I. Київський літопис
1241 , ; , , , , , , , . , , , . , , , ; , , , ; , .
Kyiv year by year, 1241-1700
The Kyiv and Mezhyhirya Chronicles Київський і Межигірський літописи
Anonymous chroniclers, 1888
Two complete chronicles in Middle Ukrainian, not an adaptation: the Kyiv Chronicle (1241-1621) and the Mezhyhirya Chronicle (1608-1700), short year-by-year records kept by Kyiv clergy and by the monks of the Mezhyhirya Monastery on the Dnieper north of Kyiv, first printed in 1888. A monastery chronicle is a working notebook rather than a story: under each “Року ...” (“In the year ...”) a monk wrote down what mattered to his community, a war, a fire, a hetman’s rising, the death of a metropolitan, locusts or an eclipse. For a learner at C2 these are among the oldest texts in the catalogue, the language of Ukraine before the modern standard, in entries that are often one or two lines long, so you can read history of Kyiv from the Mongol raids to Mazepa a few minutes at a time. About 6,200 words in 2 chapters, one per chronicle.
- C2
- 6 235 words
- 1-2 hours
Will this text hold?
C1
Earlier
At C1 you will recognise many roots but stumble on almost every line: the hard sign, ѣ and the Polish loans make even short entries slow. Try the C1 historical prose first, such as Kulish’s The Black Council, which imitates this chronicle language in a modern spelling.
C1C2
This text
At C2 you can read it entry by entry: once ъ stops looking like a letter and кг reads as g, the one-line entries go quickly, and only the copied letters and the verse call for patience.
Check this passageC2 here means reading a historical stage of the language, as Shakespeare or Cervantes are for learners of English and Spanish, and a modern dictionary will often fail you: tap translation may miss the old spellings. The numbers are already beyond C1: 27 words per sentence, as in Kvitka’s The Witch of Konotop, one of the C1 books with the longest sentences, and 15.0% of words with 9 letters or more, above the 13.8% of Pidmohylny’s The City, one of the C1 books with the highest share. But the real difficulty is the language itself. This is 17th-century chancery Ukrainian mixed with Polish and Church Slavonic, printed in the 1888 edition’s pre-modern alphabet: 1,750 words end in the silent hard sign ъ (about 29% of all words), ѣ appears 240 times and ы 560 times. Polish loans are everywhere: кроль and кролевство (“king”, “kingdom”) 25 times, тежъ (“also”) 11, абы (“so that”) 9, барзо (“very”) 4, моцъ (“power”) 3, and 43 words write the Polish g as кг (кгды “when”, Жикгимонтъ “Sigismund”, кгвалтъ “violence”). Church Slavonic forms such as преставися (“passed away”, 4 times), бысть and обретохомъ (“we found”) mark the clerical voice, and some dates count years from the creation of the world (въ лѣто 7128). The Kyiv Chronicle also quotes letters of a king and a patriarch and two passages of verse. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 6 235
- words
- 27
- words in an average sentence
- 1-2
- hours of reading
- 1888
- Друкарня Г. Т. Корчак-Новицького
Друкарня Г. Т. Корчак-Новицького, 1888. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
The Kyiv Chronicle opens in 1241 with the Mongol army burning Kraków and a strange banner that breathed foul smoke on the Christian troops, then runs through centuries in single lines: a Lithuanian prince takes Kyiv, the sultan Bayezid ends his days in a cage, printing is invented. Around 1600 the entries grow longer and closer to home: Cossack wars against the Polish crown, the quarrel between Orthodox and Uniate clergy in Kyiv (with a rhymed anecdote about an official’s wife and a cauldron of mead), the rebuilding of a church in Podil, and in 1620 the visit of Patriarch Theophanes III of Jerusalem, whose letter to the Zaporozhian Cossacks is copied in full. The Mezhyhirya Chronicle starts with the fire of Kyiv castle in 1608 and follows the monastery’s century: Petro Mohyla restoring St Sophia, the rising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, plague, eclipses, swarms of locusts, Turkish and Tatar raids, and the hetmans after him, up to Ivan Mazepa. What the last entries record is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Київський і Межигірський літописи
II. Межигірський літопис
1648 , ; ; 8 : ; 17 , , .
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Choose an underlined word.
Read кг as g
Scribes wrote the Polish and Latin g as кг: кгдыжъ is Polish gdyż (“because”) and Лекгница is Legnica in Silesia. Skip the silent ъ at the end of words as well: Краковъ is simply Краков, and the entry reads much faster.
Two past tenses side by side
The chronicler mixes the bookish past in -лъ (поразилъ, повсталъ) with the spoken Ukrainian one in -въ (збивъ, погнавъ, звоевавъ). Both are the masculine past: збивъ is modern збив, погнавъ is погнав.
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
With the Reader plan, the whole sentence is translated where Polish and old Ukrainian meet in one line, as in the entry on the captured sultan Bayezid: ажъ косткою рыбею самъ задавился, абы соромоты ушелъ, “until he choked himself on a fish bone to escape the shame”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
It is the original, not an adaptation: the complete text of two anonymous chronicles, the Kyiv Chronicle (1241-1621) and the Mezhyhirya Chronicle (1608-1700). Both were first printed in 1888 in the Kyiv collection Сборникъ лѣтописей, относящихся къ исторіи Южной и Западной Руси, prepared by the Kyiv Archaeographic Commission (editor Volodymyr Antonovych) and printed by Г. Т. Корчак-Новицький; our text follows that edition as reproduced on Wikisource. The editorial headings and notes in Russian, the editor’s footnotes and his asterisks were removed, one word the editor could not read is marked […], and four small misprints and transcription slips were corrected against the scan. The spelling is the 1888 edition’s pre-modern alphabet with ъ, ѣ, ы and і. Both chronicles take the Orthodox side, and some entries speak of the Uniate Church in the harsh polemical terms of the time.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version on MovaReader; you read on screen and tap a word to see its translation. Expect to tap often from the first entry: сплендровавши (“having plundered”) and шкаредный (“foul”) both come from Polish, and tap translation may not recognise every old spelling.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. It helps most in the long entries that string clauses together with а and и, such as the one on Khmelnytsky’s rising: Року 1648 повсталъ Богданъ Хмельницкий, гетманъ запорожский и всеѣ Украины козацкий войною на ляхи, “In the year 1648 Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Zaporozhian hetman and Cossack leader of all Ukraine, rose in war against the Poles”. Without the plan you can still tap single words up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 1-2 hours at a learner’s pace with translation of new words, slower than a native speaker. The Kyiv Chronicle has about 5,000 words and the Mezhyhirya Chronicle about 1,300, and most entries are only one to five lines long, so you can stop after any year.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is even: both chronicles have 15% long words, and the Kyiv Chronicle averages 26 words per sentence against 30 in the Mezhyhirya Chronicle, whose entries are fewer but run longer. The single-line entries before 1600 are the quickest; the hardest pages are near the end of the Kyiv Chronicle, where the patriarch’s letter and a verse eulogy of Prince Semen Lyko pile up Polish and Church Slavonic words.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. After you sign in, the reader remembers your place and the words you opened. The contents on this page open either chapter directly, for example II. Межигірський літопис, which begins with the fire of Kyiv castle in 1608.