I. Сойчине крило
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Five Franko stories from 1884 to 1905
The Jay’s Wing and Other Stories Сойчине крило та інші оповідання
Ivan Franko, 1957
The complete original in Ukrainian, not an adaptation: five of Ivan Franko’s stories, from a comic family dinner dated 1884 to the long confession of Сойчине крило written in 1905, gathered here by MovaReader. It is for upper-intermediate learners who want Franko’s later, more psychological prose next to his river and nature sketches: about 31,900 words in 5 stories, from about 1,900 to 13,100 words each.
- B2
- 31 862 words
- 5-9 hours
Will this text hold?
B1
Earlier
At B1 the dialogue of Щука and На лоні природи is within reach, but the long reflective paragraphs of Сойчине крило and Galician forms like тямиш or мойого make most pages slow going.
B1B2
This text
At B2 you can read it story by story: start with the short Щука or На лоні природи, and move on to the two long stories once тямиш, відки and the -ости genitives feel familiar.
Check this passageC1
With room to spare
At C1 the stories read freely; only Galician words and the Latin and German of the narrator of Сойчине крило will stop you now and then.
Start readingThe average sentence has 11 words, and 9.3% of words have 9 letters or more. That puts the book beside Franko’s Малий Мирон та інші оповідання (13 words, 9.6%, B2) and well below Іван Іванович та інші оповідання, which is C1 with 12.8% long words. Almost half of the paragraphs (454 of 977) are spoken lines, which keeps many pages light. What slows a learner is the Galician Ukrainian of the 1957 edition: тямиш and тямлю for пам’ятаєш and пам’ятаю (45 times), мойого and свойого for мого and свого (26), відки for звідки (11), about 40 genitives in -ости such as радости and наївности, and 66 words in Latin script, the Latin, German and Polish of educated Galicians (Aequam servare mentem, Geschäftsmann). That is far lighter than the Hutsul dialect that makes Тіні забутих предків C1, so the book is B2, near the top of the level. This is the catalog’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 31 862
- words
- 11
- words in an average sentence
- 5-9
- hours of reading
- 1957
- Книгоспілка
Книгоспілка, 1957. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
In Сойчине крило a forty-year-old official who lives alone by strict rules of calm plans to see in the New Year by himself, until a thick letter arrives from besieged Port Arthur, signed «Твоя Сойка», with a jay’s wing inside. It is from Maria, the forester’s daughter he loved three summers before and who ran away with a smooth young trainee; her letter tells where that road took her across the Russian Empire. In Батьківщина the narrator, riding through the Boiko mountains, meets his school friend Opanas Morymukha, the class joker who never stopped talking about his home village. Opanas sold the family farm for next to nothing and now teaches in a remote mountain school; one evening he agrees to tell why. Щука follows a big pike asleep under a snag and the people who want to catch it; На лоні природи sends two brothers to the river Stryi on a summer day with a gun and big plans; and in Пироги з черницями little Leibunio Goldbaum learns from his father what a businessman is, over a plate of bilberry dumplings. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Сойчине крило та інші оповідання
II. Батьківщина
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Choose an underlined word.
A letter inside the story
This whole passage is Maria’s letter to the narrator, so ти and твоєї хати mean him, and the past tense in -ла (прийшла, наблизилася) tells you the writer is a woman. Сойка, the jay, is feminine too, which is why Maria calls the bird моя суперниця, “my rival”. After a comparative, як means “than”: вчасніше, як звичайно, “earlier than usual”.
Two words for one café
Каварня is the Galician word (from Polish kawiarnia) for кав’ярня, and the very next sentence uses the standard form, so you see both side by side. Свойого часу is the edition’s spelling of свого часу, “in its day”, and Opanas then says it the standard way. Лице кров з молоком, literally “a face of blood and milk”, is a fixed Ukrainian image of a healthy rosy complexion.
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
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When the narrator sees two wine glasses laid out for a guest he no longer expects, he laughs: «Минулося моє гречане» (my buckwheat days are over); whole-sentence translation in Reader shows that this folk idiom means his time for love and merrymaking has passed.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
Yes, every story is complete and unabridged. The selection and the title are MovaReader’s: five stories taken from volume V of Franko’s Works in 20 volumes (Knyhospilka, New York, 1957) via Wikisource. Сойчине крило was written in 1905 for Franko’s Lviv collection На лоні природи і інші оповідання; Батьківщина was written in the summer of 1904, printed in Kyiv that autumn and in Lviv’s Літературно-науковий вістник in 1905; Щука first appeared in 1899, На лоні природи in 1890, and Пироги з черницями is dated 1884. The spelling is that edition’s, so forms like тямиш, мойого or радости stay as printed. Пироги з черницями uses a period word for Jews that is offensive today, and its satire leans on the stereotypes of its time.
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 Galician words such as тямиш (do you remember), which Maria repeats all through her letter in Сойчине крило, and черниці (bilberries) in Пироги з черницями.
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most with Galician turns of phrase, for example «Волю багато грошей, ніж трохи пирогів» (I’d rather have a lot of money than a few dumplings) in Пироги з черницями, where волю comes from воліти, “to prefer”, not from воля, “freedom”. Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
The whole collection takes about 5-9 hours at the pace of someone reading with translation of new words. The three short stories, Пироги з черницями (about 1,900 words), Щука (about 2,300) and На лоні природи (about 3,500), take an evening each; Батьківщина (about 11,100 words in eight parts) and Сойчине крило (about 13,100 words) take two or three evenings each.
Where does the text get easier?
The difficulty is fairly even. The gentlest story is IV. На лоні природи, with the fewest long words (8.0%) and plenty of dialogue, though its sentences average 12.5 words; III. Щука has 10.7 words per sentence and 8.8% long words. I. Сойчине крило has short sentences (9.8 words) but the most long words (9.7%) and its narrator’s Latin and German, II. Батьківщина sits in the middle (11.2 words, 9.4%), and V. Пироги з черницями has the longest sentences (16.2 words). Starting with the two short river stories is a good plan.
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 five stories also opens from the contents on this page, for example II. Батьківщина, where the narrator finds his old school friend in a mountain village.