II. Дорога
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Three city boys at a village harvest, for A2
The Tin Ring Олив'яний перстень
Stepan Vasylchenko
This is MovaReader’s retelling of The Tin Ring in simple standard Ukrainian, not the original novella: Stepan Vasylchenko’s 1927 story of three Kyiv schoolboys who walk to a village in the Poltava region to spend the harvest with two classmates. It is for A2 readers who know the basics and want a light, funny story told in the past tense: about 4,700 words in 12 short titled chapters. The complete novella is in the catalogue at B2.
- A2
- 4 743 words
- 1 hour
Will this text hold?
A1
Earlier
At A1 it is a stretch: everything is told in the past tense, sentences of about 10 words often join two clauses with бо, коли or що, and harvest words such as сніп or перевесло need a tap.
A1A2
This text
At A2 it fits: plain modern Ukrainian, past-tense narration and plenty of short dialogue; words like клуня (a barn) or ступа (a wooden mortar) translate with a tap.
Check this passageB1
With room to spare
At B1 it reads almost without translation: a quick way into the story before the complete novella at B2, with its long lyrical descriptions and the older spelling of the 1929 edition.
Start readingSentences average 10 words, the narration is in the past tense, and almost half of the paragraphs (142 of 302) are lines of dialogue. One word in 20 has 9 letters or more (5.0%); most are past-tense forms such as подивилася (she looked) or засміялася (she laughed), and some are names like Барановський. That places it with the other A2 adaptations: Наталка Полтавка has a similar share of long words (5.1%), and Микола Джеря has 9 words per sentence and 5.1% long words. Інститутка, retold for B1, has longer sentences (12 words) and more long words (5.9%), while Vasylchenko’s own fairy tales, retold for A1 as Чарівна коза, have 6 words per sentence and 2.9% long words. Every chapter stays between 9.8 and 11.2 words per sentence, so there is no hard stretch. Hence A2. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 4 743
- words
- 10
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Kyiv, a hot summer in the 1920s. School is over, and three classmates are bored in the dusty city: Valia, the proud editor of the school wall newspaper, Vitia, a tram worker’s son who can fix anything, and Kost, a quiet refugee boy from an orphanage who writes poems and has long admired Nastia Bondar and the plain tin ring on her hand. One evening they decide to walk two hundred versts to the village of Lypovyi Kut, where Nastia and her brother Vasyl spend the summer. They get lost, sleep under a windmill and in a haystack, and arrive in the middle of the harvest. There they learn to bind sheaves, help a widow with her rye, meet the pioneer girl Sonia and old Markiian, the village’s stubborn local scholar, and find out that a wooden ступа can hide a key. Soon all three boys are competing for Nastia’s attention, each in his own way. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Олив'яний перстень
VII. Вдовине жито
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Choose an underlined word.
The genitive after a container word
Біля білого поля гречки means “by a white field of buckwheat”: after поле (a field) the crop goes into the genitive, so гречка becomes гречки. Two lines later the same word is the subject of the sentence and is back in its dictionary form: Гречка гуде, “the buckwheat is humming”.
“If” that did not happen: якби and б
Що б ти робив, якби впав у воду? is “What would you have done if you had fallen into the water?”. Ukrainian builds this with the past tense plus б (or би): робив + б is “would do”, and якби is the “if” of things that did not happen. The verb does not change for present or past, so the same pattern covers both.
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 whole sentences where a short line of village speech needs a key, as in Поки натовчеш на одну кашу, сім разів спітнієш, “By the time you pound enough grain for one pot of porridge, you’ll have sweated seven times”.
ReaderIf this book is not the one
Ukrainian books A1 Earlier Peasant Arithmetic and Other Stories Мужицька арихметика та інші оповідання Another book by the same author B2
All books at this level
Before you read
Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
An adaptation, not the original text. It is MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple standard Ukrainian, of The Tin Ring (Олив’яний перстень), the novella Stepan Vasylchenko first published in 1927. We followed the text of volume IV of his complete works (State Publishing House of Ukraine, Kharkiv, 1929) on Wikisource, the same one as the complete novella at B2 in our catalogue. What changed: about 18,600 words in 17 numbered sections became about 4,700 words of past-tense prose in modern standard Ukrainian (2019 spelling), in 12 titled chapters. The plot, the main characters and the order of events are kept; the long lyrical pictures of fields, sunsets and Kyiv are cut to a sentence or two, and some side scenes, such as the card game and the village play, are shortened. The 1920s setting, with pioneers, a reading room and a registry office, stays. The source’s harvest chapter has a joke built on an ethnic slur for Russians and a coarse Russian-language rhyme; both were left out.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audio version on MovaReader: the text is read on screen. Tap a word and its translation appears; here you will often tap words of village life and the harvest, such as ступа (a wooden mortar for pounding grain), перевесло (a twisted straw band that ties a sheaf), клуня (a barn) and обжинки (the feast at the end of the harvest).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes: whole-sentence translation comes with the Reader plan. Sentences here average 10 words, so you will want it mainly where one clause hangs on another, as in Валя не міг зрозуміти, чи дід справді так думає, чи тільки жартує (“Valia could not tell whether the old man really thought so or was only joking”). Without the plan, single words translate up to a daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About an hour for the whole book at a learner’s pace, with new words translated as you go. The 12 chapters run from about 290 to 560 words, so each takes a few minutes and the story fits into one or two evenings.
Where does the text get easier?
It is even from start to finish: every chapter averages between 9.8 and 11.2 words per sentence. The quickest is chapter X, “Лист із наганом” (A letter with a revolver), at 9.8, full of short exchanges between the girls; the slowest is chapter IX, “Вірш і зозуля” (A poem and a cuckoo), at 11.2, which narrates more and quotes less.
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 open any of the 12 chapters directly, for example chapter V, “Ключ у ступі” (The key in the mortar), where the boys cannot find the key to the house because nobody in Kyiv ever told them what a ступа is.