II. Котигорошко і змій
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Three hero tales retold for A1
Kotyhoroshko and Other Tales Котигорошко та інші казки
Ukrainian folk tales
This is not an original text but MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple Ukrainian, of three heroic folk tales that Ukrainian children grow up with: Котигорошко (Kotyhoroshko, the boy born from a pea), Івасик-Телесик (Ivasyk-Telesyk and the she-dragon) and Кирило Кожум’яка (Kyrylo Kozhumiaka, the tanner of Kyiv). It is for readers who are just starting Ukrainian: about 4,000 words in 9 short chapters, told in the present tense, with sentences of 5 words on average and lots of dialogue.
- A1
- 3 974 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 run on repeated lines, such as Битися будемо чи миритися? (“Shall we fight or make peace?”), the mother’s call to Telesyk and his plea to the geese, so you meet each one three or four times.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tales read almost without translation: good for building speed, and for the names and formulas, like Вернигора (Mountain-Turner) or Пливи, пливи, човнику, далі! (“Sail on, little boat!”), that Ukrainians know from childhood.
Start readingThe average sentence has 5 words, and 173 of the 341 paragraphs are lines of dialogue. The narration stays in the present tense (живе, іде, каже); past forms such as пішли (went) or вирвав (pulled out) turn up in only a few lines. Words of 9 letters or more make up 3.1% of the text, and 50 of those 118 long words are the names Котигорошко and Вернигора. That puts the book level with Рукавичка та інші казки, the catalogue’s other A1 book of tales (5 words per sentence, 3.6% long words), while the A2 adaptation Лис Микита has sentences twice as long (10 words). The difficulty is even: the nine chapters average 4.5-5.7 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 974
- words
- 5
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
A dragon draws a girl to his court along a ploughed furrow and throws her six brothers into a dungeon. Their mother swallows a pea she finds rolling along the road, and her new son, Kotyhoroshko, grows strong enough to throw an iron mace into the sky and catch it on one finger. Later he travels with three strongmen, Vernyhora, Vernydub and Krutyvus, and meets a tiny old man whose beard drags along the ground. In the second tale an old couple rock a log in a cradle until it turns into a boy, Ivasyk-Telesyk, who fishes from a golden boat and rows to the bank only for his mother’s song; but a she-dragon is listening too. In the third, the prince of Kyiv must give his daughter to a dragon, and she learns from the dragon himself which man he fears. What happens next in each tale is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Котигорошко та інші казки
VI. Івасик-Телесик
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Choose an underlined word.
Calling someone: Ковалю!
When you call someone, Ukrainian changes the ending of the name: коваль (smith) becomes Ковалю!, Оленка becomes Оленко! and Кирило becomes Кириле!. This vocative case comes in almost every request in these tales, so read a final -ю, -о or -е on a name as a call, not as a new word.
Small words in the song
The mother’s call is built from diminutives, the affectionate “little” forms: бережок (little bank, here бережка) from берег, човник (little boat) from човен, весельце (little oar) from весло. If a diminutive looks unfamiliar, look for the plain word inside it. Приплинь is the imperative of приплисти, “to come by water”.
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 easy words make a folk formula, as in А в батька їсти й пити, ще й хороше ходити, “at my father’s there is food and drink, and fine clothes to wear”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this level
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 of three anonymous folk tales. Івасик-Телесик follows Телесик as printed by Ivan Rudchenko in Народныя южнорусскія сказки (“South Russian Folk Tales”, the imperial-era name for Ukrainian ones), vol. 2, Kyiv, 1870, recorded in Hadiach and read on Wikisource in that edition’s 19th-century spelling; there the boy is simply Телесик, and the name Івасик comes from other versions. Котигорошко follows the anonymous folk text on Wikisource, in modern spelling, and Кирило Кожум’яка the Wikisource text of the Chernihiv version recorded by Vasyl Bilozersky and published by Panteleimon Kulish in the 1850s in Записки о Южной Руси. What changed: old spelling and dialect forms became standard modern Ukrainian, the narration moved to the present tense, Kotyhoroshko’s long tale was condensed, and two violent details were softened (the little old man beats the strongmen instead of tearing strips of skin from their backs, and the hero chases his false friends away). The episodes, the dragon fights and the folk rhymes remain. The source texts themselves are not in the catalogue.
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 words from the world of folk heroes, such as булава (mace) or тік (threshing floor), as in the dragon’s залізний тік.
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 folk formulas such as Покочуся, повалюся, Телесикового м’яса наївшись! (“I’ll roll about, I’ll tumble, full of Telesyk’s flesh!”), where every word can be looked up but the form наївшись (having eaten one’s fill) still puzzles. 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 9 chapters run from about 310 to 710 words: Котигорошко takes five chapters, Івасик-Телесик and Кирило Кожум’яка two each, so any chapter fits into a short sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even from start to finish: every chapter averages between 4.5 and 5.7 words per sentence. Long words cluster in chapters III-V (4.8-6.2% of words), mostly because of the names Котигорошко and Вернигора; the two Telesyk chapters have under 1%.
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 9 chapters directly, for example chapter VI, Івасик-Телесик.