I. Кривенька качечка
. , . . . .
— , ? — .
— , . .
.
— ? ? ?
— , — . — .
. . . , .
Four folk tales retold for A1
The Little Lame Duck and Other Tales Кривенька качечка та інші казки
Ukrainian folk tales
This is not an original text but MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple Ukrainian, of four folk tales from Ivan Rudchenko’s 19th-century collection: Кривенька качечка (the little lame duck who turns into a girl), Цап та баран (the billy goat and the ram), Яйце-райце (the wonder egg) and Ох (Oh, the little green tsar of the forest). It is for readers who are just starting Ukrainian: about 3,400 words in 8 short chapters, told in the present tense, with sentences of 5 words on average and lots of dialogue.
- A1
- 3 409 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 repetition, such as the ducks’ call Хай летить із нами! (“Let her fly with us!”), the goat’s Подай ще більшу! (“Hand me a bigger one!”) and the eagle’s three tests, so each pattern comes back three times.
Check this passageA2
With room to spare
At A2 the tales read almost without translation: good for building speed and for folk formulas Ukrainians know from childhood, such as the opening Живуть собі дід і баба (“There once lived an old man and an old woman”) and the closing І я там був, мед і вино пив (“And I was there, drinking mead and wine”).
Start readingThe average sentence has 5 words, and 131 of the 275 paragraphs are lines of dialogue. The narration stays in the present tense (живуть, іде, каже); past forms such as зробила (did) or забув (forgot) appear mostly inside questions and answers. Words of 9 letters or more make up 2.2% of the text, 71 words in all, the most frequent being вертається (comes back). That is fewer than in the catalogue’s other A1 books of tales, Рукавичка та інші казки (3.6%) and Котигорошко та інші казки (3.1%), with the same 5 words per sentence, while the A2 adaptation Лис Микита has sentences twice as long (10 words). The difficulty is even: the eight chapters average 5.1-5.6 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 409
- words
- 5
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
An old couple with no children find a duck with a broken leg in the forest and take her home. While they are out gathering mushrooms, someone tidies their house, bakes bread and cooks borscht, and the neighbours have seen a pretty girl with a slight limp carrying water from the well. A billy goat and a ram, driven out by their owners, carry a dried wolf’s head in a bag and stop for the night at a fire where three wolves are cooking porridge. A mouse and a lark go to war over a single grain, and a hunter who spares a wounded eagle is promised a reward. And a lazy son who never leaves the stove is hired out to a little old man with a green beard, who climbs out of a tree stump when the boy’s father sighs “Oh!”. What happens next in each tale is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Кривенька качечка та інші казки
III. Цап та баран
— , ! — .
— , ! — . — . !
. . .
— , , , — .
.
— ! — . — !
.
— ! !
. «! — . — ?» , .
Choose an underlined word.
Past tense by gender: зробила, зварив
The tales are told in the present tense, but questions about what has happened use the past, and its ending shows who did it: Бабо, це ти зробила? (feminine -ла: the old man asks his wife), Хто зварив борщ? (masculine -в, the default when nobody knows who) and Ми нікого не бачили (plural -ли). The Ukrainian past tense has no person endings, only these forms for gender and number.
Подай-но and більшу
The particle -но, joined with a hyphen to a command, makes it pressing or casual: подай-но is “come on, hand it over”. Більшу is the comparative of великий (big), більший, in the feminine accusative because it agrees with голову (head). The goat asks three times for the same head, and the wolves start counting heads.
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 hide a riddle, as in Дай те, чого вдома не знаєш, “give me what you do not know you have at home”.
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 four anonymous folk tales, all from Ivan Rudchenko’s Народныя южнорусскія сказки (“South Russian Folk Tales”, the imperial-era name for Ukrainian ones), Kyiv: Козел и баран (here Цап та баран) and Яйце-райце from vol. 1, 1869, and Кривенька уточка (here Кривенька качечка) and Ох from vol. 2, 1870. All four were read on Wikisource in that edition’s 19th-century spelling, Цап та баран as a transcribed page and the other three on the scanned pages of the same book. What changed: old spelling and dialect forms (йійі for її, журицця for журиться) became standard modern Ukrainian, the narration moved to the present tense, the long Яйце-райце and Ох were condensed (the snake’s three tasks and the chase are shortened), and in Ох the disguised buyer of the horse is simply a one-eyed stranger. The episodes, the ducks’ song and the closing formulas 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 of village life, such as коромисло (the yoke for carrying two buckets) or веретено (spindle).
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 short lines with an idiom, such as Тепер ми квиті (“Now we are quits”), the eagle’s words after his three tests. 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 8 chapters run from about 360 to 610 words: Кривенька качечка and Ох take two chapters each, Цап та баран one and Яйце-райце three, 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 5.1 and 5.6 words per sentence. Long words peak in chapter II, Дівчина з коромислом (4.4% of words, with коромислом and підглядали), and are rarest in the two Ох chapters (about 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 8 chapters directly, for example chapter VII, Лісовий цар Ох.