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Ukrainian books for C2

At C2 the difficulty is no longer long sentences or rare words but the language itself: Ukrainian as it was written before the modern standard, in the alphabets and spellings of its time. This is what Shakespeare is for learners of English and Cervantes for learners of Spanish. Here are nine complete books: the 17th-century Cossack Eyewitness Chronicle and the Kyiv and Mezhyhirya chronicles, in chancery Ukrainian mixed with Polish and Church Slavonic; Kotliarevsky’s burlesque Eneida (1798-1842), the first major work in vernacular Ukrainian; the poets before Shevchenko in The Master and the Dog and Other Poems and Yevhen Hrebinka’s Little Russian Fables (1836); the Galician almanac Rusalka Dnistrovaia (1837); and Shevchenko in the editions of his time: the first Kobzar (1840), Haidamaky (1841) and his political and biblical poems, The Dream, The Caucasus, The Epistle and Other Poems, from the uncensored Prague Kobzar of 1876.

C2

9 books

The level's books side by side

The catalog’s two usual measures, sentence length and the share of long words, say little here. In verse a sentence can run over a whole stanza or stop at every line, and the 1840 Kobzar has only 6.8% long words, fewer than many B2 books. What sets these books apart is the spelling and the stage of the language: in the 1840 Kobzar and in Haidamaky ы stands for и and a silent ъ ends hundreds of words; Rusalka Dnistrovaia has ѣ more than 2,300 times; the chronicles write ѣ, ъ and кг for ґ, mix Polish and Church Slavonic, and run to 27-35 words per sentence with 15-16% long words, above every C1 book. Tap translation is built for modern Ukrainian and will often miss these old forms, so it helps to know the modern spelling of a word before you look it up.

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Before you read

How is C2 different from C1 in this catalog?

At C1 the hardest books are modern or nearly modern Ukrainian made difficult by dialect, the spelling of the 1870s-1910s or very long sentences, such as The Witch of Konotop and Kaidash’s Family. At C2 the language itself belongs to an earlier stage: the literary Ukrainian of 1798-1856 before and around Shevchenko, the 17th-century chronicles, and spellings with ы, ъ and ѣ that modern dictionaries do not know.

Are these the original texts?

Yes, complete texts as printed: Eneida from Kotliarevsky’s Works (Berlin, 1922), the 1840 Kobzar and the 1841 Haidamaky in their first editions, Shevchenko’s political poems from the Prague Kobzar of 1876, Rusalka Dnistrovaia (Buda, 1837), Hrebinka’s fables (St Petersburg, 1836), the poets of 1818-1856 from a 1922 Kyiv anthology, the Eyewitness Chronicle (Kyiv, 1878) and the two monastery chronicles (Kyiv, 1888). Editors’ notes and headings in Russian are left out, and a few transcription slips were corrected against the scans, as each book’s FAQ explains.

Will tap translation work on these spellings?

Often not: it is built for modern Ukrainian, and forms like сліозы, ёго or нѣгди have no dictionary entry. A few rules make most of them readable: ы is read as и, a final ъ is silent, ѣ is usually і, and іо stands for ьо or йо. Then the modern form usually translates.

What should I read before C2?

The hardest C1 books lead here: Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s The Witch of Konotop and Marusia (the language of the 1830s in a 1911 spelling), Kaidash’s Family in its 1879 first edition, and Shevchenko’s narrative poems in The Servant Girl and Other Poems. For Eneida, Kateryna and The Servant Girl the catalog also has simple retellings at A2 and B1.