I. Коник-стрибунець
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Ten Hlibov fables retold for A1
The Grasshopper and Other Fables Коник-стрибунець та інші байки
Leonid Hlibov
This is not Hlibov’s original verse but MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple Ukrainian prose, of ten fables by Leonid Hlibov, the 19th-century poet whose fables every Ukrainian child learns at school: Коник-стрибунець (The Grasshopper), Вовк та Ягня (The Wolf and the Lamb), Лебідь, Щука і Рак (The Swan, the Pike and the Crayfish) and seven more. It is for readers who are just starting Ukrainian: about 3,300 words in 10 short chapters, one fable each, told in the present tense with sentences of 5 words on average, and every fable ends with a one-line moral.
- A1
- 3 338 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: animals, food, seasons and verbs such as каже (says), питає (asks) and кричить (shouts) come back in every fable, and each moral sums up the story in one short line you can check against the plot.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the fables read almost without translation: good for building speed, and for the sayings Ukrainians still quote from Hlibov, such as Що посієш, те й пожнеш (“As you sow, so shall you reap”) and віз і досі там (“the cart is still there”, said of a job that never moves).
Start readingThe average sentence has 5 words, and 74 of the 208 paragraphs are lines of dialogue. The narration stays mostly in the present tense; the past turns up in a few openings, such as Жила собі старенька Миша (“There once lived an old mouse”), and in what the animals remember. Words of 9 letters or more make up only 1.7% of the text, against 3.6% in The Mitten and Other Tales and 3.1% in Kotyhoroshko and Other Tales, the catalogue’s other A1 books, which also average 5 words per sentence. Complete Ukrainian texts in the catalogue start at B2: Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s Intermezzo, the shortest of them, has 9.8 words per sentence and 6.3% long words. The difficulty is even: the ten chapters average between 4.8 and 5.7 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 338
- words
- 5
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A grasshopper sings and jumps through the whole summer in the steppe, while an old ant carries grain to his little house. A wolf finds a lamb drinking at a river and looks for a reason to blame it. A frog sees an ox in the meadow and decides that she can grow just as big. A swan, a pike and a crayfish agree to pull a cart to the village together. An old mouse with nowhere to live asks a lion for a corner beside his tree. A wolf chased out of the forest asks a cat which villager will hide him; a pigeon laughs at a finch caught in a trap; a cuckoo and a rooster praise each other’s singing; a pike is carried to a court of donkeys and goats; and two flies plan to leave Ukraine for a land with no winter. What happens next in each fable is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Коник-стрибунець та інші байки
VI. Вовк і Кіт
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Choose an underlined word.
A past form for a present state
Мураха втомився literally says “the ant got tired”, but it means “the ant is tired” right now: Ukrainian describes many states with a perfective verb in the past. Note also that мураха looks feminine but is used here with він (he): it is a common-gender noun, like the English “ant”, that can be either.
Calling someone: the vocative
The Wolf does not say Котик, братик but Котику, братику! (“Kitty, little brother!”): a noun used to call someone takes the vocative ending, here -у. The same ending is in Дядьку! (“Uncle!”), how the grasshopper calls the ant in chapter I.
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 the whole sentence where the grammar, not the words, is the puzzle, as in the ant’s Хто любить ледаче життя, тому взимку погано, “Whoever loves a lazy life has a hard time in winter”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not an original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple modern Ukrainian prose, of ten verse fables by Leonid Hlibov (1827-1893), written between 1853 and 1890; Коник-стрибунець, the latest, is dated 1890. Hlibov’s fables are themselves Ukrainian versions of fables by Aesop, Jean de La Fontaine and Ivan Krylov: Коник-стрибунець goes back to La Fontaine’s cicada and ant, and Вовк і Кіт (The Wolf and the Cat) follows Krylov’s fable of 1830. The verse was read on Wikisource in Байки Леонида Глібова (Kyiv and Leipzig: Ukrainska nakladnia, 1918), in that edition’s spelling. What changed: rhymed verse became short prose sentences in the present tense, old words and spellings became standard modern Ukrainian, the dialogues were opened up, and a few scenes the verse only hints at are told in full, so most fables are longer than the poems. Each fable now ends with a one-line moral in our own simple words. The animals, the plots and Hlibov’s sayings remain. Hlibov’s original verse is not in the catalogue.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version of these fables on MovaReader; the text is read on screen. Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears: for example дметься (puffs herself up), what the frog does in chapter III, or сільце (a snare), which catches a bird in chapter VII.
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 length than for lines where easy words build a less obvious pattern, such as Хто любить ледаче життя, тому взимку погано (“Whoever loves a lazy life has a hard time in winter”). 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 10 chapters run from about 300 to 390 words, and each is one complete fable, so a fable is easy to read in one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: every chapter averages between 4.8 and 5.7 words per sentence. The shortest sentences are in chapter VII, Чиж та Голуб (4.8), and the longest in chapter VIII, Зозуля й Півень (5.7), where the two birds trade long compliments.
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 IV, Лебідь, Щука і Рак.