Yatir Nitzany: Conversational Ukrainian Quick and Easy: The Most Innovative Technique to Learn the Ukrainian Language

My book is mainly intended for basic present tense vocal communication, meaning anyone can easily use it to “get by” linguistically while visiting a foreign country without learning the entire language. With practice, you will be 100 percent understandable to native speakers, which is your aim. One disclaimer: this is not a grammar book, though it does address minute and essential grammar rules (please see footnotes at the bottom of every page). Therefore, understanding complex sentences with obscure words in Ukrainian is beyond the scope of this book.

People who have tried this method have been successful, and by the time you finish this book, you will understand and be understood in basic conversational Ukrainian. This is the best basis to learn not only the Ukrainian language but any language. This is an entirely revolutionary, no-fail concept, and your ability to combine the pieces of the “language puzzle” together will come with great ease, especially if you use this program prior to beginning a Ukrainian language class.

This is the best program that was ever designed to teach the reader how to become conversational. Other conversational programs will only teach you phrases. But this is the only program that will teach you how to create your own sentences for the purpose of becoming conversational.

The East Slavic language of Ukrainian has been the subject of a ban and derision by the Russians and often denied the status of a language in its own right. A quote attributed to Czar Nicholas II goes, “There is no Ukrainian language, just illiterate peasants speaking Little Russian,” even though the Ukrainian and Russian lexicons differ by 38% (as opposed to 33% for Spanish and Italian). Outside of Russia, Ukrainian and Russian are accepted as two similar but different languages.

Ukrainian is the official state language of Ukraine and the Crimea, the first of two principal languages for Ukrainians, and one of three official languages for the unrecognized state of Transnistria, of which the other two are Romanian and Russian. It is also a recognized minority language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia.

Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script and there are an estimated forty-five million speakers of the language.

Historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic, from which it split off about a thousand years ago, of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus’. After the fall of the Kievan Rus’ as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the language developed into a form called the Ruthenian language. The Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late seventeenth century and has been associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate.

From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire, of which the biggest part of Ukraine (Central, Eastern, and Southern) was a part at the time. It has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors.

The Ukrainian language can be mutually understood, to a degree, by those speaking Belarusian and Russian.

Spoken in:Ukraine

There is no doubt the three hundred and fifty words in my program are the required essentials in order to engage in quick and easy basic conversation in any foreign language. However, some people may experience difficulty in the memorization. For this reason, I created Memorization Made Easy. This memorization technique will make this program so simple and fun that it’s unbelievable! I have spread the words over the following twenty pages. Each page contains a vocabulary table of ten to fifteen words. Below every vocabulary box, sentences are composed from the words on the page that you have just studied. This aids greatly in memorization. Once you succeed in memorizing the first page, then proceed to the second page. Upon completion of the second page, go back to the first and review. Then proceed to the third page. After memorizing the third, go back to the first and second and repeat. And so on. As you continue, begin to combine words and create your own sentences in your head. Every time you proceed to the following page, you will notice words from the previous pages will be present in those simple sentences as well, because repetition is one of the most crucial aspects in learning any foreign language. Upon completion of your twenty pages, congratulations, you have absorbed the required words and gained a basic, quick-and-easy proficiency and you should now be able to create your own sentences and say anything you wish in Ukrainian. This is a crash course in conversational Ukrainian, and it works!

In this program, whenever encountering a t’ at the end of verbs, pronounce it as a soft “ts.” For example, “to buy” / kupit’ is pronounced as “kupits” (with a soft sounding “ts”).

Whenever encountering y’y or u’u , pronounce them as “uo” as in “buoy.”

Kh — For the Ukrainian language as well as Middle Eastern languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi, etc., to properly pronounce the kh or ch is essential, for example, nacht (“night” in German) or Chanukah (a Jewish holiday) or Khaled (a Muslim name). The best way to describe kh or ch is to say “ka” or “ha” while at the same time putting your tongue at the back of your throat and blowing air. It’s pronounced similarly to the sound that you make while clearing your throat of phlegm. *Please remember this whenever you come across any word containing a kh in this program.

Again, this is not a pronunciation book. The sole purpose of this book is to provide you with the necessary skills in order to engage in fluent conversational communications. With regards to grammar and pronunciation, you are on your own!

The purpose of this book is merely to enable you to communicate in Ukrainian. In the program itself (from start-finish), you may notice that the composition of some of those sentences might sound rather clumsy. This is intentional. These sentences were formulated in a specific way to serve two purposes: to facilitate the easy memorization of the vocabulary and to teach you how to combine the words in order to form your own sentences for quick and easy communication, rather than making complete literal sense in the English language. So keep in mind that this is not a phrase book!

As the title suggests, the sole purpose of this program is for conversational use only. It is based on the mirror translation technique. These sentences, as well as the translations are not incorrect, just a little clumsy. Latin languages, Semitic languages, and Anglo-Germanic languages, as well as a few others, are compatible with the mirror translation technique.

Many users say that this method surpasses any other known language learning technique that is currently out there on the market. Just stick with the program and you will achieve wonders!

Again, I wish to stress this program is by no means, shape, or form a phrase book! The sole purpose of this book is to give you a fundamental platform to enable you to connect certain words to become conversational. Please also read the “Introduction” and the “About Me” section prior to commencing the program.