 680 (chapter I, «Закладини»), so each one fits into a short sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even. Sentences stay at about 10-13 words in every chapter. Long words vary more: chapter V, on the secret of the new wax, has the most (about 8.6% against 6.0% overall), while chapter II, the letter from Lviv, has the fewest (about 3.4%). Chapter XIII has the shortest sentences, about 10 words, because most of it is quick dialogue.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers where you stopped and which words you opened. The contents on this page also open any of the 14 chapters directly, for example chapter VIII, «Рада на толоці» (The Meeting on the Common).