Easy Ukrainian Book: great impetus for learning

I bought this book a few weeks ago to give more impetus to my Ukrainian learning. I have started teaching some of the Ukrainians who have arrived in the UK and therefore I have an opportunity to speak Ukrainian. I want to make every effort to improve my limited vocabulary. I read first and try to guess the meaning.  Then I read a second and a third time. The pictures help a lot. I remember one of my best childhood teachers – a Latin teacher – who said you will not understand a foreign language text on first reading, but if you keep looking, then each time you will guess more and more.

He was right.

After several attempts I listen to Natalia reading. She is a slow speaker which I greatly appreciate. I don’t always do the exercises but recently I have started re-reading earlier chapters and then I often do so. One of my Ukrainian students recently told me that my pronunciation of Ukrainian was a bit careless so now I sometimes use the book to try to improve this aspect. I now understand what she means. It is very interesting that her pronunciation of English is not careless enough! It is too precise. She pronounces every consonant. This is an interesting point of distinction between the 2 languages.

I am now 100 pages into the book. This represents around 60 hours of reading. I love the story. It goes with me when I go kayaking on the river. I listen to the story in the car. It seems to me that it complements the Ukrainian Podcasts really well.

Alas, few Brits seem to want to learn Ukrainian so i haven’t been able to recommend it to anyone.  They are missing out on the thrill of surprising Ukrainians with a burst of your beautiful language.