III. Парубок Семен
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Runaway serfs head for the Danube, for A2
Dorohoiu tsinoiu Дорогою ціною
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky
This is MovaReader’s retelling of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novella Дорогою ціною (“At a Heavy Price”) in simple standard Ukrainian, not the original text. It is for learners who know the basics and want to follow a whole adventure story told in the past tense. In the catalogue it is A2: about 4,800 words in 12 short titled chapters. The complete novella, with its long descriptions and the spelling of a 1955 edition, is in the catalogue at B2 for when you are ready.
- A2
- 4 765 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
Earlier
At A1 it is hard going: everything happens in the past tense, and many sentences add a second clause after бо, коли or який.
A1A2
This text
At A2 it fits: common words, past-tense narration and short dialogues; village words like очіпок (a married woman’s cap) or свита (a homespun coat) translate with a tap.
Check this passageB1
With room to spare
At B1 it reads quickly, almost without translation: a good way to know the plot before Kotsiubynsky’s complete novella, which is in the catalogue at B2.
Start readingThe average sentence has 10 words, the narration is in the past tense, and short dialogue breaks up every chapter. About one word in 23 has 9 letters or more (4.3%), words like господарювати (to keep house) or найнебезпечніше (the most dangerous). The complete novella in the catalogue tells the same story at B2: about 18,000 words, 12 words per sentence and 8.8% long words, with older forms such as од for від and a long opening essay on serfdom. Among the A2 adaptations, Тіні забутих предків by the same author has shorter sentences (9 words) but more long words (5.4%), while Лис Микита has the same sentence length and fewer long words (3.3%). The difficulty is fairly even: the 12 chapters range from 8.8 words per sentence (XI) to 12.1 (VII). Hence A2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 4 765
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Ukraine in the 1830s, under serfdom. Ostap, a young serf raised on his grandfather’s stories of the Cossacks, has told the villagers it is time to throw off the master’s yoke, and now the master threatens to flay him or send him to the army. He decides to run south to the Danube, where people say there are no masters. Solomiia, the strong young woman he loves, was married off by force to the master’s coachman; she says goodbye to him at the pond, but at dawn a young lad catches up with Ostap on the road. Dressed as a man and calling herself Semen, she sets out with him across Bessarabia. On the Danube a crowd of fugitives, cheerful little Ivan among them, waits in the reeds for boatmen from the Turkish side while Cossack patrols watch the river. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Дорогою ціною
VIII. Вовк
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Choose an underlined word.
Short commands
Ріж is the imperative of різати (to cut): the stem changes з to ж and the ending disappears. The same pattern gives кажи from казати and пиши from писати. На here is not a preposition but “here, take it”, so На, ріж ножем means “Here, cut it with the knife”.
Who feels it goes in the dative
Вовкові набридло means “the wolf got tired of it”: with impersonal verbs and words like набридло, холодно or боляче, Ukrainian puts the person who feels in the dative (вовкові, Остапові, йому). The same dative marks the target in бризнув вовкові в морду, “splashed the wolf in the muzzle”.
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
Reader translates whole sentences where the order of ideas matters more than the words, as in Остап відчув не радість, а гнів, бо згадав усі кривди, які мав від пана, “Ostap felt not joy but anger, because he remembered all the wrongs he had suffered from the master”.
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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 standard Ukrainian of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novella Дорогою ціною, first published in 1902. The source is the complete text in volume I of his Works (Knyhospilka, New York, 1955) on Wikisource, the same text that is in this catalogue at B2. What changed: the spelling is modern (2019 rules, so від instead of од), the narration is in the past tense with sentences of about 10 words, and the author’s opening essay on serfdom became three short paragraphs. The novella of about 18,000 words in five untitled chapters became about 4,800 words in 12 titled chapters. The plot, the characters and the order of events are kept; long descriptions of the steppe and the marshes are shortened. Ethnic slurs of the period that appear in the original are left out: the retelling says солдат (soldier) and роми (Roma) instead.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version on MovaReader: you read the text on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word to see its translation; here that will often be village words like свита (a homespun woollen coat) or кучер (coachman), or плавні, the reed marshes along the river, which the text also explains where they first appear.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. With 10 words per sentence you will want it mostly where two clauses meet, as in Пан шукатиме парубка з молодицею, а тут ідуть два парубки! (“The master will look for a lad with a young woman, and here come two lads!”). Single words can be translated without the plan, within a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
Plan on roughly one hour for the whole story at a learner’s pace, looking up new words along the way. The chapters run from 333 words (II) to 507 (VII), so each one is a short sitting, and two evenings are plenty.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is fairly even. Chapter XI, with a meeting at the market and many short lines of dialogue, has the shortest sentences (8.8 words on average); chapter VII, Solomiia alone in the marshes, has the longest (12.1). The other chapters stay between 9.2 and 11.3 words per sentence.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your place and the words you looked up. The contents on this page open any of the 12 chapters directly, for example chapter V, “Перевіз” (The crossing), where the fugitives wait in the reeds for boats from the Turkish shore.