I. Розділ 1
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A serf maid tells her own story (B2)
The Institute Girl Інститутка
Marko Vovchok, 1929
Marko Vovchok’s complete novella in Ukrainian, first printed in 1862, not an adaptation: a young serf maid tells, in the folk speech of a village girl, how she served a beautiful and heartless young lady. It is for B2 learners who want a short classic carried by one living voice, and for anyone curious how Ukrainian literature spoke about serfdom in the very years it was abolished. About 12,500 words in 47 short numbered sections, 9 words per sentence on average.
- B2
- 12 501 words
- 2-3 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1, start with the MovaReader adaptation of this story: the original has short sentences, but the folk forms (се for це, бють for б’ють, кажу-ж) and the diminutives will send you to the translation in almost every line.
B1B2
This text
At B2 it makes a good first complete classic: sections of 44 to 704 words, nearly half the paragraphs in dialogue, and a household vocabulary (пані, панночка, двір, хата) that returns on every page.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 it reads quickly; only the rarer folk words (зочити, дошимраються, кормиги) and the old Lviv spelling still make you pause.
Start readingThe average sentence has 9 words (8.6 before rounding) and 7.8% of the words have 9 letters or more, close to Kotliarevsky’s play Natalka Poltavka (8 words, 7.4%) and a little below Nechuy-Levytsky’s Mykola Dzheria (8.0%), both B2. The short sentences come from speech: 292 of the 645 paragraphs open with a dialogue dash, and the narrator herself talks in quick exclamations. What makes the text harder than its numbers is the folk language and the 1929 Lviv spelling. About 130 words carry affectionate suffixes such as -еньк- and -есеньк- (серденько, хутенько, старесенька), the old demonstrative се, сей, сього (“this”) appears 74 times, there are 147 short reflexive verbs like здивувавсь, and habitual було (було каже, “she used to say”) occurs 56 times. The edition drops the apostrophe (бють, пять, мягкого) and hyphenates particles (треба-ж, Скажи-ж). Still, this is not a dense regional dialect like that of Vasyl Stefanyk’s The Stone Cross (C1), and the long-word share is far from the 10% of the C1 originals. The B1 adaptation of the same story has longer sentences (12 words) but fewer long words (5.9%) and none of the old forms. Hence B2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 12 501
- words
- 9
- words in an average sentence
- 2-3
- hours of reading
- 1929
- Товариство «Просвіта»
Товариство «Просвіта», 1929. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Ustyna, an orphan serf, is taken at ten into the household of an old lady in the village of Dubtsi, where the maids sew all day in silence and steal a laugh behind their mistress’s back. Then the old lady’s granddaughter comes home from a boarding institute for young ladies in Kyiv: pretty, musical, charming in company, and openly bored by everything she was taught except French, music and dancing. She picks Ustyna as her maid, and the girl soon learns what the young lady is like when no guests are watching. A gentle regimental doctor falls in love with her, and after the wedding Ustyna has to follow the couple to his farmstead. There the servants live with a warmth the new mistress cannot stand: the coachman Nazar and his wife Katria, a wise old woman, and a tall young man called Prokip, who taps on Ustyna’s window on her very first night. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Інститутка
XXIV. Розділ 24
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Choose an underlined word.
Було: “we used to”
Ustyna describes daily life with було plus a verb in the present or the perfective future: Сидимо, було means “we used to sit”, було звеселіємо “we would suddenly cheer up”. Було here is not a past tense of the sentence but a marker of habit, and the whole of section I is built on it. The edition also writes бють without the apostrophe (б’ють, “they beat”).
Diminutives that grade
The suffix -есеньк- turns an adjective up: старесенька-старесенька is “very, very old”, вся-усенька “all over, every bit of her”. Other diminutives soften the tone: вечеронька for вечеря (“supper”), спокійненько for спокійно (“calmly”). Паночку is the vocative of паночок, “dear master”, the polite and slightly fond way the old woman addresses him.
Chapters
- IРозділ 1
- IIРозділ 2
- IIIРозділ 3
- IVРозділ 4
- VРозділ 5
- VIРозділ 6
- VIIРозділ 7
- VIIIРозділ 8
- IXРозділ 9
- XРозділ 10
- XIРозділ 11
- XIIРозділ 12
- XIIIРозділ 13
- XIVРозділ 14
- XVРозділ 15
- XVIРозділ 16
- XVIIРозділ 17
- XVIIIРозділ 18
- XIXРозділ 19
- XXРозділ 20
- XXIРозділ 21
- XXIIРозділ 22
- XXIIIРозділ 23
- XXIVРозділ 24
- XXVРозділ 25
- XXVIРозділ 26
- XXVIIРозділ 27
- XXVIIIРозділ 28
- XXIXРозділ 29
- XXXРозділ 30
- XXXIРозділ 31
- XXXIIРозділ 32
- XXXIIIРозділ 33
- XXXIVРозділ 34
- XXXVРозділ 35
- XXXVIРозділ 36
- XXXVIIРозділ 37
- XXXVIIIРозділ 38
- XXXIXРозділ 39
- XLРозділ 40
- XLIРозділ 41
- XLIIРозділ 42
- XLIIIРозділ 43
- XLIVРозділ 44
- XLVРозділ 45
- XLVIРозділ 46
- XLVIIРозділ 47
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 the whole sentence is translated, which helps with a servant’s joke such as Поможеться, що гарна! … коли дивиться так, що аж молоко кисне! (“Much good her beauty does, when one look of hers turns the milk sour!”).
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Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: Marko Vovchok’s complete novella in 47 numbered sections, first printed in Ukrainian in 1862. The author dedicated it to Taras Shevchenko; the 1929 edition used here does not print that dedication. The text comes from Wikisource, which reproduces the 1929 Lviv edition of the Prosvita society (Народня бібліотека «Просвіти», no. 758), and it keeps that edition’s spelling: no apostrophe (бють, пять), particles joined with a hyphen (треба-ж), у Київі for у Києві, and some dialogue in „…“ quotation marks. In section XIX, a market scene uses a period word for Jews that is offensive today; it appears once.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: the novella is read on screen, and a tap on a word shows its translation. You will need it for folk words such as зочити (“to catch sight of”, section I) and кормиги (“of the yoke”, section XLVII), and for forms that look strange at first, like бють (б’ють, “they beat”).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps with sayings that make little sense word by word, such as Бува лихо, що плаче, а бува, що й скаче (“There is trouble that weeps, and there is trouble that dances”), with which Ustyna explains why she still laughs. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 2-3 hours, at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The 47 sections are short and uneven: from 44 words (XXXVII) to 704 (XLV), about 270 on average, so one sitting easily covers ten of them.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even, with no easy or hard stretch. Section averages swing between 5.4 words per sentence (XXIII, a quick exchange between husband and wife) and 13.2 (XI), with no trend from beginning to end. Sections where Ustyna reflects, such as I and XXXVI (about 12 words), read slower than the quarrels and the suppers in the servants’ house.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back where you left off. Any of the 47 sections also opens from the contents on this page, for example XXVIII. Розділ 28, where Ustyna first sits down to supper in Nazar’s house.