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Teach Yourself Ukrainian Complete Course for Beginners
by Olena Bekh and James Dingley, 299 pages
ISBN 0-340-62073-0
This is a complete course in spoken and written Ukrainian. If you have never learnt Ukrainian before, or if your Ukrainian needs brushing up, Teach Yourself Ukrainian is for you.
Olena Bekh and James Dingley have created a practical course that is both fun and easy to work through. They explain everything clearly along the way and give you plenty of opportunities to practise what you have learnt. The course structure means that you can work at your own pace, arranging your learning to suit your needs.
Based on the Council of Europe's Threshold guidelines on language learning, the course contains:
- Eighteen graded units of dialogues, culture notes, grammar and exercises
- A step-by-step pronunciation guide
- A Ukrainian-English vocabulary
By the end of the course you'll he able to cope with a whole range of situations and participate fully and confidently in life in Ukraine.
Ukraine is one of the new countries on the map of Europe, but the language and history of the people who live there can be traced back at least as far as the tenth century, when Kyiv (still better known as Kiev) was already a well-established meeting place of trade routes and nations. In Ukraine it is possible to hear Bulgarian, Greek, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Romany, Russian and Yiddish. One language however unites all the people of Ukraine - Ukrainian, the sole official language of the Ukrainian state. Incidentally, Ukrainian forms of names of towns and rivers will be used throughout the book - hence Kyiv (Kiev), L'viv (Lvov, Lwow, Lemberg), Odesa (Odessa), Dnipro (Dnieper).
There are many reasons for learning Ukrainian. Intellectual curiosity about the language and culture of a 'new' European people is certainly one. At a more immediately practical level Ukraine is still waiting to be discovered as a tourist country. As Ukraine becomes stronger economically, the need will grow for foreign businessmen to have some idea of the language in order to do business there. Whatever the reason, we hope that you will enjoy the flavour of the Ukrainian language as much as you will enjoy the rich flavours of Ukrainian cooking.
The book is divided into eighteen units. With one exception, each unit contains dialogues, grammar notes under the heading 'How the language works' and illustrative material to back up what you have learned. Exercises of various types will give you a chance to test your knowledge.
We are convinced that the best way to learn Ukrainian is to acquire as soon as possible the ability to read, however slowly and painstakingly at first, dialogues and texts that we hope are both interesting and lively, even to the point of being far-fetched! The tapes provide an extra opportunity to hear the material and practise your own spoken Ukrainian. The first half of the book contains units that may seem to contain an alarming amount of grammar. Don't panic - it doesn't all need to be learned at once! The information is there for continuous reference.
We hope to have succeeded in presenting the kind of Ukrainian that will be accepted and understood anywhere in Ukraine. Once you have completed the 18 units, you will have a solid foundation on which to develop your knowledge. Ukrainians will be delighted that you have taken the trouble to learn something of their language.
In Teach Yourself Ukrainian you will meet a number of characters closely connected with Ukraine. Stephen Taylor is the director of Hermes Clothing. He is interested in business opportunities in Ukraine and has already started to learn Ukrainian. His friend, Taras Koval, an Englishman with a Ukrainian background, has been teaching him the language, and together they plan a trip to Ukraine which will combine business with pleasure. Taras is married to Vira from Ukraine. Before his trip to Ukraine Stephen makes a useful contact when he meets an English lawyer of Ukrainian extraction, Iuri Morozenko. Stephen's business contacts in Ukraine are Solomiia Koval'chuk, the director of a clothing company in Kyiv, and Ihor Stakhiv, the general manager of the company. You will also meet Ihor's wife Ol'ha and their three children, Natalka, Ostap and Olenka. Taras has a Ukrainian friend, Bohdan. During his trip around Ukraine Stephen meets his old friend, Andrew, an American journalist.
Copyright © 1997 Olena Bekh and James Dingley
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