I. Три брати
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Three folk tales retold for A1
The Flying Ship and Other Tales Летючий корабель та інші казки
Ukrainian folk tales
This is not an original text but MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple Ukrainian, of three folk tales from Ivan Rudchenko’s collection of 1869-1870: Летючий корабель (the flying ship, in which a youngest son everyone takes for a fool sets out to win a princess with seven wondrous companions), Рись-мати (a stepdaughter, a magic calf and a mother turned into a pike) and Правда та Неправда (Truth and Falsehood on the road together). It is for readers who are just starting Ukrainian: about 3,600 words in 8 short chapters, told in the present tense, with sentences of 6 words on average and lots of dialogue.
- A1
- 3 564 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 move by repetition, such as the greeting the fool gives every traveller (Добрий день, дядьку! “Good day, uncle!”) and his invitation Сідайте з нами! (“Get in with us!”), so each new companion arrives in words you already know.
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 нижче неба, вище землі (“lower than the sky, higher than the earth”, of the ship’s flight) and ні живий ні мертвий (“neither alive nor dead”, that is, frozen with fear).
Start readingThe average sentence has 6 words (3,564 words in 617 sentences), and 145 of the 279 paragraphs are lines of dialogue. The narration stays in the present tense (живуть, летить, каже); past forms such as втомився (got tired) or допомагали (helped) appear only here and there, mostly in what the characters say. Words of 9 letters or more make up 1.8% of the text, the most frequent being приходить (comes) and припливає (swims up). That is close to Котик і півник та інші казки (1.7%, 5 words per sentence) and well below Рукавичка та інші казки (3.6%), both A1 books of tales, while an A2 adaptation such as Олив’яний перстень tells its story in the past tense with sentences of 10 words. The difficulty is even: the eight chapters average between 5.1 and 6.3 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 564
- words
- 6
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
An old couple has three sons: two clever ones and a fool who sits on the stove in a black shirt. When the tsar promises his daughter to whoever flies to his feast on a ship that flies, the fool sets off with a crust of stale bread, shares it with an old man on the road and wakes up beside a golden ship. On the way he takes on seven strange travellers: a man who hears everything through the earth, a runner with one leg tied to his ear, an archer who sees a bird a hundred miles away, a great eater, a great drinker, a man with magic straw and a man with magic firewood. The tsar does not want a son-in-law in rags and sets one impossible task after another. In the second tale a stepmother buries her stepdaughter in spinning, and only a little calf helps the girl; in the third, Truth shares her bread with Falsehood on a long road and pays dearly for it. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Летючий корабель та інші казки
III. Цар і його завдання
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Choose an underlined word.
Having something: у мене є
Ukrainian has a verb for “to have” (мати), as in А що ти маєш пити?, but the everyday way to say it is у + genitive + є: у тебе є горілка? “do you have any vodka?”, literally “at you is vodka?”. In the answer, У мене тільки вода, the є drops out because the sentence names what there is. The у often becomes в between vowels or after one, as in Звідки в мене горілка?, so у мене and в мене are the same phrase.
Present form, future meaning: встигну, відпочину
Я встигну looks like a present tense but means “I’ll make it in time”, and трохи відпочину is “I’ll rest a little”. Perfective verbs (встигнути, відпочити, розбудити) have no present: their personal forms point to the future, so the runner is planning, not describing. The narrator uses imperfectives for what is happening now: сідає, засинає, закінчують.
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 simple words make a formula, as in Ось мій меч, а йому голова з плеч!, “Here is my sword, and his head off his shoulders!”, the rhyming threat the tsar repeats after every task.
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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 collected by Ivan Rudchenko and first printed in his Народныя южнорусскія сказки (“South Russian Folk Tales”, the imperial-era name for Ukrainian ones), Kyiv, 1869-1870: Летючий корабель, Рись-мати and Правда та Неправда (here Правда і Неправда and Цілюща роса). The selection of tales is the catalogue’s own. They were read on Wikisource in the 1920 reprint Українські народні казки (Українське видавництво в Катеринославі, printed in Leipzig, with drawings by Yurii Mahalevskyi), in the spelling of its day (царь for цар, кораблї for кораблі). What changed: the old spelling and forms became standard modern Ukrainian, the narration moved to the present tense, long sentences were cut into short ones, and the ship’s travellers are named when they first appear by the names the source gives them later (Слухало, Скороход, Стрілець and so on). Two punishments that the source describes in cruel detail are told more briefly here. 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 the old village, such as паляниці (round loaves of white wheat bread), свитки (long homespun coats) or коноплі (hemp, spun into thread).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Sentences here average 6 words, so you will need it less for their length than for short lines with a folk formula, such as Дурень сидить ні живий ні мертвий (“The fool sits neither alive nor dead”, that is, frozen with fear) while he waits for the runner to come back. 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 240 to 650 words: Летючий корабель takes the first four chapters (about 2,300 words), Рись-мати and Правда та Неправда 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 5.1 and 6.3 words per sentence. Long words are rarest in chapter VII, Правда і Неправда (0.9% of words), and most frequent in chapter VI, Щука в річці (2.7%, with words such as народжується and припливає).
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 V, Рись-мати, where the second tale begins.