II. Грицева шкільна наука
— , ? — , .
— , — , .
— , — .
— ! — .
— , .
— ! — .
, , , , :
— ! !
— ? — .
— ! , .
, , — , . . .
7 school stories by Franko for B2
Little Myron and Other Stories Малий Мирон та інші оповідання
Ivan Franko, 1956
The complete original in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: seven of Ivan Franko’s stories about a village boy’s childhood and his schools in 1860s Galicia, written between 1879 and 1905 and gathered here by MovaReader. It is for upper-intermediate learners who prefer short autobiographical stories to a novel: about 27,600 words in 7 stories, from about 1,700 to 9,000 words each.
- B2
- 27 580 words
- 5-8 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the dialogue of the first stories is within reach, but long descriptive sentences, Galician forms like кляса or мойого and the teachers’ Polish and Latin make most pages slow going.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it story by story: start with Малий Мирон and Грицева шкільна наука, where short dialogue carries you, and the school words soon repeat.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the stories read freely; only the Galician school vocabulary and the Latin and Polish of Отець гуморист will stop you now and then.
Start readingThe average sentence has 13 words, and almost one word in ten (9.6%) has 9 letters or more. That is close to Franko’s Коли ще звірі говорили in sentence length (12.3 words, 7.1%, B2) but with more long words, and just under Boa constrictor (14.9 words, 10.0%), which is C1. Dialogue keeps sentences short: 455 of the 773 paragraphs are spoken lines. The work is in the Galician school world as printed in the 1956 edition: кляса for клас (99 times), о. for отець before a priest’s name (126 times), мойого and свойого for мого and свого (21), видиш and видить in the sense of бачиш and бачить (20), and about 100 words in Latin script, the Polish, German and Latin of the teachers. That is lighter than the Hutsul dialect that puts Тіні забутих предків at C1, so the book is B2, at the top of the level. The last story, Отець гуморист, is the hardest, with 11.7% long words. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 27 580
- words
- 13
- words in an average sentence
- 5-8
- hours of reading
- 1956
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1956. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Myron is a peasant boy in a Galician village who asks what nobody else asks: how far can you count, and do people really see with their eyes? The stories follow him and boys like him from the village into school. Hryts, the proud commander of the family geese, is led to the village school and greeted with birch rods; in the Basilian school in Drohobych, Myron meets Valko, the feared teacher of “fine writing”; a stub of pencil found in the snow turns a school day into a trial; a spring game in the meadow ends in what the grown narrator calls his crime; on a free Sunday Myron climbs into the hay under the оборіг, the family hay barrack; and the third class gets a new master, Father Telesnytsky, who comes with the reputation of a humorist. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Малий Мирон та інші оповідання
VI. Під оборогом
, , , , , , , . , . , , , , ( , ); , , , .
Choose an underlined word.
Hryts’s lisp
Hryts is a small child who cannot yet say ж, ч and ш, so Franko spells his words the way he lisps them: видзу for виджу (I see), хоцу for хочу (I want), на сцо for на що (what for). Read them aloud and the standard word appears. Видиш is the Galician form of бачиш (you see), common in all seven stories.
What an оборіг is
An оборіг is a Carpathian hay barrack: four tall poles (оборожини) and a roof that can be raised or lowered over the hay. Note also горі, the Galician word for вгору (upwards), and мов, the bookish “like” that Franko uses for almost every comparison: мов пузатий багач, “like a pot-bellied rich man”.
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
When little Myron makes his first discovery, he runs to his father with “Я знаю, що чоловік очима видить” (I know that a person sees with his eyes): whole-sentence translation in Reader shows that видить is the Galician бачить and чоловік here simply means “a person”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
All books at this levelBefore you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
Yes, every story is complete and unabridged. The selection and the title are MovaReader’s: seven of Franko’s stories of childhood and school, taken from volume II of his Works in 20 volumes (Knyhospilka, New York, 1956) via Wikisource. The spelling is that edition’s, so forms like кляса, мойого or видить stay as printed. Franko himself published a book called Малий Мирон і інші оповідання in Lviv in 1903, with a different set of stories. The stories here were written between 1879 (Малий Мирон, Олівець, Schön Schreiben) and 1905, when Під оборогом first appeared.
Is there an audiobook?
There is no audiobook on MovaReader: the stories are read on screen, and tapping a word shows its translation. You will want it for words such as камізелька (waistcoat) in Грицева шкільна наука and скриптури (exercise books) in Schön Schreiben.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most with old forms and school talk, for example “Золота душа! Буде вам добре в ним” (a heart of gold! You will be well off with him) in Отець гуморист, where в ним is an older form of з ним. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole collection takes about 5-8 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words. Five stories run from about 1,700 to 4,400 words, an evening each; VI. Під оборогом (about 5,800 words) and VII. Отець гуморист (about 9,000 words in eight parts) take two or three evenings each.
Where does the text get easier?
The first two stories are the gentlest: I. Малий Мирон has 11.9 words per sentence and 8.0% long words, II. Грицева шкільна наука 12.3 and 8.7%, with plenty of short dialogue. III. Schön Schreiben has the longest sentences (16.1 words), and IV. Олівець long sentences (14.8) but the fewest long words (6.8%). The hardest is the last, VII. Отець гуморист, with 11.7% long words and the teachers’ Latin and Polish, so it is worth reading the stories in order.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your last place and the words you opened, so you can come back story by story. Each of the seven stories also opens from the contents on this page, for example VI. Під оборогом, where Myron spends a free Sunday in the hay.