I REALLY WANT TO LEARN HOW TO SPEAK UKRANIAN

[RusskayaGirl]

Hi. My name is Katharine and I am from New Jersey in the USA. I am Ukranian, Polish, Russian, and Czech (from that area). I love my Ukranian side and I really, really want to learn how to speak Ukranian. There is a Ukranian Orthodox Church in my town, but everyone there speaks Ukranian and doesnt know any English. I was wondering if anyone can help me learn Ukranian? Maybe online since I am still a highschool student? Please let me know if you can help me. I've done reports on Ukranian foods, etc... but I am really interested in learning it. I even plan on traveling to a small village from where I am from, but I would need to know how to speak it. Please if you can help, that would be great!!

Katharine Nadzak

[yurilev0]

Hi Katherine,

I believe the Ukrainian Institute of America on 2 east 79th st in NYC offers courses in Ukrainian. It may be worth your while to check it out.

Yuri

[Khomut]

Yeah, if you're from Jersy...
Which part of Jersy are you from?
If you are close to NYC then you can always find plenty of lessons,
if you are close to Philly - that's the same story, lot of Ukrainians there,
I guess you can try to study Ukrainian also at Summer School at Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute,
it costs some money, but it's your problem )
you can find the webpage very simple,
just print HURI in Yahoo! search
also you can find the webpage of University of ALberta, look for Ukrainian studies,
they should have something
Cosmo

[millgirl]

Hi Katharine,
I too am learning to speak Ukrainian, teaching myself. I bought an Ukrainian Phrasebook and Dictionary. It is perfect if you are planning a trip there. It has the transiliteration spelling so you can sound it out. I would suggest teaching yourself the alphabet first and how to pronounce the letters. There are several free on-line courses too. Try Google. Sorry I can't pass them on to you, just got a new computer and don't have all my favs in the new one yet. Good luck.

[bliskucha]

Hi Katharine. This is my story: About two years ago, I found out that I had ethnic Ukrainian in my family. So I started looking at cookbooks and travel guides. I found I was intrigued by the Cyrillic writing (actually I've always been intrigued by Cyrillic writing). Anyway, one thing led to another, and slowly I found myself learning the language, and loving learning the language. It's a very beautiful, lyrical and enchanting language. It is about 70% Russian, which is also a beautiful language, and has quite a bit of Polish in it. Of course, western Ukraine has more Polish in it. By learning Ukrainian, you're learning a bit of Polish and a bit of Russian. That's the good part. This is the more difficult part: It is not an easy language- no Slavic language is. It's not the alphabet that's difficult, with perseverence you'll get that. But it has 7 cases. English and the Romantic languages have 4. They say one of the hardest languages to learn is Finnish, partly because it has 9 cases.

I'm out of high school many years. I'm a full-time mother, and I study Ukrainian on and off whenever I can. It takes a lot of work. However, they say the younger you are, the easier it is to learn a language. You would have to be very motivated, and it sounds like you are, to find the time needed to learn this language. What I would recommend is this summer, concentrate, and make this your goal for the summer. Do what I did, go to the bookstores, obviously go to the language section, and buy phrasebooks (as millgirl suggested), dictionaries, and cassettes. A book I would recommend to you is, from the Teach Yourself series, Ukrainain: A Complete Course for Beginners, by Olena Bekh and James Dingley.

Again, it's a lot of work to learn Ukrainian- but it's soo worth it. Actually, this past summer, I had wanted to go to Ukraine, ended up going to Russia instead, and found that my Ukrainian helped me! It was really cool. I'm absolutely going to Ukraine in a year or two. Again, you sound super-motivated, and I would also recommend to you this British singing group, called The Ukrainians, who sing in Ukrainian. They're excellent, and the lyrics in their liner notes are bilingual.

ъ АЮФЮЧ БЮЛ СЯОЁУЁБ! (I wish you success!)

Sonya

P.S. DO NOT rely on transliterations, they'll screw you up. Learn the alphabet and the correct pronunciations of the Cyrillic letters, and depending on the book, only use transliterations to show you which syllable to stress.

[RusskayaGirl]

i just want to thank you guys for your input... i found a site that im learning, but i still cant translate... is there a key in translating? like ive been speaking spanish for 5 years, but how would i translate ukranian into english? and its really hard to pronounce the words... i know the alphabet and how to pronounce, but i still dont get it...

k.n

[jutka]

If you love cases you've got to learn Hungarian - there are 25 cases in all!