I. Старий Сірко
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Five folk tales retold for A1
Sirko and Other Tales Сірко та інші казки
Ukrainian folk tales
This is not an original text but MovaReader’s own retelling, in simple Ukrainian, of five folk tales from Ivan Rudchenko’s 1869 collection: Сірко (the old dog and the wolf), the calf who sets off into the world with five companions, the sheep and the billy goat, the sparrow and the blade of grass, and the loach and the pike. It is for readers who are just starting Ukrainian: about 3,400 words in 9 short chapters, told in the present tense, with sentences of 5 words on average and lots of dialogue.
- A1
- 3 442 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 knocking at the calf’s door (Відчини, теля! “Open up, calf!”) and the sparrow’s chain of refusals, Не хочу! (“I don’t want to!”), which grows one link longer with every step.
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 Куди очі дивляться (“wherever my eyes look”, that is, anywhere at all) and the closing Живуть собі, поживають і добра наживають (“they live on happily and prosper”).
Start readingThe average sentence has 5 words (3,442 words in 731 sentences), and 143 of the 289 paragraphs are lines of dialogue. The narration stays in the present tense (живе, каже, біжить); past forms such as прогнав (drove out) or врятував (saved) appear mostly in what the characters say. Words of 9 letters or more make up 2.2% of the text, the most frequent being приходить (comes) and маленький (little). That is the same share as in Кривенька качечка та інші казки (2.2%) and below Рукавичка та інші казки (3.6%), both A1 books of tales with 5 words per sentence, while the A2 adaptation Лис Микита has sentences about twice as long. The difficulty is even: the nine chapters average between 4.5 and 5.0 words per sentence. Hence A1. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 3 442
- words
- 5
- words in an average sentence
- 1
- hour of reading
MovaReader. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
Sirko, an old farm dog, can no longer guard the yard, and his master drives him out into the fields. There he meets a wolf, who has a plan to win back the master’s favour, and Sirko promises to repay him one day. A hungry calf is sent out into the world and gathers a boar, a ram, a gander, a drake and a rooster as companions; when a snowstorm comes, only the calf builds a hut. A sheep caught in the hops follows a billy goat everywhere, right into the cabbage patch. A proud sparrow wants a blade of grass to rock him and flies from the goat to the wolf, to fire, water and oxen to make it obey. And a pike corners a loach, who suddenly asks whether she has been to church lately. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Сірко та інші казки
VI. Хатка в лісі
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Choose an underlined word.
Calling someone: вовче, Сірку, голубчику
When a character speaks to someone, the name changes its ending: this is the vocative case. Вовк becomes вовче, брат becomes брате, Сірко becomes Сірку, собака becomes собако and голубчик becomes голубчику. The dictionary form is вовк, so if a tap shows an unexpected ending inside a line of dialogue, the speaker is simply addressing that character.
Present form, future meaning: відчиню, прорию
Не відчиню! looks like a present tense but means “I won’t open!”. Perfective verbs (відчинити, прорити, пробити) have no present: their personal forms point to the future, so прорию is “I will dig through” and проб’ю “I will break through”. The narrator uses the imperfective відчиняє for what the calf does again and again.
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 an idiom, as in Сірко сам дасть йому раду, “Sirko will deal with him himself”.
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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 five anonymous folk tales, all from the first volume of Ivan Rudchenko’s Народныя южнорусскія сказки (“South Russian Folk Tales”, the imperial-era name for Ukrainian ones), Kyiv, 1869: Сірко, Луплене теля (here Теля і друзі), Овечка й козлик, Горобець та билина (here Горобець і билинка) and Въюн и щука (here В’юн і щука). The selection of tales is the catalogue’s own. They were read on Wikisource in that edition’s 19th-century spelling. What changed: old spelling and dialect forms (йійі for її, хозяін for хазяїн) became standard modern Ukrainian, the narration moved to the present tense, and short scenes were filled out with dialogue that follows the source. Some details were softened: in the source the calf is skinned before it is sent away (луплене means “skinned”) and builds its hut from dung, while here it simply leaves home and builds a hut of branches, straw and clay; and where the source names an ethnic group as the attackers in the sparrow’s chain, this version has simply вороги (enemies). 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 довбня (a heavy wooden mallet) or ятір (a wicker or net fish trap).
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 Куди очі дивляться (“wherever my eyes look”, that is, anywhere at all), the calf’s answer when the other animals ask where it is going. 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 9 chapters run from about 290 to 520 words: Сірко takes four chapters, the calf two, and the sheep, the sparrow and the loach one 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 4.5 and 5.0 words per sentence. Long words are rarest in chapter II, Вовк і дитина (1.0% of words), and most frequent in the last chapter, В’юн і щука (3.9%, with words such as паніматко and підпливає).
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 9 chapters directly, for example chapter VIII, Горобець і билинка.