I found an old book in the basement which I can only partially understand because it's in Ukrainian, so call I can do is look at the pictures. It's very dogeared and it's been scribbled on in a lot of places, and because it starts out with the alphabet, I think its purpose is to teach kids how to read. A sort of "Ted and Sally -- Run! Run! Run!," type of book.
I don't know how old it is, but I suspect it's from pre-Communist times, because there are pictures of churches, and none of Lenin or Stalin.
And the games children played in those days! They'd never be tolerated today.
To illustrate, I scanned a page:
Can anyone read it well enough to help out with a translation?
Does anyone remember playing a game like that as a child?
In modern terms, it's easy to say that this book "sets a bad example" by showing children harnessing and whipping each other. Certainly, no such picture would make it into a modern reader. But did it really set a bad example for children of that era?
Or am I a "moral relativist" for posing such a question?
posted by Eric on 09.12.07 at 11:31 AM
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Comments
"Children in a team of small horses."
I'm not saying it is Ukrainian, it may be Russian and I'm too rusty to get it all. But there are characters one doesn't find in Russian. Sometimes, when I listen to Ukrainian, it's like listening to Russian as is listening to English being spoken in more rural southern areas of the U.S.
I asked a coworker who immigrated to the US from Ukraine, and she give me the following translation:
Children were playing horses. Yurchik (nickname for Yura) was a driver. He made a whip and drove the horses. Ivas (nickname for Ivan) and Petrik (nickname for Peter) were horses. Yurchik tied his horses up with rope under armpits and rode. The children ran on a sand road, jumped and neighed like horses would do:
- Neigh-neigh
Then they ran to a river, laid on the grass as if they grazed.
She indicates that it is most likely early twentieth century, only just after the revolution.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
"Children in a team of small horses."
I'm not saying it is Ukrainian, it may be Russian and I'm too rusty to get it all. But there are characters one doesn't find in Russian. Sometimes, when I listen to Ukrainian, it's like listening to Russian as is listening to English being spoken in more rural southern areas of the U.S.
But the Ukrainians would never accept that.