Teach Yourself Ukrainian - 2 Audio CDs and Book
Brand New (still shrink wrapped): 2 CDs and Book
This is a complete course in spoken and written Ukrainian, which includes book and CDs. If you have never learned any Ukrainian before or if you want to brush up your existing knowledge, this is the book for you! The book is divided into 18 graded units containing dialogues, grammar notes, back-up material and exercises to check your learning. The Cyrillic alphabet is fully explained in the Introduction and there's lots of opportunity for you to practise both reading and pronunciation. By the end of the course you'll be able to cope with a whole range of situations and participate fully and confidently in life in Ukraine.
There is an audio recording to accompany the course, on CD.
* Comprehensive - all you need to be able to read, write, speak and understand Ukrainian.
* Cyrillic script - there's plenty of help and practice to learn to read and write the script.
* Pronunciation guide - the step-by-step guide in the Introduction and the accompanying audio recording will ensure that your pronunciation is accurate and you are understood when you speak.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Pronunciation
Hello! What's your name?
Very nice to meet you!
Do you have a family?
Hello! I'm calling from London...
We need to book a room in a hotel
What's the climate like in Ukraine?
I have plans to develop trade with Ukraine
We are flying with Ukrainian Airlines
Your passport, please
I'll show you the building
My friends and I want to have lunch
I should like to walk the streets of Kyiv
I have brought proposals for the creation of a joint venture
I want to call out the doctor
What's your idea of the perfect wife?
The train arriving on track number one...
Here's to the health of our guests!
See you again, Ukraine!
Key to the exercises
Ukrainian-English vocabulary
Grammatical index
About the Authors
James Dingley and Olena Bekh are former lecturers at university level.
About the Ukrainian Language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses the Cyrillic alphabet. The Ukrainian language traces its origins to the Old Slavic language of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus'. In its earlier stages it was known as Ruthenian. Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus (10th–13th century). The language has persisted despite several periods of bans, discouragement or both throughout centuries as it has always maintained a sufficient base among the people of Ukraine, its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. It is accepted that before the eighteenth century the precursor to the modern literary Ukrainian language was a vernacular language used mostly by peasants and petits bourgeois as no traces of earlier literary works could be found. It existed along with Church Slavonic, a literary language of religion that evolved from the Old Slavonic.
The earliest literary work in the modern Ukrianian language was recorded in 1798 when Ivan Kotlyarevsky published his epic poem, Eneyida, a burlesque in Ukrainian, based on Virgil's Aeneid. His book was published in vernacular Ukrainian in a satirical way to avoid being censored, and is the earliest known Ukrainian published book to survive through Imperial and, later, Soviet policies on the Ukrainian language.The Ukrainian language is currently emerging from a long period of decline. Although there are almost fifty million ethnic Ukrainians worldwide, including 37.5 million in Ukraine (77.8% of the total population), only in western Ukraine is the Ukrainian language prevalent. In Kiev, both Ukrainian and Russian are spoken, a notable shift from the recent past when the city was primarily Russian speaking. The shift is caused, largely, by an influx of the rural population and migrants from the western regions of Ukraine but also by some Kievans' turning to use the language they speak at home more widely in everyday matters. In northern, southern, eastern and central Ukraine, Russian is the language of the urban population.
Use of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine can be expected to increase, as the rural population (still overwhelmingly Ukrainophone) migrates into the cities and the Ukrainian language enters into wider use in central Ukraine. However, the situation in eastern and southern Ukraine is not changing a lot, the rural Ukrainophones continue switching to Russian. The literary tradition of Ukrainian is also developing rapidly overcoming the consequences of the long period when its development was hindered by either direct suppression or simply the lack of the state encouragement policies.The word mova is used for "language" instead of jazyk as in most other Slavic languages, due to semantic differences; mova means "speech" whereas jazyk means "tongue" (note that both these words can mean "language" in English).
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