I. Фарбований Лис
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Six of Franko’s animal tales for A1
The Painted Fox and Other Tales Фарбований Лис та інші казки
Ivan Franko
This is not Franko’s original text but MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple Ukrainian, of six tales from his 1899 collection Коли ще звірі говорили (When Animals Still Talked): Фарбований Лис (The Painted Fox), Ріпка (The Turnip), Лисичка і Журавель (The Fox and the Crane), Заєць і Їжак (The Hare and the Hedgehog), Лис і Дрозд (The Fox and the Thrush) and Мурко й Бурко (Murko and Burko, a cat and a dog). It is for readers who are just starting Ukrainian: about 3,700 words in 6 chapters, one tale each, told in the present tense with sentences of 5 words on average and plenty of dialogue. Franko’s complete tales are in the catalogue at B2.
- A1
- 3 711 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
This text
You can manage it at A1 if you know the present tense and a few hundred everyday words: the tales repeat their key lines, such as Допоможи нам вирвати ріпку! (“Help us pull up the turnip!”) and the fox’s Дрозде, Дрозде, ти витягнув мене з ями? (“Thrush, thrush, did you get me out of the pit?”), so by the third time you read them without a tap.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tales read almost without translation: a good bridge to Franko’s complete tales, Коли ще звірі говорили, which the catalogue has at B2 with the western Ukrainian (Galician) words and long sentences of the original.
Start readingThe average sentence has 5 words, and 121 of the 254 paragraphs are lines of dialogue. The narration stays in the present tense; past forms such as висохла (has dried) or обманув (deceived) turn up only in a few lines. Words of 9 letters or more make up 2.6% of the text, less than in The Mitten and Other Tales (3.6%), and the most frequent of them, нагодував (fed), comes from a refrain the thrush answers again and again. Franko’s complete tales, Коли ще звірі говорили, sit at B2 with 12 words per sentence and 7.1% long words. The difficulty is even: every chapter averages between 5.0 and 5.6 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 711
- words
- 5
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Mykyta the fox boasts that he will steal a hen from the town market, escapes the dogs by jumping into a barrel of blue paint, and wakes up in the forest as a beast nobody has ever seen, so he tells the animals that Saint Nicholas has sent him to be their king. An old man grows a turnip as big as his head and calls his whole household, down to the mouse, to pull it out. A fox and a crane invite each other to dinner, and each serves food the guest cannot reach. A proud hare laughs at a hedgehog’s crooked legs, and the hedgehog bets him that he will win a race. A fox stuck in a pit threatens a thrush’s chicks and makes the bird get him out, feed him, give him a drink, make him laugh and frighten him. And Murko the cat, hungry on a harvest day, sends his friend Burko the dog off to look for a buried sausage. What happens next in each tale is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Фарбований Лис та інші казки
IV. Заєць і Їжак
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Choose an underlined word.
Two endings for “they”
The town noise is a list of present-tense verbs for “they”. Some end in -ать/-ять, like кричать, скриплять, вищать and гарчать; others in -уть/-ють, like йдуть and продають. The ending tells you the verb’s conjugation, which helps when you look up other forms.
Who is speaking
A paragraph that opens with a dialogue dash is speech. When the narrator steps into a line, his words sit between two more dashes: in the hare’s line Гуляєш? сміється Заєць. З такими ногами краще лежати вдома! only сміється Заєць (“laughs the hare”) is the narrator, and both the question and the jibe belong to the hare.
Chapters
Translation while you read
The book stays free on every plan. Reader, €1 a month, removes the daily limit on words and sentences.
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€1 a month
Reader translates the whole sentence where every word is easy but the custom behind it is not, as in Що маю, тим і пригощу, “What I have, I’ll treat you to”, the polite formula with which the fox invites the crane.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not Franko’s text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling in simple modern Ukrainian of six tales from Ivan Franko’s collection Коли ще звірі говорили (When Animals Still Talked), first published in 1899; the choice of six is the catalogue’s. It follows the text read on Wikisource in the 1956 Kyiv edition of Franko’s works, the same text as the catalogue’s complete B2 book. What changed: western Ukrainian words of the 1890s such as шпіхлір (granary) or торговиця (market) became standard modern Ukrainian, Заяць became Заєць, the narration moved to the present tense, long sentences were cut into short ones, and Franko’s storyteller asides were shortened. The harshest moments (the animals in the pit eating one another, the deaths that end several tales) are told in a line, without detail, and the hedgehog’s ducat became a gold coin. The animals, the episodes and the morals remain.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of these tales on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: here that will often be country words such as борозні (in the furrow, where the hedgehog runs his race) or пасовище (pasture).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Sentences here average 5 words, so you will need it less for their length than for sayings such as Я його знаю, як фарбованого Лиса (“I know him like the painted fox”), which Ukrainians say of someone whose tricks they see through. Without the plan you can translate single words until the daily limit runs out.
How many hours does it take?
About an hour for the whole book, at the pace of someone who still translates new words, not a native speaker’s. The 6 chapters run from about 340 words (III, Лисичка і Журавель) to about 980 (I, Фарбований Лис), and each chapter is one complete tale, so a tale fits into one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: every chapter averages between 5.0 and 5.6 words per sentence. Chapter V, Лис і Дрозд, has the shortest sentences (5.0), because so much of it is the fox’s question-and-answer refrain; chapter VI, Мурко й Бурко, has the longest (5.6), with the cat’s made-up story about a sausage.
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 6 chapters directly, for example chapter IV, Заєць і Їжак.