Comprehensive Ukrainian I includes 30 lessons of essential grammar and vocabulary -- 16 hours of real-life spoken practice sessions -- plus an introduction to reading.

Upon completion of this Level I program, you will have functional spoken proficiency with the most-frequently-used vocabulary and grammatical structures. You will be able to:

* initiate and maintain face-to-face conversations,
* deal with every day situations -- ask for information, directions, and give basic information about yourself and family,
* communicate basic information on informal topics and participate in casual conversations,
* avoid basic cultural errors and handle minimum courtesy and travel requirements,
* satisfy personal needs and limited social demands,
* establish rapport with strangers in foreign countries,
* begin reading and sounding out items with native-like pronunciation.

 

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).

 

Note: These Language program courses are special order and take 3 - 6 weeks for delivery.