I. Іменини під дубом
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A Robin Hood of Podillia, retold for A2
Karmeliuk Кармелюк
Stepan Vasylchenko
This is MovaReader’s retelling of Karmeliuk in simple standard Ukrainian prose, not the original play: Stepan Vasylchenko’s drama in three acts, printed in 1927, about Ustym Karmeliuk, the peasant rebel of Podillia who took from landlords and gave to the poor. It is for A2 readers who know the basics and want a real story told in the past tense, with plenty of dialogue: about 4,500 words in 10 short titled chapters. The complete play is in the catalogue at B2.
- A2
- 4 479 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
Earlier
At A1 it is a stretch: the whole story is in the past tense, many sentences join two clauses with що, бо or щоб, and the landlords’ angry speeches need several taps.
A1A2
This text
At A2 it fits: everyday words, past-tense narration and lots of short dialogue; words like отаман (a rebel leader) or облава (a manhunt) translate with a tap.
Check this passageB1
With room to spare
At B1 it reads almost without translation: a quick way to know the story before Vasylchenko’s complete play at B2, with its stage directions and Podillia speech.
Start readingSentences average 10 words, the narration is in the past tense, and short lines of dialogue make up much of the text. About one word in 19 has 9 letters or more (5.3%); many are past-tense verbs such as засміялася (she laughed) or почервоніла (she blushed), and the hero’s own name in the genitive, Кармелюка, comes back again and again. Among the other A2 adaptations, Marusia has the same figures (10 words, 5.3%), and Natalka Poltavka, also a play retold as prose, is slightly lighter (9 words, 5.1%); the B1 retelling of the Eneida reaches 11 words per sentence. The first two chapters, which set the scene in the forest, have the longest sentences (11.5 and 12.0 words); the other eight stay between 9.4 and 10.7. Hence A2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 4 479
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Podillia, early in the nineteenth century. Under an old oak in the forest, the outlaw Karmeliuk celebrates his name day with peasants from the nearby villages, and a small boy wants to know where he keeps his wings. His men stop everyone on the road to the manor where young Pan Stas is giving a party: a band of musicians, a priest with cards in his pocket, a young lady who loves to dance. Then the landlord’s steward marches into the forest with a crowd of armed villagers to catch the outlaw. That night, at the manor, Pani Liuba and her family hide in the cellar from the man who has fined them for flogging their serfs, and a cheerful landowner from Chernihiv, with two carts of wool, asks to stay the night. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Кармелюк
VI. Пани під землею
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Choose an underlined word.
“Has” without a verb
Ukrainian often says “at someone” where English says “someone has”: у дяді Кармелюка крила means “Uncle Karmeliuk has wings”, with у plus the genitive and no verb at all (є, “there is”, is left out). Дядя here is not a relative: children call any grown man дядя.
Small words, big tone
Particles carry the tone of this scene: аж із Чернігова means “all the way from Chernihiv”, Оце хитрий! is “Now that’s cunning!”, and Саме час гостей приймати! (“Just the right time to receive guests!”) is irony: Pani Liuba means the opposite.
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 reported speech keeps its own tense inside a past-tense story, as in Він почув, що в Галузинцях розбій, і боїться їхати далі вночі, тому просить переночувати, “He had heard there was robbery in Haluzyntsi and was afraid to travel on at night, so he was asking to stay the night”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Ukrainian books A1 Earlier Peasant Arithmetic and Other Stories Мужицька арихметика та інші оповідання Another book by the same author B2
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple standard Ukrainian prose, of Karmeliuk, Stepan Vasylchenko’s play in three acts, published in 1927 in Kharkiv in the third volume of his collected works (Державне видавництво України). We followed that text on Wikisource, the same one as the complete play at B2 in our catalogue. What changed: a play of about 11,000 words became about 4,500 words of past-tense prose in modern standard Ukrainian (2019 spelling), in 10 titled chapters, and a short paragraph on the real Ustym Karmeliuk (1787-1835) was added to the first chapter. The plot, the main characters and the order of the scenes are kept; the crowd scenes are shorter, the stage directions became narration, and a few folk-song lines are quoted, among them «Маю жінку, маю діти, та я ж їх не бачу» and «За Сибіром сонце сходить». An ethnic slur and the coarsest insults of the original were left out.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version on MovaReader: the text is read on screen. Tap a word you don’t know and its translation appears; here that will often be words of the period such as панщина (the unpaid work serfs owed their landlord) or економ (a landlord’s steward), or village words like ціп (a flail).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Sentences here average 10 words, so you will need it mostly where one clause leans on another, as in Поки свічка не догорить до цього знаку, щоб ніхто з місця не рушав (“Until the candle burns down to this mark, nobody is to move from their place”), where щоб gives an order. Without the plan you can translate single words up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About an hour for the whole story at a learner’s pace, with new words translated as you go. There are 10 chapters of about 300 to 500 words each, and a longer last chapter of about 800 words, so most chapters take a few minutes and the story fits into one or two evenings.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even. The first two chapters, which set the scene in the forest, have the longest sentences (11.5 and 12.0 words on average); from chapter III on, where dialogue takes over, sentences stay between 9.4 and 10.7 words, and chapter VII, “Гість із Чернігова” (The guest from Chernihiv), has the shortest (9.4).
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 10 chapters directly, for example chapter III, “Сміливий піп” (The bold priest), where Karmeliuk’s men stop a priest on the road.