I. Верховина
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Hutsul villages under Polish rule
Verkhovyna and Other Stories Верховина і інші оповідання
Marko Cheremshyna, 1940
Five complete stories by Marko Cheremshyna in the original Ukrainian, as printed in Kraków in 1940, not an adaptation. It is for learners at C1, or strong B2 readers ready for the speech of the Hutsul highlands in the Carpathians, which Cheremshyna (the pen name of Ivan Semaniuk, 1874-1927) uses in the narration as well as the dialogue; like Vasyl Stefanyk, he was a master of the short village novella. About 12,000 words in 5 chapters, one story each: the title story runs to about 7,000 words, the other four to 1,100-1,400.
- C1
- 12 029 words
- 2-3 hours
Will this text hold?
B2
Earlier
At B2 the plots are easy to follow, but Hutsul forms such as шо, тота, гейби, дєдю and verbs in -си, and words like ґаздиня and бадіка, stop you in almost every line.
B2C1
This text
At C1 it reads with word taps: the same village words come back on every page, so after the long title story the four short ones feel lighter, except Коляда, whose sentences average about 19 words.
Check this passageC2
With room to spare
At C2 only the rarest Hutsul and Polish administrative words (засколобина, постерунковий, презус) still need a tap; the rest reads for Cheremshyna’s song-like rhythm.
Start readingOn the numbers alone this is a demanding original: sentences average 15 words, as in Boa constrictor and Захар Беркут (both C1), and 9.4% of the words have 9 letters or more, close to the 10% line and well above the two other dialect books at C1, Тіні забутих предків (7.4%) and Stefanyk’s Камінний хрест та інші новели (5.0%). On top of that comes the Hutsul and Galician speech of the 1920s. The text writes шо and ше for що and ще 71 times, тот, тота, тото, тоті and тоту (that) 51 times, гей and гейби for як and ніби (like, as if) 31 times, and аби for щоб 70 times; 23 reflexive verbs end in -си (зажурилиси, подивитиси), and about 50 words have є where standard Ukrainian has я (дєдю, тємлю, чєс). Village words return on every page: ґазда and ґаздиня (householder, his wife) 54 times, бадіка (old peasant) 38, їмость (a priest’s or officer’s wife) 69. Polish rule brings its own vocabulary: командант (police commander) 39 times, шандар (gendarme) 14, зеленюк (border guard) 18. The 1940 editors glossed 110 words in footnotes even for Ukrainian readers of their day. Stefanyk’s dialect grammar is thicker (шо about 10 times per 1,000 words against about 4 here), but here the words and the sentences are longer. This is the catalogue’s assessment, not a certificate.
- 12 029
- words
- 15
- words in an average sentence
- 2-3
- hours of reading
- 1940
- Українське видавництво
Українське видавництво, 1940. Wikisource
What it is about, without the ending
In the Hutsul mountains of the 1920s, now under Polish rule, old Fedir Orfeniuk refuses to stand godfather to the child of the village constable, and the next day he is ordered to drive two ladies, the police commander’s wife and the priest’s wife, down to a ball at a forest villa. On the road the tipsy ladies chatter about their husbands, their lovers and their jewellery, and the old man begins to see that a plot is being hatched around his widowed daughter-in-law and his land. Four shorter stories follow: the head of a village reading room, just sentenced, meets a little girl at the prison wall with a basket of Easter eggs for her mother; peasants sentenced for attending a rally pay a lawyer and a bribe to be let into jail early, so as to be free for the spring work; a shepherd hurries down from the mountain pasture on Midsummer Night because a border guard is courting his wife; and carollers sing a carol of their own under the shutters of a forest guard who is feasting the gendarmes. What happens next is not revealed here.
Compare two places
Верховина і інші оповідання
III. Ласка
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Choose an underlined word.
Arguing in proverbs
The old man and the constable trade sayings rather than reasons: доки люлька смакує, доти сила бірує means “as long as the pipe tastes good, the strength holds”, with бірувати as the Galician verb for to cope, to have the strength. Read сімдесять as сімдесят, держати as тримати, and вартує as коштує or вартий (is worth).
One sentence, many links
The second paragraph is a single sentence of about 80 words, strung together with бо, а тоді, але при тім and та й. Stop at each link and the chain becomes clear. Пійти is піти, узрить is побачить, возьні are court ushers, and рахують зебро (they count your ribs) means they beat you.
Chapters
Translation while you read
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Reader
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When a lawyer mocks the peasants for wanting to work, one of them answers “Ми люди робітні, пане, ми весни шкодуємо” (“We are working people, sir, we cannot spare the spring”), and translating the whole sentence in Reader untangles the dialect verb шкодувати, which here means to grudge the loss of something.
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Is this the original or a learner adaptation?
Yes: all five stories are complete and in the original Ukrainian, in the order of the edition we use, «Верховина і інші оповідання» (Українське видавництво, Kraków, 1940, Народня бібліотека no. 11). The title keeps that edition’s і інші, where today’s Ukrainian would write «Верховина та інші оповідання». Cheremshyna wrote these stories in the 1920s, in the last years of his life, about Hutsul villages under Polish rule; they were first collected in a book in Kyiv in 1929, two years after his death, in Верховина, edited by Mykola Zerov. The text comes from Wikisource and keeps the 1940 spelling, with endings such as радости and докучливости where today’s Ukrainian writes радості and докучливості, and no apostrophe in память or розяснив. The editors’ introduction and their 110 footnotes are not part of Cheremshyna’s text, so they are not included. Near the end of Писанки a few words are repeated by a printing slip of the 1940 edition; they are kept as printed.
Is there an audiobook?
No, there is no audiobook on MovaReader: the stories are read on screen. Tap a word to see its translation; you will need it most for Hutsul words such as киптар (a sleeveless sheepskin jacket) or засколобина (a hollow on a mountainside).
Can I translate a whole sentence?
Yes, with the Reader plan. It helps most where the dialect and the word order bend together, as in the first paragraph: “Хаті сорок шість, а дідові сімдесять років то вже старому гляба діти до хресту держати” (“The house is forty-six and the old man seventy, so he is past holding children at the font”). Without the plan, single words are translated up to the daily limit.
How many hours does it take?
About 2-3 hours at the pace of someone reading with word translation, slower than a native speaker. The title story, Верховина, is more than half the book at about 7,000 words; Писанки, Ласка, На Купала, на Івана and Коляда run to 1,100-1,400 words each, so each fits into one sitting.
Where does the text get easier?
It is fairly even, with one exception at the end. The first four stories average 13.5-15 words per sentence, and На Купала, на Івана has the fewest long words (7.5%); Коляда, the last, averages about 19 words per sentence and has 11.4% long words, the most of the five. Верховина is a good way in despite its length, since about two thirds of its paragraphs are dialogue. На Купала, на Івана has short sentences but the thickest folk imagery, with forest spirits such as нявки, чугайстир and арідник.
Will my place in the book be saved?
Yes. Once you sign in, the reader keeps your place and the words you opened. Any of the five stories opens from the contents on this page, for example III. Ласка, about peasants who want to serve their sentence before the spring work.